Chapter 5: Questions Without Answers
Chapter 5: Questions Without Answers
The mystery of mana refused to remain a curiosity, no matter how carefully Cassian tried to treat it as one. Several days had passed since Lena had given the strange sensation a name, yet the explanation had not settled his thoughts the way a useful answer should have. Instead, it had arranged every previous observation into a pattern that demanded more attention. Mages used mana, monsters carried more of it than ordinary beasts, certain herbs possessed stronger traces than others, and most people in Frostwood accepted those facts with the same practicality they gave rain, hunger, and winter.
For Cassian, acceptance was not enough. Adam had spent too much of his first life surrounded by people who knew the names of things without understanding the mechanisms behind them. A worker might know which lever stopped a machine without understanding why it failed. A patient might repeat the name of an illness without understanding what it did inside the body. Even skilled professionals sometimes relied on methods inherited through repetition rather than full comprehension. Cassian did not look down on that kind of knowledge, because practical knowledge kept people alive, but it always left him restless when the deeper principle remained hidden.
That restlessness followed him into the storage room three mornings later, where Lena had begun organizing medicinal supplies for winter. Frostwood treated winter preparation with a seriousness that had once seemed excessive to him and now seemed entirely reasonable. Food, firewood, tools, clothing, herbs, roof repairs, and livestock shelters all needed attention before the first heavy snow arrived. A household that prepared poorly did not merely become uncomfortable; it became vulnerable to hunger, sickness, cold, and the kind of emergencies that left neighbors speaking in lowered voices by spring.
Lena’s storage room reflected that understanding. Shelves lined three walls from floor to ceiling, crowded with clay jars, woven baskets, wrapped bundles, and small cloth packets tied with thread. Dried herbs hung from overhead beams in careful rows, filling the air with layered scents that Cassian had gradually learned to separate. Feverleaf carried a faint sweetness beneath its grassy smell, bitterroot announced itself with unpleasant sharpness, and widow’s thread left a metallic trace in the nose that lingered long after the plant was set aside. To anyone else, the room might have seemed cluttered; to Lena, every object had a place, a use, and a consequence if mishandled.
Cassian knelt beside several baskets while Lena worked near the window, where pale autumn light entered through the shutters and fell across the table. She sorted fresh cuttings with the easy precision of someone repeating movements taught by mother, grandmother, and experience. He had learned not to confuse that calmness with simplicity. A wrong plant in the wrong mixture could harm someone, and a missing herb during a storm could cost more than coin. Lena’s work seemed quiet only because she had spent years removing unnecessary motion from it.
“Those do not belong together,” Lena said without turning from the table. Cassian looked down and realized he had been holding two bundles while thinking about mana instead of the task in front of him. Before he could defend himself, Lena added, “You always pause before making that mistake, which means you know something is wrong but have not finished deciding why.”
Cassian moved the bundle to the correct basket, though he could not help glancing at her with mild suspicion. “That sounds like magic.”
“That sounds like raising children,” Lena replied, and the faint smile in her voice suggested she had expected the accusation before he made it. “A mother who cannot tell when a child is about to make a mess will spend half her life cleaning after disasters that could have been prevented.”
He accepted the correction and resumed sorting, though his attention remained divided between the work and the experiment he had been planning since dawn. He could not announce that he intended to test his ability to sense mana, because Gareth’s warning about unusual children still echoed in his mind. People praised, feared, or tried to use what they did not understand. Cassian had no intention of inviting any of those reactions before he understood the phenomenon himself.
His method was crude, but it was the best available to a four-year-old with no instruments, books, teacher, or privacy. He would close his eyes, touch several baskets without looking, focus only on the presence or absence of the strange sensation, and identify the herbs afterward. The test lacked proper controls and depended too heavily on subjective perception, which would have annoyed Adam in his first life. Still, even imperfect tests could reveal patterns if repeated carefully enough.
The first several attempts encouraged him. Feverleaf produced no unusual sensation, bitterroot felt ordinary, and widow’s thread created the familiar faint pressure almost immediately. Silver moss felt weaker but present, like warmth reaching through thick cloth. When he repeated the sequence, widow’s thread again stood out more clearly than the others, and for a brief stretch of time Cassian allowed himself to believe he had found the first reliable distinction.
Then the pattern betrayed him. One basket produced a sensation nearly as strong as widow’s thread, yet when he opened his eyes he found only feverleaf resting beneath his fingers. He repeated the attempt at once, expecting the same result, but the sensation vanished so completely that the plant felt ordinary again. A third attempt produced only uncertainty, which was worse than failure because uncertainty created too many possible explanations. Either his perception fluctuated, the plant itself changed, environmental factors interfered, or the entire sensation depended on something he had not yet considered.
He continued testing whenever Lena’s attention shifted elsewhere, and by midday the results had become more frustrating than useful. Some herbs consistently felt stronger than others, but not consistently enough to form a stable rule. Medicinal strength did not equal mana strength, because several useful plants produced almost no sensation. Freshness might matter, though the evidence remained too weak to trust. His own focus might matter as well, which raised the unpleasant possibility that he was measuring his concentration rather than mana.
“You are frowning at the baskets again,” Lena said after nearly an hour, and Cassian realized he had been staring at widow’s thread with the intensity of a man accusing it of deception. Lena set down a bundle and studied him across the table. “Most children make that face when they dislike vegetables, not when they are thinking about plants.”
Cassian adjusted his expression too late to be convincing. “I was trying to understand why some herbs work better than others.”
“That is a question herbalists ask their entire lives,” Lena said, though her tone carried more approval than concern this time. She returned to sorting, but her next words came more slowly. “My grandfather used to ask it often. He cared less about which remedy worked and more about why it worked. That made him useful, troublesome, and very difficult to satisfy.”
Cassian looked up despite himself. “What did people think of him?”
“Some respected him, some avoided him, and some became annoyed whenever he corrected old explanations that sounded better than they behaved,” Lena said. “He believed a useful answer that was wrong could become dangerous if people trusted it too much. My mother said he would rather be disliked for a correct warning than praised for a comforting mistake.”
Cassian felt the words settle into him with unexpected weight. Adam had known people like that in fragments: a pharmacist who cared more about dosage than customer impatience, a mechanic who refused quick fixes that would fail later, a physician who hated uncertain records more than difficult patients. None had been perfect, but all had understood that reality did not become safer because people preferred easier explanations.
A crash interrupted the conversation before Cassian could ask more. Elara appeared in the doorway with an empty basket in hand and an expression of wounded dignity, while Darren stood behind her looking deeply vindicated. Several smaller baskets lay scattered across the hall behind them. “I told him that stack would fall if he pulled from the bottom,” Elara announced, though the speed of her accusation suggested she had been preparing it before entering.
Darren crossed his arms with unusual firmness. “You told me that after you stacked them badly.”
“I stacked them efficiently.”
“You stacked them tall.”
“That is often efficient.”
“It stopped being efficient when they fell.”
Lena closed her eyes for a moment, not in anger but in the practiced exhaustion of a mother deciding whether justice was worth the effort. “Both of you will pick them up, and neither of you will explain whose fault it was until the floor is clear.” Elara opened her mouth, reconsidered after seeing Lena’s expression, and turned back toward the hallway with Darren following in silent triumph. Cassian returned to the herbs with his face carefully lowered so nobody would see him smiling.
The rest of the morning passed with no breakthrough, but the failed tests did not feel wasted. By the time Lena finished tying the final bundles, Cassian had eliminated several possibilities and gained one uncomfortable conclusion: sensing mana was not as simple as noticing a smell or feeling heat. The sensation could be real while his interpretation remained unreliable, and that distinction mattered. If he trusted every impression too quickly, he would build theories on sand.
At dinner that evening, Gareth returned later than usual, carrying the smell of wet leaves, cold air, and forest mud into the house with him. The meal was already on the table: thick stew, bread, smoked meat, and preserved vegetables. Elara had spent most of the afternoon pretending she had not lost the basket argument, while Darren had spent most of it looking too pleased with himself. Both fell quiet when Gareth entered, because even children recognized when an adult carried difficult news in his posture.
Lena noticed before he spoke. “More signs?”
Gareth hung his cloak near the door and washed his hands in the basin before answering. “South of the old creek. Rowan found claw marks on three trees and part of a carcass dragged into brush. Nothing fresh enough to mean the beast is near the village tonight, but close enough that no one should grow careless.”
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The table changed with those words. Elara sat straighter, Darren looked toward the shuttered window, and Lena’s hands stilled around the ladle. Cassian watched all of them before watching Gareth. His father did not sound frightened, but his voice had entered the calm, measured place Cassian associated with danger. It was the same kind of voice Adam had heard from experienced workers during emergencies, when panic wasted energy and every word needed to carry weight.
“What kind of carcass?” Cassian asked.
Gareth looked at him for a moment, perhaps deciding how much detail belonged at the dinner table. “Thornbuck. Large one.”
Elara frowned. “Ironclaws eat thornbucks?”
“Ironclaws eat almost anything they can catch,” Gareth said. “That is why we keep children close to the village until this one is dealt with.”
Elara immediately recognized the direction of that statement and looked offended. “I am not a child like Cassian.”
“You are a child like Elara,” Gareth replied, tearing bread with one hand. “That is a separate but equally troublesome category.”
Darren lowered his head over his bowl, but his shoulders betrayed him. Elara glared at him first, then at Gareth, then at Cassian, as if the entire male half of the table had conspired against her. Lena’s mouth twitched, though she wisely chose not to enter the conflict.
The discussion shifted toward practical matters after that. Gareth explained that Rowan One-Eye wanted the hunters traveling in pairs until the Ironclaw’s territory became clearer. Marcus Fletcher would check the western snares, Old Bren would inspect the creek beds, and Gareth intended to examine several older trails in the eastern forest. Frostwood had no formal militia, yet responsibility moved naturally toward those with skill. The system was not elegant, but it had the strength of long familiarity.
Cassian listened carefully while pretending to focus on his stew. He was beginning to understand that the Ironclaw was not merely a monster somewhere in the woods. It was a pressure spreading through the village, altering routines, limiting movement, changing conversations, and reminding everyone that Frostwood survived because it respected threats before they reached the door. In that sense, danger behaved almost like weather. It shaped decisions long before it arrived visibly.
“You will come with me tomorrow,” Gareth said suddenly, and Cassian looked up so quickly that Elara nearly dropped her spoon.
“Why him?” she demanded.
Gareth did not even blink. “Because I need him to learn how to notice danger before danger notices him.”
“I can notice danger.”
“You argue with danger.”
“That is not the same thing.”
“No,” Gareth agreed. “It is worse.”
Darren made the mistake of laughing aloud, which redirected Elara’s attention toward him for the remainder of dinner. Cassian stayed quiet, though anticipation had already begun tightening inside him. Gareth rarely brought him into the forest without purpose. If tomorrow’s lesson involved the Ironclaw’s territory, then the forest might provide more than survival instruction. It might provide another chance to observe mana near a monster’s traces.
The next morning arrived clear and cold. Frost silvered the grass beyond the village, and each breath left pale vapor in the air. Gareth checked Cassian’s cloak twice, adjusted the strap of a small satchel across his shoulder, and reminded him of the rules before they left. Cassian would stay close, speak softly, touch nothing without permission, and obey immediately if told to stop or hide. Lena listened from the doorway without interrupting, though the tightness around her eyes revealed what she thought of sending a four-year-old into the forest during an Ironclaw scare.
Gareth did not take the usual eastern path. Instead, he led Cassian along a narrow trail that curved between old pines and patches of exposed stone, moving slowly enough to teach but carefully enough that Cassian understood the lesson had consequences. The forest seemed different beneath the cold morning light. Sounds traveled farther. Leaves crackled sharply under careless feet. Birds called from high branches, then fell silent in uneven waves that Gareth seemed to notice more than any visible sign.
After nearly half an hour, Gareth stopped beside a muddy stretch where several tracks overlapped. “Tell me what happened here.”
Cassian crouched and studied the ground. At first the area looked like a meaningless mess of impressions, but Gareth waited without rescuing him from confusion. That patience forced Cassian to slow down. He identified the narrow prints of a deerlike animal, several smaller tracks crossing at an angle, and one deeper mark near the edge where something had slipped. “A thornbuck passed through first,” he said carefully. “Something smaller crossed after it. The deeper mark might mean the ground was softer there, or the animal changed direction quickly.”
Gareth nodded, but not enough to give full approval. “Better. Look beyond the ground.”
Cassian raised his eyes. A low branch had been broken near shoulder height for him but lower for Gareth. Several leaves still clung to it, fresh at the torn edge. Farther ahead, grass leaned in a direction that did not match the wind. The thornbuck had not merely walked through; it had moved fast enough to brush against the branch and disturb the grass.
“It ran,” Cassian said.
“Why?”
Cassian searched for another sign and found none he trusted. “I do not know.”
“That is the right answer when evidence ends,” Gareth said. “Guessing feels satisfying, but it makes men blind. Once a man decides what happened, he starts ignoring signs that disagree.”
The words struck harder than Gareth probably intended. Cassian thought of widow’s thread, feverleaf, and the inconsistent experiments from the previous day. He had wanted mana to behave simply because simple rules were easier to use. That desire had not made the evidence simpler.
They continued deeper, and Gareth turned the forest into a classroom without ever naming it one. He showed Cassian where rabbits had chewed bark near the base of a shrub, where a fox had passed beneath a root arch, and where disturbed leaves suggested a bird had taken flight suddenly from the ground. When Cassian guessed incorrectly, Gareth corrected him without mockery. When he guessed correctly, Gareth asked why until the answer became reasoning rather than luck.
Near midday they reached a stand of older trees where the air felt colder despite the sun. Cassian noticed the sensation before they found the marks. It pressed against awareness in a way widow’s thread never had, stronger and less stable, almost like the difference between a candle and a fire burning behind a closed door. He slowed, and Gareth noticed at once.
“What is it?”
Cassian chose the truth carefully. “This place feels different.”
Gareth’s hand moved closer to his knife as he scanned the trees. He did not dismiss the statement, which frightened Cassian more than dismissal would have. “Different does not always mean dangerous, but in the forest we treat it as worth noticing.”
They found the claw marks several minutes later on the side of a fallen tree. Four deep grooves had torn through bark and into the pale wood beneath, each longer than Cassian’s forearm and spaced wider than any ordinary predator’s paw. Splinters lay scattered nearby, and the exposed wood had not yet darkened fully from weather. Gareth crouched beside the marks without touching them, studying the edges, the ground, and the brush beyond.
“Two days, perhaps three,” Gareth said after a long silence.
Cassian kept his voice low. “How can you tell?”
“The wood has begun to dry, but not enough for a week. Rain touched it yesterday, yet the deeper cuts still show fresh color. If I had seen the tree before the rain, I could say more.”
The explanation impressed Cassian because it admitted limits. Gareth was not guessing wildly. He was reading evidence and marking uncertainty where the evidence ended. That made the conclusion more trustworthy, not less.
The mana sensation felt strongest near the claw marks, and Cassian immediately began forming a new theory despite Gareth’s warning about premature conclusions. Every strong source he had noticed seemed connected to life or things recently separated from it: medicinal plants, storm deer antler, monster traces, animal remains. The Ironclaw marks seemed to confirm the pattern. Stronger creatures left stronger impressions. Mana, perhaps, belonged primarily to living systems.
The idea felt elegant enough to be dangerous.
Gareth ended the lesson soon after, though he continued teaching while they withdrew. He pointed out how fear could make a person move too quickly and miss obvious signs, how returning by the same path could be foolish if a predator had begun following, and how silence in the forest was rarely empty. Cassian listened, but part of his mind remained fixed on the theory taking shape. Life carried mana. Stronger life carried more. Traces lingered after contact, especially when the creature possessed enough power.
By the time Frostwood’s outer fence came into view, the theory had begun feeling almost solid.
It survived until the following afternoon.
Gareth had taken him to help repair a section of fencing near the old eastern road, where rain and shifting soil had loosened two posts. Cassian’s role mostly involved carrying small tools, holding nails, and remaining out of the way. Gareth explained the work as he moved, showing how angled support distributed force and why certain woods rotted faster when placed directly in wet soil. The lesson interested Cassian, though not as much as the forest had.
Then he felt it again.
The sensation came from the roadside, faint but unmistakable. Cassian turned slowly and found a weathered stone half-buried near the base of an old marker post. No moss covered it. No roots pierced it. No insect nest disturbed the soil around it. The stone appeared entirely ordinary, yet the strange pressure strengthened when he stepped closer. It was weaker than the Ironclaw marks and different from widow’s thread, but it was undeniably present.
His theory came apart without ceremony. Mana was not limited to living things, nor to things recently touched by living creatures. The stone fit neither category, yet it produced the sensation clearly enough to destroy the conclusion he had carried back from the forest. Cassian stared at it for several seconds, irritation and excitement rising together.
Gareth noticed. “What did the stone do to offend you?”
Cassian looked back at him. “I was wrong about something.”
Gareth drove another post into the ground before answering. “Good.”
That was not the response Cassian expected. “Good?”
“Wrong means you found the edge of what you know,” Gareth said, testing the post with one hand. “That is better than walking around with a bad answer and calling it truth.”
Cassian watched him return to work, surprised by how closely the statement matched lessons Adam had learned from the best teachers of his first life. The words were simple, but the principle beneath them was not. A wrong theory was not failure if it broke honestly against evidence. It was a map showing where ignorance still lived.
That night, after the house grew quiet and Darren’s breathing settled into sleep nearby, Cassian lay awake beneath his blanket and reviewed the evidence again. Widow’s thread produced a sensation, but not always with the same clarity. Feverleaf once appeared to do so and then did not. Ironclaw traces felt strong, yet a stone beside the road also carried mana despite showing no sign of life. The pattern he wanted had failed, but the failure itself had revealed something more important. Mana was not a simple property of living things.
The people of this world accepted mana as part of reality. Herbalists used plants shaped by it, hunters feared monsters filled with it, and mages trained to move it in ways ordinary villagers could not. Most people treated that knowledge practically, which made sense in a place where survival demanded useful answers before perfect ones. Cassian respected that more than he once would have.
Respect did not quiet the questions. It sharpened them.
If mana existed in plants, monsters, people, and stones, then what determined where it gathered? Did it flow through the world like water, settle into matter like heat, or bind to structures according to rules no one in Frostwood understood? Could it be measured, stored, transferred, refined, or exhausted? Did mages command it through instinct, discipline, or some interaction between body and environment? Every answer he lacked seemed to open three more questions behind it.
Cassian closed his eyes while the wind moved softly beyond the shutters. He was four years old, dependent on his family, trapped by a child’s body, and surrounded by a world that possessed more mysteries than tools to investigate them. In his first life, Adam had often possessed curiosity without opportunity. In this life, opportunity seemed to exist everywhere, hidden in herbs, claw marks, stones, and the ordinary explanations people accepted because survival left little time for wonder.
For now, he had no teacher and no method beyond careful attention. That would have to be enough until he built something better.
End of Chapter 5