The Apprentice noticed the line of luminescent crystals the first time he stepped into the Wizard’s laboratory. They were on a high shelf, thus he assumed they were valuable or fragile or both, so didn’t ask about them for a very long time.
Between the weary hours of transcription, quests for kings, and alchemical lessons (such as why love potions are, at best, trouble), the Apprentice learned that the Wizard was much kinder than her stern demeanor suggested. As such, one day, between the bubbling of beakers and the scribing of pages, he asked his master, “What are the glowing orbs on your highest shelf?”
“Ah,” the Wizard clucked as she often did when the Apprentice asked difficult questions. “Those would be my mistakes.”
Confusion overcame awe of his instructor, causing the boy to say, “My father always said you shouldn’t drudge up old wrongs.”
“Then your father is a wise. It’s not good to hold onto grievances or flagellate oneself with own’s errors.”
“Then why do you keep them?”
With a heavy sigh, the Wizard retired from her strangely bound grimoire. “Because encased in each of those orbs is a mistake that taught me an important lesson.” In her wizened hand she picked up a rod that she often used in her instruction. The Wizard used it to point at one of the many orbs.
From its surface, the spectral image of a crying young boy with a bloody nose sprang forth. “I learned to be kind because I was cruel.”
She moved the rod to another crystal, from which came the translucent image of a starving family. “I learned to be generous because I was greedy.”
With as much hesitation as the Apprentice had ever seen in the Wizard, she moved the rod to the next. In its depths the boy could see a young woman who very much resembled the Wizard running away, looking over her shoulder in terror at an unseen thing. “I learned to be brave because I was a coward.”
The Apprentice stared at each of the crystals. “It almost seems cruel to keep them.”
“Perhaps it is,” the Wizard conceded, “but there is a part of me that fears if I ever forget the mistake, I will forget the lesson. So, sometimes, late at night, I take them them down from the shelf and arrange them around me. I pick each up in turn to examine them. And as I look at their stupid, tragic beauty, I tell myself:
“Never Again.”
See the author’s published work here.
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I love this!! “What were the glowing orbs on your highest shelf?”…”Those would be my mistakes.”…brilliant M
Thanks. Sometimes our mistakes are the only things we really own.