The Princess Academy (its time to shine)

Chapter 7

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

One 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.