Chapter 193: A Little Longer
“Eight years,” he sighed as he lay in his old bed, which Niko had so graciously lent to him after he’d come back. “I waited for five years only to be told to wait for another eight. Who does that?”
Part of him wanted to say fuck it and just leave, but he knew he couldn’t abandon his own child like that. Son, he corrected himself; Elthena seemed to be pretty certain she was going to have a son. She must have seen that in her vision.
It was a sleepless night for him and a heartbreaking one, too. He considered getting drunk again but decided that was an unhealthy coping mechanism. So, instead, he tried to figure out what it was he was supposed to do with another decade.
He didn’t figure it out, though, not that night or in the day that followed. It wasn’t for almost a week, when he was helping one of the older fishermen recaulk the seams in his boat, that he decided what the right answer was. If he was going to end up being a teacher, then he was going to teach people. It wasn’t like he had a skill for that, but Simon was sure that he was in no way naturally talented at it, either.
He spent a few weeks trying to teach a couple of the other boys and girls of the narrows how to write their names and learn the most basic letters, but they showed no more interest in the subject than Niko had. “I told you,” his former apprentice laughed. “That stuff’s a waste of time!”
“You learned, eventually,” Simon countered.
“Yeah, but only because you made me,” Niko laughed. “And what do I do with it? The math tricks you taught me can be helpful, but the letters? What is it I'm supposed to read?”
That was a good point. Other than Simon’s own journal, he didn’t really have anything for these kids to read. He didn’t have any adventure books or horror stories to share with them. So, it was like teaching them to use a computer without offering them the video games that would keep them playing and learning.
Simon thought about it for days but had no good answer. The proper thing to do would be to kick off an industrial revolution and create movable type and printing presses, but that would take forever and require a lot more money than he had at his disposal.