Pinnacle Star: The Seven Failures of The Little Professor

star1PROLOG

There once was a boy named Weather, but nobody called him that; he was called the Little Professor. Necessity compelled him to walk before he could crawl, though he took the time to learn crawling once his schedule had cleared up. He never asked advice from anyone, but learned from observation and reflection even in infancy. Many people admired his apparent intelligence, though many others thought him haughty and pretentious; but Weather carried on learning, then reading, then studying, then experimenting, and finally inventing along with all the others. He even taught students on occasion, though not with any enthusiasm. Many thought it his destiny, though many others thought it arrogant ornamentation, that such a young person would presume to educate others, both younger and older than himself. Yet whether with ebullient admiration or resentful sarcasm, everyone called him the Little Professor.

The Little Professor was born on a long-dead cabbage farm to a mother and father and twenty-seven dogs of various breeds and diverse degrees of pedigree. Since the farm was long-dead, the mother supported their family by supervising the maids at the Golden House, the largest and most palatial home in Solinus. It was on the opposite side of town, so she rode there every morning before sunrise in an old turnip wagon that their neighbor Mister Borgins ran, and rode home every night after sundown on one of a trio of mules that their other neighbor Miz Toonix used to haul rocks from the meteor quarry. The father spent his day taking inventory at the local smithy, which was close enough for him to walk. Neither parent was particularly ambitious, and although neither cared much one way or the other for their jobs, their lives, nor even each other, they were content in that their worlds were predictable, manageable, and relatively free of crisis. When the Little Professor stopped coming home one day, the parents were reasonably pleased with his apparent independent initiative in finding his own employment and home, or relatively bereaved at his disappearance and apparent death, whichever sentiment they found was warranted.

It transpired that the Little Professor had decided one day to erect his own laboratory out of rocks from the meteor quarry and driftwood from the Sea of Stars. To those who asked (and they were few) he intended to study and plot the migration of the stars; to learn where they went when the weather grew colder and predict exactly when they might return as it grew warmer. He thought, given his name, that people might be amused by his apparent interest in meteorological patterns. But of course nobody knew his name, nor did he think to mention it, so the cleverness went unobserved. Still, long before he had reached adolescence, the Little Professor had become master of his own laboratory on the shore. Everyone called it the Lighthouse.

The Lighthouse was a single tower of four or five floors, depending on who one asked, whose frequent rumblings led the unknowing to suppose it held a basement as well. It was a hundred paces away from the shoreline at high tide, when the meagerest of the starlets would wash up and turn the beach into a glittering cascade of dazzling, twinkling delight. Other children the Professor’s age would often run out to the beach just before sunrise after the first high tide had receded, to gather up the starlets, which they would fling into the air to watch their mesmerizing sparkles. Many children would take them home and leave them on the floor near their bedrooms, to guide them to their bathrooms should they be woken in the middle of the night. Others would braid them into their hair or adhere them to their arms or clothes, some would pile them in the center of town for nighttime gatherings or even just toss them into their waste bins. It didn’t matter in the end, because on the next sunrise the starlets would vanish, winking away back out in the farthest reaches of the Sea of Stars, presumably to wash right back onto the beach in a few days’ time. So, even though they were one of the most beautiful things about living in Solinus, no one ever did much of consequence with the starlets, knowing they would soon be gone and soon return.

The Little Professor, it was believed and reported, had little time for such frivolity. So removed was he from playing or idleness that the starlets themselves seemed to avoid the Lighthouse, so much so that a fifty yard radius around it was bereft of the dazzling beauties every morning when the other children came out to gather them. A handful of parents wondered if perhaps the starlets were animals like starfish or muscles, and had simply never moved when anyone was watching. That might explain how they always managed to disappear right from under everyone’s noses. Indeed, many children would stay up late watching a starlet in their bed, sometimes dozens of them, falling asleep trying to see just what happened and where they went. Even a child who managed to stay awake, however, would become frustrated in their hopes. They would doze, or be distracted by an unexpected noise, or otherwise lose their focus for a mere instant, and the starlet would be gone. A blink was never enough, but anything else, and they would wink out of being. No one knew why, and every child would eventually give up wondering. The adults never wondered, of course, because they themselves had stayed up late nights in their own childhoods, watching, wondering, failing, and eventually learning not to wonder about it anymore.

The Little Professor, it was believed and reported, had little time for such frivolity. That is, until the Princess went out early to gather starlets.

She was not actually royalty yet, but she had been betrothed to the young Prince since her birth, so everyone simply called her the Princess. The Prince had been born the day before, and that was the custom in Solinus. Since no one had ever met a betrothed girl who did not want to be a Princess by marriage, no one ever thought to question the practice, nor did they with the current young Princess, whose name was Miricet. Miricet had many virtues: she was brave and did not tolerate injustice, she was intelligent enough to know that she had much to learn and spent many a day rectifying this, she was healthy but dedicated to growing stronger, and she had the remarkable ability to put dogs to sleep with her eyes; a very useful skill on a full moon night, when the baying hounds of the Northside would keep the farmers awake. By happenstance, she also had very large and pointy ears, which was considered one of the most attractive traits a person could have in Solinus, so many conjectured that the young Prince would be very happy with his bride one day. The Princess’ happiness was rarely conjectured upon.

To be sure, however, the Princess was elated this particular morning some time ago. For all her merits, Miricet was a somewhat greedy child, and decided one morning to head out to the beach early so she might gather more starlets than anyone else. It was very dark, but she had the light of the nearby beach to guide here. Despite her auspicious birth, she was not yet royalty and lived nowhere near the Golden House. So she left her pet bloodhound Pericles (who as anosmatic) awake that night, that his rustling and chuffing would keep her from sleeping too deeply. It worked perfectly, and the poor dog’s discomfort allowed her to rush out to the beach long before sunrise even considered encroaching upon Solinus shores. It was there, on this morning so early that it was still night as far as anyone was concerned, that the Princess found the Little Professor gathering starlets around the Lighthouse.

Though she had of course heard of him, Miricet had never actually seen the Little Professor. She was sure it was him, however, because who else would be trundling around the Lighthouse at this hour, and he was after all quite little. Still, she did not want to be rude, and thought it best to make polite inquiries.

As she approached, the Princess was quite certain the little boy had seen her out of the corner of his eye, and seemed perhaps to be ignoring her. Curiosity warred with manners however briefly, but being a Princess by fortune rather than breeding, manners really had little chance in the exchange. “Excuse me,” she offered, “are you the Little Professor?”

“That’s right,” he answered, never interrupting his work. It should be stated that, so early in his life, the Little Professor had not yet served as instructor to anyone; it was just a name.

This was why the Princess next asked, “Who is it that you teach?”

“No one,” he answered, still continuing to gather up starlets. There was a notable tension in his movements, as though he wanted to be moving much more quickly or slowly than he actually was. Miricet was an observant child, and wondered if the boy was fighting the urge to hurry up his work and leave.

To test the proverbial waters, she pressed on. “You know,” she proposed, “everyone thinks the starlets avoid your house. No one had any idea you gather them like everyone else.”

“Oh yes?”

Miricet had once heard that if children do not learn to talk until late in life, then they were tragically incapable of speaking more than two words at a time. She found herself wondering if the Little Professor was one such misfortunate. “Tell me,” she continued, “why do they call you the Little Professor?”

“I’m afraid I don’t really know.” She suspected he did in fact know, but was so happy to learn that the boy did not suffer any apparent verbal disadvantages that she let the perceived deception go unremarked upon.

“I wonder,” she persisted, “why is it they call your home the Lighthouse?”

“Because it’s tall and by the Sea, I suppose.” It was true that, although lights were sometimes seen in the windows, the Lighthouse had never produced light of sufficient intensity to earn the name. But then there had been no ships near Solinus for hundreds of years, so Miricet supposed anyone was free to call anything they wanted a Lighthouse, as the opportunity for confusion was limited.

She considered pushing further, but the boy was clearly set in his mission, and there were plenty of starlets for just two people. The Princess turned and hurried away from the Lighthouse and its well-known radius and began gathering her own. Occasionally she would glance up at the Little Professor, until once she looked up and he was gone, winked out like a starlet after midnight.

By the the time the other children had come out, the Princess had quite a hefty load of starlets and was considering leaving early. A few of the children professed disappointment at her departure, and a handful envy at her morning haul. All were ultimately mollified, however, knowing that the next morning would bring more opportunity and new challenges.

As the Princess departed, her stuffed bag hoisted over her left shoulder, she spared one last glance for the Lighthouse and its bare radius. She had not thought to tell anyone her secret about the starlets, how they were almost certainly not animals and were not avoiding the Little Professor as they all thought, but it seemed unimportant. A small part of her enjoyed having this little secret to herself, and in time she found that others enjoyed the mystery, wondering what starlets ate or how they traveled and why they disliked the Little Professor so. Her secret grew in her over the years, like a small but strong fire on a winter’s night, comforting her hands and stomach and heart and face when she needed it.

Miricet did not go out early again, and as far as she knew no one else did either. The Little Professor was left to gather his starlets in peace.

Until one night, years after but still in their childhood, the Princess came again in the early morning. She had seen and even spoken with the Little Professor many times since, but had never before ventured out again so early in the morning. Her Prince, for all his virtues, was a greedy child however, and she decided to gather starlets for him as a surprise. She again found the Lighthouse’s radius bedecked with the twinkling wonders, but the Professor was nowhere to be seen. Instead, a brilliant, effulgent, glorious, yet gentle light was shining out from the peak of Lighthouse, aimed out to Sea. It sparkled, glittered, and almost seemed to smile down at her while pointing out into the Sea of Stars, encouraging her and promising unknown delights. She looked out into the Sea, her bag forgotten on the sand, wonderstruck. In time, she looked back to the Lighthouse, where the gorgeous illumination burst out in defiance of the stubborn dark. It shown, triumphant in the beautiful night.

Then, all at once, it winked out. The Princess was momentarily blinded as she watched the inert tower for several minutes. In time, she turned to gathering the starlets for her Prince again. She would sometimes glance over at the Lighthouse. After those extraordinary few minutes, it now seemed a little sad and a little dead. The shimmer of the beach, however, and the promise of another day kept her from despair. After several glances, she suddenly found the Little Professor trudging out of the Lighthouse, an empty sack in his hand, to begin gathering his starlets. The two saw each other, stared, but did not speak.

These were the only two times in her childhood that the young Princess, Miricet, journeyed to the Beach by the Sea of Stars alone. There was a third time, when she was almost a woman, but that is her story, one Weather never knew.

Pinnacle Star, Stories

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