Seeker

“In the beginning, there was the hum of the universe.”

Shinobu and Quin sat cross-legged on the floor of the practice barn. Alistair had dragged in the old blackboard. He was standing in front of it, looking as much like a teacher as it was possible for a large Scottish warrior to look. He had made a good start by wearing glasses beneath his messy and very red hair. He was, however, also wearing a tight, sleeveless exercise shirt that left bare his enormous arms. Beneath the shirt he had on his teaching trousers, which made an appearance every now and then. They’d been carefully pressed with a crease down the front of each leg, but the effect was ruined somewhat by the fact that Alistair was barefoot.

The big man repeated himself: “In the beginning, there was the hum of the universe.” He looked at his two students. “What does that mean?”

Shinobu’s hand went up.

“Yes, lad?”

“The vibration of all things,” said Shinobu.

Quin put her hand up.

“Yes, lass?”

“All matter in the universe vibrates,” Quin said. “Atoms, electrons, even smaller things.”

“Aye. Correct, both.” Alistair uncrossed his massive arms, picked up a piece of chalk, and began to draw an atom. He pressed too hard and broke the chalk twice before he’d finished the diagram. Quin smiled.

“Don’t laugh at me, child,” he said good-naturedly. “You’ll make me feel small, won’t you? Now. What is a hum but a vibration? When something vibrates, it needs at least two dimensions, does it not? At least up and down and side to side. Do you agree?”

Quin and Shinobu nodded, impressed by the sheer quantity of words coming from Alistair, who usually said as little as possible. Perhaps this lesson was as exciting for him as it was for them—hence his efforts to look scholarly. He turned and drew a diagram of a two-dimensional wave vibration.

Quin caught Shinobu glancing at her. They’d both turned fourteen within the last month, and though they’d been learning to fight for years, Briac had only now given his approval for the two of them to begin this particular instruction with Alistair. It meant he believed they would make it to their oath. Briac believed they were good enough to be Seekers. She smiled at Shinobu, excited for them both.

Alistair cleared his throat. “If you can’t even concentrate on the lesson, Son, maybe you should tell her, eh?”

“What, sir?” Shinobu asked, startled. He looked away from Quin quickly.

As Quin watched, Shinobu’s cheeks flushed bright red, and he seemed to shrink in upon himself. She guessed that his father had mentally caught him daydreaming about one of the many girls he knew down in Corrickmore. That would explain the absent way he’d been staring at her for the last few minutes—his mind had been wandering. He was so good-looking, it was no surprise those girls were after him. To give Shinobu time to recover, Quin raised her hand.

“How do you read minds, sir? And why can’t I?”

“How I read minds: not at all,” Alistair replied. “My son’s face had his thoughts written on it clear. No mind reading required.” He removed his glasses and carefully cleaned their rims with the hem of his tank top, giving his face a professorial expression as he did so. “Why can’t you read minds? The answer is, maybe you can.”

“I really can’t, sir.”

“Could be you can, girl, but there’s no telling if you will. It might happen of a sudden, at any point before you’re grown, when you’re training your mind as we are.” He put his glasses back on, and Quin realized there were no lenses in them—they were purely for show. “Once you’re an adult, you’ll know whether you can or not. I can’t. Your mother, Fiona, had it come upon her all at once when she was a girl. Overnight, she could read a mind like she was reading a book. But I think not so much anymore.”

“She still does, sir,” Quin offered. “Mostly when I’m thinking things I don’t want her to know.”

“Ah, of course. Now, if my son’s cheeks have stopped burning, we can continue the lesson. Tell me—could something vibrate in three dimensions?” They both quickly agreed that this was so. “How about four?”

Shinobu raised his hand.

“Ah, lad, you know this one. What is the fourth dimension?”

“Time, sir,” he answered. They had learned this before, of course, but its relevance was not yet clear.

“Correct. Master MacBain gets a lollipop after class. Which he is welcome to share if he likes.” Here he glanced knowingly at Quin, and Shinobu looked uncomfortable again.

Alistair pushed on. He drew a three-dimensional cube on the blackboard, then a long arrow beneath it. “Time. Any vibration happens through time. But there is a very strange thing in the universe—”

“Stranger than a man wearing a tank top with dress trousers, sir?” Shinobu asked.

Quin stopped herself from smiling. Since Shinobu’s mother had died, Alistair had been both father and mother to him, and he gave Shinobu plenty of room to fool around. But whether Alistair would put up with it during a lesson was never certain.

Fortunately, Alistair smiled and gave a very large sigh. “Have you no respect? This is my formal tank top, isn’t it? Now, please. There is a strange thing in the universe. The vibrations of atoms and electrons and even smaller particles dinnae quite add up. There is something wrong with them, isn’t there? Until we understand that they are vibrating in more dimensions than those we see around us.”

Quin’s heart beat faster with anticipation. Alistair was going to tell them something important. She could feel it.

“There are the three dimensions we see, and the one we feel—time. But there are more. Curled up within the smallest vibrations of the universe, there are other dimensions. These slide through our own dimensions like movable, interlocking threads.”

He turned back to the chalkboard and drew something like threads woven together into a piece of fabric. “Aye, and time. Here, it moves like this.” He pointed to the long, straight arrow in his earlier diagram. “But there?” He shrugged. “Time might not be so simple. What if you could unfurl those hidden dimensions? What if you could open them up and step into them? What would they feel like? Where would they take you?”

Both students were silent for a bit, staring at Alistair and his simple drawing.

Finally Quin asked, “Can we really do that, sir?”

Alistair set down the chalk and crossed his huge arms over his chest. He smiled.

“That’s all for today.”