Book 2: Chapter 8: The Road South (3)
For the first two hours, Bigan tried to talk to Sen. The cultivator indulged some questions, but mostly he just grunted noncommittal noises at the chatty wagon driver. The young man eventually figured out that Sen didn’t really want to chat about casual nothings. After that, he focused on driving the wagon and casting uncertain looks upward. The longer they stayed on the road, the more foreboding the sky grew. The clouds were heavy and black, casting the road into a kind of false dusk that seemed to bother Bigan more than Sen thought was warranted. When the ox started to balk at going any farther forward, though, Sen accepted the inevitable. They were in for a storm and likely a bad one.
“I’ll be right back,” Sen told Bigan, before leaping off the wagon and disappearing into the woods.
It took Sen a few minutes, but he found a spot where they’d be relatively sheltered from the storm. Sen knew from his time on the mountain that lightning tended to strike things that were exposed, so he had no intention of setting up camp on or near the road. He did take a little time to find a spot away from any of the taller trees, as those would be the most likely to draw lightning strikes. There was even some grass that the ox could eat, although Sen wasn’t sure how much grass the animal required. The oxen on the caravan that he’d traveled with had mostly been fed grains from stores that moved with the caravan. He wondered if Bigan had anything like that tucked away in his wagon. Probably not, Sen thought. Satisfied that the spot he’d picked was sufficient for riding out at least one night of bad weather, Sen returned to the road. Bigan had given up any pretense of looking at anything but the sky. His face was turned up and the ox had stopped moving, instead letting a steady stream of low, unhappy mooing sounds.
“Bigan,” Sen called.
The young man let a terribly unmanly shriek of surprise and whirled to face Sen, who managed to keep a straight face only thanks to years of intense personal discipline.
“What?” Bigan almost screamed.
“Follow me.”
“Okay,” said Bigan, who started to climb down off the wagon.
Sen shook his head. “Bring the wagon, unless you don’t need any of the things in it.”
Bigan cast a guilty look at the covered back of the wagon before he sat back down on the driver’s seat. It took some coaxing, but Bigan managed to get the ox to turn off the road. Once the ox saw that they were headed for cover, it stopped fighting and picked up its pace a bit. Sen set Bijan the task of securing the wagon and the ox, while he set up the tent and, after considering Bigan for a long moment, the formation flags. Sen didn’t suppose that the young man would get any benefit from the extra qi, but it wouldn’t hurt him either. Since he had the time, Sen used a bit of earth qi to raise the dirt just beneath the tent several inches. It wouldn’t keep them dry if the whole area flooded, but it should keep most of the water out of the tent for anything short of flooding. Then, with nothing left to do but wait, Sen sat down on his blankets inside the tent and began to cultivate in earnest.
Bigan fearfully ducked into the tent a few minutes later, but Sen didn’t even look at the young man. Sen had provided them with shelter, which he considered to be the fulfillment of any vague obligation he might have to the wayward wagon driver. Unfortunately, Bigan seemed almost physically incapable of tolerating silence for any appreciable duration of time.
“Are you cultivating?” he asked Sen.
Sen didn’t open his eyes when he said, “Yes.”
Nearly a full minute of glorious quiet followed. Then, Bigan apparently grew bored again.
“I always wanted to be a cultivator.”
Sen just grunted at that comment. Sen was well aware that he had started late, very late really, in cultivation. If not for the focused attention of three elder nascent soul stage cultivators, he sincerely doubted he could have gotten as far as he had. For Bigan, the window to start cultivating and have even a chance at making real progress had closed around a decade before. If he started now, the man would be lucky if he could make any progress in first stage body or spirit cultivation. Most importantly for Sen, though, was the certainty that he had no intention of providing the kid with any advice about cultivation. After seeing how sect cultivators acted, and witnessing Bigan’s terrible judgment firsthand, Sen was very disinclined to ever provide anyone with advice about cultivation. Sadly, Sen’s disinterest didn’t seem to discourage Bigan at all. If anything, it encouraged the man.
“I always thought I’d make a great cultivator. Flying through the air on a sword. Righting wrongs. Blasting things with my qi.”
“You’ve heard too many stories,” said Sen.
“What? You can’t fly?”
Sen hesitated for a moment. He’d never tried to fly, on a sword or any other way. He honestly didn’t know if he could, although he wasn’t in a hurry to try either. It wasn’t an especially useful skill if you don’t want to draw attention.
“No,” said Sen. “I can’t fly.”
“But you do right wrongs. I mean, you’re helping me.”
“I was helping the ox,” said Sen.
“The ox?”
“Yes, the ox. You left it standing there in the road with no food or water for hours,” said Sen, and then a thought occurred to him. “You did give the ox something to eat and drink, right?”
Bigan got flustered and said he needed to take care of something outside. Sen rolled his eyes and went back to cultivating. About ten minutes later, a much damper Bigan crawled back inside the tent. His embarrassment kept the young man silent for almost half an hour. Then, as inevitable as the dawn itself, he started talking again.
“I’m really not stupid, you know.”
Sen let that statement hang in the air without comment.
“I just get distracted sometimes.”
More silence.
“And I forget about things. Important things.”
In his head, Sen kept repeating the same thing. This is not your problem. This is not your problem. This is not your problem. Yet, it seemed like no one else was willing to try anymore. Bigan might not have figured it out yet, but Sen had done the math. He was willing to bet that there was virtually nothing of any real value on the wagon. The boy’s uncle had abandoned the young man out there on the road to die, no doubt for the good of the family. Probably for the good of the girl that Bigan had convinced to marry him as well. If not for Sen’s intervention, the kid would probably be huddled in the back of his cart, still out there on the road, just waiting to be struck by lightning. Sen’s mind offered up one last, halfhearted, this is not your problem, before even it fell silent.
“What have you done about it?” Sen finally asked.
Bigan gave him a perplexed look. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, you know this is a problem. What have you done to fix it? Have you done anything to fix it?”
“Of course, I have,” said Bigan, drawing himself up with a decent approximation of dignity before it all fell apart. “Well, I think I did. I meant to.”
The young man’s face went almost blank as he appeared to search through his own memories. A look of chagrin passed over his face. He silently shook his head, never quite managing to look at Sen’s face. Sen let the boy stew over that for a few minutes, at least in part to give himself time to think. If he had that problem, what would he have done about it? Sen had simply never had the luxury of distraction. As a child, he had to stay focused or go without food. On the mountain, there had been no room for it.
Tiredness could be forgiven, and often was, but not distraction. Distraction almost universally meant pain. Lose focus during sparring, and you would get hit. Lose focus while practicing forms, and you could injure yourself. Lose focus while reading, and you’d miss details that Uncle Kho would inevitably ask about. It was a different kind of pain, but embarrassment could sting almost as much as a practice blade upside the head. Often, the sting of embarrassment lingered for far longer as well. Sen regarded Bigan for a long moment before he decided to get more information.
“What do you think about that is so much more important than what’s right in front of you?”
Bigan stiffened a little, but he answered. “I think about the future.”
“What about it?”
“I think about what it’ll be like when I’m successful and rich.”
“How will you become successful and rich if you can’t even accomplish simple things that people ask you to do? Who will want to work with you if you never finish the things you start, or simply forget to do them altogether? You’re to be married, yes?”
“Yes, next year,” said Bigan proudly.
“Do you think your wife will understand if you forget to bring home food?”
That thought seemed to jar the young man in a way that nothing else had. “No. But I would never do something like that?”
“You’re sure? Sure enough to make a vow to the heavens right now?”
Bigan opened his mouth as though to make the vow, then, with an expression of near agony, he closed his mouth again. “No.”
Sen shrugged one shoulder as if the whole thing were a matter of no great weight. “Perhaps fate has written a mighty destiny for you. But, perhaps, you should consider ways that you might advance your own cause, on your own merits, first. If you wish to be a good husband, ask yourself what that means. Then, ask yourself if you meet that measure.”
Sen didn’t know if those words were wise or not. If they were, perhaps they would encourage the young man to spend more time thinking about what was happening in the present, and less time daydreaming about some imagined future. Either way, they did inspire Bigan to remain silent and lost in his own thoughts for the rest of the evening. Sen didn’t waste the opportunity and returned to his cultivation.
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