“I want to read you something,” Mr. Carrow said one afternoon, opening the cloth cover of an old stitched book. “A poem written two hundred years ago, about the mightiest king who ever lived.”
Jackie leaned forward, his insides aching in ways that made his breath catch.
“But first, a question.” He set the book between them. “What do you think happens to kings when they die, Jack?”
No one else called him Jack except Mr. Carrow. “They’re buried?”
“Yes. But what about their kingdoms? Their castles? Their gold?”
Jackie was no longer mesmerized by gold. It dripped from every fixture with such profusion that he now saw it as garish and gaudy rather than a sign of class. “It goes to the heirs?”
“And if there are no heirs?”
Jack shrugged.
“Let’s find out.” Mr. Carrow flipped to a specific page, smoothing it flat as he brought the book closer. “This poem’s about a self-righteous king named Ozymandias who ruled an empire so vast it stretched beyond the horizon. He built statues of himself so tall they touched the clouds, believing such self-inflating displays would make his legacy last forever.”
“Did it?”
“Give it a listen and you decide.” Mr. Carrow’s voice shifted into an easy cadence as he read of a cruel leader who stamped his name and face on lifeless things and mocked his people. “My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings!” He pounded his fist dramatically on the table. “Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!” His voice then grew softer as he told of time passing and the king’s inevitable death. “…Nothing beside remains. Round the decay of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare, The lone and level sands stretch far away.” He snapped the book shut, but the words lingered in the golden room like dust motes falling through light.
“What do you think?”
“I like the part when he says ‘sneer of cold command’.” Jackie thought of the chancellor’s face. The way his lip curled when servants didn’t move fast enough, the flat contempt in his eyes when he looked at anyone smaller than himself.
“Does it remind you of something?”
Jackie stilled, his interested gaze reflexively lowering to the ground.
He knew better than to answer that question honestly, and Mr. Carrow knew better than to ask such things. They were alone, but anyone could be listening.
“Jack?”
“No.”
“What’s left of his power now, Jack?”
He shook his head. “Nothing.”
“That’s right. Nothing.” Mr. Carrow tapped the book. “Just sand. Erased by the wind and time. ‘A colossal Wreck,’ the poet says. That was the biggest thing he ever made.” He pushed up his glasses and grinned. “So you see, Jack, even the marks of tyrannical giants and the most powerful kings will one day fade.”
“What the hell are you teaching him?” The voice boomed from the doorway, and Jackie flinched, his body instinctively shrinking at the growl of the chancellor’s displeasure.
He towered over the threshold, his bulk filling the frame, his face twisting with disgust. Behind him, Marco, his advisor, cowered in a rumpled suit.
“We were reviewing a classic poem by?—”
“Poetry?” The chancellor spat the word as if it were a curse. “I’m paying you a fortune to educate this boy, and you’re wasting time on poems?”
Mr. Carrow folded his hands, but not before Jackie saw them tremble. “Poetry develops language skills and critical thinking, Chancellor. It’s a foundational element of?—”
“Foundational?” The chancellor’s laugh was disparagingly ugly. “You want to know what’s foundational? Strength. Power. Winning.” He thundered into the room, disrupting any temporary sense of peace.
Marco followed like a shadow, a dog in human form that had been kicked so many times it no longer remembered it could bite back.
“What is this?” The chancellor rummaged through Mr. Carrow’s stack of books, tossing them carelessly aside and causing several to slide from the table onto the floor. No one missed when the stitched spine split from the glue, and the delicate pages fell out. Nor did anyone have the courage to pick it up and fix it.
“I want him learning real subjects,” the chancellor shouted. “History. The important parts about conquest. Teach him something useful, like how empires are built. Not this artsy garbage about how they died.”
