Princess Academy Read online

  “Because he’s ashamed,” said Miri with years of bitterness rushing in her blood. “Because I’m too scrawny to do any good.”

  “Laren, you big, dumb, tight-lipped fool,” said Doter to herself. “I should’ve known better, I should’ve known he was too much of a man to explain. Everyone in the world knows but the girl, the only one who should. Shame on you, Doter, for not speaking up years ago. . . .”

  Miri felt stilled and soothed by Doter’s talk. She wrestled with her sobs until they were subdued to quiet, painful shakes in her chest. It was useless to interrupt when Doter conversed with herself, though Miri was hungry to hear whatever secret was behind it.

  At last Doter sighed. “Miri, do you know how your ma died?”

  “She was sick after she had me.”

  Miri felt Doter nod. “That’s true, but there’s more to tell. It was high summer and traders were coming up any day. There’d been a costly number of accidents that year, and the quarry didn’t have enough cut stone to trade for the next month’s supplies. Your ma, she was a stubborn girl, and though big as a full moon with you in her belly, she insisted on helping out in the quarry. You may be able to guess what happened.”

  “She was stone braking,” Miri said softly.

  “One of the boys tripped, the stone slipped, and your ma tumbled down the steep side. That night you were born before your time. She hung on for a week, but she’d bled a lot, and there are some things a person can’t survive.”

  “For that week, she didn’t let me out of her arms.”

  “Of course not, why would she? You were tiny and scrawny and fuzzy, and also the most beautiful baby I’ve ever seen, excepting my own.”

  Miri started to protest, but she never could argue with Doter. Os often said, A wise one never doubts the words from Doter’s mouth.

  Doter grasped Miri’s shoulders and held her at arm’s length. Miri let her hair fall forward to hide any signs of crying, but Doter had a round, glad face and just looking at her made Miri feel easier.

  “No one cares that you don’t work in the quarry,” said Doter. Miri choked on this and struggled to free herself, but Doter pinched her shoulders harder, as if determined to be heard. “I’m telling you now, no one cares. Do you think anyone begrudges my girl Esa her time tending house? When Laren says, Miri won’t work in this quarry, everyone nods and never speaks another word about it. You believe me, don’t you?”

  Miri shuddered, a last sob breaking loose.

  “Your pa is a house with shutters closed,” said Doter. “There are things going on inside that a person can’t see, but you sense he has a wound that won’t heal.”

  Miri nodded.

  “Marda takes after your pa, but you, Miri, you are your ma alive again. Look at your blue eyes, your hair like a hawk feather. He can’t help seeing you and thinking of her. It nearly killed Laren to let Marda work in the quarry, but he had no choice with just three of you in the house. How could he bear letting his little girl step foot into the place that took the life of her ma?”

  They walked back through the village, and Miri kept her eyes on the ground before her. The whole world had shifted, and she was not sure she could keep her feet.

  She was her ma alive again.

  When Miri returned, she found Marda moved from the quarry into their house. Frid’s mother had pronounced the injury a painful leg break but nothing serious. While the woman set the broken leg, Miri held Marda’s hand, kissed her cheek, plaited her hair, and loved her as much as she felt, as much as she imagined her mother would. That night, Miri gave Britta her pallet and slept curled up beside her sister to comb her hair or stroke her face when Marda could not sleep for the pain.

  Early the next morning, Miri woke to see her pa sitting in a chair, staring at his hands. She rose and padded to him, her bare feet silent. He reached out for her without looking up and pulled her into his chest.

  “I’m sorry, my flower.”

  He held her tighter, and when his breath shook on a sob, Miri did not need to hear any more words.

  He was sorry. She was his flower. They would be all right.

  n

  Chapter Fifteen

  nLook no farther than your hand

  Make a choice and take a stand

  n

  In a mountain summer, the world savored each day. Dawn came early, inviting waking up slowly and stretching and looking forward to everything. Olana noticed the class’s attention straying to the window, so she held more and more class time out of doors. The girls spent weeks learning the dances for the ball, twirling, skipping, and sliding under the sun. The hard blue of the sky appeared to arch above their heads a mere arm’s length away. Sometimes Miri reached and jumped and fancied she nearly brushed its smooth, curved shell.

  Miri had never felt like this, light enough to float into the clouds. Even Katar’s jabs and Bena’s and Liana’s turned backs did not hurt so much—Doter’s story draped around her. What she had long believed was not true, and now the world was wide open to discover what was.

  One evening after chores, Miri sat with Britta, Esa, and Frid on her pallet in the corner of the bedchamber and confided in them the story of her mother.

  “So, did you . . . do you think I’m a burden on the village?” Miri spoke low enough that her voice would not carry. She did not want to give Katar anything else to taunt her about. “That I’m too weak to work in the quarry?”

  Frid frowned. “No one on Mount Eskel is too weak to work in the quarry. I heard my ma say once that your pa kept you home for his own reasons. I guess I never thought about it again.”

  Miri rubbed her arms and laughed. “It’s wonderful, it’s just so hard to believe. It’s like all my life I thought the sky was green.”

  Esa lay on her stomach, one arm propping up her chin. “The way you act, always laughing out loud, saying what you think, I never would’ve guessed you worried what anyone thought.”

  Britta had a shrewd smile. “I keep thinking about a tale my nurse used to read to me about a bird whose wings are pinned to the ground. Have you heard it? In the end, when he finally frees himself, he flies so high he becomes a star. My nurse said the story was about how we all have something that keeps us down. So here’s what I’m wondering—if Miri’s wings are free, what will she do now?”

  Esa grinned. “Fly away, Miri bird, fly away!”

  Miri flapped her arms and cawed.

  “What are you doing?” said Bena, annoyed.

  The girls laughed.

  Where should I fly? Miri asked herself all summer as she traveled between the academy and home.

  Olana did not like it, but she lived by the agreement and allowed the girls a week off with each trader visit. Word of a village with gold coins to spend must have reached many ears, and traders new to the mountain arrived with specialty goods like strong-soled shoes, dyed cloth, chairs that rocked, ceramic cups, metal pails, painted ribbons, and steel needles. The village’s food stores built up, so no one had to wait with empty barrels for the next trader visit.

  At midsummer, Marda and Pa presented Miri with a new pair of boots for her fifteenth birthday. She marveled how she could not feel the sharper stones through the soles.

  Marda was resting while her leg healed, so each day at home, Miri helped her sister to the shade of an evergreen tree beside their house and with a shard of rubble rock scratched letters on the old quarry wall. On later visits she brought a book filched from Olana’s shelf, and the day came when Marda read an entire page on her own. She leaned back her head and sighed.

  “What’s the matter?” asked Miri.

  “Nothing. It feels good.” She looked to where the sun was grazing the western hills. “You know how the lowlanders have always been with us, how the traders talk and such. I’ve wondered if they were right, if we aren�
�t as smart, if there’s something wrong with us. With me.”

  “Marda! How could you believe them?”

  “How could I not? When you first started to teach me, I was terrified. You’ve done so well, and I was sure I’d be too dull to learn. The whole village would be thinking how Miri’s the head of the academy but her sister’s got goat brains.”

  “No one could think that, especially not now that you’re the only one outside the academy who can read. Besides, Katar’s first in the class.”

  Marda raised her brows. “But if you want to be, I don’t know of anything that could stop you.”

  Miri almost told Marda then of feeling like the outcast of the quarry and the mean, tight spot of jealousy she had harbored in her heart for years. But the sensation was loosening, and it did not seem to matter as much anymore.

  Before the academy, she had sat on her hill watching goats, and her imagination could dream of nothing grander than working in the quarry. But now she was aware of the kingdom beyond her mountain, hundreds of years of history, and a thousand things she could be.

  She would not test her father’s pain and ask to work in the quarry again. She would find her own place. And sitting under a tree with Marda as she read her first page felt like the best place in the entire world. Miri wondered how she could make that good feeling last.

  n

  Chapter Sixteen

  I cut all day and I squared all night

  And I thought I’d mined the mountain’s might

  Then I saw all my work by the bright dawn light

  The mountain was the world and my labor a mite

  n

  One early morning at the academy, Miri went outside before breakfast to stretch and look out over the mountains. A wind came out of the north and whipped the end of her shirt tight against her hips. It smelled far away, not familiar and warm like summer wind, but of empty places, trees Miri did not know, and snow. The scent made her muscles tense. It meant summer was over, autumn was dawning, and the ball was just weeks away.

  In the academy, the mood changed with the weather. Every day that passed was one day less to learn how to impress the prince and not look like an utter fool. The dances were practiced with uptight clumsiness, the curtsies with anxious stumbles. Olana yelled at them, “Do you want to look like imbeciles? Do you really want the guests to believe every frightful thing they’ve heard about the outlying territories? Stand up straighter, pronounce your words. For pity’s sake, stop looking like you want to humiliate me!”

  Miri tried to remember when every curtsy had begun to feel more important than breakfast.

  For some of the summer, Miri had spent outdoor breaks teaching Britta quarry songs and running over the hills. Now change pulsed around them, and she felt pulled inside to bend over books and recite lists of kings and queens. Soon most of the other girls were studying through breaks and rest days as well. She found herself glancing often at Katar, wondering if the older girl had caught things that Miri missed, or staring at the painting of the house with hope so strong that it felt like something she could reach out and grab. When she found herself in such a mood, she tried not to think of Peder at all. Her mind and heart tangled.

  Then Olana announced the final exam. Each girl read aloud from a book and was judged on pronunciation and clarity. Knut stood in for the prince, and the girls toe-heeled across the room and curtsied to him. He never put down his stirring spoon and met each girl’s eyes as if it pained him terribly, but with Miri he managed a half smile.

  During Miri’s turn at Dance, Katar caught her eye and winked. Miri staggered in the midst of a step, looked away, and tried to concentrate.

  “It’s all right, Miri,” said Britta, who was acting as her dance partner. “You’re doing really well.”

  Miri could hear Bena whisper her name.

  After the individual tests, the girls followed Olana to the top of a slope where the ground was softened with grass. The wind from the valley smelled as fresh as wind-dried laundry, and the sun warmed the top of Miri’s head as though giving her a pat. She leaned back on her hands and felt her shoulders relax for the first time in a week. She was confident that she would pass.

  “Take a long look,” said Olana, gesturing to the northern horizon. “It’s the only view some of you will ever see. So far, several have not done well enough to pass the exam and attend the ball. Now is your last chance to redeem yourselves. Those who are near to failing must answer correctly each question or you will remain hidden in the bedchamber while everyone else dances and makes eyes at the prince.”

  Olana sat the girls in a circle and began the decisive quiz. Miri recounted the first five kings of Danland beginning with King Dan and Katar supplied the next five. Frid stumbled with her question but came up with a correct answer.

  Then Olana turned to Gerti. “Name the years of the War of Rights.”

  Gerti’s faced drained of color. She squinted at the sky, her eyes searching, but hopelessness made lines on her brow. Miri watched Gerti’s struggle and amazed herself by feeling relieved. In the contest for academy princess, everyone was competition.

  “The answer, Gerti,” said Olana.

  “I . . .”

  Miri thought of the painting of the house, of Marda saying that nothing could get in Miri’s way, of the silver gown with tiny rosebuds and the feeling that buzzed in her bones when she thought of the significance the title “Princess” would add to her name. At that moment, it all felt wispy and weedy compared with Gerti’s immediate need.

  It’s just not fair, Miri thought. Everyone has studied hard all year. We should at least get the chance to go to the ball.

  Her decision seemed obvious. She would try to help.

  Her instinct was to use quarry-speech. But how can I tell Gerti a number of a year? She had found a way to tell the girls to run. If she could find the right thought, she might be able to communicate anything, particularly as the academy girls had so many shared memories. It could work. It just might.

  By her foot, a single miri flower wiggled in the breeze. That gave her hope. The pink flowers seemed to thrive around beds of linder. The entire area had once been a working quarry, and surely there was a remnant. Still, Miri had heard it work only with solid stone like the living quarry and the floor of the academy.

  Olana sighed. “Just say you don’t know, Gerti, and we’ll move on.”

  Gerti’s lip quivered. Miri sank her hand into the autumn grass. There must be linder deep down. She pushed harder and hoped.

  Despite what Peder had said, she still liked to sing aloud when quarry-speaking; it helped her focus the internal singing that pushed her memory into the stone. But she could not risk it here. She pressed the ground and thought of her favorite block-squaring chant: “The mountain was the world and my labor was a mite.” She organized her thoughts and sang them silently in the rhythm of that chant.

  Miri recalled the History lesson when Olana first had talked about the War of Rights. A fly had been caught in the room, buzzing madly and thumping the window. Miri remembered because she had wondered how many times that crazy fly could bounce off the glass before knocking itself unconscious, and she had decided 212 times, the first year of the war.

  “Two hundred twelve to two hundred seventy-six,” Olana had said. “Say it, class.”

  Thump, thump, went the fly.

  “Two hundred twelve to two hundred seventy-six,” they had repeated.

  Thump, thump, thump-thump.

  Miri sang the memory into the earth—the fly drumming on the window, Olana declaring the years, the class repeating. Perhaps Gerti had noticed the fly, too. Perhaps with that nudge, the memory would come forward for her and the sound of those years fall from her mind to her tongue. Miri’s vision shivered, her thoughts clicked, that moment painted itself in full color in her mind
, but Gerti’s face did not change. Miri tried again, her quarry-speech song roaring inside her.

  “If you haven’t remembered by now, Gerti, you won’t,” said Olana. “Now then, Liana, please name—”

  “Two hundred and . . .“ Gerti looked up. She appeared to be trying to taste something peculiar or identify a distant smell. “Two hundred and twelve to two hundred and, uh, seventy. Seventy-six, I mean, seventy-six.”

  Katar elbowed Miri in the ribs, having no doubt detected Miri’s quarry-speech as well. Miri smiled back pleasantly.

  “Hm. That’s correct,” said Olana.

  Gerti looked at Miri and smiled as big as the sky. Olana returned to Liana, who answered correctly, as did the next girl. Then Tonna tripped up over the first rule of Conversation.

  Miri had not thought of continuing her silent hints, but she believed Tonna had as much right to attend the ball as Gerti. A jab from Katar and a warning look decided her. Miri searched for the perfect memory and sang it down into the mountain’s hidden linder and up into the minds of any listeners. Tonna sighed relief and answered the question.

  Miri smiled. It was beginning to be fun.

  The exam continued while the sun arced west, dragging their shadows longer. Whenever a girl faltered or looked Miri’s way, she did her best to communicate a helpful memory. She was relieved that Britta always knew her answers.

  Then Frid could not remember the last rule of diplomatic negotiations. Miri quarry-spoke of the day Olana had introduced the rules of Diplomacy, but Frid just stared at the ground with her familiar wide-eyed expression and seemed resolved to defeat. Miri dug her fingers deeper into the earth, and if she had sung aloud, her quarry-speech would have been a shout; but no recognition crossed Frid’s face. Whether the memory was unclear or the quarry-speech was too faint on that hill, it was not working.

  “I’m sorry,” Miri whispered.

  “Silence,” warned Olana.