Age 6
He was so excited that he couldn’t help but do everything fast that morning. Almost every day was the same. Wake up, help mom with chores, workout, train with dad until the sun went down. Every once in a while they went to the village at the edge of the woods so that dad could get news of what was happening in the area, and mom could get supplies for food and the tools she made.
She had been the daughter of a master weapon smith and had learned the trade from him. That was how they had met. Dad was on a job and needed his sword repaired and he instantly fell for her. It was part of his favorite story, and it was fresh in his mind as he picked up the bow she had made him for his birthday. He ran out of his room and ignored the bowl of food set out for him, for today would be the first time his dad took him hunting.
“I don’t know where you think you’re going young man, but you have to eat before you head out. And you have chores to do.” He hadn’t even had a chance to get the door open. He turned and saw his mom standing there with a smile on her face. She sighed, never dropping the smile. “Fine. I’ll let you go without doing your chores, but not without eating. Deal?”
“Deal.” He put the bow down next to the door and went to the table. He stopped to hug her before he sat down. “Thanks mom, I love you.” She answered with a kiss to the head and a reminder that he now owed her. He finished quickly and bolted out the door. The sun was coming through the canopy of the trees in beams of light that dotted the forest floor. His dad was by the forge sharpening his sword.
“You’re out sooner than I’d thought you’d be. You wouldn’t be skipping out on your chores, would you?” His dad always managed to have a straight face, no matter what he was saying or doing, but his eyes always betrayed him. And the smile they were hiding told him that he knew his mother was going to let him off the hook today.
They gathered their supplies and went deep into the woods. Along the way his dad pointed out different types of tracks and marks that indicated something had been there. He learned what markings belonged to what animals in this area. And after hours of wandering, and marking trees to find their way back, they came upon a set of tracks that his dad said belonged to a buck. At this point he had been getting bored. Somehow he had thought that hunting would have been more exciting than just walking through the woods looking at the ground. But his dad kept telling him that patience was a powerful weapon. “The fool that rushes to his target scares it away or gets hunted themselves. The patient man watches and learns everything he can so that he can find an opening and then no one needs to know he was ever there.”
The tracks had not been fresh so they had more walking to look forward to, fun. But, according to his dad they had not been too old so the buck had to be somewhere in the area. It was almost a full day before they finally found it. They had come to a clearing with a lake, and the buck was resting on the far bank. His parents had taught him a way of talking with his hands so that they could communicate silently. It was part of his training so that one day he could take over the job his dad had once done. At the moment he was telling him to move quietly around the lake without alerting their target.
It took the better part of an hour to cover the distance without alerting the animal but he was finally ready, or so he thought. He strung an arrow to his bow took aim and froze. He had been so excited to go out and help his dad hunt, so excited to put to use his skills with a bow that he had been practicing for years, that he had not stopped to think about what it really meant for him to loose an arrow at an animal. He just stood there staring at the resting buck. What right did he have to kill it, what if it had kids?
He wasn’t sure how long he stood there before he felt his father’s hand on his shoulder. He had a calming smile on his face and he nodded gently for them to go back into the woods. It wasn’t until the arrow was back in his quiver that he felt the tear on his cheek. They left quietly and made camp some distance away from the lake. He just knew that behind that smile his dad had to be disappointed in him. They remained silent until the camp fire was lit and then his dad asked just one question. “Why do you think that I’m smiling?”
That was not what he had expected. He wiped another silent tear from his eyes and stared into his fathers. He didn’t know how to answer that. All reason dictated that his dad should have been mad at him for ruining the trip. They were supposed to bring back food, and now they had nothing. Why would he smile? His gaze dropped to the fire. His dad broke the silence again. “Ok, I have an easier one. Why couldn’t you shoot?”
That was easy to answer, but hard to admit to his dad. He had been one of the world’s greatest assassins, and his son couldn’t even kill a deer. He didn’t want to admit to his dad that he was weak. That he had realized, looking at an animal that he was about to kill, that he thought it was wrong to think he had any right to ends something else’s life. How could he expect others to not want to hurt him if he could hurt them? The thought of lying to his dad had never crossed his mind until now. He looked up into that gentle smile on the other side of the flames, and told him how he felt.
Instead of arguing, getting mad, or just disappointed, his dad moved to sit behind him and wrapped his arms around him. “Life is the most precious gift in all of creation, and the fact that you naturally see that brings me more joy than you could think.”
“But then how could you have been an assassin? And why are you training me to be one?” It made no sense. If life that that precious of a gift, how could he expect him to take it.
“What I’m about to say you might not truly understand until you are older. And that’s not because you’re not smart enough, but because to truly understand you just need to experience more. Not all men are good. There are those who hurt others so that they can get more stuff, or more power over other. And there are those who hurt others simply because they enjoy doing so. In a perfect world all we would have to do is explain and show these people that what they are doing is not right and that there are more important things in life than stuff or power. That every being deserves to be happy and safe. But they will answer, that just like that deer, we sometimes have to hurt something in order to live.”
“We hunt because we need food. But that doesn’t mean that we don’t appreciate and lament the sacrifice that the deer makes to feed us. We take its life, but we do it only when we need to. We never hunt more than we need, and we never hunt ones that have another life depending on it. That is why we go for the solitary buck. The mother is the one that stays with the young and raises them so her we leave alone. It is a similar principle that allowed me to be an assassin. I never hurt an innocent. The only people I would go after were those that maliciously harmed others.”
“The important part there is the word ‘maliciously’. It is always horrible when life is lost, but sometimes it is necessary. A general that has to make a decision between saving a single village from attackers or stopping an attack on a dam that will flood the whole valley and destroy all the villages should not be labeled guilty for the loss of innocent life. Yes people will die based on his decision and the attackers will die because of his orders, but he is only taking their lives and sacrificing the village to save the lives of many. It is the attackers who are just trying to get more possessions from the villagers or demonstrate their power by flooding the valley that are being malicious and need to be stopped.”
“I know it’s a lot, and I know it’s not an easy concept, but over time it will become easier to see when someone is being malicious and when they are just doing the lesser of two evils. When you are a little older I will teach you more about the way men think and how much they lie to themselves, and you will understand more. For now I want you to put that in the back of your mind and think about the buck.”
His dad was right. He understood the words and he thought he understood what he meant, but there were so many possibilities as to why someone would do, well anything. How could he possibly learn to know when someone was being ‘malicious’, when it was ok to take a life. On the other hand he understood about the deer. He wasn’t expected to not care or be happy that he was taking a life. In fact he was to mourn the gift he was to take from another living being, but he also needed to eat. He needed to feed a family, he needed to not forget. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He asked the gods for forgiveness for the gift he was about to take, and for them to grant its soul peace. He picked up his bow and wiped the last tear from his cheek. “I’m ready.”
