Three coppers…I could buy a glazed bun or a tiny sweet cake. All for myself.
What would we go without later so that I could have this treat?
No, not later: Father hadn’t had toast this morning, just coffee.
And no bread with his soup last night.
“Thank you, Father.” I flopped in for one more hug. “I love you.”
“And I love you, Big. Go on now, Kammi’s getting ahead and you don’t want to be late today.”
I nodded, and tucked the coins inside my coat pocket. Father straightened my scarf and tugged my braids free, and then I was flying up the street after my sister.
—
In the schoolyard, the younger children ran around like there was no food shortage and no war and their fathers weren’t away and their houses not knocked down.
But we older ones lingered, unusually still, whether we were taking the test or not.
My heart longed to run around with the younger children, but my legs felt too wobbly. Megs and I stood together, watching our breath turn to steam in the air.
“That must be the Examiner,” Megs whispered.
I looked over at the teachers. The new woman had dull blond hair pulled into a tight knot at the nape of her neck. She wore a gray army uniform with a jacket and a skirt to her knees.
Kammi ran over and tugged my sleeve.
“Mathilde!” She squeezed my arm.
“Ouch! What?” I asked. “What’s wrong?”
“Jullen says they’re taking everybody today, everybody who sits the test. If you signed the papers, you belong to the army already!”
“That isn’t true,” Megs said. “If they were taking everybody, they wouldn’t be holding a test, would they?”
The bell rang.
Megs ran to the line for the test, not wanting to lose points for tardiness.
But when I looked down at Kammi, she was crying.
“Hey, shh…” I knelt to look into her eyes. Her worry was the same one I’d confessed to Father. “Megs is right, they won’t take people who won’t be useful. I don’t have much of a chance to be picked.”
Kammi frowned at me, doubtful.
“I’m nowhere near the top of my class, and most of the kids are two years older than me. Miss Tameron seemed surprised I’m even going to sit the test, but anyone’s allowed to.”
Kammi scowled, still not believing me.
The yard had almost cleared. We didn’t have much time.
“Listen, you’ll get out of school hours before me today. Get a treat.” I put the coins in her hand.
Her mouth dropped open as she turned them over.
“Where did you get these?”
“Father.”
Suddenly I felt warmer, lighter. Father had said he would be proud no matter how I did. And if he was scrimping on bread, he wasn’t expecting the four hundred orins.
He wasn’t expecting me to pass.
What a gift Father had given me in these coins!
I glanced up at the teachers. The Examiner was staring at me from the head of the testing line, brow creased and mouth set straight.
Uh-oh.
I jumped, grabbed Kammi’s hand and ran her over to her line, and hurried to the back of my line.
The Examiner asked, “Mathilde Joss?”
Process of elimination: I was the last one.
“Yes.”
“You’re late.”
“Yes.”
“Care to explain yourself?”
“No.”
She nodded and entered a mark on her attendance sheet.
I swallowed hard and stared solemnly back at her.
—
The Examiner’s assistant led us to a large classroom. At each of the forty desks sat two booklets, a pink one with printed text and a blank blue book, plus two sharp pencils.
The Examiner had somehow gotten there ahead of us, as if she could evaporate and reappear in a different place. She said, “You will sit in alphabetical order by last name, starting in the front left, one behind the other.”
Then she called our names and we took our seats. Some of the older students, especially the boys, were much taller than me. I felt very small in my chair.
Megs sat behind me to the right. I turned to look at her, but she was so focused that I couldn’t catch her eye. She was like that during tests. I turned back around.
The Examiner said, “Put your lunch pails on the floor. Verify that your name is on the pink booklet in front of you.”
Mine was.
“And on the answer booklet.”
Mine was.
“Many of your answers will go into the pink booklets, but for math problems and longer paragraph answers, you may use the answer booklet. You may work in any order, but make sure to number the answers you enter in the blank book. You have all day today, but not any longer. There will be a break at noon for lunch and stretching.”
She paused, but no one moved. No one would dare open the booklets before being instructed to.
The Examiner’s manner changed, from being someone who looked like she would take a ruler to us for the slightest infraction to someone who might, maybe, give a crying child a hug.
Maybe.
“Before you begin, I want to thank you for volunteering to serve your country. You are very young, and, if selected, you may spend the rest of your childhoods away from home. None of you have taken the decision to be here lightly. Nor have your families. All of Sofarende appreciates your willingness.”
She looked each of us in the eye in turn.
Then she became stern again.
“There is to be no talking. If you need to use the washroom, raise your hand, and my assistant will escort you in silence. Otherwise, no one who leaves will be permitted to return.
“You may open your booklets and begin.”
A quick flutter of paper as forty booklets were opened at the same time; cracks of the booklets’ spines being creased to lie open; taps of pencils being removed from the grooves in the desks. I glanced around the room, but when my eyes looked forward the Examiner was watching me again, so I cleared my throat and opened my own pink booklet.
Fifty pages crammed full of tiny, typed text. I turned through the pages, slowly. Enough work for a day, or two, even for a grown-up.
It probably wasn’t possible to finish the test today.
We wouldn’t be expected to.
Phew.
I settled on pages with math I knew, opened the blank blue book, and got to work.
After the math, I moved on to translations. They seemed to expect us to know every language on the Continent, and those from Eilean and Nor’land, too! I thought I understood most of the passages, and scribbled out everything I could.
I was surprised when the Examiner announced, “Please close your booklets. You may stretch, walk around this room, and eat, but you are still not permitted to talk.”
I stretched, got my lunch pail, and looked to Megs. We walked over to the wall and sat together.
I opened my lunch pail to find that Father hadn’t been the only one who’d wanted me to have treats today. My slice of bread, packed by Mother, had a paper-thin spread of butter and, even more unbelievable, a sprinkle of sugar. There was also a small, beautifully shined, green apple.
Megs’s sandwich had an extra slice of spicy red sausage on it. Extra meat was even more special than my sprinkle of sugar.
I pulled my sweater more tightly around my middle and leaned against Megs.
Megs sat straight and stiff. She took tiny bites, chewing carefully.
Halfway through my sugared bread, I held it out to her. She shook her head. Halfway through my apple, I held that out to her, too. She shook her head again, but I continued holding out the apple. She took two bites and handed it back.
The Examiner’s attendant came by and offered us each a glass of water and a trip to the washroom. The Examiner, while keeping a close eye on everyone, set two new pencils on every desk, takin
g the dull ones away. Where a student had worn out the erasers in the morning, she left an extra pink cube eraser for the afternoon.
Megs and I stayed together against the wall, and I squeezed her hand.
She would do fine. She would be picked to go.
Though if this was how nervous she was on testing day, what about all the days that would follow? When she was serving in the war?
When Megs went, she would go without me.
THE TEST BECAME MORE and more peculiar as I flipped through the pages.
About ten pages had blank maps to fill in.
A map of the Continent was labeled for the current year. Since borders had been shifting with the advance of Tyssia, I added last month before the year. I shaded all of the Skaven lands as part of Tyssia. I named the southern states, the small countries to the west and south of Erobern that blocked their sea access, as best I could.
A map of the whole world was labeled THE GREATEST HISTORICAL EXTENT OF SOFARENDE. I shaded in most of where we are now with more Tyssian provinces included, and then the colonies all over the world.
We didn’t have colonies anymore. We’d given them up, granted freedom to those lands, and focused on life at home.
After the maps were questions or instructions:
Describe the origins of Sofarende.
All of us knew that. The ancient and medieval Eileans and Nor’landers and Sofarers sailed to each other’s lands and blended, so that Sofarenders were descended from those peoples, too. We spread into southern parts of Sofarende, like where we lived, that were more mountainous, and mixed with the mountain peoples there, too, the peoples who on other mountains became Tyssians or Erobins. We were strong because we were made of everyone. All the provinces voted to be one country, under one seafarer flag, a hundred years ago.
How did the current war come about?
I jotted down how Tyssia had taken the Skaven kingdoms, one by one. Sofarende and Eilean had pledged to defend the Skaves if anything like that happened, so we had to fight. Then Tyssia joined with Erobern and started attacking us.
Next came pages and pages of patterns—numerical, geometric, lyrical, musical—without directions. I continued each or wrote down what I noticed.
Then there was a whole page that was a jumble of letters, like a word-find puzzle. I circled some words I found in the lines, but I didn’t know if I could look backward and diagonally, too, or change direction midword, or if I could just use the jumble of letters to create words. So I just circled words every which way until the paper was crammed full of circles, and then I started listing on the side. I concentrated so hard I forgot I was taking a test.
I turned the page and went completely still.
326) How do aerials stay up?
327) When flying at 10,000 feet and 350 miles per hour toward a target with a load to drop, when should you drop the load to hit the target?
Was this what the whole test was about after all?
Were they looking for kids to fly aerials?
Were these the only questions in this whole booklet that mattered?
I didn’t want to fly aerials. I didn’t want to drop bombs on people.
I looked at the first question again. I had no idea what kept aerials up. So I just wrote, “Engines. Propellers. Wings. Air pressure.”
As for the second question, I didn’t know how to do those kinds of calculations. I figured that the load would be moving forward, like the aerial itself, so I wrote, “Before you get there.”
Suddenly Kaleb got up, his chair scraping loudly on the wooden floor. He walked to the front of the room, handed in his booklets, and left.
We stared after him.
In the next few minutes, other boys started handing in their exams, too. Maybe they had just been waiting for someone to be brave enough to go first.
How had they decided they were done? Had they answered everything they knew? Or were they just tired of answering?
I didn’t think I had answered enough yet. As I flipped through the remaining pages, the questions became more and more random.
Draw and label a sound fortress.
That was actually something I could do, though I wondered which country’s features they wanted me to use. I decided the key word was sound. I could pull from any tradition, as long as it made a good fortress.
Hmm.
I drew.
You are packing a picnic lunch for a friend. What do you include?
What was this? A chance to show that I knew proper nutrition? Then why wouldn’t they ask for a whole week’s meals?
Bread, meat, cheese, fruit…
Then something else occurred to me, so I wrote, “That depends on what my friend likes to eat.”
Suddenly someone was crying. From a few seats back and to my right.
Megs.
She flew up the aisle and out the door.
She wouldn’t be allowed back in.
That was the rule.
I ran into the hallway. “Megs?”
I found her down the hall, back against the wall, knees drawn up. The Examiner’s assistant approached her, but when she heard my footsteps, she paused. She nodded at me and returned to the classroom door. The Examiner poked her head into the hallway, saw me crouching down to talk to Megs, gave me a stern, searching look, and shut the door.
We were officially done with the test.
Relief washed through me, warm as sunshine.
But Megs…
She had her arms drawn up over her head, which was resting on her knees.
I put a hand on her shoulder, but she flinched and drew in her breath as if burned.
“Megs, it’s just me.”
She was crying too hard to answer, so I sat down next to her.
Finally Megs said, “What am I going to tell Mother? What will she say? She’s going to be so disappointed. I couldn’t finish it. I tried and tried, but it was like I would never finish.”
How had she not seen?
“You weren’t meant to finish. No one was.”
She looked at me through her fingers. “Really? Why didn’t I notice that?”
“You were probably…so focused you didn’t see it. I bet you still did great. I bet you answered enough to show how smart you are.”
“You really think that’s possible?”
“Of course I do. I bet everything you wrote down was…was perfect.”
Something caught in my throat and I stopped talking.
Megs stopped crying and looked up. My being unable to continue was to Megs what Father’s saving for the coins had been to me. His saving confirmed that he thought I wouldn’t make it. My crying confirmed that I believed she would go.
She would go, and I would never see her again.
Miss Tameron walked down the hallway.
“All done, girls?” Her eyes scanned our red, puffy ones.
We nodded.
“That’s a relief, then?”
We nodded.
“Have a good night. I’ll be glad to have you back tomorrow. No one wanted to answer my questions without you, Megs. Oh, Mathilde, did you know you have blue paint on your ear?”
I reached up to feel both of my ears; they must have glowed pink with my embarrassment.
“Good night, girls.”
“Good night, Miss Tameron.”
Megs seemed calmer. I stood in front of her, presenting both hands, and she took them. Hers were still wet with tears. Hard to hold on to as she stood up.
—
At dinner, Kammi pushed her chair close to mine. We kept bumping elbows as we cut our meat and carrots. When Mother turned to get something from the stove, I poured half of my milk into Kammi’s glass.
“How was it, Big?”
“Hmm?”
What was the best thing to say? That I’d walked out of the test, to follow Megs, when maybe I could have done more?
They probably wouldn’t be too impressed by that.
“I answered a lot of questions.”
br /> “What kinds of things did they ask you?” Father asked.
“Math, translations, patterns…”
“So you think it went well?” Mother asked.
“You let me go with blue paint on my ear.”
“It suited you,” Mother said. The corners of her mouth twitched into a smile; suddenly Father and I were smiling, too.
The glowing candlelight—no electricity tonight—seemed to flicker inside me as well, warm and soothing.
A shred of darkness remained, like that creeping in through the windows between the curtains.
Megs would be going away.
THREE DAYS LATER, the entire school was called to an assembly at the end of the day. The teachers tried to hush us, to make us face forward.
Then the Examiner marched in and we fell silent.
“I am here to announce the results of the Aptitude Test, which many of you sat just a few days ago. We very much appreciate the willingness of each student. From this group, I have selected one for service.”
Megs’s hand, which had been pressed into mine, went slack. I tried to hold on.
“Please offer your congratulations to…” The Examiner looked around, trying to locate her winner. Her victim.
“Mathilde Joss.”
—
Megs’s hand finally slipped out of mine.
Everyone was still and quiet.
A hand touched my shoulder. “This way, Mathilde.” Miss Tameron guided me to the door of the hall as students moved up the aisle around me.
“Congratulations, Mathilde.”
“Congratulations.”
But it didn’t sound like congratulations. It sounded heavier. Like they weren’t happy. Or wobbly. Like they were scared.
Scared for my life?
That was it. My life had ended. I’d stopped breathing. My heart had stopped beating, when the Examiner had said my name.
Megs had been next to me, but where was she? When had we been separated? And Kammi? She’d been in the room, too. Why hadn’t she come to find me?
—
The Examiner waited for me in the principal’s office, alone. I sat, legs numb and fingers tingly.
“Congratulations, Mathilde. You should be very proud.” She sat in the principal’s chair.