Aur Child

Gallia-Tiul stood early the next morning before a small group of village youngsters recently chosen by the elders to hear the Children’s Lecture. They shifted in their seats, their fingers twitched and squeezed the odd rigidity of borrowed scriptleafs, but their eyes were invariably fixed on her. Unlike her previous week’s lecture, ‘28 Essential Plants of the Child Moon’, not a single child, she could tell, didn’t yearn for her to begin speaking. They had arrived uncharacteristically early to the tiny classroom and remained there in quiet anticipation, only a whisper when she had entered. They knew – she knew they had been told by their parents, older siblings, or higher classmates – she would finally answer so many of their questions.

For years, adults had told them they would “soon learn, soon know, or soon understand”. Oftentimes, those words – which were always spoken in a tone of condescension – came after they had smashed fists, screamed in fury, or hurled insults. But now, after being left to their primitive instincts, restless and confused in their first decade of life, it was time to welcome them to the nascent beginnings of adulthood. The truth about the way of adults, always hidden from children until they reached their second decade, would now be told when she revealed to them the ‘Children’s Lecture’, the opening words of Our Order.

Adults, they had seen, unlike themselves, never battled. While too thoughtless and young to acknowledge it consciously, the children struggled internally with this difference. They all knew they were different, and they all wondered why. Gallia was sure they felt this way because she had too. And she could see in their shimmering eyes that they now knew their confusion would soon be over. She had something they desperately wanted. What would it be like, she thought with a thrill in her bosom, to understand again for the first time?

“You may now access the section entitled ‘Our Order’ in your scriptleafs,” she said.

The children, like egrets fishing a shallow pond, pierced instantly at their family’s scriptleafs with sharp fingers. She shared their excitement. She had always cherished these lectures more than any other, yet she knew that her hand shook for different reasons. That scream. She could not forget the scream from the ship. The scream that seemed to call for a mother. The scream that plagued her attempts to sleep last night. Her actions had riddled her with doubts about her own convictions, her own legitimacy. She shook because, for the first time in her life, she worried that she might fail to deliver this critical message with all the credibility the children deserved.

The children looked at her.

“Elder Tiul,” one said in a shudder, “May we read it now?”

Gallia straightened herself and said, “Oh, yes, would you please read aloud the first line to us?”

The eager girl with a red-tipped nose nodded, cleared her throat, and read.

“Despite our slow climb out of the savage wild to a civilization with morals, the choice of primitive violence is all too instinctual.”

Gallia let the thick walls swallow up those words like water in a drain.

“We can be violent towards one another,” she said. “Or not. It is a choice. Now your turn, dear,” Gallia nodded to the next child. A boy with pointy elbows and one worn sandal dropping from his foot took the cue.

“When we focus the energy of our hopes, our minds, and our hearts upon humans, the promise of peace and mutual aspiration can show us to the unrealized splendor of Earth.”

Gallia smiled and reached for the boy, caressing his cheek. She said, “We can all be happiest when we try to help one another be happy.”

She nodded again. The next child read to his peers.

“Search your dialogue for commonality and concord. A selfish desire for happiness is in fact a common emotion shared by every human.”

“Yes,” Gallia smiled. “Lovely. We all want to be happy. Remember that. You, you, and everyone you meet, all want to be happy. Of course, you might say, it’s obvious. But if you remind yourself of that, if you think of that when you speak to others, you will be happier yourself. And now you.”

“To make internal peace from the direst of conflict is to elevate all humanity. To care for one another, is to care for ourselves.”

“That’s right. If you can find it in your heart to hug your pesky brother, your neighbor, even a stranger, regardless of things that may have happened, you will make everything better. And finally, dear,” Gallia nodded to the last child. “Please, the last line.”

The tiny voice leaped from the boy’s mouth, like the chirp of a hatchling safely tucked in a high-branched nest.

“Violence solves nothing. Resolution comes through dialogue.”

“Ah yes,” Gallia said after a period of profound silence. “Violence solves nothing. But talking! Talking will help you through any worry. Speak your mind. Ask others how they feel.” She balled her hand up an crunched her face into a teeth-clenched, menacing scowl. “Always remember, your words are so much more powerful than your fists.”

One of the girls furrowed her brows and cleared her throat.

“Is… is that it?” she asked.

“Yes. That’s it.”

Gallia looked carefully at those treasured little faces in the room, round-eyed and open-mouthed in their desperate attempts to comprehend the meaning of what they had just read, each one a promise of their people’s future. She knew they were always this way at first; expecting something obviously profound and not yet realizing it was all there once they wrapped their heads around it. Of course, they didn’t understand every word. How could they? But the spirit of it was nonetheless instantaneous; they were at once members of those who saw, knew, understood. Young as they were, they would exit the classroom as young adults. They had experienced enough – both the errors of their own ways and the example of the adults’ – to grasp what it meant. And in every step, every stumble, they would absorb those words a bit more. In every interaction, they would feel themselves included in the greater good of it. From that day forward, with a few lapses in judgement, they would fulfill lives of peacefulness and care towards one another. They would practice resolution through the satisfying pleasure of dialogue rather than the stinging pain of domination. They would shun the aggression used to terrorize one another just one day earlier. It had all been forgiven by a mutual indoctrination to the sacred philosophy of universal kindness. In an instant, any transgressions were looked back upon merely as childishness and naivete of youth. Gallia knew just by their steady heads and upright posture that they were indeed now adults. Young adults, to be sure, not to be expected to take full responsibility for their actions until realizing their third decade. But they were, nonetheless, adults who would uphold the values of Our Order.

By their second decade, many kids were clever enough to guess that the basis of Our Order had to do with violence and peace, but to read those words for the first time was to be shown, as it was said, ‘the secret path out of a dark forest’; a simple solution to a daily problem. The content of Our Order was obvious after reading it, but the history of humans for thousands of years was proof that it was not achievable without a consensus about its superiority. It had taken so long to get there.

Gallia would have liked to enjoy the electric thrill she felt erupting in the classroom as the wonder of discovery and the outpouring of anxiety were released at once, but the knock at the door stole that luxury from her.

She waved her hands in rotating circles and said to the children, “Discuss, discuss!” as she walked to reach the door’s handle. When she saw Elder Nallu-Hoenria standing at the threshold with low slung eyebrows and a downturned mouth, she stepped out of the room and closed the door behind her.

“Nallu,” she said with a lilt in her tone, “what a surprise to see you here. And you look terrible. What has happened?”

Nallu continued to frown and shook her head.

“It is what will happen that brings me here. I’m surprised to see you can stay so calm despite the great threats that hang over us. I regret interrupting your class, Gallia, but I cannot hold my tongue any longer. You must recover the Aur child from that reckless Alai at once and end this nonsense. There is too much at risk to let him continue stabbing away at it with his rusty tools.”

Gallia leaned against the door. Such a high just moments earlier, but now it came as a terrible jolt to be yanked so far down so quickly to the most terrible of her concerns.

“But Nallu, we agreed – we all agreed together – that the Aur child would be safest there for the time being. I know of nowhere to hide it yet; we need time to find a safe place. Nothing Alai can do to the Aur child can cause it any harm; we both know it has endured much worse than a few pokes from an old screwdriver.”

“But it is exposed, Gallia. It has tempted the Apostates before, and it will beckon them here once again if you do not rush to hide it where it cannot be found. Perhaps I let the others sooth my concerns last night but now I must insist you demand its return. And what’s more, rumors have started amongst the villagers; they blame Alai’s strange new power cell for the unexplained illnesses by which people have been taken.”

“But there’s no proof those are connected,” Gallia protested.

“Perhaps not, but proof never stopped a convenient rumor. You might know of this if you weren’t playing with the children right now.”

Gallia stepped back. “I do not like your tone, Nallu. I am keeping these children calm. They deserve to not be disrupted by my own worries.”

“They are all our worries, Gallia.”

“But what would you have me do? I can’t defend the Aur child myself if Apostates were to come to take it.”

“Certainly not, but your clan has enough strength to prevent its being taken.”

“What?” Gallia gasped. Her eyes widened with exasperation. “You expect me to summon a militia of my clan to stand vigil over something about which I have never told them? And where, pray tell, do you suggest we establish our garrison? Would you have them surround the wind tower with shovels and rakes?”

Nallu scoffed and tilted her head. “That might work. Don’t they trust you to know what is best for them?”

Gallia shook her head. “There’s something strange going on here, Nallu. We both know we haven’t seen eye to eye on many subjects,” she turned and looked back at the door, behind which came the murmur of the children, “but what you’re asking me to do is antithetical to everything we believe in. Have you shared this new direction with any of the other elders?”

“This direction, Gallia, is up to you. I would that you took more responsibility for it.”

Gallia stared at Nallu. The glee of her lecture had been replaced by the dread of her worries and now that had been replaced by a faint bite in her stomach that there was more to this sudden challenge than just what Nallu was saying. She tried hard to resist her suspicion, but for the first time in her life, Gallia wondered if Nallu might have been biding her time for decades to disrupt the faith the village had put in Gallia. Might this be some terrible plot to make her look the senile fool? No! It was too awful to consider. She must assume the best of her fellow sister. Again, the buzzing children caught her ear, and she remembered the shake in her hand at the beginning of the lecture. If she didn’t hold the light of those values against this fear, what would she have left? How could she ever expect to find her secret path out of the dark forest?

“Look, Nallu. I understand your concerns. I care about them. I care about you. I promise to speak to Alai tomorrow, and I will demand he returns the Aur child. We can then reconvene the elders – all of us – to decide how to protect it. I believe that is the very best anyone in my position can offer at this moment.”

Nallu leaned back ever so slightly, released her folded arms, and turned to walk away.

“I hope,” she said, looking over her shoulder, “for all our sake, that you will not be too late.”