Princess Academy (5 page)

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

O
ne 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?

When the girls fled the classroom at the next break, Katar fetched a book from the shelf and sat in her chair with a loud thud.

“Don’t look so shocked, Miri,” said Katar without raising her eyes from the book. “You’re not the only one who can study during breaks. I guess you think academy princess is yours, no competition.”

“No,” said Miri, wishing for a good, biting response to pop into her head. All she could think of was, “But maybe you do.”

Katar smiled, apparently thinking that retort too weak to deserve a response. Miri agreed silently. She could force herself to stay in the classroom for only a couple of minutes before slinking away.

Over the next several days, Katar’s presence in the classroom during breaks kept Miri scurrying other places to test her quarry-speech—in a corner of the bedchamber, behind the outhouse, and once in the closet, though just stepping inside made her skin itch as if covered in spiders. More and more often, when she rapped the ground and sang a quarry song, a curious sensation followed. Everything before her seemed to vibrate like a flicked tree branch, and a sharp, warm feeling flared behind her eyes. The idea of the rat and the closet felt round and real, as though she were living the moment again. She felt her song throb inside her and imagined it going down into the stone, into the mountain, down and then up again to find someone who could hear.

But often, nothing happened at all. And she could not figure out why.

Quarry-speech is supposed to be for talking to other people,
she thought.
Maybe I need to try it with someone.

Miri did not dare approach any of the girls who worked in the quarry. Would they think she was foolish to try? Would they laugh? One morning while Britta read aloud in class, Miri watched her, thinking that Britta did not know enough about quarry matters to laugh at her and was not likely to tattle to the other girls. Miri was reluctant to try it with a lowlander, but her anticipation of discovery was making her impatient.

The next afternoon break, Miri joined the others outside. The sun’s glare off the snow made her eyes water, but it seemed the most beautiful day Miri could remember. The sky was achingly blue. The snow that crunched under her boot spread over stone and hillock like spilled cream. The cold made the world feel clean and new, a day for beginnings.

Miri walked straight past the group of older girls and greeted Britta. “Hello.”

Britta had been standing alone and seemed startled to be addressed.

“Want to go for a walk?” said Miri, hoping to get Britta alone.

“All right.”

As they walked away, Miri reached to take Britta’s hand. Britta flinched as if surprised at the touch.

“It’s normal to hold hands while walking, you know,” said Miri, guessing from Britta’s reaction that common hand-holding was a mountain custom.

“Oh, sorry,” said Britta. “So everyone holds hands? Boys and girls and everyone?”

Miri laughed. “Girls and boys hold hands when they’re little.” She could not remember when she and Peder had last held hands. As they grew up, the casual touch of wrestling and playing had just stopped. “If a girl and boy hold hands when they’re older, it
means
something.”

“I see.” Britta took Miri’s hand.

They trudged through untouched snow around the side of the building, and Miri glanced back to see if anyone else was near. Just a little farther.

“I wanted to tell you, I’m sorry Olana put you in the closet,” said Britta.

Miri nodded, her eyes wide. “So am I. There was a rat in there, and I don’t mean Olana. An actual rat tried to nest in my hair.” She shivered. “I found a whisker in my braid the next morning, and I think I might have squealed aloud.”

Britta smiled. “You did.”

“Well, I’m glad my horror was amusing to someone,” said Miri, making sure to add a good-natured grin so Britta would know that she was teasing.

“Olana shouldn’t put people in closets or strike us,” said Britta, negotiating the deeper swells of snow. “I think she’s too quick to punish.”

Miri pressed her lips together in a surprised frown. If Britta disapproved, then perhaps Olana’s attitude was not typical of lowlanders. Or perhaps Britta was not a typical lowlander herself.

“I didn’t think they’d be so mean,” said Britta. “Since one of us will be the princess.”

“Do you think one of us really will be?”

“I don’t think they would lie.” Britta puffed a visible breath. “But lately I feel as stupid as a tree stump, so I don’t dare believe my own thoughts.”

They sat on the linder steps that led to the academy’s back entrance, and Miri thought she could chance it now. She tapped a rhythm, thought of a quarry song, even hummed aloud. She was trying to quarry-speak the
Take care
warning she had often heard echoing out of the quarry. For just a moment, everything appeared to quake and she felt that resonance, but Britta did not flinch.

Miri nearly groaned aloud. She had been certain those sensations were a sign of quarry-speech, but if it had worked, Britta would have reacted in some way to the warning.

Unless . . .
She looked Britta over.
Unless lowlanders are deaf to it
.

The more she let this idea soak in, the likelier it seemed. Quarry-speech was just for quarriers, just for the mountain. That made Miri smile to herself while she sang. Something mountain folk could do that lowlanders could not. Something even Miri could do. A talent. A secret.

“Should I . . . Do you want me to sing with you?” asked Britta.

Miri stopped. “Oh no. I was, you know, humming for fun.”

“You don’t have to stop,” said Britta. “It sounded nice. I just didn’t know what you expected, because I seem to be always doing the wrong thing. Lately. Sorry to interrupt. Keep going.”

“We should be heading back anyway.”

“All right.”

The girls turned to retrace their steps. Miri teetered when her foot hit a deep patch of snow and she let go of Britta’s hand, but Britta grabbed her arm and helped steady her.

“Thanks,” said Miri.

“Thank you. I mean . . .” Britta looked up, struggling for words. “Thanks for talking to me.” She pressed her lips together as though she were afraid to say any more.

“Sure,” Miri said casually, though inside she was reeling. The girl had thanked her just for talking.

As they came back around to the front of the building, Liana whispered something to Bena, and Bena smirked. Miri hung on to Britta’s arm even tighter, determined not to be cowed by their looks.

When Olana called them back in, Knut was standing at the head of the classroom cradling a rectangular package wrapped in a coarse brown cloth.

“Your progress has been sluggish of late,” said Olana. She smoothed her chisel-sharp hair behind her shoulder. “Perhaps it’s due to the winter and the separation from your families, or perhaps you’re simply not taking this endeavor seriously. I thought it was time for a reminder of why you’re here.”

Olana removed the cloth and held up a colorful painting much more detailed than the chapel’s carved doors. It illustrated a house with a carved wood door, six glass windows facing front, and a garden of tall trees and bushes bursting with red and yellow flowers.

“This house stands in Asland, the capital, not a long carriage ride from the palace.” Olana paused as if anticipating a dramatic reaction. “It will be given to the family of the girl chosen as princess.”

Several voices gasped, and Miri could not be certain if hers had been one. Perhaps all of this was real after all. There was proof. Pa and Marda could live in that beautiful house and never dress in cloth too threadbare to keep off the sun or half starve in the winter. She longed to give them something so precious and perfect. What would her pa think of her then?