Light flickered pink over the tree tops, and Kestrel rushed back to the house. "Child!" her mother exclaimed. "Have you been dawdling? The transport will be here in five minutes."
"I have to go find Feldspar," Kestrel said as she handed her mother the basket. "Ginger's barking a lot, and I think we should go check on her."
"No time for that. I'll find him."
Kestrel only had time to shrug off her coat, swipe at her boots, and collect her bag and a sandwich of leftover bread and meat to eat on her way. No eggs today. Kestrel sighed. Feldspar would eat them for sure. "Exams today?" her mother asked, even though they hadn't talked about anything else for a week. Kestrel nodded. "Sorry there isn't time for eggs, then." Kestrel shrugged. She was sorry too, but she didn't have time to miss the transport and have to walk today.
Back outside, but without the heavy coat, Kestrel shivered. At least she could keep her mittens, but there was no where to put a farm coat in her classroom. She tore off a bite with her teeth. The bread was from yesterday's baking and dry around the edges, but her mother had warmed the meat and then wrapped the whole thing in a cloth so that not all of the heat had been sapped away by the time she ate it. She chewed as fast as she could, knowing that the transport would be there shortly.
Almost. She was almost done with EI. But she didn't want to think about that. Not yet. Because if she wasn't doing chores or going to Institute, then she didn't know what else there was.
She heard the lizzy before she saw it, the hum of motors and gears punctuated by jolts in the dirt road. Later on, when the road was snow-packed, it wouldn't make so much noise, and she would have to watch more carefully. Except, she thought, that this was her last season at EI.
The lizzy pulled up. Once it had been blue with smart white paint that read Educational Institute Zone #14, and the letters were still readable, but the cold had flaked them, and the sun and weather had faded the blue so that it was sad and patchy. No one had put the cover on the passenger bed yet, so Kestrel huddled on the floor with the other students, trying to keep low to avoid the wind. A lizzy went fast, faster than Kestrel could run--although a horse could beat a lizzy in an short race. The driver sat by himself up front, with a thick coat, mittens, lap blankets, a scarf, and every other bundled up kind of wrapping until just his eyes were peeking out. Kestrel knew that he had a heated stone in a box of sand for his feet and that under those wrappings, he had another stone in a sand bag on his lap, too. He wasn't going to suffer from the cold. A couple of the smaller girls, Eglantine and Mousie, huddled up to her, and she put her arms around them, knowing that all three of them would be warmer for pressing close together.
"Kestrel!" called Daisy when they stopped in front of a white house with a green roof. "Can you believe that it's today?" She climbed in and wiggled her way through the pack of children until she was next to her friend. "I studied all last night," she confided, "but this morning, I couldn't remember a thing, not even what books I had opened. I'm so afraid that they'll tell me that I'm not good for anything. I don't know what will happen if I fail. My dad will kill me." She looked white with green undertones.
"They can't do that," Kestrel told her. Trust Daisy to find something impossible to worry over, even though she had a good reason. Kestrel would be nervous too if she had Daisy's father as her dad.
"I heard of someone over in Gideon's Stream who had that happen to her. It was my cousin's friend's sister-in-law. She took the exams and failed everything. They didn't know what to do with her. Finally, her mother went to the butcher's son and bullied him in to soliciting her, but I don't know if they got married or not. Maybe she just lived at home forever."
"Daisy, you're being silly. That doesn't happen. It can't happen," Kestrel said confidently as a little worm of doubt crept into her soul. Of course, she was a good student, and she had studied and could remember what she had studied, but still...or what about Daisy? Maybe Daisy really would fail her tests. But then, Kestrel reflected, with Daisy's looks, she wouldn't need to pass the test. All of the eligible men would take one look at her photo and start filling out papers as fast as they could. Daisy chatted on for a while about how nervous she was, and Kestrel tried not to be infected with even more worry. The problem was that Daisy would talk about it, feel better, and move on. Kestrel would store everything up and continue worrying for both of them. She looked at the world passing by and tried to think about something else. And as often happened, she tried to distract herself by thinking about magic.
As they passed fields and houses, Kestrel wondered again about how much magic it would take to run a lizzy. The spell cubes that powered them were large and heavy, much larger than any of the units they had at home. It would have to be to have enough magic to move a whole cart full of people around. No one person in Terraced Hill, except the Domini, could afford that much magic, and sometimes people complained about it, but it really wasn't practical to have all the children walk so far every day to and from EI, since all of them had chores to do and limited daylight to work in. So as long as the new units kept coming to trade for old ones, no one complained very much because it was the central government and not the local one paying for them.
Kestrel had heard that in the bigger zones, that magic was more common. People said that they didn't even use candles. Kestrel felt in her pocket. She always carried a little bit of magic with her--at least, it was probably magic. Her grandmother had told her that it was magic, but it wasn't anything like the quarts blocks that powered lights or motors. It was different, nicer, and today she needed a small bit of her grandmother to help her get through. If she did well, then she might be able to go on to learn to be a greenwoman like her grandmother had been--she might even be able to become an engineer and work with magic all the time. She loved the feel of magic when it flowed through her. She loved the little gathering feeling that it gave her to speak one of the words that her grandmother had taught her. It was as though her whole body was filled with thousands of little being or bits of energy or something that all stopped what they were doing and focused on one thing together. It made her feel--well not more alive, but more aware that she was alive.
Of course, her magic classes at EI were nothing like that. They were filled with equations and numbers, but maybe for big magic you had to be more careful. Maybe they had to teach you all of the beginner things so that you wouldn't cause trouble. Besides, she didn't fill anything as large as quartz blocks. She didn't know anyone else who put magic into buttons like she did, like her grandmother had. If her parents knew about it, they never mentioned it. Of course, her father wasn't likely to, and it was his mother, so maybe that was it.
So maybe she'd become an engineer and learn the proper way to do magic. Or maybe, and here Kestrel's stomach did a little somersault, maybe she would be solicited, maybe she would be married. She had written to him. She wasn't supposed to, but she had anyway--to tell him that exams were coming up and that her choosing would follow. That was as far as she dared go. She couldn't directly ask him to...but then he would know, and surely he would request her in the stack, and he would smile when he saw her folder, and then she would get a letter. Kestrel bit the inside of her cheeks and told herself not to get carried away. But she couldn't help smiling and feeling a little bit warmer all the way to the portal.
When they branched off of the main road, and headed to the wooden archway on the right, her stomach fluttered again, and not in a gentle, pleasant way. Some days she loved going through the portal, but other days, it made her feel like she was leaving home forever. After all, if something happened to it, then she'd never get home. Nothing had happened to them, ever, they were powered by their own magic source that the Founders had put into place. The philosophers and engineers had even taken one apart to try to figure it out, but it hadn't worked. In the end, they had broken the portal, and the zone--Morgan's Lake, she thought it was--had lost a portal so that now people had to go to a different zone and around. They weren't very happy, and the philosophers and engineers hadn't tried again.
Kestrel watched as the gatekeepers turned dials and slid switches. The portal hummed, and the lizzy drove through. Routine. But she still held her breath every time.
The road on the other side was paved, and they moved faster on their way to a large brick building. Other students had already arrived, and the place was churning with noise and people. The lizzy stopped in front of the stairs, and Kestrel joined the others in the press to see friends and get to classes.
Kestrel checked her watch as the lizzy drove closer to the Institute. Why did she have to have the slowest lizzy and the farthest zone in the entire district? She wound up her watch, even though it didn't really need it. Then she tried to catch Daisy's eye, but Daisy looked like she was thinking about something and wasn't paying attention.
She's probably worrying about the test, Kestrel told herself. For the last six months, Kestrel had dragged Daisy into the dining room with a stack of books whenever she could. Daisy preferred to talk about anything except books. She tried to distract Kestrel with stories about which graduating young man would solicit an introduction with her. Officially, young men from other provinces had preference. That way the bloodlines didn't cave in on themselves. It was also supposed to promote friendly relations between provinces, but it didn't really work that way. Kestrel turned her watch to look at it again without really seeing it. Matchmaking wasn't something that she would have bet her future on a couple of years ago. Until recently, she had been determined to be some kind of magic user, whether it was a humble greenwoman or a philosopher, but that had changed.
With a half grin, half grimace, Kestrel admitted that it had happened 1 year and 276 days ago. She tried to stop herself from calculating the hours, but she was so fast at it by now, that it was hard to stop. The accurate count was 1 year, 276 days, 6 hours and 12 minutes since she had met the Domini's Son, and her world had changed.
Her hand went automatically to her neck for the one button she kept on thin chain around her neck. One memory, captured by accident, but it had changed her entire life.
"Hey, wake up, Kestrel!" The voice jolted her out of her thoughts and suddenly her eyes were wide open. Chert held the back of the transport open. He waved at her and raised his eyebrows. It was his turn to help the smaller children down. Kestrel usually helped him--which meant that she did it for him--because he wasn't exactly what she would describe as a patient or gentle person. She jumped up and rushed to stand by him ahead of the little students who were lining up. She raised her arms and caught one child at a time as they jumped or flopped at her. Chert leaned on the gate and looked bored.
"Hey Chert," said one of his friends running up. He paid no attention to the pile of short people who scattered to keep from being stepped on. "You have got to get in there, my friend. There are some serious events."
"Hawking," Chert said wandering away from the transport. "What is it?"
"You'll never believe it," Hawking said, "some guys tried to break into the Domini House."
Kestrel's head snapped up. "The Domini House?" she demanded. Those riders yesterday. They really had been on the way to the Domini House. What if something had happened and she could have prevented it?
"I wasn't talking to you," Hawking said, looking down at her. He turned back to Chert. "So anyway, it was the Outliers, here. And they were, I mean, attacking the Domini. I don't know how many people they killed, but they had help. Really, help from someone inside the EI. Absolutely traitor, we're talking traitor. I couldn't believe it."
"I don't believe it," Chert said. "Look, I'm in a green house, a Green house, and my dad did not get a word of this this morning."
Kestrel tried to follow behind them so that she could listen to what they were saying on the way in, but it was just her luck that one of the smallest kids started pulling on her and asking for help to get to the bathroom.
Chert turned around to look at her. "Are you still here?" he demanded. "Why?"
"Believe me," she said, pointing at the kid, "if he hadn't slowed me down, I would be as far away from you two as I could get." She rolled her eyes, shook her head, and walked off holding the sticky hand of a five-year-old, praying that they made it to the bathroom in time, and cursing Chert for going on about his dad instead of letting Hawking get to the point. The Outliers had attacked the Domini's house? She had to find out if Boron was safe. He had to be. If anything had happened to him-- She couldn't cry, not now. Besides, she would be sorry if she didn't this little guy to the bathroom as fast as possible. Boron had to be all right. That was all there was to it.
1) Once she had deposited the sticky child and washed her own hands, Kestrel raced to the secretary's office. Her test started in twelve minutes, but she could make it. She had to know that Boron was all right, or she would never be able to pass her exam.
http://kestrelbook.blogspot.com/2012/03/chapter-2aa.html
2) Fingernails bit into Kestrel's palm as she walked quickly along the hallway. Her test started in twelve minutes. She'd never make it. She couldn't do anything to help Boron one way or the other, so the first order of business was to pass her test, and then she'd find some answers.
http://kestrelbook.blogspot.com/2012/03/chapter-2ab.html
No comments:
Post a Comment