“Now, what’s your name, young fellow?” he asked after he had introduced himself as Ian Shelby and dropped two coins in my hand.
“Kellen Carmichael.”
“What grade will you be in this fall?” I looked at him blankly. He elaborated. “How far are you in your schooling?”
“I don’t go to school,” I said, for I never had. And now, with my father gone, there was too much to do around the house. It had not seemed to occur to my mother that I might need a formal education, and it had never occurred to me, either.
Ian Shelby looked disapproving. “You have to go to school,” he said. “How else will you learn your letters? Your numbers? Your history?”
“I can read,” I assured him. My mother had taught me, right along with the sewing and the cooking. “And count. I don’t care about history.”
“It’s always a mistake not to care about history,” he said. “How old are you, young—” He hesitated for a moment. “Young woman?” he asked.
I was impressed by his perceptiveness, so I answered. “Eleven. Twelve at the end of summer.”
“Eleven-year-old girls should be in school,” he said firmly. “If you like, I’ll talk to your parents and explain why an education is important.”
I laughed. “My mother won’t care what you say.”
He pulled a pair of spectacles from his pocket and surveyed me with some seriousness. It made me fidgety; I could not tell what his inspection would yield him. “Your mother might be brought to care,” was all he said. “I will see you enrolled in school this fall, Kellen Carmichael. See if I don’t.”
If I had known Ian Shelby better at that moment, I would have resigned myself instantly to the notion that, come autumn, I would be attending the Thrush Hollow Schoolhouse. His visit to my mother yielded predictable results, for she swore she could not spare her son for the five hours a day school was in session. I was lurking outside the parlor while this conversation took place, and I heard the gap in the conversation that followed while Ian Shelby assimilated this information. But the pause was brief; he smoothly plunged forward.
“What you need from your son today is nothing compared to what he will need from an education tomorrow,” the schoolteacher said. “Don’t set yourself up as the reason your child might fail in the future.”
“He won’t fail. He’s a smart boy,” my mother said. “I need him.”
The discussion, which lasted another twenty minutes, ended on the same note. I was standing outside, looking casual and disinterested, when Ian Shelby finally left. He appraised me a moment, and then said, “I was right, wasn’t I? You’re her daughter, not her son?”
I nodded. “Told you she wouldn’t care.”
“Oh, don’t give up yet,” he said. “I haven’t. It seems more imperative than ever that you be allowed formal schooling.”
I wasn’t sure what “imperative” meant, though I came to think it meant inevitable. Ian Shelby talked to the town mayor, he talked to the parents of other children my age, and the result was that enough pressure was brought to bear on my mother that she had no choice but to allow me to attend school that fall.
You understand, I was not sure this was a victory.
I hated school for the first few weeks. I was not used to being confined in any one place, and I missed the freedom of doing whatever I wanted once the household chores were done. Sitting still was hard; learning was even harder, for Ian Shelby had high standards and was not inclined to accommodate laziness in his students. At times I could actually feel my head expand from all the new knowledge he was attempting to cram inside of it.
Then there were my fellow students.
I knew all of them by sight, of course, but I wouldn’t have counted any one of them as a friend. Well, I was a strange girl; I was not easy to take to. This had been true in random encounters on the streets of Thrush Hollow, and it was still true inside the schoolhouse.
We had been divided loosely by grade and ability into three levels. I sat with the lowest group, with children my age and much younger, practicing my letters and learning more complicated words than had come my way so far. The children in this particular cluster were mostly too young to have developed the art of teasing with any real skill. The oldest students were busy flirting with or ostracizing one another, and they paid no attention to anyone outside their own small circle. But those in the middle group had enough attention and enough malice for everybody.
“Hey. Who’s the new boy?” was the question that came up as soon as we were sent outside for our mid-morning break on the very first day.
“Kellen Carmichael,” someone answered.
“You. Kellen. Can you run?”
“Run well enough,” I said in a wary voice.
“Going to do relay races. You want to play?”
I shrugged. “All right.”
“I don’t want girls on our team,” said a weasely dark-haired boy.
Everyone stared. “That’s a girl?” several boys asked.
“Yes,” I said defiantly. “I can still run.”
“We’ve had girls on our team before,” said a tall boy.
“I don’t want girls! You can have them on your team.”
“Are you sure she’s a girl? Looks like a boy.”
“I can run faster than you can,” I said to the weasely boy. I had no idea if this was true. But I was fast enough to be respectable and willing to prove it.
“I don’t race girls,” he said.
I shrugged. “I’ll race someone else, then.”
That was good enough for the others, and they picked their champion, a burly fair-haired boy with a stupid grin. The weasely one called out our marks and shouted “Go!” and we were off. I was smaller and had better wind; he had more powerful legs, but the course was short. I won. A few of the onlookers cheered and a few booed.
“She can run on my team,” the tall boy said. “Let’s pick sides.”
I handled my part of the relay with speed and competence, and the first recess went well enough. So did the second one. So did the playground breaks for the entire first week. But there were still questions about me. The weasely boy, whose name was Carlon, never stopped needling me and was always ready with a laugh or a sneer if I fell. He and his friends would whisper together, and throw me dark looks, and altogether give me the sense that they were plotting against me. Of course, they did the same to everyone who was smaller and weaker than they were. They were born bullies and no doubt had long careers of cruelty ahead of them.
I would have abandoned the boys’ games except that the girls’ circles were closed to me. A few times that first week I attempted to play or eat lunch with the girls my age, and each time I was rebuffed. The prettiest of them actually squealed and leapt to her feet when I sat on the ground next to her one afternoon.
“Oooh—she’s so strange—don’t let her touch me!” she cried. Some of her friends giggled, and some of them cast me considering looks, and none of them talked to me. “Make her go away!”
“Go play with the boys, Kellen,” one of her friends said, emphasizing my name as if it was an ugly word. “We don’t want you here.”
I stood up, turned away, turned back, and shoved the pretty girl onto the ground. She squealed again, a most satisfying sound, as her pale pink frock went skidding into the mud.
Naturally, Ian Shelby was informed of the infraction. After class, he gave me a grave lecture on civility.
“I’ll be nice to them when they’re nice to me,” was my response. “Which will be never. So I guess I’ll just have to quit school.”
“Not yet,” he said.
The next week was better, for I was good at the games the boys played. I could throw a ball and hit with a stick as well as any of them, and I had already proved I was a runner. But I was woefully inept at boxing, a sport introduced the third week of school, and I ended up down in the mud myself, gasping for breath and feeling bruises form on every edge of my body.
“Told you s
he was a girl,” Carlon said, because there had been renewed debate on this topic when I had won a footrace that very morning.
“Prove it,” one of his cronies suggested.
I tried to scramble to my feet, but too late. Too many hands. Arms holding my shoulders down, fingers in my waistband, my pants pulled down to my knees. No doubt about it now.
“I hate girls,” one of Carlon’s friends grumbled as everybody released me and turned away, no longer interested. “Hey, where’s the ball? Let’s see how far we can kick it.”
I sat up, pulled my pants back on, and willed myself not to cry. A boy wouldn’t have cried. Most girls wouldn’t have been racing to begin with. How was I supposed to behave? Where was I supposed to find my friends? I waited for Mr. Shelby to ring the bell signaling end of recess, and I fiercely regretted any necessity for acquiring an education.
Chapter Three
The next day, right before he sent everyone else outside for the morning break, Mr. Shelby said, “Oh, and I want two students to assist me. I received a shipment of books from an old friend, and I need help organizing them. Whoever volunteers will have to stay in during recess for the next few days, if that’s all right. Kellen, will you be one of them?”
I looked up in surprise. What a fortunate reprieve! I had been uneasy about what this day’s playground activity might consist of. “I suppose,” I said.
Mr. Shelby nodded. “Good. And Gryffin? Can I count on you?”
Every head swiveled to stare at the student sitting in the back. He never joined any of our games at recess, anyway. He was a lame boy who walked very slowly, using two canes. No one would ever think to challenge him to a footrace. He was about my age, but in the level above me. I had never said a word to him in my life.
“Yes, of course,” he replied.
“Good. Everyone else—out you go.”
The room emptied of everyone except the teacher, the boy, and me. Mr. Shelby lowered his thin, stooped frame till he was kneeling by a battered trunk in the back of the room, muttering when he could not get the lock to spring. “I must have left the key in my jacket pocket,” he said, rising and heading for the door. “I’ll be back in a few moments.”
He disappeared, and the boy and I were left alone. Curious, I hitched my desk closer to Gryffin’s and studied him a minute. He had nondescript brown hair, badly cut, and a thin face. Everything about him was thin, even his arms and fingers, though his shoulders looked bulky under his plain cotton shirt. I guessed his arms were strong from wielding the canes and supporting the weight that his legs could not. His eyes were a startling blue, and his face was alive with interest.
“Gryffin?” I said tentatively. “That’s your name?”
He nodded. “You’re Kellen. I’ve seen you around town.”
I was surprised. “Really? I haven’t seen you.”
He smiled a little ruefully. “Mostly I watch from the window.”
“What window?”
“My uncle Frederick runs the tavern in the square. I have a room on the second floor.”
“Must be hard to get upstairs,” I said without thinking.
But he only nodded. “Once I go up, I don’t usually come down for much. So I look out the window instead.”
“Why do you live with your uncle?”
“Because everyone else is dead.” He considered for a moment. “Well, my father might not be dead. But he’s gone.”
Now I was the one to nod. “Yeah. So’s my father.”
“Yeah,” he said. “I heard.”
“And my mom’s crazy,” I offered.
He smiled again, more widely. “I heard that, too.”
“So maybe having an uncle is better than having a parent.”
His face took a shuttered look. “It doesn’t seem like it.”
I gestured toward the floor. “So what happened to your foot?”
“Feet. And legs,” he corrected. He shrugged a little. “Twisted somehow, when I was born. They’ve never been right.”
“Are they getting better?”
“Getting worse, it seems like.”
“Do they hurt?”
He nodded. “Most of the time.”
“Have you seen a doctor?”
“In Thrush Hollow? I’d have to go to Wodenderry to find someone who could help. And my uncle doesn’t have the money to pay for doctors. Anyway”—he shrugged again—“I don’t think anyone can mend me.”
“Did a Truth-Teller tell you that?” I demanded. “Because unless a Truth-Teller said it, you might be wrong. Someone could help you.”
He looked amused. “Thrush Hollow doesn’t even have its own Safe-Keeper,” he said. “It’s too small to draw Truth-Tellers.”
“What you really need is the Dream-Maker,” I said, inspired. “When you go to Wodenderry, don’t look for a doctor. Look for the Dream-Maker. Tell her you want your legs to be strong. She’ll make your wish come true.”
“I don’t think I’ll be going to Wodenderry any time soon.”
“Maybe she’ll come here. You can make your wish then. She travels all the time.”
“To Thrush Hollow?” he said with the same disbelieving inflection.
“Well, some Dream-Maker must have come here some- time. I thought Dream-Makers went everywhere in the kingdom?”
“Melinda’s getting pretty old by now,” Gryffin said. “I don’t think she travels much.”
“Well, I don’t think you should give up,” I said.
“I think I’ll count on something other than magic to fix my life,” he said.
“Like what? Fix it how?”
“I’m pretty smart,” he said, the way another boy might have said I’m pretty tall or My hair is red. “When I’m old enough, I want to apply to the university in Wodenderry. I’ll study law or accounting, and then I’ll get a job in the royal city. Maybe I’ll do clerking for the king.” He gave a smile; that had been a joke. But he sobered immediately and glanced around the schoolroom. “That’s why I’m here. I have to learn as much as I can.”
“I’m here because Mr. Shelby made me come,” I said darkly.
“It wouldn’t hurt you to learn something, too,” he said.
I rolled my eyes. “And then what? What kind of job am I going to be good for? No one’s going to want to hire me.”
“You can do whatever you want,” Gryffin said, with such certainty that I almost stared. How could someone with mighty few advantages be so sure that he could determine his own future? How could he think that I had any chance to do so? Had I been in his place, I would have been sulky and bitter. As it was, I was hardly optimistic and sunny. “You just have to know what it is you want.”
“Something better than this,” I said. That wasn’t particularly specific, but Gryffin nodded. Better than Thrush Hollow. Better than lost or neglectful parents, better than pain of the body and pain of the soul.
“But it starts here,” he said. “That’s why we have to learn everything we can.”
“I’m not a boy, you know,” I said abruptly. “I’m a girl.”
“I know,” he said.
“You haven’t asked why I don’t act like a girl.”
He turned his head to give me an appraising look out of those blue eyes. “What does a girl act like?” he said.
“What I mean is—”
“I know what you mean.”
At that particular moment, Mr. Shelby bustled back in, triumphantly jingling a key ring from one bony hand. “Here it is!” he said. “Not that you’ll have time to do any work today, since it’s almost time for me to ring the bell. You’ll just have to stay in a few more afternoons and help me sort through the books.”
He never said, and we never asked, but I assumed Mr. Shelby had kept us inside that day to protect us from the harassment of our fellow students. I had not paid any attention to Gryffin’s forays outside the building, but I guessed they had been even less pleasant than my own. It was a kindness on Mr. Shelby’s part to keep us indoors, a
way of sheltering us from spitefulness without having to chastise our abusers. I had missed the chance to run and jump and expend some of my considerable energy—but talking to Gryffin had been a more than acceptable exchange.
I knew already that he would be my friend. My first. Perhaps even then I suspected that his friendship would become the standard by which every other one was measured.
Within a matter of days, Gryffin and I were inseparable. I would swing by his uncle’s tavern in the morning on my way to the schoolhouse and walk slowly alongside Gryffin until we made it to the building, talking about anything that caught our attention. Most days he was animated and cheerful, interested in everything, from trash we saw on the side of the road to my observations about the people we passed. Occasionally, when he was in more pain than usual, he could be sharp-tongued and grim, and I learned to be silent those days so as not to earn a biting retort to an innocuous observation. I have to say, however, on balance I was in a bad mood more often than Gryffin was, and he tolerated my outbursts with general good humor. So I tried to do the same for him.
The first few days we walked to school together, I carried his books and his lunch for him. Then it occurred to me there was an easier way, and I spent an evening designing and sewing a knapsack that he could wear over his shoulders. Stupid that his uncle had never thought to make him such a thing before, and Gryffin was delighted with it. Now he started borrowing books from Mr. Shelby, bringing home novels and historical accounts and advanced mathematics texts, and studying into the night. When he came across something he found particularly interesting, he would share it with me the next day. Thus, somewhat against my will, I learned the chronology of our major kings and queens, the history of our foreign trade, a handful of poems, and the basics of long division.
Because there were now two of us, the other students mostly left us alone. Gryffin was not above tripping somebody with one of his canes if he thought he had been insulted or I had been maligned, and I was willing to swing wildly in an attempt to strike someone if I had been hit first. There were still the occasional taunts and ambushes, but they were rare and minor—and everybody had to endure those once in a while.