“Miri,” said Olana, entering. “Not even a stretch today? Do the other girls hate you so much?”
Olana’s comment stung. Miri had not known her distance from the others was obvious. She pressed the hidden book to her side and sauntered out of the classroom.
For the next two weeks, when the others went outside, Miri curled up in a corner of the bedchamber, the book of tales on her lap. She struggled at first, but soon the words made sense together, and then the sentences built on the page, and then the pages made stories. It was marvelous. Stories were inside those tedious letters they had been learning all along, stories like the ones she heard at spring holiday or that Peder’s grandfather told before a fire on a cold night. And now she could read them by herself.
Several days later, Olana took a book from the shelf and handed it to some of the older girls. Though Katar read better than the rest, she still stumbled over the unfamiliar words, sounding them out laboriously. Britta as well could barely get through a sentence. Her ruddy cheeks turned even redder. Miri considered that she had been mistaken and Britta had never been able to read.
“What a shame.” Olana took the book from Britta and turned to Miri. “Well, you’re a young one, but you seem focused of late.”
The book was History of Danland, the dark brown tome Miri had tried and failed to read before. Olana opened it to the second page and pointed to a paragraph. Miri’s tongue felt made of clay. She cleared her throat, gripped the book, and began.
“Our ancestors came from the north and farmed the fertile central plains. They also raised herds of cattle, horses, mountain goats, sheep, and fowl. Along the coast, fishing became one of their most important industries, as it is today.”
The words seemed to glide across Miri’s tongue, each one falling into place. She had never seen the passage before, but studying the book of tales had made reading anything easier. She stuttered over a couple of words but sounded them out all right.
“Well, girls,” said Olana when Miri finished, “if the prince were coming tomorrow, you know who would wear the silver gown.”
Miri felt a grin break her face and had the unlikely impulse to give Olana a hug. Katar’s frown deepened into a glare. Miri swallowed and tried to look modest, but it was too late. Katar was usually the best in the class, and surely she thought Miri’s smile meant that she was gloating. Her victory soured like milk left standing.
That evening as she returned from the outhouse, Miri halted at the sound of hushed voices coming from the front of the academy. She took a few steps backward, easing her boots through the hard shell of the snow. Whispering meant secrets, and it raised a shiver of curiosity on Miri’s skin. She leaned against the wall and strained to pick words out of the quiet drone. Her own name spoken in a whisper made her feel queasy.
“. . . can’t stand Miri . . . acts like she’s so smart . . .” That voice belonged to Bena. “. . . never liked the way she hung on Peder . . . becoming unbearable . . .”
“. . . just lucky today,” said Liana. “She won’t . . .”
“She’s just fourteen,” said Katar, speaking much louder than the others. “What are you worried about?”
Bena mumbled something else. Katar snickered.
“There’s no chance of that. One of the older girls will win.”
“I get the idea, Katar, that you think you should be princess,” said Bena, her voice scaling higher. “But as long as . . .” She returned to whispering, and Miri could hear no more.
Miri started on her way again, and the girls quieted as she passed. Liana smiled uncomfortably, Bena glared at the ground, but Katar stared at Miri, her expression unrepentant. Miri returned that stare as though it were a challenge. She had just raised a defiant eyebrow when she tripped on one of the front steps and fell flat in the snow. She jumped to her feet and ran inside, chased by the sound of the older girls chuckling.
That night, she lay on her pallet inhaling the darkness. It was a comfort to her to be awake as the others slept, as though she elected to be alone, as if she enjoyed it. The bedchamber fire was not high enough to warm her on her pallet at the far end of the room, and she shivered and wished for something to hope for. She closed her eyes and saw the folds of the silver dress twist and shimmer beneath her lids. Her dreams of becoming academy princess wrapped around her and eased the chill.
n
Chapter Six
Whiskers taut, front teeth bared
Shaking breath, round eyes scared
n
Winter kept falling from the sky, building up under the windowsills, and crawling with frost over the panes. When clouds kept the sun from burning the frost away, Miri could see the outside world only as a grayish blur. So much time indoors, so much time with no one to talk to, was making her feel wretched. Her body ached, her skin itched as though she were wrapped tight in wool and could not stretch.
The next time Olana dismissed the girls outside, Esa turned to Miri before leaving the classroom and gestured that she should follow. Miri sighed with anticipation. If Esa forgave her, perhaps the others would as well. Her determination to be just fine alone melted under the bright hope of making everything all right.
She had one small task first. After waiting until all the girls left the classroom, Miri crept to the bookshelf for a chance to return the volume of tales. She was standing on her tiptoes, inching the book back into place, when a sound at the door startled her. She jumped and dropped the book.
“What are you doing?” asked Olana.
“Sorry,” said Miri, picking up the fallen book and dusting it off. “I was just . . .”
“Just dropping my books on the floor? You weren’t planning on stealing one, were you? Of course you were. I would have allowed you to borrow a book, Miri, but I won’t tolerate stealing. In the closet with you.”
“The closet?” said Miri. “But I wasn’t . . .”
“Go,” said Olana, herding Miri like a sulky goat.
Miri knew the place, though she had never been in it. She looked back before stepping inside.
“For how long?”
Olana shut the door on Miri and clicked the lock.
The sudden lack of light was terrifying. Miri had never been any place so dark. In winter Marda, Pa, and Miri slept by the kitchen fire, and in summer they slept under the stars. She lay on the floor and peered under the door into the thin band of gray light. All she could see were the bulges of floorstones. Faint shouts and happy screeches drifted in from the girls playing in the snow. Esa would think Miri had ignored the invitation, that she did not care to be her friend. Miri inhaled sharply, then coughed on the dust.
A sound of scurrying brought her upright. She heard it again, a noise like fingernails tickling a smooth surface. Miri held herself tight to the wall. Again. Some small animal must be in the dark with her. It might be just a mouse, but not knowing made the thing strange and unnerving. She tried to see past the shadows. Her eyes adjusted, bringing some definition to the darker shapes, but there was not enough light.
When the scurrying stopped, Miri stayed standing until her back ached and her head felt heavy. She was tired of staring at the dark, imagining she saw faces staring back or tiny forms darting in the corners. Boredom made her sleepy. At last she lay down, resting her head on her arms, and watched the slit under the door for a sign of Olana coming to free her. The cold of the stones soaked through her wool shirt and raised bumps on her skin, making her shiver and sigh at once. She fell asleep without resting.
Miri woke to a tug and a horrible feeling. Was someone in the room trying to wake her? The light bleeding through the door was even dimmer, and the throbbing in her body told her it was hours later.
She felt it again, a tugging on her scalp. Something was caught in her braid. She wanted to scream, but terror clamped down on her breath. Every spot of her ski
n ached with the dread of what might be touching her. It felt strong, too big to be a mouse.
The tip of a tail licked her cheek. A rat.
Miri sobbed breathlessly, remembering the rat bite that had killed a village baby some years before. She did not dare to call out for fear of spooking the beast. The tugging stopped, and Miri waited. Is it free? Is it gone?
Then the thing thrashed harder. Close to her ear Miri heard a dry squeal.
She could not move, she could not speak. How long would she have to lie there until someone came for her? Her thoughts lunged and rolled, seeking some way out, some comfort.
“‘Plumb line is swinging, spring hawk is winging, Eskel is singing.’” She whispered as quietly as a slow-moving stream. It was a song of celebration, of springtime, using a weighted cord to square a stone, looking up to a hawk gliding, feeling that the work was good and the whole world just right. As she sang, she tapped a linder floorstone with the pads of her fingers, as though she were working in the quarry and using quarry-speech to a friend nearby.
“Mount Eskel is singing,” she whispered, and began to change the words, “but Miri is crying. A rat she is fighting.” She almost made herself laugh, but the sound of another snarl tore it from her throat. Afraid now even to whisper, she sang in her head, still tapping her fingers in time and with her silent song pleading with the darkness for someone to remember her.
The door opened, and candlelight pierced her eyes.
“A rat!” Olana had her walking stick in hand and used it to prod at Miri’s hair.
“Hurry, hurry,” Miri said, shutting her eyes.
She heard a squeal, a scamper, and she jumped to her feet and embraced Olana. She was trembling too hard to stay upright on her own.
“Yes, all right, that’s enough,” said Olana, prying Miri’s arms from around her.
The cold and her fright made Miri feel half-dead. She hugged herself against a chill that threatened to shake her like a wind-stirred seedpod.
“I’ve been locked up for hours,” she said, her voice croaking. “You forgot about me.”
“I suppose I did,” said Olana without apology, though deeper lines in her brow spoke that she was disturbed by the sight of the rat. “It’s well that Gerti remembered you, or I might not have come until morning. Now get on to bed.”
Miri now saw Gerti, her eyes as wide as a mink’s as she stared at the gaping darkness of the closet. Olana took her candle and left them in shadows, so Miri and Gerti hurried back to their bedchamber.
“That was a rat,” said Gerti, sounding haunted.
“Yes.” Miri was still trembling as though she were frozen cold. “Thanks for remembering me, Gerti. My heart would’ve stopped if I’d been in there another moment.”
“It was strange how I thought of you, actually,” said Gerti. “When we came back from break this afternoon, you were just gone. Olana never said anything, and I was afraid to ask. Then when we were getting ready for bed, I had this horrible memory of when I was locked up, and I’d heard scratching noises in there, and I was so sure you were locked up in the closet, and I . . . I don’t know, but I knew there was a rat. It was almost like . . . Oh, never mind.”
“Like what?”
“I’m sure I guessed you were in the closet because, where else would you be? And I thought I heard a rat when I was in there, too, so that’s how I knew. But the way my vision kind of shivered when I thought about it, the way the idea of you and the rat was so clear, it reminded me of quarry-speech.”
Miri felt new chills. “Quarry-speech? But—”
“I know that’s silly. It couldn’t have been quarry-speech, because we’re not in the quarry. I’m just glad we didn’t get into trouble. When I went to Tutor Olana’s bedchamber and begged her to come get you, she threatened all kinds of punishment.”
Miri did not say anything else. New possibilities were painting themselves before her in the dark.
n
Chapter Seven
I’ve a lever for a bandit
And a chisel for a rat
I’ve a mallet for a she-wolf
And a hammer for a cat
n
One afternoon two or three years earlier, Miri and Peder had sat on a grazing hill above the village. They were young enough that Miri had not yet begun to worry that her nails were dirty and broken or that Peder was bored with her words. He was then working six days a week in the quarry, and Miri had pressed him for details.
“It’s not like building a fire or tanning a goat hide, Miri, not like any other chore. When I’m working, it’s as though I’m listening to the stone. Don’t scowl at me. I can’t explain it any better than that.”
“Try.”
Peder had squinted at the linder shard in his fingers. He was using a small knife to carve it into the shape of a goat. “When everything’s going right, it feels like the songs we sing on holidays, the men taking one part, the women another. You know how the harmony sounds? That’s how working linder feels. It may seem silly, but I imagine that linder is always singing, and when I get my wedge in just the right crack and bring down my mallet just so, I feel like I’m singing back. The quarry songs the workers sing aloud are to keep time. The real singing happens inside.”
“Inside how?” Miri had asked. She was plaiting miri stems to keep from appearing too interested. “How does it sound?”
“It doesn’t actually sound like anything. You don’t hear quarry-speech with your ears. When something is wrong, it feels wrong, like when I know the person next to me is pushing too hard with his lever and could crack the stone. When that happens, and it’s too noisy in the quarry to just say, ‘Ease up on that lever,’ I tell them in quarry-speech. I don’t know why it is called quarry-speech since it is more like singing than speaking, only you’re singing inside. And it sounds louder, if you can describe it like that, when someone’s speaking directly to you, but everyone nearby can hear.”
“So, you just sing somehow and other people can hear it,” she had said, not understanding.
Peder had shrugged. “I’m talking to a person, but I’m singing, but not out loud. . . . I don’t know how to describe it, Miri. It’s like trying to explain how to run or swallow. Stop pestering me or I’ll go find Jans and Almond and we’ll play a boys-only game.”
“You do and it’ll be the last game you ever play.”
Peder had not understood why it was important to Miri to understand quarry work, so she had not pressed anymore. She liked that he did not guess her frustration and isolation, that he assumed she remained the same carefree Miri she had always been.
Miri now let the memory of this conversation roll around in her mind, adding to it everything she thought she knew about quarry-speech. It had always been part of the quarry and so something she could not do. Had Gerti heard quarry-speech? she wondered. Can it work outside the quarry after all? Just the possibility was as enticing as the smell of honey cakes baking next door.
The day after the rat, Miri was doing morning chores, sweeping the academy corridors. She waited until no one else was near, then ducked into a cold, unused room and tried to quarry-speak. She rapped the broom handle on a flagstone, trying to mimic a quarry tool, and sang a work song aloud. Then she changed the song to carry the message she wanted to speak. “I’ve a lever for a bandit and a chisel for a rat. The rat was in the closet till the tutor made it scat.”
She knew from watching the quarry that the workers sang and tapped when they spoke quarry-speech, but just changing the words to the song did not feel right.
The real singing happens inside, Peder had said.
“Maybe in the same way that singing is different from speaking,” she whispered, trying to reason it out, “quarry-speech is different from just thinking.”
With a song, the words flowed together in
a manner that was different from normal conversation. There was a rhythm to it, and the sounds of the words fit together as though they were made to be sung side by side. How can I do that same thing with my thoughts? she wondered.
Miri spent the rest of the chore hour trying it out. She made up songs as she often did, not only singing aloud, but focusing on the sound of her song, trying to make her thoughts resonate and flow in a different way, and focusing on the tiny tremors her knuckles sent through the linder stone. Did the speech rush into the ground? She closed her eyes and imagined she was singing her thoughts right down into the stone, singing of the rat and her desperate need that night in the closet, pushing her internal song with a quavering desire to be heard.
For the briefest moment, she felt a change. The world seemed to shudder, and her thoughts clicked together. She gasped, but the feeling was gone as quickly as it had come.
Olana rapped her stick in the corridor to announce the end of chores, and Miri swept up her pile of dirt and ran to the classroom. She watched Gerti take her seat, trying to detect any sign that the younger girl had heard. Miri risked a quick question before Olana entered.
“How are you feeling, Gerti?”
“Fine.” Gerti sat down, scratched her neck, and then, with a glance at the door to make sure the tutor was not near, she whispered, “I guess I can’t get that rat out of my mind. I was just remembering again when I was in the closet. . . .”
Olana came in and Gerti whipped herself back around. Miri rubbed the chills from her arms. She believed it had worked, but questions still kept her brow wrinkled. Of all the girls, why had Gerti heard her quarry-speech that night? And why again?