Princess Academy (10 page)

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Chapter Thirteen

All I know are

Scraps, flakes, chips, rocks

All below are

Stones, shards, bits, dross

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T
he next morning the girls walked back to the academy. This time no soldiers pressed them from behind, but Miri guessed she was not the only one feeling jittery. They talked over their Diplomacy strategy, and many of the girls offered ideas. Frid and other sixteen-year-olds were vocal and supportive, but Bena refused to speak again after she declared that Miri would fail, and Katar stayed in her usual spot alone at the head of the group.

When they arrived at the academy, the girls arranged themselves before the steps in a straight line. Miri could see Knut peering through a window.

In the silence of waiting, Miri became aware of the jagged rocks poking through her boot soles. They had already been thin when they had been Marda’s, and now they were . . . Miri tried to think of a word that was thinner than “thin.” She wanted to hop around or say something funny to relieve the nervous tension, but she was the diplomat and thought she had better appear respectable.

Finally Olana emerged, fists on her hips. The two soldiers stood behind her.

Miri brought to mind the first rule of diplomatic negotiations:
State the problem.
“We know we are not welcome inside,” she said.

Olana blinked. That was not what she had been expecting to hear.

“We left without your permission and violated your authority,” said Miri. The second rule:
Admit your own error.
“That was wrong.”

Frid shuffled her feet nervously. Miri knew the girls had not been expecting to concede fault, but she was not confident she could be convincing without help from the rules of Diplomacy. Besides, she wanted Olana to see that they had listened and learned.

“You kept us from our families, punished us for unfair reasons, and treated us like criminals. That was also wrong. We’re here now, willing to forget our mutual offenses and start over. Here are our terms.”

Olana blinked rapidly, a sign that her composure had slipped. Miri felt encouraged. She reviewed the other rules:
State the error of the other party.
Done.
Propose specific compromises
and end with
Invite mutual acceptance
. She hoped she was not forgetting anything.

“For each rest day, we will be allowed to return home to our families and attend chapel, leaving in the late afternoon and then returning by rest day evening. When traders come, we will return home for one week to help barter, haul stone, and work in our homes. Rule breaking may be punished with a missed meal, but no one will be hit, locked in a closet, or grounded from a return home.”

Olana clicked her tongue to show that she was not impressed. “I have a steep task to turn twenty mountain girls into presentable ladies. These measures are the only way I can keep you in line.”

Miri nodded. “Perhaps they were, but no longer. As part of these new terms, we will vow to focus on our studies, respect your authority, and obey all reasonable rules.” Just one more:
Illustrate the negative outcome of refusal and positive of acceptance.
“If you don’t agree to this, whichever of us the prince chooses will report your bad behavior and demand of him that you serve the rest of your days in some outlying territory of Danland even more distasteful to you than Mount Eskel.”

“A swamp,” Britta whispered. Miri nodded. She had read about a territory that was swampland—smelly, sticky with mud, and poorer than the mountains.

“Such as a swamp,” said Miri.

Olana cringed visibly.

“And if you live by these terms and treat us as you would treat noblemen’s daughters, whichever one of us chosen as the princess will commend your teaching and see you get comfortable work tutoring in Asland.

“As well, we request the dismissal of the soldiers. Their only purpose seems to be to intimidate us, so they should go home to Asland when the traders come again in a few weeks.”

Olana arched one eyebrow. “In this very class we’ve read of bandits who rove the isolated territories of Danland. What will we do if they decide they like the look of Mount Eskel?”

Frid chuckled and the girls exchanged smiles. The tale of defeated bandits was a staple at spring holiday.

“Bandits did attack our village before I was born,” said Katar, jumping in. “You may have noticed there’s nothing to steal, except linder blocks too heavy for bandits to easily haul. And when they saw that every quarry man was twice their size and wielding mallets and pickaxes, it didn’t take much to run them off the mountain. They won’t return.”

“I see,” said Olana.

“We accept these terms and invite you to do the same,” said Miri, waiting for Olana to respond. The silence poked at Miri’s confidence, and she shifted her feet in the rock debris and tried not to squirm under the weight of Olana’s hesitation. “Um, so do you?”

“Do I accept these
terms
?” Olana pulled long each vowel sound, an effect that had always made Miri cold for what she would do next. “I’ll go ponder the matter, and I’ll be sure to let you know.”

Olana was turning away when Katar spoke.

“If forced to wait long, we’re likely to return to the village. At that point you would have a long walk to make before telling us your decision. That will prove time lost on our studies, and if we’re not presentable when the prince arrives, it will reflect badly on our tutor.”

Miri frowned. She had forgotten
Assert a deadline for acceptance
.

A slow smile crept from one corner of Olana’s mouth to the other. Some of the girls looked at one another, uneasy at what such a reaction could mean.

Then, unexpectedly, Olana applauded.

“I am impressed,” said Olana. “I hadn’t expected as much from mountain girls.”

“We may be mountain girls,” said Britta, “but we’re also Danlanders.”

“Indeed,” said Olana. “This has been a very good demonstration of Diplomacy. Let’s return to our studies and see if we can’t get you to the same level in every subject. Your terms are accepted.” She entered the building.

Several of the girls exhaled at once, and the sound made them laugh.

“Olana might be a good sort after all,” said Frid with some surprise.

“We had her by the hair,” said Miri. “She had no choice.”

Miri caught up with Katar on the academy steps. “I’m glad you spoke up or we could still be standing out here waiting.”

Katar cut her eyes at Miri. “I’m a better diplomat than you and everyone knows it. It should’ve been me talking. Too bad for you that academy princess isn’t based on who everyone likes best.” She pinched Miri’s arm and stomped up the steps.

Miri rubbed her arm and rolled her eyes at Britta.

“She is a sour one,” said Britta.

Esa nodded. “And not worth the trouble. Katar’s a thornbush protecting a hare that’s too skinny to eat.”

The morning after returning to the academy, Miri arose before the others, stretched, and leaned against the window to watch the sun rise. The fade to day happened so gradually, Miri was surprised when she noticed it was light enough to see the stones littering the ground outside, rough with bites of morning frost. Only after the other girls were stirring and she was about to follow them to the dining hall did she look down.

On the outside of the windowsill was a piece of linder as long as her open hand, the kind streaked with pale pink veins. It was carved in the likeness of a hawk, sharp eyes, curved beak, wings outstretched. Miri now noticed footprints in the soft mud around the house leading up to the window, then turning and heading back toward the village until they disappeared into the rocks of the roadway.

She remembered how Peder had called her a hawk, always staring at the sky, at the mountain view, or out the window toward the village. She smiled to realize he guessed that she would be at the window, that she would see it first and know it was for her.

“I’m his best friend,” she sang to the window, sang down into her toes, and out perhaps for the whole world to hear. For the moment, she did not care who knew the secret that made her chest tight and her head as light as seeding weeds in a breeze.
I’m his best friend.

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Chapter Fourteen

She’s as lovely as a girl with flowers in her hair

The mountain, my lady

She’s as bright as spring sun drying rain from the air

Mount Eskel, my lady

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B
y a week following spring holiday, all traces of winter had vanished from the mountain. The last hard patches of snow melted into the mud, then the mud hardened and grasses grew. The miri flowers sprang up in the rock cracks, faced the sun, and twirled themselves in the breeze. On breaks, the girls spun the pink flowers and made wishes.

Miri found herself again on a hill, watching the last miri petal fall. She touched the linder hawk hidden in her pocket and thought of one wish she could make. Then she turned west, away from the village, toward the pass and the lowlands, and thought of a different wish.

She dropped the flower stem and laughed before she could even form the thought. Of course she did not wish to be the princess. How could she wish to marry someone she did not know? Katar’s talk about being special and doing great things had lodged in her head, Miri decided, and she just needed to shake that nonsense loose.

But her eyes flicked back to the west. What wonders waited in the lowlands? There was, of course, that beautiful house for Pa and Marda, but whenever she thought of giving them that gift, she could not imagine herself actually wedded to a prince. For a moment she let herself wonder how such a future would change her.

“Princess Miri,” she whispered, and surprised herself by feeling a thrill. The title added weight to her name, made her feel more significant. Miri was a scrawny, hopeless village girl, but who would Princess Miri be?

Other girls on the hill watched the last petal on their miri flowers tick off and float away. Miri wondered how many were wishing to wear a silver gown and how many were wishing for a title before their name.

“I used to think that was the whole world,” said Esa, sitting beside Miri with Britta and Frid. Esa’s eyes sought out the swells and slopes of the mountains dimming from green to gray on the northern horizon. “Now I feel so small, perched up here on our isolated mountain.”

Miri nodded. That morning a lecture from Olana had shaken a dreary spirit over their heads—linder represented a tiny fraction of the Danlander economy, less than the sale of pig ears or cloth flowers for ladies’ hats; the entire population of Mount Eskel was smaller than the number of palace stable hands; the wooden chapel doors, so loved and prized by the village, were smaller and less ornate than the front doors of any Aslandian merchant.

“The lowlands aren’t so different from here,” said Britta. “Just bigger and . . .”

“
A lot
bigger,” said Frid.

“It’s hard to feel like I matter at all,” said Esa.

Katar strolled by, twirling a bare miri stem. “A princess matters.”

When no one argued, Miri knew she had not been the only one contemplating the western horizon when making her wish. The world had never felt so wide, a great gaping mouth that could swallow all of them whole. It made Miri wish she could bite back.

“It doesn’t seem to matter what we think,” said Miri. “The prince will come up here and look at us as if we’re barrels in a trader’s wagon. And if I’m salt pork and he doesn’t care for salt pork, then there’s nothing I can do.”

Her eyes found Katar walking down the hill.
But I can do something about academy princess
, she thought.

It would be harder than she had hoped. The older girls had been spooked by Miri’s tie with Katar after the first exam, and Bena, Katar, and Liana spent all their free time with open books. Miri gazed longingly at spring erupting outside the window but forced herself to study—at least, most of the time. Britta, Esa, and Frid could coax her outside for a nostalgic game of Wolf and Rabbit every so often.

At first, the new arrangement with Olana felt little better than before. She was tense and short of temper, as if uneasy with the threat of tutoring ruffians in a swamp but unable to soften her hard demeanor. But gradually Miri felt the mood ease. The girls who at first tried to take advantage of the new situation found after a lost meal that they should still listen to Olana.

Just before the arrival of the traders would afford them a week off, Olana held another exam and announced the top five scores. Katar was first and Miri second.

“Sorry, Miri,” said Katar. “You know you’re too short to look right in that gown, anyway.”

“You’re too tall to . . . ,” Miri stumbled, unable to think of a good response. She cursed herself silently. “Never mind.”

Esa was shocked and thrilled to hear she was third, until Bena and Liana caught up to her on their walk home for the next rest day.

“I think you girls on the fourteen-year-olds’ row are cheating,” said Bena.

“I wasn’t cheating, Bena,” said Esa. “I’ve been studying.”

“Oh? So have I, and there’s no chance both you and Miri could beat me. I’ll be watching you.”

“Me too,” said Liana.

“I guess they don’t like anyone who is competition,” said Miri after the older girls had moved away.

“At least I
am
competition,” Esa said cheerfully.

The girls were a few minutes from the village when the sound of a donkey bawling echoed off the mountainside. A caravan of trader wagons came up from behind, Enrik at the lead.

“Britta, they’re here,” Miri whispered, pressing a hand to her belly. “What if it doesn’t work? What if they refuse to trade for gold, take away the supplies, and we can’t get the linder down to a market, and—”

“The academy released you all for the trading, did they?” said Enrik, squinting at the girls as he rode by. “Well, I hope your people have been hard at work without you. I should be grumpy to come all the way here for half a load of linder.”

Miri and the girls ran behind the wagons and reached the village a few minutes after them. The traders were stopped before a gathering of villagers. Os stood at their head.

“This is outrageous!” one of the traders was saying. “We won’t buy your linder at such prices. Then what will you do? Starve, that’s what.”

“That’s a risk we take,” said Os. A brief glance at Miri’s father was the only sign that he might be unsure. Pa folded his arms, a stance that made him appear twice as broad and as solid as the mountain.

“If you refuse,” Os continued, “we’ll manage to haul our linder down the mountain ourselves, sell it at the first town for triple what you pay, and make the local merchants there rich when they resell the stone to the capital for triple what they paid. We’ll win, they’ll win, everyone will win. Except you.”

The pause that followed made Miri want to hop from foot to foot. If it worked, their lives would change. If not, if Miri’s suggestion ruined everything . . . She shut her eyes, afraid to think about it.

“Do you think they’ll agree?” Britta whispered.

“I don’t know,” said Miri, curling and extending her toes inside her boots. “But I wish they’d hurry and decide, whatever they do.”

“When we get back to Asland and the king hears about this,” said a trader with white hair and a smooth face, “he’ll send others to mine the linder. I’ve half a mind to do it myself.”

“Go right ahead,” said Os, his arm open and gesturing to the quarry.

The trader hesitated, and many of the lowlanders exchanged glances.

“Do you have any idea what it takes to find quiet stone?” said Doter in her round, loud voice. “Quiet stone—the linder that sleeps, that is good and sound, has fissures in just the right places, but not too many. Do you have the ear to hear where to break it from the mountain, the eye to know where to slide the wedge, how many taps of the mallet, not one too many, not one too few? And then there’s the squaring to be done. You’re fools, the lot of you, if you think we’re not aware that we’re the only people alive who know this mountain and know linder and how to harvest it for palaces and kings. So don’t try that threat on us again.”

A gush of warmth entered Miri’s chest, she felt so proud and happy to be part of a people who knew a craft no one else did. She wanted to run to Esa’s mother and hug her, and the desire pricked in her heart the old, tiny wound that reminded her she did not have a mother of her own. She sidled up to her pa.

After Doter’s lecture, both sides were quiet, waiting for a decision. Miri wondered if worry could actually kill a person.

Enrik moaned, running a hand through his greasy hair. “I told you there was a risk all that learning at the academy might smarten them up, and now it’s come to this.” He turned to Os. “Fine, but your asking price is too high to account for our costs and reasonable profit. I’ll give you one gold piece for three blocks of linder.”

Miri had to sit down, she was so dizzy with relief.

“Enrik!” one of the traders shouted.

“I’m not going back empty-handed,” said Enrik.

Soon others were agreeing as well, some less reluctant than others, and trading began. Many villagers came to Miri to verify fair prices. Miri said, “Yes, I think so,” or, “I’d ask for a bit more.” For the moment, in her woolens and braided hair, she felt as important as she imagined she would in the silver gown and a crown.

Since the traders had not hauled enough supplies to trade for the linder at the new prices, they purchased the surplus with gold and silver coins. Os asked Britta to make sure they were genuine, and Britta examined each one, hefted it in her palm, bit down, and nodded approval.

Half the village put their shoulders to loading the finished blocks in the wagons. As the traders and villagers worked together, Miri was surprised to hear pleasant chatter. Some even agreed to stay the evening and share a meal with the villagers.

Miri stood by her sister, observing a trader pat a quarrier on the back. “Seems strange. I thought they’d dislike us even more.”

“Maybe it’s hard to respect someone you’re cheating,” said Marda.

When the work outside the quarry slowed, Miri took Britta’s hand and they walked through the village, Miri recounting who had married whose son, recent quarry injuries, family secrets, and any other village tidbits she could think of to help Britta feel more at home.

Just when Miri was enacting an exuberant retelling of the time Frid’s brother was so woozy after a spinning dance that he fell face first into goat droppings, Peder walked by. He did not so much as glance at Miri, as though she were a stranger, as though their conversation at spring holiday and the linder hawk on the windowsill had been daydreams. She stared, stunned by a twinge in her chest. She hated the feeling and needed a laugh to dislodge it.

“Britta, did I tell you about when Peder decided to take a winter bath?”

Peder stopped when he heard his name. Miri kept talking without looking his way.

“He had stolen my straw doll, and I was chasing him out past the chapel. It’d been sunny the day before and melted snow filled up the old quarry holes, so you couldn’t tell flat ground from the pits. He’d just turned around to taunt me when,
whoosh!
” Miri mimed Peder dropping down. “He disappeared completely. You should’ve seen the surprise on his face when his head popped back up, like he thought the whole world had been tugged out from under his feet. He climbed out, soaked, his hair straight and hanging down in his face, and he said in this shocked, breathless voice, ‘What’d you do?’”

Britta was laughing, and she snorted, turned red, and laughed harder.

Peder grinned. “I still think you did something.”

“Yes, that’s right. I dug a hole, filled it with icy water, tempted you into stealing my doll, and forced you to run directly into it. . . .”

“I wouldn’t put it past her,” Peder said to Britta.

“The doll was ruined, but it was worth it to see that surprise frozen on his face.”

“You laugh now,” said Peder, “but best take care what your flapping mouth reveals or I might have to tell how one spring holiday you threw off all your clothes and ran out—”

Miri put her hand over Peder’s mouth. “I was three,” she said through her laughs. “Three years old. Three!”

Peder’s eyes widened impishly, and he laughed under her hand. She thought of trying to wrestle him to the ground, then realized that she was touching him and he had not pushed her away. Her old fear seized her, and she let him go.

“Peder!” his father called, and he ran off to help in the quarry. Miri put her hand in her pocket and held the linder hawk.

“You like him, don’t you?” asked Britta when he was too far away to hear.

Miri shrugged. “Do you?”

“I don’t think any of the boys in the village know I’m here.”

“Oh, yes? Then what about Jans?”

“Do you know that you avoid talking about Peder?” Britta asked.

“Or maybe you just avoid talking about Jans.”

“Miri,” said Britta with a touch of exasperation.

Miri slumped onto a boulder. “What should I say? That I like him so much it hurts?”

“Maybe you should tell him.”

“But what if I do and he looks at me like I’m salt fish rotten in the barrel, and then I can never be his friend again?”