Blankmap: Book I

13. The Lessons Continue

By the fourth day of his lessons Solomon Hyrax had progressed from letters to words to full sentences. He had wrestled for the better part of two hours with the transition from the letters that built the words to the words themselves, until Rip Rap provided a delicate solution.

"Listen, yeh'll make yerself crazy if yeh don't ease up. This can't be done wi' brute force, I promise yeh. Yer father tells me (if I recall correctly) that yeh like to climb trees. Right?"

Solomon, purple in the face from trying to sound out the four-letter words on the page before him, looked up.

"Yes, but what does that have to do with me learning to read? Climbing trees is a cinch. Climbing a tree without any branches at all is probably easy compared to this."

"Well, keep thinkin' about branches fer a quick second. Now tell me, how do yeh get to the top of a tree?"

"How do I get to the top of a tree?" It seemed to be a pointless question, just another in an endless series of frustrations in the young life of Solomon Hyrax. Gone was the enthusiasm that had allowed him to tackle single letters so easily and beg for extra work. This was torture.

"Clean out yer ears, boy, can't you hear that's what I asked? Now, think. How do you get to the top of a tree?"

Solomon let out a long sigh. "You climb onto the lowest branch. Then you pull yourself up hand-over-hand. Your legs do most of the work, though. You check the strength of your footholds every so often before you make your way further up. You do that long enough and you're at the top of the tree."

"And would yeh be frustrated with someone who's scared o' heights, who couldn't do it just as easy as yeh say the first time they tried to haul themselves up a blasted tree?"

"I suppose so, yeah."

"And wouldn't yer frustration make them more frustrated in turn?"

"Probably."

"Okay. Now yeh've got a small sense of what I'm tryin' to accomplish here wi' yeh. So, back to thinkin' about those branches. Let's pretend fer a moment that the first letter is the lowest branch. I know there's a lot more'n four branches to a tree, but like I said, we're pretendin' here. Once yeh've hit the fourth letter yeh've climbed the whole stinkin' tree. Now...climb, boy."

Once Solomon took a deep breath the tree metaphor began to make a good deal of sense. He began to sound his way through the words a little more easily after that. He even started turning the page a little upwards on the right side so that it felt more like climbing. He was grateful that Rip Rap, unlike the old woman, didn't seem to think him stupid for not being able to do something he had never done before. He was also glad that Rip Rap hadn't wanted to talk about all that had happened in Nishaya. Somehow Solomon felt that he wouldn't be able to do all that he felt justice with words; what was more, he was worried that even if he were to convey all that was in his heart, it might be found to be silly, or wrong, or young. So he said nothing, and asked nothing.