“You can’t say that for sure until you try.”  Batem’s gap-toothed grin widened.  He stepped back and watched with interest.

Kirin shuddered.  Everybody in the room was staring unblinkingly at her, their eyes penetrating her like daggers.  She could weave many types of patterns but had never considered making shadow from light.  It seemed like it should be possible, but the idea just seemed so—unnatural.  She pushed her bangles up her forearms and again shifted focus, bringing points of light into view.

Batem had just mentioned that shadow was not exactly the absence of light, but logically it seemed that if compressing light particles together was the easiest way to form visible light, that getting shadow particles to gather would form visible shadow.

Kirin spread her fingers and gathered light particles in two separate groups, prying them away from each other to create a space in which only shadow matter could remain.  Her hands began trembling as she prevented loose light particles from slipping into the void, but the pressure eventually built up to the point that she could no longer hold the particles apart, and light matter spilled back into the space, colliding with itself in a brilliant flash, knocking Kirin back a step and leaving a residual sizzle in the air.

A wave of nervous gasps filled the room and Batem motioned for Kirin to try something else.

Kirin furrowed her brow and put her hands together again.  What was the trick to this?  She had managed to inadvertently generate lightning by forcing collisions, but wasn’t any closer to seeing or manipulating the shadow particles that were supposed to be there.  She squinted.  Maybe she needed to manipulate the particles directly.  The problem was she couldn’t see them.  When she was first learning to shift focus, she knew to focus on the light particles and ignore the few hazy specks of shadow particles she saw at the corners of her eyes.  She searched for the shadow particles, but every time she thought she spotted one and turned to look at it, it was gone in the mass of light particles, and then she’d glimpse another shadow particle just out of view.

Maybe she could manipulate the shadow particles without looking directly at them.  Concentrating further, she put her fingers out to gather the shadow particles at her periphery, but none would follow, instead dancing out of view even as random light particles marched themselves obediently into neat rows.

“I can’t do it!” she finally blurted out.  “I can’t create shadow!  I don’t know the pattern, and when I manage to see any shadow particles I can’t get them to respond to me!”  She hung her head, certain that Batem and all the other students would be delighted at her failure.

Batem chuckled and made his way back to the front of the room.  “Well of course you can’t make shadow, Kirin, whether you know the pattern or not.  No Naltite can.  Not even our beloved prophetess, the Nassé, can.”

“Oh,” Kirin said, her cheeks burning.

“You may sit now, Kirin,” Batem urged, and Kirin quickly made her way back to her cushion on the floor.

“Now,” Batem continued.  “I realize that we do not often speak openly of shadow, or of Anoth and his followers.  Part of this is because we Naltites can only manipulate the light, but the other part is that we do not wish to speak ill of the dead.  The Anotites willingly chose to follow Anoth out of this world, Zaidna, into their world of shadow, Yalet, and in so doing sealed their eventual doom.  Now we are simply left to wonder what our civilization would be like if we had wielders of shadow among us.”  He paused almost nostalgically.  “Well then, there is more to ormé than just the light and dark aspects of primal matter.  Can anyone name the other types of matter we can view with different degrees of focus?”

Kirin kept her hands firmly in her lap while another student timidly raised his.  “Um,” the student sputtered as Batem nodded his way.  “There’s also spirit matter, right?”

“Yes, that is right,” Batem confirmed.  “That is the type of matter that can only be seen in the second degree of focus, which none of you have probably even glimpsed for more than a few seconds when overshooting the first degree.  And spirit matter is unusual in that we can see it but cannot manipulate it at all.  Spirit matter infuses all living things and sometimes manifests itself as an aura or a hazy outline of a person or creature.”

Kirin had accidentally slipped into the second degree of focus a few times when practicing her patterns at home.  She would be concentrating, getting herself into the first degree of focus, when she would suddenly find all the light particles fading away, replaced by a faint glow that vaguely outlined where she knew her hands were.

“Lastly,” Batem remarked while pacing to the other side of the room.  “I’m sure we are all aware of the third degree of focus, which only the most talented and trained priests and priestesses can view, much less make use of.  Can anyone tell us what the purposes are of this last degree of focus?”

Kirin’s classmates looked around at each other, murmuring a bit.  Everyone knew what the third degree of focus was, but nobody really discussed it, especially with lowly acolytes.  It was a very advanced concept, but they all understood its uses to be a bit more—personal.  Batem surveyed the room good naturedly before fixing his eyes on Kirin, who tried in vain to avoid his gaze.  “How about you, Kirin?  Surely you know something of the third degree of focus?”

Kirin reddened.  No way of avoiding the topic now.  “The Nassé uses the third degree of focus to cleanse people’s psyches.”

“That is true,” Batem agreed.  “Not just the Nassé, of course, even though as our prophetess she is the most qualified to do it.  Very few people can switch to the third degree of focus, and fewer still can make out the strands of thought matter that make up each person’s psyche.  Tell me, do you know what a psyche looks like?”

“A bowl of noodles,” Kirin blurted out, recalling a painting of a psyche she had once seen in the temple library. 

The rest of the students giggled as Batem smiled.  “Yes, I suppose that’s not inaccurate.  I myself was never so talented as to do more than basic manipulation of thought matter, but I believe ‘a bowl of noodles’ is analogous enough.  And that bowl of noodles is something that is centered right here.”  He tapped at his wrinkled forehead.  “If you could see me in the third degree of focus, I’d look like a man with a full head of hair!”

Several students laughed uncomfortably.

“I will not belabor the topic, but I would like to note that psyches are made of a special type of refined matter, one that does not have a physical counterpart in any other degree of focus.  So, if you were to watch someone die, their psyche stays intact for just a few minutes before poof—” Batem threw up his arms theatrically.  “The psyche dissipates like a cobweb in the wind.

“One obvious fact that not many people know is that there are other kinds of refined matter present in nature, although, paradoxically, no refined matter is created naturally.”  He quelled more confused murmurs with a glance.  “One form of dense refined matter is almost completely resistant to manipulation with ormé—or anything else, really.  This kind of refined matter is what the Goddess Forest is made of.”

Kirin’s blood ran cold as Batem mentioned the Goddess Forest.  This was another taboo subject, even though it was only about fifteen miles west of the temple.  Kirin knew the stories about Naltena creating the Goddess Forest to symbolize her victory over Anoth and to protect the Naltites from the parting that separated her world from his.  But something about the Goddess Forest disturbed Kirin even more deeply now.

Batem turned to pull open the curtains over the window and noted the low position of the sun.  “Well, I have rambled on this subject more than I intended.  Perhaps another day we will continue this discussion.  For tomorrow, please bring your carving tools, as we will be practicing our binding skills.  You are dismissed.”  He shooed the students with his fingers, and they all began to gather up their scrolls and exit the classroom.  He moved to his desk and started sorting through a stack of papers before noticing Kirin still kneeling on her cushion.  “Oh, are you still here?”

Kirin fidgeted.  She wanted to go home, but she was still a bit shaken by what Batem had said about the Goddess Forest.  She had never seen it up close, but her mind was filled with images and memories of it, inside and outside.  It had recently been a theme in her dreams, causing her disturbed sleep.  In those dreams, she had glimpses of herself entering the forest and running somewhere, and then—she shook her head.

“Is everything all right?”  Batem was now standing directly over her.  “I hope you were not offended by my shadow demonstration.”

Kirin frowned.  “I don’t understand why we need the Goddess Forest.  We’re forbidden from going inside it and not supposed to talk about it.  And people say it just keeps getting bigger every year.  It’s creepy.”

Batem chuckled.  “Creepy, is it?”

“I’ve been dreaming about it, too.  Bad dreams, that are coming back almost every night.”

“Bad dreams sound suspiciously like nightmares,” Batem remarked.  “And you, my star pupil, are a candidate for Nassé, and as such are thankfully immune from nightmares.  I think we can agree that a future priestess, much less a future prophetess, would not be very useful if she were tainted by nightmares.”

“Maybe,” Kirin agreed uncertainly.

“You shouldn’t harbor bad feelings about the Goddess Forest.  The Goddess Forest was created as a gift from Naltena—a marker and a protection for us against the parting hidden within it.”

“But all the Anotites are gone.  The parting doesn’t have any power anymore.  What are we being protected from?”

“The Anotites may be gone, but the parting is far from powerless.  I happen to believe in the existence of hadirs—those immortal monsters created by Anoth—and their ability to cross the parting, but not go beyond the bounds of the trees.  All we need to know is that Naltena uses the Goddess Forest as a shield for us.  We simply need to stay out of the Goddess Forest, and we will remain safe from the hadirs.  And we know from the children’s stories that the hadirs would like nothing more than to crush your head and slurp up your psyche.”  Batem stared at Kirin menacingly.

Kirin stared back in silence before finally snorting with laughter.  “Oh, Batem, you’re silly!  Now I’m going to dream about hadirs, thanks to you!”

Batem returned her smile and motioned toward the door.  “Off with you, then.  Give my best to your father.”

Kirin jumped up and tossed her satchel over her shoulder.  “I will, but I doubt it’ll make him like you any better.  Bye!”  With that, she bounded out of the room and into the temple halls.