"Everywhere we go, its war, after war... I get it already. That humans are stupid." ~Lavi Jr. Bookman.
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                               And itâs sad
                                            Itâs so damn sad
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â  I guess? It was a new experience, but it was nothing extraordinary or very personal. The lady I was with was experienced and patient with me, and I applied what I already knew from reading and talking with Gramps. We didnât do anything crazy, it was just the basics, but she was very good about explaining all kinds of things and debunking a lot of myths people seem tâ take as fact about sex. â
Someoneâs re-picked up the habit of stealing a certain someoneâs blankets all for himself and rolling around in them til heâs tangled up a tight little cocoon.
He couldnât even remember accurately the last time he picked up a cigarette but damn if it didnât feel nice having one between his fingers again and filling the air with the smell of smoke.
Heâs walked until he couldnât see straight, coiled bandaged fingers around old man Bookmanâs hair as a tether to guide, and kept walking still.
Heâs been cold. Tired. Hungry.
He vividly remembers winter just after his ninth birthday. When he was the twelfth name. He remembers makeshift walls untouched by canon fire or flame or battering, because this was now just a war of time and patience.
No fighting needed be had. All the enemy force had to do was blockade supplies and wait.
He remembers disquiet. Grim, stubborn acceptance, faces daring to hope beyond hope, but only on the surface. Beneath smiles, jokes, and camaraderie, theyâre all thinking the same thing. Theyâre going to die.
No one says it. No one has to.
The waiting is the worst. Fires arenât enough to keep the bite of the season away. Food is given and taken sparingly to those who need it.
He remembers blinking frost from eyelashes drearily, sitting up from where he was pressed against Grampâs side, to find a hand in his face, holding out food to him.
He remembers a sympathetic smile from hollow cheekbones, eyes that are tired, so tired, but still willing to share. Pity for an old man and wayward child who were stuck here to suffer their woes despite not being soldiers.
He doesnât remember his own look, lips pursed and single green eye shrouded by confliction. Loss sews pain in the heart. Cruelty and death plants seeds of distrust for these creatures that share the title human with him. The lesson that humans are inherently destructive hit him hard and fast within only a few records, shattering delusions of grand fantasy for what it would mean to know âthat which no one else doesâ.
He does not hate Bookman for that. Only fleetingly did he consider the temptation a foul trick. But heâs learned better. Knowing what no one else does never explicitly implied things that were pleasant. Only his own childish ignorance had been to blame. Heâs wiser now.
Itâs that same sense of wisdom that has him hesitate when food is held out to him by one certainly just as hungry as he, who could also die any moment. From the cold⊠from hunger⊠from fighting⊠from betrayalâŠ
Could it be selflessness?
He knows this oneâs name. Harold Brook. His father and one brother is fighting in this war too. At home he has a sickly mother, a slightly younger sister, a much younger brother⊠a brother that is the same age as the bookman apprentice.
Projection, he thinks. He longs for his family, of course. He longs for his younger brother, and here he is, the twelth name, the closest thing to that. Of course its not selflessness that has food in his face. Its something entirely different.
He takes it anyway, offers gratitude through a small smile, forced to his lips. The painful cold makes his lack of overflowing appreciation excusable, of course. It isnât taken personally. His internal deductions go unnoticed.
He eats, because he doesnât want to die. He never refuses when offered, because heâs âjust a childâ. He shares only with Bookman, because the old man is his only constant. He pokes his nose into everything, because waiting is boring.
He almost pokes his head over the wall, tired of this cage, but someone else beats him to it and takes a shot to the skull from a sniper just waiting for a clear target. He thinks better of the idea from then on.
People die, as he always knew, and as they did too. They die of cold. Hunger. Some go because of sickness. Others, suicide. Some just lose their will, others, their minds.
He too is starving, exhausted, and freezing. Generosity that has carried him this far is gone now, no one can spare it, and watching everyone slowly die around him often before their lives vanish from their bodies, the possibility that one night will be just a little too hard for him or for Bookman settles over his mind as a cloud far more dreary than the ones darkening the sky.
But he doesnât look away.
He absorbs it all from behind a green eye like fortified steel. Refusing to acknowledge the reality will do nothing to change that this is just the way things are.
All that matters is that this battle is lost, and he does not want to die.
He does not want to die.
He does not want to die.
And he doesnât. He endures. He and Bookman last to the end, when the enemy side has realized there are no sentries and no movement and all but a few scarce fires have gone out, and start to overcome the wall without resistance.
At last â at last â this prison will become nothing but a distant memory, scribed onto a book and shelved, and forgotten as they move on to write the next.
Bookman knows when to move and how. He and his apprentice are both small, and Bookman is crafty, and they dodge and hide in places unnoticed and taken for granted as the troops from the other side march in and line up all that remain for what is by now nothing more than a mercy killing.
Emerald hue glances over reddened snow, streaks left on white as corpses are dragged and disposed of, and he crosses each name off a mental list until heâs exhausted them all.
No survivors. None but an old man and a wayward child passing on their way.
Heâs walked until he couldnât see straight, numb fingers grasped around folds of fabric, always following in his mentorâs footsteps.
Heâd been cold, tired, hungry⊠that child. And he had not survived. That child had been the 12th name, the one who sat through the hard winter, and watched everyone die, and wished that he too would not die.
But all things must come to an end, and it was fine, because as long as the thirteenth name kept walking, the clan of Bookman would carry on.
â Oh sure, when I want affection its all âwhy donât you go be with someone else, like an Akuma? Theyâll love you!â and not giving a shit about pushing me aside-- â He keeps kicking and throwing stones aimlessly into the night-darkened woods, hearing them thunk off of trees and crash through bush leaves, sounds that are only mildly satisfying at best. â But as soon as I go cozy up to someone else suddenly Iâm a âTRAITORâ! Pah! Whatever. â
He flops down in the moss with his arms crossed over his chest and curls his legs up, huffing aloud and trying to force the uncomfortable flutter of his heartbeat steady. Fine. If he hates him being around other people so much including him heâll just sleep out here alone.
Seven years old, on only your first Name as Bookmanâs successor, and already your ever-growing perceptions of the world have been tainted a little blacker by the reality of war.
Your first Name then is Jona, which is ironic, because it brings to mind that one popular Christian story that people are so fond of repeating, and just like in that story, this is one massive whale of a world to be swallowed by.
You almost wonder at times if this was deliberate, some sort of sick joke on Bookmanâs part, but the thought is likely as ludicrous as it is entirely false, and ultimately shaken away. Though in hindsight, you and him know the full cruelty displayed in each conflict, beforehand, thereâs no telling how ugly it will get.
Regardless, you are now Jona, who, at seven years of age, has witnessed your very first war, seen your very first bloody battle, played your part in the very first of many medical tents you will volunteer in, and feinted at the sight of the very first, yet never the last, violent post-war suicide of a broken soldier.
Its unlike the old man to show such concern, but Bookman does take the time to talk with you, to make certain everything is alright, and to put to detached, textbook explanation of everything that happened and why.
You listen with keen, yet passive, attention.
At least⊠thatâs how you attempt to appear. In reality, you are numbed to the deepest core with shock, your mind like a strainer, every word passing through like water between the cracks, leaving behind only the faintest drops of recollection.
It doesnât escape Bookmanâs eyes, and heâs quick to snap your attention back properly.
You have the sense to look ashamed. He has the sense not to scold you.
Instead, he acknowledges: It is a trauma. There is nothing invalid about it, but it is a matter to deal with none the less, and he has a few tricks on how to do so. Such tricks will not come immediately, but they will establish firmly with time and practice.
He invites you to sit with him, somewhere quiet. Undisturbed. You sit cross-legged, first without thought, but Bookman does as well, and he tells you to sit up straight. He shows you how to fold your hands, to close your eyes, to keep yourself postured upright instead of slumped.
Its meditation, a tool for the mind, simple enough anyone can do, but wholly and irreplaceably important. He shows you deep breathing, and focusing on all senses besides sight, and while you find yourself noticing the faintest sounds of birds and the wind with a new appreciation, he starts going into the battle and its aftermath.
Every detail. Every sight. Every smell. Every taste. Every sound. The man you saw gutted in the field. The man having a shattered limb cut away. The man who shot himself in the face.
Everything you donât want to remember, he talks about in vivid, casual detail.
He tells you not to shut it out.
Focus on it all. Keep it sharp in your mind. Donât let a single detail slip through and become forgotten.
Its hard.
Bookman knows its hard.
But you do as he says, even as tears flow unchecked down your face. Even as breathing comes in short gasps and hiccups. Even when a whine or whimper passes your lips, and you fidget where you sit because you donât want to remember it.
Bookman is patient with you. Its a rare instance, but one you never forget. Youâre only seven, he tells you outright, and your mind isnât used to it yet. Its only natural that what you feel at everything is fear, but fear can be mastered. Whatâs more, being the age that you are, your mind is more easily and quickly adaptive, the adjustment easier to make than if you were older.
In short, you will learn to accept your role much more easily than someone older and more set in their ways.
Then, after all of this, he teaches you compartmentalization.
A Name for a bookmanâs heir is not merely a matter of something to go by. A Name is an alias; an identity, but for you it is also another tool. A separation of experience and Self, and you, in a way, are two identities.
You are Junior, and you are also Jona, and you must figure out where the balance between those two lies. That balance, therein, is who will experience and store what.
Junior is permanent â or as permanent as any name will be, for one day too you will also cast that aside to become just Bookman â while Jona is temporary.
Junior exists to store what is most important. Junior is the core of all Names, and it is Junior who dictates who and what each Name will be. Junior must always â always â remain unmoved by what is in front of him, to be able to look at anything without flinching.
Each Name must follow certain rules set therein by Junior, but each Name will be different, created with different traits, and bears the brunt of all things shed as unimportant.
It is the Name which acts and reacts, in a manner appropriate to both the task at hand and satisfying the requirements of human interaction, and it is Junior who watches and evaluates but never becomes involved.
In a sense, Junior is the puppet master. The core who will always remain. The Names are only the puppets then, putting on a performance, and when that performance comes to its end, it becomes Juniorâs job then to cut the strings for good, again, and again, and again.
Explained that way, it becomes easy to understand the expectations. A puppet without its strings never rises again, but the stage is still set for another to take its place.
Bookman spends hours talking you through each raw experience, unwavering through every one of your tears, shaky breaths, shifts of discomfort, but with each one, these reactions become fewer and fewer.
They are things which merely are.
Things which cannot be changed.
Things you will see time and again.
Things that you should never, as an heir to Bookman, look away from, and next time, you will be a little more prepared.
There comes a point when calm returns, when thereâs a kind of detached peace as you envision these things, mentally sort them and tuck them away, and let them go.
Once Bookman is convinced you will be fine, he quietly gets up, and leaves, and you continue to meditate on everything until tiredness leads you to rest. Unsurprisingly, the sights haunt your dreams as nightmares.
The days following mark the end of this war, which you and Bookman arrived upon the tail end of. Though in meditation, detachment from the reality is easy, its less so in the waking hours when you help Bookman retrieve re-tellings from recovering and dying soldiers, though none of it is half as bad as the sight of them before they were treated.
There are moments â moments of youthful naivete â that you want to offer comfort in some form or other. Bookman allows it at the time, but only because such shows of childish compassion make gathering accounts easier. Later, he tells you not to get emotionally invested.
Donât let feelings reach you, because once you do, that bias taints the records you are to gather. Its easy to feel drawn in by the plight of the wounded, to pity them as victims, but one must never forget that they too can be monsters on the battlefield, as much as anyone who tried to take their lives as well.
You spend much of these days off on your own, meditating, reflecting on all that youâve seen, heard, and felt, and all that Bookman is trying to teach you. Bookman leaves you alone to your thoughts, but never unwatched.
Its not long before you and Bookman set off again, and in that moment that you do, you are no longer Jona, but merely Junior Bookman again. Thereâs hardly a difference, at the time. Nothing feels different between the two, and you wonder at the time if it should be.
Being two different people should mean that something changes, shouldnât it?
But, looking back on it later, it will be evident that there was a change.
Reality and war is cruel, and without exception, takes no prisoners, if only in a figurative sense, because who one was going in is not who they are coming out, even as a simple observer on the sidelines.
Ultimately, Jona may not have been much of a Name at all, but Junior had certainly started to harden and become set in stone.
Though you were technically Junior for a year before that, you were so in namesake only, still not having begun your transition from when you used to be Sage Rookwood, the boy who came before the bookman, until that first look at a true battlefield.
Its thus that Jona may as well not have been a Name at all. Only in dawning your next name â Cole â a little more than a month later, that you first begin to make proper use of your Names.
You and Bookman walk for a long ways, following the long, ever ongoing trail of a railroad.
It would not be your first time seeing a train, though that first encounter had been something enticing and wonderful and you ate up every specific on how a train engine worked with the utmost fascination for modern technology. There were even a handful of instances where you rode on a train, unable to help but marvel at the passing scenery, the feel of the wheels rumbling underfoot, or the breeze coming in through an open window.
This instance is less than joyous.
You follow the railroad for days, watching with interest whenever a steam engine chugs by, until you and Bookman are somewhere deep, deep in the wilds, mountains and conifers surrounding you and your path as far as the eye can see, no civilization anywhere within sight. As the railroad twists through the trees like a snake, it disappears into a tunnel through the mountains, and waiting at the mouth of it is a halted train.
Though you never quite forget the sight of a battlefield, a month and a half is long enough for such remembrance to begin settling, no longer a constant on your mind, intruding every thought throughout every day in every moment. Especially with the mental exercises Bookman has been guiding you through.
As such, though nowhere near as shocking as that very first encounter, its jarring when the first sight you come to see is piles of uniformed bodies being offloaded from military train cars.
You donât look away, though you could, but the sight turns your stomach. Its not like that field stained red, nothing quite so revolting, but there are so many.
And this war, Bookman tells you, isnât likely to end in a matter of days like the last. Jona was your very first rudimentary test as a Bookmanâs apprentice, but this will be where the trials truly begin.
You are stopped on the crest of the hill where the railroad meanders for but a moment, before Bookman resumes progress and you follow close behind. As you approach closer, there are crates, wagons drawn by horses, and more, and more, and more corpses.
At first theyâre offloaded from the trains in piles, tall as those offloading them, and then lined side-to-side in rows on canvas sheets laid out on the dirt just shy of the tree line. At first, you and Bookman are barely noticed as the living dig deep, long trenches for what youâll soon come to recognize as a mass burial.
Ideally, Bookman tells you, these men would all be returned home, or at the very least, given a plot in a formalized cemetery which could be easily visited. Most will simply be dropped here, lucky if the graves are able to be dug deep enough wild animals donât smell and dig up the bodies. Probably only those of affluent backgrounds or esteemed military recognition will make it back to be buried and mourned properly.
Many of them, even their personal belongings, and the clothes on their back if those are still in good enough shape to salvage and reuse, wonât make it back, or be buried with them, instead becoming property of their country.
Then, Bookman goes about properly introducing himself to a man he recognizes as someone in-charge, based upon his dress and mannerisms, and the way others go about addressing him.
He offers you and himself to aid in odd jobs, such as bringing food and water to the soldiers and animals, in exchange for continued observation. You spend most of the day carrying bowls, buckets, and pots to and from, fetching whatever needs be delivered from one hand to another.
As you do, you and Bookman gather recounted tellings from the soldiers, much as possible. As an old man and small child, its easy enough to gather stories, though sometimes its more difficult to gather the full details yourself, as many of the soldiers hold back on details due to your youth.
Its no big deal, you tell them. No big deal, because youâve already seen a battlefield. Already seen gruesome sights. Still, they arenât completely willing to tell all that they saw to a child, sending you away in a huff.
When the train finally loads up and moves, you and Bookman travel with it, all the way to the front lines. In that time, you especially draw attention and become well known aboard the train, seeing as you are the only person there younger than fifteen, unmistakable due to your striking orange hair and eyepatch.
Bookman receives a great deal of pressures and scolding that heâs taking you along towards a war zone, where children should never go, but the old man takes it in stride, never losing patience.
You, on the other hand, become both self-consciously anxious and a little bit insulted. Bookman knows what heâs doing, you know even then, and you donât need strangers disbelieving what you can handle and underestimating you.
You can handle it. Thatâs why Bookman brings you.
Gramps, after all, is infinitely wise. You trust him completely.
Your bitterness doesnât go entirely unnoticed, but the old man cautions you to not be upset by it. There will always be those who doubt, and they are better off ignored.
You take that to heart. No point in listening to those who donât know you anyway, right?
Within only a couple of days, the train reaches its destination, and its only another day or two by wagon before reaching the war zone.
The conflict, though not in full swing when you arrive, is definitely active. You can feel the shift in the group arriving fresh as they draw near, tension filling the air thickly, reflected in every cautious or otherwise rigid movement. Thereâs no gun fire or explosions, but thereâs a sense of waiting, of a trigger just waiting to be set off.
The only question is who will make the first move.
Dug into the hillside are trenches, creating a maze of corridors through dirt and held together primarily by planks of wood roughly nailed together. Crates, rope, weapons, and ammunition all line the corners in high concentration, and thereâs a certain fidgety, almost mechanical way that everyone moves about the space.
Its strange, and disconcerting. Hardly anyone moves with a sense of normalcy. Certainly no one is relaxed, even those who appear unbothered, or perhaps even happy, to be here. The air is faintly sour, but try as you might, you canât pinpoint where exactly its coming from.
Mainly, now, while things are quiet, you take the time to wander the trenches, to make a mental map of where everything is in your head. You get met with a lot of looks, suspicious glances. More than once, someone makes a show of how you shouldnât be there, who let this brat in here? Three of those times end in being marched to the commanding officer posted there, only to have them be told you are supposed to be there and to leave you be.
By dayâs end, you learn youâre not very fond of touch, rubbing your sore upper arm where more than one man grabbed and dragged you along.
You also learn one other thing, something youâll be foolish enough to almost forget on a number of occasions in the future, but never fully.
A bout of curiosity as to the other side, the enemy waiting in their own camp set-up not far away, overheard off of the lips of restless soldiers, leads you to try and climb up the side of the trench and peek your head out.
You donât make it very far, because someone grabs the back of your clothing and yanks you down into the earth. Admittedly, you yell in surprise.
The guy who pulled you down gives you a stern lecture, cautioning to never poke your head over the sight barrier. He demonstrates â with a stick and a head-sized ball of cloth â just why that is.
No more than three seconds pass before a clear shot ring out, and the ball of cloth explodes as a bullet passes straight through it.
Snipers.
Many a soldiersâ death can be accounted for by new recruits playing lookie-lou, and getting their heads blown clear off before they can even pick up a gun.
That could have too-easily been you.
You thank him fervently, grateful for his interference that before had you baffled and annoyed. Certainly, there will be moments later you grow too curious for your own good, but for the time, you take the lesson to heart and donât try again.
Days go by where nothing happens. Its a waiting game, but eventually the storm has to break, and when it does, everything is much closer than it ever was the last time.
More often than not, you find yourself covering your ears, just to shut out the din of guns firing, explosions hitting far too close, dust showering down all around. Thereâs blood and injuries, but not a lot at first. Most of the dead and injured are because of bullet wounds, but not slashed to bits like the last warâs battle.
Thereâs a time when you just sit, head between your knees and palms over your ears, and stare into open eyes of a man with a bullet through his skull, blood slowly trickling down his face in a barely noticeable stream. The sight is far more forgiving, even perhaps a welcome distraction, than the noise raging all around you.
Screams of dismay and fear, baneful cries, the constant pop of guns, the distant BOOM of canons, and the muffled PFFFFFMMP of canon balls creating craters in the earth. Thereâs explosions. At one point, grenades and fire-bombs make it inside the trenches, sending people scattering, both willingly and in pieces.
You almost become one of the ones blown apart, but Bookman, staying near the entire time, is quick to move and pull you along.
The explosions manage to flush a number of the side youâre hiding with out into the fields, looking for new positions to take cover. In looking for a new refuge, entire rows of soldiers are mowed down and fall, only a small number making it to safety alive, though few unharmed. Others, you notice, play dead or try to crawl.
Those flushed out into the fields didnât stand a chance. Out of the frying pan and into the fire, as the saying goes.
Those foolish or desperate enough to crawl, who draw attention with movement, are further shot down. What little cover the fields provide, old logs or decaying wood structures, become ripped apart by bullets piece by piece, until thereâs nothing adequate left, and those still cowering are pinned down with nowhere to go.
Theyâre dead. Still breathing, but no chance to remain that way, you realize. Its tragic, and sick, and thereâs a feeling of sympathetic dread deep in your gut. All the same, thereâs nothing that can be done, Bookman tells you in hushed tones.
You nod, but you and him are alone in this realization, because against solid reason, several soldiers holed up in the semi-safety of the trenches leap out, and rush to rescue them, firing as they sprint.
Part of you, for just a flicker, wants to believe theyâll make it, like some sort of heroic survival tale you might hear too often, everyone sighing with relief at the happy ending.
This is not that ending.
Bodyâs snap and jolt with a peppering of bullets, slumping to the ground gracelessly. There are caterwauls of grief, of rage, from those still standing, still running, still staying back and covering their charge with open fire, but its all for nothing in the end.
Just a damn waste of life that didnât have to end.
Pointless.
And as the fighting drags on â pointless â and the death count continues to rise â pointless â and officers threaten to shoot their own men should they retreat â pointless â a desperate, detached question enters your young, shaken mind.
Today you will take on your very first of many Names to come â Jona â and today you will witness your very first war.
It isnât exactly sprung on you. Bookman tells you exactly where youâre headed and what youâll be doing, but your imagination doesnât yet go so far as accuracy in matters of life and death. Youâre not to blame for that, for what child of seven truly knows the Hell that war looks like, unless theyâve already lived through it?
You didnât understand, but you thought you did. Not entirely, but enough, and you are so, so damn foolish when you do.
Nothing could have truly prepared you for that first time.
When you arrive, it is over the crest of a hill, overlooking a sprawling field, and at the top of another hill in that field is a fort.
Beneath it, in that field â a field that should have been tall, and flowing in gentle waves, and so beautiful like that which you had first departed from, and like so many others you had tread through, but instead lies trampled and stained in dark reds â are people, fighting.
People killing each other.
The smell hits you a little bit faster than the sight, and only a little bit slower than the sounds. The smell of copper, â which youâll soon learn isnât actually copper â of smoke, of gunpowder, of dust, and sweat, and something else rotten you canât yet identify, but what youâll eventually come to learn is the scent of fear.
The medley of smells turns your stomach, but not as much as the sight of it. Some shapes are too far away to see clearly, to witness the full extent, but others are near enough.
There are bodies â human bodies â piled on each other and covered in blood. Those arenât the worst. Some are missing limbs. Some are torn nearly in half. The ground is an awful shade of dyed browns, blacks, and reds. The earth is upturned unnaturally, by impacts of canon fire, and dust chokes the air in a miasma.
And you see people fighting, mostly shooting from a distance, but some are also fighting in the fields with gun-mounted spears or even swords and machetes, hacking each other to bits.
You hear them battle cry, and you hear them scream when theyâre cut into, and you hear canon fire, and gun shots, and at one point you can almost swear you heard the actual sound of someoneâs head explode into shrapnel.
ThisâŠ
âŠthis is nothing of what heâd thought to agree to, when agreeing to become Bookmanâs successor.
This is disgusting.
Itâs abhorrent.
Itâs barbaric.
You canât help but whine your distress, coherency to put these agitated, horrified thoughts to proper words, all of those lessons on expanding into advanced vocabulary â especially for your age â failing you at the sight of it all.
You canât help but move closer, pressing against Bookman, who doesnât move but doesnât look particularly sympathetic either, because this? This is something that, for a Bookman, old and experienced as he is, is used to, and this is something you will need to grow used to as well.
Thereâs no room for coddling and encouraging to look away.
You ask him why you are here, in this place, watching people kill each other.
He tells you this is history too. That this is the most important history.
He tells you that people are the least honest when they do the things that are most horrible.
He tells you how humans do not like to be seen in negative light, so they omit whatever makes their side look less favorable, and exaggerate what might otherwise make the opposing side appear less evil by comparison.
He tells you that of all things historically significant, wars, genocide, massacres⊠these are all things for which their kind is most guilty of excluding historical fact, be it for ulterior gain or out of shame.
You decide, later, yourself instead of off the words of Bookman, that much of the human history that âno one knowsâ is rife with stupidity and cruelty, and your ideals of what you thought knowing âthat which no one knowsâ was foolish and naive.
You canât really agree, but you canât argue either â unknowingly or not, you chose this path.
You chose to become a Bookman, and this is what being a Bookman means.
To know that which no one else knows, and to never look away.
Bookman doesnât move. There are wars where you will be closer, so much closer, but this is not that one.
Not this time.
Not this battle.
Later, you will know why. Bookman is protecting you, keeping you away from the fray because youâre too distressed by the sight to not get yourself killed down there.
You simply arenât ready. Its your first war, and youâre seven damn years old.
How could you possibly be ready?
He doesnât move, and he doesnât shake you off either, like a statue unwavering. You donât complain. You donât beg to leave. You do, however, tell him you donât like it. You tell him you donât understand.
You donât understand why theyâre fighting and killing.
He doesnât answer why.
Later, after so many years, after seeing so many wars, why doesnât matter, because there are hundreds of reasons, and none of them really make a damn bit of sense in the end.
The fighting plays out, for hours, and each few minutes that pass, another falls, and another, and another, and another.
Eventually, at some point, thereâs a cease fire, and everything goes quiet, and that is the most unsettling of all.
Its quiet, and already, your ears grew used to the din, to the constant noise of the distant chaos. You try not to think too hard on it, because you donât want them to fight again.
Its over.
Good.
Its over.
Still, Bookman doesnât move, for a while. He waits, and watches, and he says nothing for the longest time.
Not until there is movement below, people casually picking their way through the field, around and over bodies of the fallen.
Finally Bookman looks down at you, and he bids you follow him closely, and he descends the hill towards the battlefield. You do as he says, hiding in his shadow, chest flighty with anxiety.
When he is noticed, he holds up his hands in a show of peace. He assures them the two of you arenât scavengers, introducing himself as Bookman and you as Jona â you barely even recognize the name as yours.
They donât even think you â a child â and he â an old man â might be soldiers.
Bookman offers his services. He knows healing. He can aid them in transporting and caring for their wounded. Worn down, they can only accept the help that comes to them so generously. It wonât be long before you learn the real intent behind this offered aid â to gain trust, and gather willing accounts from the survivors about the battle.
You and Bookman wander the fields, looking for survivors. What seemed awful from afar is so much more indescribable up close.
Farther away, you couldnât see the details of frayed, bloody flesh and exposed bone.
Farther away, you couldnât see the hollow stares of their horrid death grimaces forever locked in their faces.
Farther away, you couldnât really smell the pungent scent of scattered organs and blood and emptied bowels.
Closer up, all you could do was fight the urge to vomit, and lose.
Being even closer to the stained earth when you do doesnât help.
Its all you can do, to turn your face to the sky, the bright, beautiful blue sky, and just try to breathe.
Breathe past the dust; past the gunpowder; past the blood; past the death; past the sweat; past the fear.
Clean, fresh air, high above you, untainted, pure; and so, so damn far out of reach.
Bookman is there, then, and you know it only because he puts a hand on your shoulder. He says nothing to you about yourself, no words of comfort, simply come help me with this.
You donât argue. You donât get upset with him.
You do find yourself disgusted. Disgusted with everything else that surrounds you. Disgusted with the dark color now on your pant legs from kneeling in the grime.
Quietly, still, disgusted but numb, you rise, and try to brush your knees off, and feel disgust again when it only transfers to your hands and then back to some other unsullied part of your pants when you wipe them on your thighs, and you follow Bookman.
Follow him through the maze of bodies, of the dead, and the dying, and the wounded. Mostly, you act as his eye and his ears, looking and listening for signs of survival.
Every step is fighting for breath, and fighting against heaving. Sometimes, some of the sights you come across, you canât win against it, but at least by then youâd already emptied out what you had to expel.
Sometimes you hear a groan, or see someone move, and you call for Bookman and the others. Sometimes, its the sight of someone not mangled that has you looking curiously for breath, or for a pulse â the way Bookman showed you earlier. One time, its a man coughing blood grabbing your ankle suddenly, holding on so tight you think heâll snap it, until Bookman and others come running and pry the grip free.
Bookman and others warn you â donât stray too close to the fort on the hill.
The battle is supposed to be over, but that doesnât mean the shooting canât resume. You heed those words well, always watching over your shoulder and listening.
Moving from the bloodied fields results only in ending up in bloodied tents, where the noise hits again.
Here, there are no canons or guns being fired, but there are cries, groans, barking, wails, SCREAMS.
There are people fighting, and other people holding them down.
Thereâs wounds being cleaned, and then being stitched, and bandaged.
There are saws, and limbs being amputated.
Thereâs the smell of hot metal, and burning flesh, and bodily fluids of all kinds.
In one bed, thereâs a man with blood-soaked bandages around his head, drooling over himself, eyes faded like he may as well already be dead.
Thereâs another, still alive, still conscious, having loose organs rearranged to stitch him back up.
You wonât even be able to look at a butcher shop or a sausage for weeks without feeling sick after this.
You try to look away, find something else to focus on, and it ends up being another, covered in lacerations but no major damage, sobbing quietly and rocking himself, muttering incoherencies under his breath.
The poor man seems even more traumatized than you do.
You â seven years old, sympathetic, innocent, unprepared â reach out the way Bookman reached out to you, just to put a hand on his shoulder, to maybe make things better.
He jumps, near straight to his feet, rocking on the balls of them, and his eyes flash, he throws a hit that completely floors you and makes you see stars in the dirt, and he HOWLS at you.
Screams in jagged, deadly rage, âLEAVE ME ALONE. DONâT TOUCH ME. STAY AWAY! STAY AWAY!!â
You scramble away, startled, fearful, just trying to help!
Bookman stands between you and him, but the man isnât interested in fighting. He goes back to rocking, frantic with himself, blind and dumb to the rest of the world.
Bookman tells you to leave the man be. Checks your face where the man hit you and does what he can to numb it. Tells you to make yourself useful and to be careful â not everyone here is in their right frame of mind now.
You do as he asks. You fetch things by request, moving quick and quiet, maneuvering through the cramped space easiest, being the smallest. You watch the surgeons work, reviled but also intrigued to see their skills at work, to see them put people back together better than they were when first found.
You take out bloody bandages and rages, tattered clothes made unusable by the fighting, and return with fresh ones as asked. You move personal things to safe storage as requested, and with emphasized care, move weapons taken from soldiers to somewhere out of sight under the care of those nearby who escaped major injury.
You hear them spout off names for things â medicine â that you can hardly pronounce even hearing them spoken aloud, and you try to lock all of them into your memory as important things, just like all that Bookman has tried to teach.
Its chaos, but its productive chaos.
You donât really feel anything about it. You can hardly process it.
Seven damn years old, in your first war, helping in your first ever medical tent.
And it didnât feel like anything.
Not until that one jarring moment, shattering what fragile semblance of coping that he was managing to maintain through everything with quiet compliance.
That one jarring moment, carrying another of many pistols out to be stored with the rest, still loaded â youâve already learned to tell by the weight â when he jumps at you.
The one jarring moment the man rocking on the floor, chanting hysterics, leaps, and grabs the gun in your unsuspecting hands, and yanks the barrel into his face, andâ
BANG.
Your breath stops with that shot, the echoes of vibration from the kickback trembling through too small hands.
He reels with a crater in his skull, eyes rolled back, and he falls.
He falls forward, and his blood is on you. Its splattered on your face, and its smeared all down the front, even though you backtrack so fast that you almost fall backwards through the tent walls yourself.
When your breath comes back, it strains in your throat, struggling, clawing, and air gets in, but it aches, and it comes in fast, short bursts that only leave you more breathless.
You see spots, and you wheeze, and waver, and before anyone can even get close, youâre on the ground and everything is going dark, deeper, deeper into blackness.
What a damn foolish age to be deciding the course of the rest of your life. But you were six, and you think you know enough to make that call.
`To know what no one else knows.`
With that promise alone, I chose to become a Bookman.
Foolish, foolish child.
Foolish child, filled with ideas and dreams and expectations of what that will mean. Visions full of adventure and intrigue like all those grand stories you heard, told off of the lips of soft-spoken parental figures and repeated by excitable youth.
Adventure awaits you.
Mysteries that will be your secrets to keep or tell as you wish.
The tales you will tell around the candle fire at night, when no one can sleep and time is passed through oral tradition.
Excitement fills you. It tingles in every pore, fidgets in every finger, floods your mind and your heart.
Youâre six, and you just know that your life will be exciting, and you donât know that you are so, so foolish for thinking so.
You are just too damn young.
You are ignorant.
And you donât even realize.
But thatâs the reason why, isnât it?
Six years old, eager, seeing life through a tainted lens, where everything is grand. Youâre innocent, and innocence â as they say â is bliss. Willing to do what is asked of you, pining for acceptance and validation from those you look up to â literally. The perfect, vital age for molding however one needs you to be, to shape how you will think and participate in the world without having to re-wire your perceptions.
Youâre six, and the world is yours to explore, but it is not.
Leaving everything is no big deal to you. You had little to hang on to anyway. Very little was yours, but very much was out there, just waiting for you.
It was waiting for you, and you had to find it.
So, at six years old, too young, too deluded, you agree to sign your life to this task. This is who you are. This is who you will be now, and you are so thrilled.
âI accept you as a successor to the Bookman line,â he â Bookman â says.
Its such a weird name, he thought⊠Bookman. Its almost like the name of a character in a story. Bookman. Why only that?
âHidden history refers to those excluded historical facts that are outside what is generally known. From now on, you will record this hidden history, all right?â
âYes!â Thereâs no hesitation as you follow his heels, the old man looking over his shoulder and down. As the strong smell of wheat fills your nose and the wind sweeps through the sea of golden stalks, and carrying dandelions on the breeze under a bright blue, near-cloudless sunny sky.
The waving flicker of that field, like waves on the ocean, mirrored by the sun against a canvas of bright azure was so beautiful, a fitting backdrop to great things to come.
As you follow old-man Bookman, the discussion takes a turn.
Your name â your four-letter name â cannot stay. As an heir to Bookman, you must renounce who you were, which means your name cannot remain. You must dawn a new one.
Its weird, but not an impossible adjustment to make. Youâre so used to answering to it, but you can learn, if thatâs what it takes to follow this course.
If its what you have to do to be a Bookman.
âWhat kind of name?â you ask, thinking of what sort of name youâd like. He tells you, a name that has the same number of characters as the name he started with. Thatâs good, because your name is short and sweet.
It has to be impersonal, he adds. No ties. No attachments to anything. No naming yourself after friends or family, nothing like that. You think about it for a while, but he tells you it doesnât matter.
You donât really need a name yet. In fact its better that you donât have one â that you get used to not having one.
For now you are only Junior.
Junior Bookman, heir to Bookman. It is the only name â title, rather â that you will keep for a long time to come, until you, too, become just Bookman.
Junior and Bookman.
Its so weird.
Its weird, but youâll get used to it.
Bookman plans to travel a long way, and that, too, is something youâll get used to. In fact, moving around is preferred, at first. Seeing new places is much of the reason you agreed to go along.
You travel through many places. Bookman is old, but no obstacle seems too steep for him to bypass. The same cannot always be said for you, but you are determined. Whether you travel a flat road, or try to scale past a mountain with him, you are determined.
You keep following, and you try not to complain sometimes, and if you have trouble finding a way to get past something, Bookman waits. Sometimes he speaks, offers advice, and sometimes he simply watches in silence and expectation. When you finally get around something more difficult, he nods quiet approval, and you move on.
Times when you stop to rest for a time, Bookman shows you things. He teaches you ways to fight. The world â he tells you â can be a dangerous place, unforgiving to those who cannot defend themselves. The world â the human world â trusts outsiders little, and so outsiders, as they are, must be able to take care of themselves, much as is possible.
You accept this reasoning at face value, even though it is so much more complicated than that, yet it is also so very simple. You donât think about what it foreshadows. It is simply the smart thing to be prepared for anything, isnât it?
So he teaches you proper form, and he teaches you stretches that will have the most benefit for them. He shows how to move, plays a little of Monkey See, Monkey Do with you, and every so often he moves a limb to the right place when you donât quite have it down. He shows you so many styles, fighting hand-to-hand but also with weapons. He shows how to manipulate another in a fight, both physically and psychologically.
You are young, and for all your youthful ignorance, you are still smart, and you take to it well. You are eager to please Bookman, who makes sure you learn all these things you never knew about before, and Bookman approves in quiet, passive movements, gestures, and on rare occasions he even gives a kind word.
Mostly his words are harsh, but sometimes they arenât, and those days are the best.
He doesnât only teach you movement.
He teaches you perception, ways to look at thing differently, to see sides and angles you never would have thought to. To keep your mind open, able to accept things as they are, but still to question why and how they are, because to never question, blindly following only certain things, is unacceptable in their line of work.
He teaches how to survive, both in society and out of it. How to work, to make yourself useful with what skills you possess, sometimes that you never would have even thought off. How to survive the wild, what places make good locations to rest in, and how to identify things that will make staying alive easier, like what kinds of foods to eat or leave alone and how to find water and shelter when none not of your own or someone elseâs making is available. He teaches these things in easy summer, and teaches them still through the hard winter.
And he teaches you language. Language you already spoke, but never had words so advanced for. Languages you didnât, and that you hear on the lips of strangers as you and Bookman pass through.
And he teaches you a language that you only ever hear from the old man. A language specific only to their clan, that no other people in the entire world except for you and him speak.
This language â like you â has no name.
It needs no name, as it has no country of origin, and no need for any others to reference, just as you have no home country to return to and no one waiting there to speak the words with.
And that is the best thing of all.
It is a secret, and no one else knows it. You keep that knowledge close. You treasure it.
This language is yours and you and Bookman are the only ones who even know it exists.
You learn something on your own. You learn to call Bookman Gramps, and you also learn that he doesnât like it.
He tells you not to call him Gramps.
You ask why.
âBecause I am your teacher, not your grandfather.â
âBut youâre old,â you tell him, blunt. Innocent.
You learn one more thing.
Bookman hits hard.
You learn another thing.
Bookman hates being called old.
You think you shouldnât do either one again, but you will. You wonât know it yet, but you definitely will. Thatâs one more thing youâll come to learn: you like to razz people, and you like nicknames. So make that two things.
You live like this way for a year, just learning things, seeing new places, and its everything you hoped for and more. You are chosen, and you chose, and you are fortunate. There are so many things to learn, and it seems as if Bookman knows them all, and soon so will you.
You are seven, then, and you have learned so much. Bookman is pleased with you, and you are pleased with yourself.
And you are ready for the next stage in your training as the successor to the Bookman line.
This is the day you get your new â your first of many â names. Bookman asks if you would like to pick it. You decline. You trust Bookman to give you a good one. A good one that means nothing, and yet, means everything, just like everything else Bookman has given you up to this point.
He thinks only for a moment, and then he decides.
Jona.
Jona Junior Bookman.
You grin at him, delighted.
Your first Name.
Your very first record ever.
Now, you are really, truly ready to start not just learning, but being a proper Junior Bookman.
Today you have your first Name, and today, you will witness your first war.
And today, your eyes will open for the very first time.
Yeah, he knows heâs probably getting too close, too attached, but is that so bad? Thereâs something about how this all feels that he wants more of. He doesnât want to let go of it yet, not when he doesnât have to. Heâs just having fun, right? The same as he does with Yuu. Its not that serious. He knows heâll have to leave eventually and none of it will matter, but that doesnât have to be just yet, does it? As long as he doesnât forget his ultimate purpose and he doesnât think that will happen.
Deak keeps complaining about the smell on him but he likes it. The residual scent of sweat and cologne and alcohol woven into warm blankets that always make for a good cocoon. Maybe its... comforting, but heâs never going to be caught saying it.So long as he can just steal blankets and curl up in them, he doesnât have to admit anything.
But then he talks about leaving and it stings and he canât say anything because heâs not allowed to get attached. He calls things âmineâ but with exception to his records, nothing is. He doesnât get to have anything and thatâs usually fine but being in this damnable place for so many years...
Donât go.
But he canât indulge in whatâs always been forbidden. So he just scoffs instead.
