He nodded.
“What else do they tell you?”
“That I’m one of them. That just like their great ancestor, I have swallowed the shadow of the sun. They call me Grandfather Crow sometimes, although I am not so old.”
“An ancestor, eh?”
He lifted a knobby shoulder in a shrug.
“What else do they call you, Serapio?”
He hesitated. “When my skin is too cold, Nightbringer. Or Suneater, sometimes, when I’m angry. They say that my body is cold, but my anger is hot.”
“All this you have learned from the crows?” He sounded surprised, like he had not expected that.
“They are my friends. I have earned their trust.”
“And what did your mother call you?”
Serapio twisted from where he sat on the stones to face the stranger. “Did my mother send you?” he asked.
“Your mother is dead.” The man’s voice was flat and unsympathetic, a man making a statement of fact. “But yes, she did send me, after a fashion. Arranged for me and two others to come should her work succeed.”
“You mean me,” Serapio said. “I am my mother’s work.”
“What did she tell you?”
“That I would be a god.”
The stranger was silent for so long Serapio thought he might have left undetected.
“You are a strange one,” he remarked, finally. “Come in. I have something here for you.”
Serapio heard the man’s footsteps retreating into the room. He considered ignoring the command to follow, but his curiosity got the better of him. He whispered a farewell to his friends, stood to dust off his hands and pants, and made his way to the bench he knew to be just inside the door. He took a seat.
“Take this.” Something pressed against his knee, and Serapio grasped it. It was rough bark and thick, as long as his hand and as wide. He flattened his other palm against it.
“A tree branch?”
“And now this.”
Something else at his knee. He took it, feeling a handle and a wide blade, blunt and tapered on the end. “A knife?”
“A chisel. I’m going to teach you how to carve.”
“Why?”
“It is only a tool, a means to an end. Now, when was the last time you used your hands?”
“I just used them to pick up this chisel and wood.”
A sharp blow struck his cheek. He cried out, collapsing to the floor. The crows outside shrieked. He raised a trembling hand to his face. It came away wet with blood, a thin slice of skin ripped free from the kiss of some weapon he didn’t know. It stung where the flesh was exposed to air. Rage bubbled up inside him, not cold at all, and he opened his mouth to call his crows.
“Bring them down on me, and I’ll strike them, too. I don’t want to hurt them, or you, Serapio, but you will respect me. Do you understand?”
Serapio snapped his jaw shut. To hit him was one thing. He would not risk his friends.
“Let’s start again,” the man said. “Wood and chisel.”
Serapio fought back tears and tried to ignore his bleeding cheek. He weighed the raw wood in his hand and the chisel in the other. He thought of throwing them at the man. But then what? Where would he run to avoid another blow? And his birds. The man might hurt his birds.
“Stop feeling sorry for yourself,” the man said. “I can smell your self-pity from here. Do as I say, and we’ll get along fine. I’ll only hit you when you need it. I am reasonable, after all.”
Serapio didn’t answer.
Quick steps, and Serapio knew another blow was coming. He shied back as the man’s hand gripped him by the hair, pulled him to his knees.
“You talk about destiny,” he hissed, “but are unwilling to suffer to achieve it? You won’t get to Tova if you are afraid, Serapio. I will make your mind strong, hone your ability to endure pain, if you let me. Or do you wish to stay on this terrace and rot with these keepers of yours?”
The stranger shook him, making his head bob back and forth like a reed in the wind. “I will suffer!” Serapio cried, voice high and frightened.
The man released him, and Serapio collapsed forward. He caught himself on hands and knees, breathing hard, wood and chisel still gripped between fingers and palm.
He heard the man cross the room and settle back on the far bench. His voice came from a distance. “Describe the wood to me. Tell me what you feel.”
Serapio took a deep steadying breath. Pushed himself to sitting and turned the wood between his fingers, against his palm. “It feels rough,” he ventured, fighting to keep his voice steady.
“More than that,” the man coaxed. “Concentrate. Use your fingers and your mind.”
“Rough,” Serapio repeated, and then, “Pitted. Jagged along here, the left side, and knotted just below where my thumb is.” He ran the edge of his thumbnail along the knot.
“Better,” the man said. “Now, feel for the creature already inside the block. It’s there, hiding, waiting for you to bring it forth.” A rustle of clothing as the man leaned closer. “Can you do it, Serapio? Can you find the creature inside the wood?”
“Yes.” He ran the chisel along the groove he had mapped with his fingernail, imagining a crow in his mind. Small head, large beak, curving breast, and feathered wings. He dug the chisel into the wood, but it slipped, thrusting under his fingernail instead. He cried out in pain and drew his hand back. Stuck the finger in his mouth and sucked.
“Make the pain your friend, Serapio,” the man urged. “Learn to appreciate it the way you might a lover. Let it become the thing you crave most.”
Serapio knew nothing personally about what lovers did, but he had heard the servants fucking in the room next to his often enough. He did know he wanted nothing to do with suffering and pain. Is that what this man was here to teach him? He didn’t want it, but if it meant he would become what his mother wanted him to, he would endure.
“Now,” his tutor said, “tell me again about the wood. Use different words this time.”
Serapio did.
Time passed. The room grew colder as the sun set, and servants came to light the wall lamps and offer them supper. The man ate but instructed Serapio to keep working since he had not yet earned the right to eat.
Only when the night servants came to ready Serapio’s bed did the man say, “It’s time for me to leave.”
“Are you coming back?” Serapio asked, unsure if he wanted the man to stay or if he wanted him gone forever.
“Yes. I keep my promises.” He clamped a hand on Serapio’s shoulder and squeezed hard enough for his thin bones to shift painfully under his shirt. “Next time I come, you can call me Paadeh. We’ll be friends yet.”
Serapio knew instinctively that this was a lie. Paadeh did not like him. He wasn’t sure why, but he knew it as well as he knew his name. He might be here to honor a promise that he had made to his mother long ago, he might be here to teach him pain so that he could fulfill his destiny, but they would never be friends.
After his new tutor had left, Serapio held his hand to his cheek for a long time, thinking. The blood had dried in a hardened line that flaked off when he tugged at it.
The pain had startled him, but he had already begun to forgive it, make it his friend as Paadeh had said.