The few days that followed, settled down into a close, austerative, rhythm, the kind of rhythm that neither made itself known with effect or definite discoveries but dropped forward through repetition and self-denial. Ethan James rose earlier than the time of dawn every day, not because his body dictated it, but because his mind could no longer afford him the luxury of too much sleep. Suffering was the first thing to greet him when he was able to think again, it had stayed in his joints and spine, like an old debt which could not be forgotten, but it lost its stern commanding power. Rather, it was the feeling of calculatedness or even bargaining, as though his body had come to accept that torture ceased to be the foe but the state of development.
He groped his way slowly along the tallness behind the shack, and repeated the same slow drills upon which he had trained himself in days, every movement divested of redundant energy. His breathing was still slow and steady, pulled down in the belly, then expelled in even strokes which grounded his consciousness. The small heat in him was now to be felt answering more readily, not rushing wildly and tearing at his frail meridians, but in little, oscillating rivers, which answered his own limitations. It was not power, not as yet, but it was collaboration, and that was everything that changed and was not to be underestimated.
Black Stone City is waking sluggishly ahead, its dull clamours murmuring in the background, where human beings such as Ethan were not supposed to become, but to die. The clonking of carts, far voices, the yell of a dog, gave him a dull groundwork to his training, as a reminder that the world was going on its bonelessly indifferent way whether he worked at it or not. He embraced that apathy. It allowed him room to live without being noticed, to restructure without being bothered, and to fail without anyone around. In his past existence each action, in his life was noticed, measured, envied; here obscurity was a mask as precious as armor.
By mid-morning his nerves were becoming tired and he felt a heavy weariness in his limbs, a heavy weariness that threatened to slow him down and cloud his vision. The lesson about the reality of pain had already been reiterated to him too many times before Ethan was forced to halt when his body could no longer endure. But recklessness could only retard him, and impatience was a luxury he could no longer indulge in. He sat down upon the chilled ground and allowed the soreness to settle and he watched the irregularities go over his own body and where he felt the resistance had diminished and where the blockages remained still implacable. This was not the body that could not be saving, and it required respect and time, and he was finally ready to give them.
A little later Lily James came in with food, and she dropped the bowl next him in her presence quiet and unobtrusive. She had not been taught to break into his habits with inquiries or care, but her eyes still trailed in pursuit of his movements with a half-worry and half-fearful anticipation. Ethan said thank you, and this time he was able to say the words with less of the burden of the guilt. He ate his time, conscious as he was, of the service which even this plain food rendered him, in his healing, how insignificant it might appear compared with what he used to eat unconsciously.
The sun rose higher and he went back to his house, not to sleep, but to study his condition just as he did his physical drills. He was stretching, bending, and pushing himself to the limit and was memorizing all the feelings. Suffering ceased to be anarchic, it had now forms, limits of which he could trace and know. That knowledge made him a man in command, and command, even though of a meager kind, brought back some dignity that he had previously lost far earlier than his death.
Later in the afternoon, pedestrian feet were walking by the shack, and the laughter made his chest cold. Ethan did not have to look at their faces to tell the tone. The voice of Marcus Reed was easily carried, keen in the pride of austerity and thoughtless fun, and then the usual chorus of approval came in reply to it, that such and such agreed with him, and that such and such did him service. Ethan stood still with a placid face, but the fingers in his palm were balling up. Anger of the kind, instinctive, hot, had been averted, but he stamped it beneath himself with habitual discipline. Powerlessness was self destruction and he had already destroyed himself in one way by over estimating patience.
As the voices died away he took a long breath and gave himself up to his breath and left the tension to melt instead of solidify into something poisonous. He told himself that this stage was momentary and that survival preceded conflict and that silent strength lasted longer than noisy strength. Marcus Reed did not find it necessary to understand that he was being remembered. Such knowledge would only be relevant once the scale of them was changed permanently.
Towards evening Ethan went further than to-day out of the shack, taking the less travelled roads on the outskirts where broken boulders and weeds that grew in the ditch gave protection. The stroll was a tax indeed, and his legs were aching at every step, but he did not complain. Action showed the areas of weakness that were yet to be addressed, and strength could not be nurtured alone. He stopped frequently, getting himself down to his ground, listening to his body, and pushing himself on with obstinate force.
The city walls were visible in the distance, faded and not very remarkable, but they did represent a border that he would one day cross again. No longer as the abandoned failure they recalled, but as something re-formed by the passage of time, training and purpose. Such a thought would not bring a feeling of comfort as much as clarity. His agency was not his objective but revenge. All the rest would come naturally out of that basis.
At night when the night had fallen and the air had cooled, Ethan went back to the shack, his steps slow though gradual. Lily was waiting, with a care which was a little troubled, as she went about to his cutting hands and aching muscles. This time he did not brush her off and the silent attending poured him into a state of reality to make him realize that the task of building up was not his business only. Confidence, even in the trivialest degree, made him stronger than physical training had done.
On the night he was lying awake and hearing the subdued murmurs of Black Stone City,
Ethan pondered the burden of will, how all his decisions now were weighty. He no longer was floating in anguish without purpose. Every gasp, every stride, every constraint was calculated, to be later moulded into a future which he could at last contemplate with a mind undistempered by bitterness.
The agony did not cease, nor the infirmity, which they no longer characterized him. They were instruments, memories of what he had gone through and what he never wanted to experience again. The same discipline, the same patience, the same silent resistance would be required to-morrow, and he would encounter it, without any hesitation. Ethan James went on step by step, intention by intention, invisible yet intact, with the gradual inevitability of which this trail, rough as it was, would take him somewhere worth visiting.
The night was long and thin, and it would not give Ethan the relief of deep sleep, but still even being awake was no longer punishment. His mind was less disjointed, quicker and more precise, than he had hoped it would be, and seemed to be walking in perfect harmony with the routine which he was subjecting his body to. He heard what was being said outside the shack, what life it was some miles away in Black Stone City, what it was all the same, and found that it no longer provoked resentment. It just was and so was he, and that was all at the moment.
This time round, as the dawn came sneaking in, pale and unwilling, Ethan rose with an artificially slow pace which saved him the trouble of effort. His muscles were complaining, but the complaint was not of the acute panic of old times, but was a stumbling complaint that told him of restraints, not of obedience. He embraced such a change because he knew that awareness was the initial step to mastery. The air outside was cool and bore the slight smell of damp earth and smoke, which brought him to the present, as he continued without any hesitation with his routine.
Now he modified his practice with imperceptive purpose, lessening repetition to accuracy, giving attention to posture, equilibrium and restraint. Every movement turned into the dialogue between mind and body, a negotiation and not a command. He paused when his breathing did not go on, corrected and resumed only when his rhythm came back. The improvement was gradual, yet it was definitely there, and this knowledge implanted itself in him and strengthened a will that was no longer based on anger and desperation.
Ethan spent hours trying to push the weak internal warmth on more careful pathways, by and by, not taking the broken channels that so far opposed him. The feeling was delicate and precipitant but answered when he was restraining. The moment of pain was sharp enough to be noticed, but it did not last long; instead of destroying him, it had created a faint ache in its place. He took the lesson to himself, and he made it by heart like all the others that this body already had taught him.
Later in the day Lily came back with water and food in her thoughtful expression in a short distance and looked at him. She did not answer at once, feeling that maybe silence befitted him more in such situations. Her voice was soft and careful and when she came to do it at last she asked not whether he was hurt, but whether he was coping. It was the difference, and she was more than she knew. Ethan replied candidly, and said that he felt heavier one day than the next, but he never mentioned fear or doubt, since they no longer had power over him.
She went and Ethan was left alone once more, observing the light slide over the uneven ground, and gave himself a little time to think about Victor Hale. The memory had a different burden than the physical suffering, a smaller pain of betrayal and misplaced trust. He neither ruminated on it nor did he repress it. Those were wounds he understood would be the next thrust shaping his future decisions like any scar cut into his flesh, it would make him wary but never remove his ability to be loyal.
Towards evening the dullness of fatigue was further urging him, but he was not tempted to yield to it too early. Rather he strolled round the edge of the outskirts again, more slowly than last, and careful of each irregular stride. His confidence increased in proportion to his number of circuit and not through loss recovered. The walls of the city were nearer, but less imposing, but he knew that the actual distance was not counted in steps but preparedness.
As night fell once more, and Ethan at last put his head on his pillow, with his aching and steadfast body, he knew a sad fact that rested upon him like a ritual. He was not just getting by day by day anymore; he was constructing something slowly but consciously, something that was lasting, below the surface. His path was still long and doubtful but, as he had never before, since his resurrection, trusted to the road he was following.
Sleep finally gained its own, shallow though adequate, death, bearing no dreams of former grandeur or future vengeance, bearing only its ceaseless awareness that it would be tomorrow, and he would be ready to face it.