Early the following morning, as Ilika lay in bed thinking about the supplies he wanted to get for his students that day, elsewhere in the city others were awake, preparing to deal with issues that were, to them, much more important.
The high priest stood at the front of the windowless stone room, making eye contact with each of his associates as they entered. Rarely-used secret handshakes were exchanged as the guests settled themselves into the soft, throne-like chairs.
Once all the guests had been checked off the list by the priest at the door, he departed, closing the door behind him.
“Brothers,” the high priest began, his arms outstretched. “Events that Almighty God set in motion long ago are coming to pass.”
A rumble of curiosity filled the room. The high priest let it run its course.
“The king has proven he is not going to cooperate with the Powers from On High. His most recent mistake was to deny our righteous request to not be taxed like peasants.”
The murmur that followed lasted several minutes, but eventually died down and another high priest slowly rose from his seat and spoke.
“The king is standing in the way of the Church, we all know that. But he is very popular with the people, and has the complete loyalty of the city guards and the noblemen. It would be impossible to rise up against such a king.”
Agreement rippled through the room as the speaker lowered himself back
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into his chair.
“Well spoken, my friend. As things are, we cannot make a move. We must first tarnish him in the eyes of the people. I have my ears to the streets, just as you do. Many people are starting to grumble about the king’s open policies concerning the port, the roads, and the city gate.”
“Surely,” the head of another order said as he rose, “there are a few travelers and some strange goods entering the kingdom. They haven’t caused any trouble, and I must say, some of those strange goods are quite tasty.”
Laughter filled the room for a moment, and the high priest at the front smiled. “We don’t need to wait for them to cause any trouble. We just need to make the people think they are going to be trouble.”
“How do you propose to do that?”
“A young character has appeared in the city recently who pretends to be a captain even with no ship in the harbor. I have interrogated him, and my agents have been tailing him for several days. He is from so far away that his values are completely different from ours. He has purchased a number of slaves, freed them without so much as a day’s work, and seems to be educating them.”
The rumble of anger that ran through the room made the high priest smile.
“I need four strong helpers,” Ilika announced after breakfast, looking around the room. “Toli, Miko, Boro, and Sata. Neti is going to lead a mathematics lesson for the rest of you.”
“Me?” she said with a very unsure voice and a troubled expression.
“Yes, you. A leader doesn’t have to know everything. A leader leads. All of you can work together to figure out the answers. Remember when I explained the difference between addition and multiplication?”
“Um . . . addition is one number and another,” Neti said, searching her memory, “and multiplication is . . . I forget.”
“Can you help, Mati?”
“Ummmmmm . . . repeating a number so many times?”
“Right. I’ve made some little pieces of paper with problems on them. The cross means addition. The X means multiplication. You can use paper and make dots if that will help.”
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“So . . .” Neti said, looking at a problem, “two X three means two repeated three times?”
“Exactly.”
“Okay. This isn’t so hard.”
Ilika set a leisurely pace as he and his four helpers walked up Market Way toward the city gate.
“It’s always a little spooky going this way,” Toli said with an uncomfortable look.
“Yeah,” Boro agreed. “This is the way to the . . . you-know-what.”
“The slave market?” Ilika guessed.
Miko frowned. “The one place in the city I never want to see again.”
Ilika grinned. “But now you could just go in, buy a mug of tea and a biscuit, and sit down and watch the show.”
“Yeah, and what if we saw an old friend on the block?” Boro said, his voice full of feelings.
Ilika dropped his fake grin. “I know. I was almost sick the first time I wandered in. That was before I learned I could find people like you in there.”
“Where are we going?” Sata asked.
“Saddle shop, up here on the right just before the . . . you-know-what.”
The five entered the large shop and looked around. Everything necessary for horses and wagons filled wooden bins or dangled from pegs on the walls —
saddles, harnesses, bridles, ropes, and brushes.
“Here’s what we want,” Ilika said when he found the leather saddlebags.
“It looks like they have plenty. Help me check each one, make sure it’s in good shape.”
The clerk took each set of bags after it was inspected and stacked it on his table. “They’re all newly oiled — should last you a lifetime.”
“Bedrolls?” Ilika inquired.
The clerk stacked up ten canvas bedroll covers. “Saddles? Bridles?”
“We don’t have the horses yet. Besides, this is all we can carry today.”
“Okay . . . the bags are a silver, and the rolls are new, so they’re a silver too
. . . so that’s two greats.”
Ilika paid and the clerk showed them how to put the saddlebags over their
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heads, each person carrying two.
“These are heavy!” Toli complained.
Sata rolled her eyes, and made no attempt to hide it.
As soon as they unloaded themselves, placing a pair of saddlebags and a bedroll on each bed, Ilika set his previous helpers to the math problems, and drafted Buna, Neti, Rini, and Kibi. “Sorry you have to sit out these shopping trips, Mati. You are now the leader.”
Mati nodded and started organizing the flash cards.
The cart in the marketplace that sold woven wool blankets stocked a variety of colors and patterns, which delighted Kibi and Buna. Neti paid more attention to the quality of the workmanship. Rini was happy just to stand in the sunshine.
Ilika loaded each person with four thick blankets. They staggered back to the inn, barely able to see over their burdens.
“Let’s see how the math is going,” Ilika said. “Mati, you were here all afternoon. How would you guys do seven plus four?”
Everyone gathered around the table.
“Um . . . we’d make seven dots, then four more, and count them all.”
“Okay . . .” Ilika began with a slight smile. “The human mind is capable of doing several things at once. If I start counting up from seven with part of my mind, and count the number of times I’ve done that with another part of my mind, I can do this problem in my head. I say, ‘eight, nine, ten, eleven.’ I stop when I’ve counted up four numbers, and there’s the answer, eleven.”
“Huh?” Neti said with a confused look.
Ilika went through the process on paper with Neti while everyone watched.
He knew from facial expressions that Sata and Toli were ready to jump in with both feet.
“Five plus three,” Ilika said to Neti.
“Six, seven, eight, ni . . . no, just eight.”
“Yes! You’ve got it!”
Ilika did one with each student, giving Sata and Toli harder problems. As the numbers got larger, Ilika showed them how to break the number being
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added into several chunks. Rini tackled the last problem of the lesson, fifteen plus nine, after being reminded that nine was three threes.
“Sixteen, seventeen, eighteen .
.
. nineteen, twenty, twenty-one .
.
.
twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four!”
“Hooray for Rini!” the rest cheered.
But Rini remained standing with a serious expression that made everyone else fall silent.
“I’m the last at something else too,” the slender lad said. “I’ve listened to everyone tell their stories, but I haven’t told mine. Every time someone tells about how they got into slavery, it makes my stomach all twisted into knots, especially the girls dealing with . . . you know. My story is very different. I chose to be a slave.”
Looks of shock and disbelief came to almost everyone. Only Ilika didn’t seem too surprised.
“I wasn’t very old when I realized I didn’t want to be like other people.
Everyone around me, even my parents and my brothers and sisters, were hurting themselves, using each other, and abusing all the wonderful animals and plants. Everywhere I looked people were taking beautiful things and making them ugly . . . taking truth and changing it into lies . . . and making good into bad. It made my stomach twist up just like your stories do.
“I began walking into the woods and the hills, as far as I could go. At first my father would whip me when I got back. But I kept going, walking for hours, then all day, then several days. My father finally gave up when he realized I wasn’t taking any food with me, just finding things in the wild.
“One day I met a man. He told me what it was like being a slave, since he had been one. I knew I didn’t want to be a slave all my life, but I decided it might help me understand people. So I became a slave and it taught me many, many things. But now I’m really happy I’m with all of you.”
When Rini fell silent, he looked around and saw everyone looking back at him with respect, almost wonder.
“Thank you Rini,” Ilika said. “Now that we have all shared our stories, I want to point out something. If your lives had not unfolded as they did, including the poor family lives most of you had, and the slavery all but one of you endured, I would not have found you, and we would not be together now.”
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At dinnertime, good appetites greeted a tasty shellfish stew. With some hesitation, the innkeeper wandered by the table.
“The wife and I were noticing that you’re getting travel gear, and wondered if you’ll be heading out soon.”
“A few more days, maybe a week,” Ilika replied. “Boots should be done tomorrow, and then we can start walking around the city a bit more.”
“Mosa made a pudding for you tonight . . .”
“Yum!” several voices said at once.
“. . . and she’d like to make a special meal for your last day here.”
Ilika smiled. “That would be wonderful, Doko.”
“I’m learning how to add and multiply numbers!” Sata told her father with pride.
Doko smiled at his daughter with pride. “Maybe you can come back someday and teach your hopeless brother!”
Up in their room, nobody let Ilika forget about their book.
The first paragraph, which described the green forests and snowy mountains where the story took place, was figured out a word at a time by candlelight, each word by a different student, Ilika right there to help with problems. Each sentence was then read by each and every student. Finally the entire paragraph was read over by Ilika.
That one paragraph of half a dozen sentences filled their minds for the rest of the evening. They repeated parts of it to each other as sores were tended.
They discussed it as hair was combed. They imagined being there as shoulders were massaged.
No doubt those magical woods and mountains filled their dreams after everyone was ready for bed and the candles were blown out.
Deep Learning Notes
Every society has people and organizations that are constantly on the watch for anything out of the ordinary, anything that threatens the normal “status
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quo” (Latin: the state in which). Sometimes this is because they genuinely believe that society should remain unchanged (see the Naturalistic Fallacy in any good logic book). At other times, it is to profit by the situation (either the lack of change, or the upcoming change). In this case, it appears the high priest planned to make use of Ilika to help him bring about another change: overthrowing the king. The high priest was, therefore, not actually concerned with the stability of society at all.
Ilika presented the method of mentally adding two numbers that is most often used by “auditory learners,” people who learn best by hearing. Others are
“visual learners,” people who prefer to “see” the quantities (either in physical reality, or through visualization). Finally, “tactile learners” prefer to touch and feel the subject matter.
Rini has a personality and a value system that is always very rare. In some societies, he would be respected as a mystic, shaman, priest, or prophet. In others, he would just scrape by, staying in the bottom rungs of society, perhaps being some kind of artist. In either case, he would be happier than most people could imagine.
In our society today, most people have access to thousands of books and movies, millions if they live near a large library or can use the internet. This situation easily leads to over-stimulation. The “law of diminishing returns”
sets in, and beyond a certain point, knowledge and happiness increase little with additional stimulation, and may even decrease. Ilika’s students, on the other hand, are learning to read with just one book. Every word and picture in that book will be milked for all the meaning and pleasure it can bring.
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