V
Michael’s Education Continues
The next morning, Mrs. Sobaka and Mrs. Khomyak arrived right on time, as they did for the next
four months of Michael’s lessons. Galina’s lesson today was history. After all, he had 20,000
years of history to catch up on.
After receiving his morning ritual with Anne, Mrs. Sobaka and Michael went into the dining
room, sat at the table, and began his lessons. “I want to teach you history today, Michael.” Mrs.
Sobaka said. “If you want clarification on anything we covered yesterday, you’ll have a chance
at a later time, probably next week. I’m going to assume that you don’t need help with anything
like math or English since you’ve completed college and, according to what Leo told me, you
were quite a good student.”
Michael smiled at the compliment and said, “Well, my father demanded that I be the best I could
possibly be.”
“Good. Now, let’s begin our history lesson. Because you were asleep for 20,000 years, there’s
a lot of history to teach you. However, between the fall of human civilization and the rise of
Humanimal civilization, there are over 10,000 years of what we call ‘The Dark Times.’ It was
during the dark times that the most violence between humans and humanimals took place. The
humans tended to blame the humanimals for their troubles and took it out on them. However,
there were exceptions.” Galina handed him a rather thick book saying, “Here’s a book on the
history of the dark times. Start reading it and you’ll get an idea of what I’m talking about. We’re
going to spend at least a week on history; so, it’s imperative that you understand what
happened during the dark times.”
Michael sat at the table reading the book that Galina had given him. As he was reading, Anne
came running from her room with Mrs. Khomyak in hot pursuit. Anne was laughing as hard as
she was running. Anne ran up to Michael and jumped into his lap and pressed her face into his
chest. “Anne! What are you doing?” Michael asked.
“Mah’l, I pwayin. Mama Komak pway chase Anne. Beez hide me.” Anne giggled.
Michael wrapped his arms around Anne and said, “Okay, Anne. I’ll hide you from Mrs.
Khomyak.”
Galina stepped back into the dining room to see Anne sitting in Michael’s lap with her face
buried in his chest and giggling. She smiled and said, “So, you like little Anne, huh?”