The Hammer Unfalls

4.60 Anger Management

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Trembling with rage, Glim left the glass house and found a nearby snowbank. He knelt in the snow and stuck his forehead into the crunchy powder. The damp seeping into his knees and the feeling of snow on his cheeks reminded Glim of that day years ago when he’d wriggled his way into the mountainside to seek muscheron chicane for Master Willow. Disgust welled within him at the memory.

The disgust distracted a bit from the anger, and he thought of endless days scrubbing vials. The boredom of those days calmed him somewhat. His face grew numb from the snow. Glim pulled his head from the snow, took a deep breath, and started running for the south gate.

At first he couldn’t focus on anything but the crawling tension that had plagued him since his return. Nothing felt right. Glim ran faster, as if he could outrun the feeling. That didn’t work, not really. But the cold air in his lungs and the fatigue of running dulled it somewhat.

His father had made him do almost the same thing. Run to fetch branches. There must be something to it. Somehow, running must lessen anger?

Master Willow had asked him to ponder just that. Your true emotion is something else, he’d said. Not for the first time. Master Willow had once made Glim climb a thorn-covered tree in the cold and asked how he felt. At the time, the question had seemed ridiculous. “Bad,” he’d said. But by the end of the lesson he’d come to realize that irritation had been masking fear and shame. All of them took Glim’s mind out of the proper attitude to ply effectively, according to his tutor.

Now that anger had completely taken over his entire life, Glim started to see that perhaps the man had a point. Glim didn’t want to live this way. He woke up furious, and went to bed that same way, and it hadn’t stopped.

He knew exactly why. Glim remembered the book with the ten arrows. Anger had a whole cloud of words surrounding it. Frustration, and indignation. All of them had one thing in common: they motivated you to act.

Glim had no action to take. So his anger had not burned off. It fed itself like a snake eating its own tail.

If the urge to fight went away, what else would Glim be feeling?

He had an idea of the answer. Glim stopped running and wiped his brow of sweat. Fine. He’d hear what his tutor had to say.

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Glim sipped his tea and looked across the parlor at Master Willow, who sat on a leather chair with his fingertips pressed together.

“I see you have calmed yourself somewhat.”

Glim nodded. “Why did you ask me to stick my head in the snow?”

“It has something to do with blood. We don’t really know. Plunging yourself into cold water, or mostly your forehead, makes your body calm itself. Maybe to save energy. All we know is extreme cold is a way to trim the forest.”

“Trim the forest?”

“It’s a metaphor. Perhaps it will be useful to you. If not, I’m sure you’ll find your own. Think of yourself attempting to ply as an archer aiming at a target. To hit the target, you need to have a bow and arrow, and be able to see the target. The bow and arrow are skills and essentiæ, and they are not the point of this metaphor.”

“What is the point, then?”

“Intense emotion blocks your view. Ideally there would be nothing between you and the target. But that’s not realistic. Archers shift position all the time to get a clear shot. Anything that is in your way, anything that affects your concentration or wellbeing, is a tree in your way. Are you tired? There’s a few saplings between you and the target. Is your leg broken? There’s a huge oak between you and the target. Are you happy? There probably aren’t many trees in your way. Are you furious, as you have been lately? There is an entire thicket in your way.”

“I see,” Glim said, and sort of meant it. “What is trimming the forest?”

“A tree grows from a seedling. If left unchecked, it will become a sapling, and then a tree. It is easier to trim a sapling than a fully grown tree. We mages try to maintain awareness of any seedlings that are growing within ourselves, so that we can trim them early and easily.” Master Willow leaned forward. “That is why I gave you the positive accumulations scroll, so you could find things to put yourself in a better frame of mind.”

The scroll. It seemed like years ago that he’d read it. But his pea plants hadn’t even flowered yet. The enormity of just how little time he’d actually spent with Ryn hit Glim like a hammer blow.

“You haven’t been doing those, I expect.”

“No, Master Willow.”

“It takes vigilance to keep the forest pruned. It will come in time. The way you were an hour ago, you had an entire forest pressing in and vines binding you. You couldn’t have plied if your life depended on it. Or someone else’s.”

Glim tried to ignore the dig. He watched the flames dance in the fireplace until the moment passed. “So what is this pruning you speak of?”

“There are ways to clear your line of sight when things have gotten out of hand. None of them are immediate, which is why you don’t want to be in such a state in the first place. To clear away a devastating emotion such as fury or fear takes time, and clarity of purpose. You can’t ply and negate fear at the same time. If your emotion has gotten the better of you, you need to cut it away. The most extreme way is to plunge your head in icy water. Or to engage your body by running, or lifting a weight, or anything else that causes your physical exhaustion to overcome the emotion.”

Glim set his tea mug down. “You’re saying that to achieve mental balance I need to drain myself physically?”

“In a way, yes.”

“Isn’t that doubly ineffective?”

“Indeed it is. You are further endangering yourself in order to regain what is already lost. It’s a grim situation to be in.”

“What if there is no ice nearby, and I’m not able to run?”

“There are two more things you can do, though they are less effective. One you already know. Your father taught you. Breathe in, hold, breathe out, and hold.”

“Yes. Battle breathing. I’ve done that before. It works.”

“The last one is to tense part of your body while you breathe in, and relax it as you breathe out. Then do the same thing with another part. Say, tense your hand into a fist with one breath, then tense your left shoulder, then your back, and so on.”

“That doesn’t seem like it would work as well,” Glim said, as respectfully as he could muster.

“Given enough time, it does.”

Glim shook his head. “When a hyaena is attacking, there isn’t time for such exercises. None of them.”

“Which is why you should seek to never be clouded as you are now!” His tutor sighed. “Even if you do manage to temporarily chop the tree of anger away in the moment, it will pop right back into place unless you deal with it. The tricks I’ve just told you merely give you a respite. You have to then deal with whatever is happening inside of you. This is the worst case scenario. When you are in the forest, you have to get out of it. Immediately.”

“I see your point, Master. How do I keep myself from being trapped in such a way?”

“If your emotion is getting out of hand, you need to intercept it. That is an entire lesson in itself. You’re not quite there yet. The first step is to identify what you’re actually dealing with. Did you ponder the question I asked you?”

“Yes. It is just like the thorn tree.”

“The what?”

“Never mind. I’m afraid, and ashamed.”

“So you have paid some attention. Go on.”

“The anger is making me want to fight. I want to fight because I am afraid. And also I’m ashamed of how I was unable to protect Ryn.”

“You’re not exactly right, but we’ll get to that. Why is any of this important?”

“If I don’t know who the enemy is, I can’t fight it.”

“That’s only part of it. Thoughts, emotions, feelings are always in motion. Like threads on a loom weaving in and around each other. If you miss a thread, it can get buried under the others. And they often lead to each other like links in a chain. You might waste time and resources breaking the wrong link, only to find another was the real culprit all along.”

“Are you saying that if I control my fear, my anger will go away?”

“It will certainly help. But fear is yet another false link in your chain right now.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re dealing with one of the toughest emotions right now. And it’s neither anger, nor fear, nor shame.”

“What is it then?”

“The root of everything that is plaguing you.”