Princess Academy By Shannon Hale

Chapter 1

The east says it's dawn
My mouth speaks a yawn
My bed clings to me and begs me to stay I hear a work song
Say winter is long
I peel myself up and then make away

  Miri woke to the sleepy bleating of a goat. The world was as dark as eyes closed, but perhaps the goats could smell dawn seeping through the cracks in the house's stone walls. Though still half-asleep, she was aware of the late autumn chill hovering just outside her blanket, and she wanted to curl up tighter and sleep like a bear through frost and night and day.

  Then she remembered the traders, kicked off her blanket, and sat up. Her father believed today was the day their wagons would squeeze up the mountain pass and rumble into the village. This time of year, all the villagers felt the rush for the last trading of the season, to hurry and square off a few more Under blocks and make that much more to trade, that much more to eat during the snow-locked months. Miri longed to help.

  Wincing at the rustle of her pea-shuck mattress, Miri stood and stepped carefully over her pa and older sister, Marda, asleep on their pallets. For a week she had harbored an anxious hope to run to the quarry today and be already at work when her pa arrived. Perhaps then he might not send her away.

  She pulled her wool leggings and shirt over her sleep clothes, but she had not yet laced her first boot when a crunch of pea-shucks told her that someone else had awakened.
  Pa stirred the hearth embers and added goat dung. The orange light brightened, pushing his huge shadow against the wall.

"Is it morning?" Marda leaned up on one arm and squinted at the firelight.

"Just for me," said their father.

He looked to where Miri stood, frozen, one foot in a boot, her hands on the laces.

"No," was all he said.

"Pa." Miri stuffed her other foot in its boot and went to him, laces trailing on the dirt floor. She kept her voice casual, as though the idea had just occurred to her. "I thought that with the accidents and bad weather lately, you could use my help, just until the traders come."

  Pa did not say no again, but she could see by the concentrated way he pulled on his boots that he meant it. From outside wafted one of the chanting songs the workers sang as they walked to the quarry. I hear a work song say winter is long. The sound came closer, and with it an insistence that it was time to join in, hurry, hurry, before the workers passed by, before snow encased the mountain inside winter. The sound made Miri's heart feel squeezed between two stones. It was a unifying song and one that she was not invited to join.
   
  Embarrassed to have shown she wanted to go, Miri shrugged and said, "Oh well." She grabbed the last onion from a barrel, cut off a slice of brown goat cheese, and handed the food to her father as he opened the door.
"Thank you, my flower. If the traders come today, make me proud." He kissed the top of her head and was singing with the others before he reached them.

  Her throat burned. She would make him proud.
Marda helped Miri do the inside chores—sweeping the hearth and banking the coals, laying the fresh goat dung out to dry, adding more water to the salt pork soaking for dinner. As Marda sang, Miri chattered about nothing, never mentioning their pa's refusal to let her work. But gloom hung heavy on her like wet clothes, and she wanted to laugh and shake it off.

"Last week I was passing by Bena's house," said Miri, "and her ancient grandfather was sitting outside. I was watching him, amazed that he didn't seem bothered by a fly that was buzzing around his face, when, smack. He squashed it right against his mouth."

Marda cringed.

"But Marda, he left it there," said Miri. "This dead fly stuck just under his nose. And when he saw me, he said, 'Good evening, miss,' and the fly..." Miri's stomach cramped from trying to keep speaking through a laugh. "The fly wobbled when he moved his mouth...and...and just then its little crushed wing lifted straight up, as if it were waving hello to me, too!"