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Description
-4-
Nicholas was four the first time he realized just how much Thomas did not like him.
In the typical way of a child, he had known—not through experience, just instinctively—that his father would always have an open smile, lap, and ear for his early babbles, and that Thomas would always have a sullen scowl, an uninterested grunt, and a broad back as he turned away. His older brother had always been moody and quiet, except when he raised his voice at Nicholas, his father, one of the servants, his horse, or whoever happened to be in the vicinity, but it never occurred to Nicholas that Thomas harbored a special hate just for him.
Nicholas had a voracious appetite, but he ate so little that his father sometimes worried he would starve himself into an illness, but Nicholas just kept on going. Instead of food, he devoured knowledge. He would follow his father, watching and listening, and when his father shooed him away, he would latch onto someone—anyone—else. He learned by watching how to take bread out of the oven, how to sharpen a stylus and smooth clay on its plate, how to use scales…and he learned by doing how to scrub mud off the slate floors on the same day that the Houseman taught him to clean up his own messes.
The only things that he could not learn just by watching were letters and numbers. He could stand at the Steward's side for hours, watching him scratch into clay, could follow every careful flick of his father's pen across page after page in the ledgers, but even when they read to him, the arrangements meant nothing.
"Nick, I don’t have time for this right now," snapped the Steward after repeating a salutation four times. “And aren't you too young yet to be learning your letters?"
Nicholas took the Steward's rebuke as a solid answer to his own question and scurried away, but that did not stop him for more than an hour, at which point he ventured down the hall to his brother's room, where Thomas was bent over his desk, stylus in hand and open book beside him. Nicholas tiptoed up and stared in awe at the neat rows of text in the book, admiring the fancy flourishes around the edges of the page, never noticing that Thomas' stylus made ever deeper impressions in the clay. At last, he could no longer hold in his eagerness.
"Tom, when do you learn to read?"
"Now," Thomas spat as he pushed his stylus all the way through the clay to the board underneath.
"But you done it before."
Thomas threw down his stylus.
"Get out of here Nick!"
"But I didn’t—"
"Get out of my room!"
Nicholas' eyes widened and he hurried to do just that, but when he stumbled, Thomas stood up and threw the board of clay at his back.
"Father!" Nicholas shrieked as he barreled down the hall and tripped down the stairs. Slipping on the slate floor in the foyer and dodging servants in the kitchen, he raced out to the stables where he knew his father was inspecting the horses, and ran headlong into the Stableboy just outside the door.
"Whoa, boy! Where are you headed?"
"FATHER!"
The Stableboy started and yanked his hand away from Nicholas' shoulder in alarm.
"There now, don’t yell, I didn’t hurt you!"
"Nicholas!"
Thomas barreled through the kitchen until he stood in the back doorway, his eyes narrowed at his small target. Nicholas let out a small squeak of fright and sidestepped as close to the Stableboy as possible. The Stableboy looked between the two brothers, eyebrows raised.
"What are two doing?"
With a low growl, Thomas punched the air and pointed wildly in their direction. "You keep out of this, Stableboy!  And keep that whelp out too! Keep him out of my room and out of this house! I don’t want him anywhere near me!  I don’t—"
"Thomas!"
All three boys turned in the direction of the manor Master's voice and quieted at once. Bertram stood there, solemn and stiff with sternness, his arms folded and his forehead creased into a deep frown.
"Thomas, will you please tell me why you are outside when you ought to be in your room at your writing board?"
"That boy—"
"Which?  Your brother?"
The color solidified in Thomas’ face, but he refused to clarify. "He was bothering me," he spat.
"Indeed?"  Bertram glanced over Nicholas, knowing that the six-year old could never hide his guilt, and saw only wide-eyed amazement…and mud.
"Nicholas, turn around."
The Stableboy stepped out of the way and Nicholas did as he was told. Clay was spattered all across the back of his blue shirt. Bertram sighed heavily.
"Thomas, I don't care how much your brother was bothering you, you should never mistreat him."
"But he—"
"That's enough, now. You'll clean up the mess you've made on your own, Thomas, and then I want your copying done for inspection by dinnertime, understood?"
Thomas growled low in his throat and stalked away without reply. Bertram frowned at his retreating back, then shook his head and looked at Nicholas.
"Come here, my boy," he said, all sternness melted into gentleness. He knelt so that he was eye-level with his son, then spun Nicholas around in a circle until he giggled and collapsed with dizziness into his father’s arms. Bertram turned him over and began to brush the clay off his back.
"Nicholas, you should know better than to disturb your brother while he is studying."
"I didn't bother him," Nicholas mumbled. "I just wanna know how old you got to be to learn to read."
Bertram smiled, the skin around his eyes creasing like pinched fresh dough. "So that's what this is all about, is it?"  Nicholas nodded solemnly. "You know, you are a little young yet. Come to think of it, I don't think most boys your age can even string a proper sentence together."
The smile had changed into a slight frown, but Nicholas remained quiet, waiting for his father to say something, because until father said something, nothing happened. That was always how it worked in the manor:  Father called and someone answered. No one else had such absolute power, not even Thomas.
"Hmm…" Bertram rubbed the bristly moustache beneath his nose thoughtfully with the tip of his thumb. "Well, I suppose if you are a little more eager than most children your age, then you can begin to learn a little early, if you wish. But I barely have time for Thomas as it is..." he added to himself. He looked up from where he knelt on the ground and surveyed the Stableboy, who had feared to leave without being dismissed. "You, boy, can you read?"
"What?" The Stableboy let a little laugh slip out in his voice. "Read?"
"Yes, that is what I said."
The Stableboy blinked. "Of course not! I'm a stable boy!"
Bertram shrugged. "Stable boy, steward, what's the difference? Just a few letters, right?  You're a bright boy, I've seen you around the manor."
The Stableboy flushed red and shuffled his feet.
"Well, Stableboy, what do you think? If I allowed the Steward to teach you to read, would you be willing to teach others?"
The Stableboy sucked in his breath. Nicholas was too young yet to know it, but the Stableboy had a good sense of what this opportunity could mean for his future. All the best people could read: stewards, soldiers, nobles, scholars… If he could read, the world would be an open door for him, and if he could teach... The concept was so much bigger than anything he had known before, bigger than the manor that he had known most of his life, so when he nodded, he did so understanding that he could not comprehend the extent of his decision.
Nicholas watched, wondering, as his father smiled at the Stableboy's stunned expression.
“And if the Steward taught you, would you teach my son?"
"Y- yes, sir!"
"No!"
Bertram frowned and looked down into Nicholas' pouting face. "What's wrong?"
"I want to read! I want to read!"
"But don't you see, Nick?" The Stableboy's grin was eating up his face so fast that it almost frightened Nicholas. "You are going to read! But so am I! We're going to learn together, and I'm going to help you! You're—I mean, we're—I mean..." He trailed off and smiled foolishly, leaving Bertram to laugh at the pair of them.
"Don't worry, Nicholas." He tousled his son's hair and stood up, giving him one last pat to brush away a bit of clay. "Soon the pair of you will be smarter than jackrabbits."
And with that, he gathered himself and set off on his daily walk around the fields.
The prospect of reading was so exciting that it drove all reason out of Nicholas' mind. He ran around the house, looking at the spines of thick books and imagining that he knew what they said, drawing figures in the dirt in anticipation of the day when the scratches would actually mean something to someone other than himself. And then, somehow, he ended up back in his brother's room, excited as ever, heedless of the situation that had gotten him his reading lessons in the first place.
"Tom, Tom!" he cried. "Guess what! I won't bother you anymore! I'm gonna read!"
"No you're not," Thomas grumbled. His hand shook with anger, adding an extra line to a syllable symbol, and he swore under his breath before he licked his finger and tried to rub out the offending evidence. But then he realized that Nicholas was watching him with wide, accusing eyes, and that made him rub so hard that he erased the entire word. He swore again just to make Nicholas gasp.
"You can't say that, Tom!"
"Sure I can. I'm old enough to swear, just like I'm old enough to read."
"How old?" Nicholas asked, all curiousness and awe, with no trace of hostility at all. His innocence only made Thomas angrier.
"Older than you!" he snapped. "I didn't read until I was eight, and you're barely half that. Your brain's still too soft for it."
"Is not! Father said I would learn."
That brought Thomas up short. He knew as well as Nicholas that his father's word was law in the manor, and his promises were not taken lightly.
"You're lying, you little wretch. Father wouldn't waste any effort on you."
"Yeah he would! He said Steward's gonna teach me and the Stableboy, and the Stableboy's gonna teach me! He said I'm young but he'll start anyway. He said I'm smarter than most kids my age and he said—"
Thomas' slap came so quick that Nicholas almost missed it. One second he was talking and smiling and the next he felt as though the smile had been dragged off his face. He raised two fingers to the place that stung and realized that Thomas was raising his hand again. He tripped backwards to the door, afraid to take his eyes off his brother.
"I hate you, Nicholas," Thomas hissed. "I hate you like the Core."
The strength of the word forced Nicholas out of the room, down the stairs, out of the house, all the way, at a run, half a mile to the edge of the manor grounds, to the baby willow trees that guarded the manor side of the stream. He sat down on the water-cooled stones beneath the bridge and drew up his knees to his chin, trying to think. But nothing came…nothing but the three things that he knew already, the three things that he needed to think his way around if he wanted them fixed…the sting on his cheek and two words on his heart: 'hate,' Thomas had said, the normal, human kind. But it was worse than that, worse than what Nicholas meant when he said he hated his fish or he hated his uncomfortable new shoes, worse because of that second word… Thomas had used the other kind of hate, the worst kind, the kind that really meant it, the kind that never ended. Nicholas was only four years old but he knew already that his brother condemned him to the Core.

Description
-4-
Nicholas was four the first time he realized just how much Thomas did not like him.
In the typical way of a child, he had known—not through experience, just instinctively—that his father would always have an open smile, lap, and ear for his early babbles, and that Thomas would always have a sullen scowl, an uninterested grunt, and a broad back as he turned away. His older brother had always been moody and quiet, except when he raised his voice at Nicholas, his father, one of the servants, his horse, or whoever happened to be in the vicinity, but it never occurred to Nicholas that Thomas harbored a special hate just for him.
Nicholas had a voracious appetite, but he ate so little that his father sometimes worried he would starve himself into an illness, but Nicholas just kept on going. Instead of food, he devoured knowledge. He would follow his father, watching and listening, and when his father shooed him away, he would latch onto someone—anyone—else. He learned by watching how to take bread out of the oven, how to sharpen a stylus and smooth clay on its plate, how to use scales…and he learned by doing how to scrub mud off the slate floors on the same day that the Houseman taught him to clean up his own messes.
The only things that he could not learn just by watching were letters and numbers. He could stand at the Steward's side for hours, watching him scratch into clay, could follow every careful flick of his father's pen across page after page in the ledgers, but even when they read to him, the arrangements meant nothing.
"Nick, I don’t have time for this right now," snapped the Steward after repeating a salutation four times. “And aren't you too young yet to be learning your letters?"
Nicholas took the Steward's rebuke as a solid answer to his own question and scurried away, but that did not stop him for more than an hour, at which point he ventured down the hall to his brother's room, where Thomas was bent over his desk, stylus in hand and open book beside him. Nicholas tiptoed up and stared in awe at the neat rows of text in the book, admiring the fancy flourishes around the edges of the page, never noticing that Thomas' stylus made ever deeper impressions in the clay. At last, he could no longer hold in his eagerness.
"Tom, when do you learn to read?"
"Now," Thomas spat as he pushed his stylus all the way through the clay to the board underneath.
"But you done it before."
Thomas threw down his stylus.
"Get out of here Nick!"
"But I didn’t—"
"Get out of my room!"
Nicholas' eyes widened and he hurried to do just that, but when he stumbled, Thomas stood up and threw the board of clay at his back.
"Father!" Nicholas shrieked as he barreled down the hall and tripped down the stairs. Slipping on the slate floor in the foyer and dodging servants in the kitchen, he raced out to the stables where he knew his father was inspecting the horses, and ran headlong into the Stableboy just outside the door.
"Whoa, boy! Where are you headed?"
"FATHER!"
The Stableboy started and yanked his hand away from Nicholas' shoulder in alarm.
"There now, don’t yell, I didn’t hurt you!"
"Nicholas!"
Thomas barreled through the kitchen until he stood in the back doorway, his eyes narrowed at his small target. Nicholas let out a small squeak of fright and sidestepped as close to the Stableboy as possible. The Stableboy looked between the two brothers, eyebrows raised.
"What are two doing?"
With a low growl, Thomas punched the air and pointed wildly in their direction. "You keep out of this, Stableboy!  And keep that whelp out too! Keep him out of my room and out of this house! I don’t want him anywhere near me!  I don’t—"
"Thomas!"
All three boys turned in the direction of the manor Master's voice and quieted at once. Bertram stood there, solemn and stiff with sternness, his arms folded and his forehead creased into a deep frown.
"Thomas, will you please tell me why you are outside when you ought to be in your room at your writing board?"
"That boy—"
"Which?  Your brother?"
The color solidified in Thomas’ face, but he refused to clarify. "He was bothering me," he spat.
"Indeed?"  Bertram glanced over Nicholas, knowing that the six-year old could never hide his guilt, and saw only wide-eyed amazement…and mud.
"Nicholas, turn around."
The Stableboy stepped out of the way and Nicholas did as he was told. Clay was spattered all across the back of his blue shirt. Bertram sighed heavily.
"Thomas, I don't care how much your brother was bothering you, you should never mistreat him."
"But he—"
"That's enough, now. You'll clean up the mess you've made on your own, Thomas, and then I want your copying done for inspection by dinnertime, understood?"
Thomas growled low in his throat and stalked away without reply. Bertram frowned at his retreating back, then shook his head and looked at Nicholas.
"Come here, my boy," he said, all sternness melted into gentleness. He knelt so that he was eye-level with his son, then spun Nicholas around in a circle until he giggled and collapsed with dizziness into his father’s arms. Bertram turned him over and began to brush the clay off his back.
"Nicholas, you should know better than to disturb your brother while he is studying."
"I didn't bother him," Nicholas mumbled. "I just wanna know how old you got to be to learn to read."
Bertram smiled, the skin around his eyes creasing like pinched fresh dough. "So that's what this is all about, is it?"  Nicholas nodded solemnly. "You know, you are a little young yet. Come to think of it, I don't think most boys your age can even string a proper sentence together."
The smile had changed into a slight frown, but Nicholas remained quiet, waiting for his father to say something, because until father said something, nothing happened. That was always how it worked in the manor:  Father called and someone answered. No one else had such absolute power, not even Thomas.
"Hmm…" Bertram rubbed the bristly moustache beneath his nose thoughtfully with the tip of his thumb. "Well, I suppose if you are a little more eager than most children your age, then you can begin to learn a little early, if you wish. But I barely have time for Thomas as it is..." he added to himself. He looked up from where he knelt on the ground and surveyed the Stableboy, who had feared to leave without being dismissed. "You, boy, can you read?"
"What?" The Stableboy let a little laugh slip out in his voice. "Read?"
"Yes, that is what I said."
The Stableboy blinked. "Of course not! I'm a stable boy!"
Bertram shrugged. "Stable boy, steward, what's the difference? Just a few letters, right?  You're a bright boy, I've seen you around the manor."
The Stableboy flushed red and shuffled his feet.
"Well, Stableboy, what do you think? If I allowed the Steward to teach you to read, would you be willing to teach others?"
The Stableboy sucked in his breath. Nicholas was too young yet to know it, but the Stableboy had a good sense of what this opportunity could mean for his future. All the best people could read: stewards, soldiers, nobles, scholars… If he could read, the world would be an open door for him, and if he could teach... The concept was so much bigger than anything he had known before, bigger than the manor that he had known most of his life, so when he nodded, he did so understanding that he could not comprehend the extent of his decision.
Nicholas watched, wondering, as his father smiled at the Stableboy's stunned expression.
“And if the Steward taught you, would you teach my son?"
"Y- yes, sir!"
"No!"
Bertram frowned and looked down into Nicholas' pouting face. "What's wrong?"
"I want to read! I want to read!"
"But don't you see, Nick?" The Stableboy's grin was eating up his face so fast that it almost frightened Nicholas. "You are going to read! But so am I! We're going to learn together, and I'm going to help you! You're—I mean, we're—I mean..." He trailed off and smiled foolishly, leaving Bertram to laugh at the pair of them.
"Don't worry, Nicholas." He tousled his son's hair and stood up, giving him one last pat to brush away a bit of clay. "Soon the pair of you will be smarter than jackrabbits."
And with that, he gathered himself and set off on his daily walk around the fields.
The prospect of reading was so exciting that it drove all reason out of Nicholas' mind. He ran around the house, looking at the spines of thick books and imagining that he knew what they said, drawing figures in the dirt in anticipation of the day when the scratches would actually mean something to someone other than himself. And then, somehow, he ended up back in his brother's room, excited as ever, heedless of the situation that had gotten him his reading lessons in the first place.
"Tom, Tom!" he cried. "Guess what! I won't bother you anymore! I'm gonna read!"
"No you're not," Thomas grumbled. His hand shook with anger, adding an extra line to a syllable symbol, and he swore under his breath before he licked his finger and tried to rub out the offending evidence. But then he realized that Nicholas was watching him with wide, accusing eyes, and that made him rub so hard that he erased the entire word. He swore again just to make Nicholas gasp.
"You can't say that, Tom!"
"Sure I can. I'm old enough to swear, just like I'm old enough to read."
"How old?" Nicholas asked, all curiousness and awe, with no trace of hostility at all. His innocence only made Thomas angrier.
"Older than you!" he snapped. "I didn't read until I was eight, and you're barely half that. Your brain's still too soft for it."
"Is not! Father said I would learn."
That brought Thomas up short. He knew as well as Nicholas that his father's word was law in the manor, and his promises were not taken lightly.
"You're lying, you little wretch. Father wouldn't waste any effort on you."
"Yeah he would! He said Steward's gonna teach me and the Stableboy, and the Stableboy's gonna teach me! He said I'm young but he'll start anyway. He said I'm smarter than most kids my age and he said—"
Thomas' slap came so quick that Nicholas almost missed it. One second he was talking and smiling and the next he felt as though the smile had been dragged off his face. He raised two fingers to the place that stung and realized that Thomas was raising his hand again. He tripped backwards to the door, afraid to take his eyes off his brother.
"I hate you, Nicholas," Thomas hissed. "I hate you like the Core."
The strength of the word forced Nicholas out of the room, down the stairs, out of the house, all the way, at a run, half a mile to the edge of the manor grounds, to the baby willow trees that guarded the manor side of the stream. He sat down on the water-cooled stones beneath the bridge and drew up his knees to his chin, trying to think. But nothing came…nothing but the three things that he knew already, the three things that he needed to think his way around if he wanted them fixed…the sting on his cheek and two words on his heart: 'hate,' Thomas had said, the normal, human kind. But it was worse than that, worse than what Nicholas meant when he said he hated his fish or he hated his uncomfortable new shoes, worse because of that second word… Thomas had used the other kind of hate, the worst kind, the kind that really meant it, the kind that never ended. Nicholas was only four years old but he knew already that his brother condemned him to the Core.