Max nodded. “How did you know?”
The man sat back, and his smile was easy now, comfortable. “They brought you here,” he said. “No one comes without them. I can answer them for you, if you’ll let me.”
Max grinned suddenly and looked back, trying to catch Susan’s eye. But Susan again had gone somewhere inside her own head, and he saw that at the same time Nell did. So he looked at her instead and nodded, eyebrows raised.
Nell flushed. Was he asking her permission? Permission to do what he wanted, and what Susan had said they had to? She’d wanted to be asked, and now, for a fraction of an instant, Max was asking. Ever so slightly, she nodded back, feeling a warm pleasure spreading up her cheeks.
He had asked.
“Master Watcher,” the old man said, “tell the council I have found my student.”
Nell had been asked, but she began to regret her answer on the spot when the Guide announced lessons would begin immediately. The Master Watcher took that as a cue to try to hustle the rest of them out the door, possibly by force, as necessary. The girls were saved the indignity of actually being shoved through only by Jean. Suddenly understanding that they were, in fact, being separated from Max, Jean got a familiar look on her face — the one that said she’d be getting painfully loud in under thirty seconds if somebody didn’t do something quick. Max headed her off by begging for a minute to say good-bye to his sisters. So as the Master Watcher tapped his foot, looking like he’d just sucked a lemon, Max joined them in the hall.
He glanced down at his feet, and Nell saw in the polished tiles the faint reflection of the five of them, bulky, blurry shapes, one of which was fidgeting. That was Max. He leaned toward Jean and lowered his voice.
“It’ll be all right, Jean. You’ll see. I’m going to learn things here. Things that will get us home. Tell her, Susan.”
Kate had taken Susan’s hand and was hanging on for dear life. Nell watched her tug at it now, just to make sure Susan was listening, but she needn’t have worried, because Susan’s expression had sharpened. She looked from Max to the old man through the door, then back at Jean.
“He will,” she said. “This is the place to do it, right? Look at all those books!”
“And I’ll write you a letter!” Max added in a sudden fit of inspiration. “A real one this time. I’ll tell you all about it — I promise.”
“And he’ll visit,” Nell said, thinking she ought to get at least a word in. “A lot. Right, Max?”
Jean, who had perked up at the promise of a letter, nodded vigorously. “Letters,” she said. “And visiting every day, right?”
Max glanced uneasily back at the Master Watcher, waiting none too patiently in the room with the old man. “As much as I can,” he said. “It’ll be great. I promise.”
And so they left, but if Max’s promise referred to general greatness, Nell thought, it was broken before they were halfway across the second garden, when the Master Watcher deposited them in the care of a florid-faced woman who smelled faintly of boiled carrots.
He called her Shepherdess, though she didn’t look to Nell like she spent much time outside with the sheep. She wore her graying hair in a loose bun that bobbed at the back of her head when she spoke, and her spotless, sand-colored dress, which just brushed the tops of her shoes, billowed when she walked.
“You’ve brought me girls!” she said delightedly when she met them near the artisan booths. “And so changed already! Wonders!”
She was so enthusiastic that Nell took an instant dislike to her.
“Mistress Meva will show you your places,” the Master Watcher said by way of good-bye. Nell watched him go with rising impatience, wishing he were more like the old man, who seemed so delighted with questions.
Mistress Meva took Kate’s hand and then Jean’s, without asking.
“Such small things!” she said. “Wonders, really!”
Kate looked mildly scandalized, and Jean pulled her hand away, but the Shepherdess didn’t seem affronted. She laughed and pinched Jean gently on the cheek.
“It’s all right,” she said. “We’ll be friends soon. Now, come and I’ll get you ready to start school.”
Following as the woman hurried the girls along, Nell whispered bitterly to Susan that the Shepherdess was the kind of adult who treated little kids like puppies. Susan, distracted again, said nothing.
“You act like you’re sleepwalking,” Nell complained. “Will you pay attention at least?”
Susan looked up, frowning. “I am paying attention,” she said. But her voice didn’t sound right.
It was only when they reached the first band that Susan woke up. Following Mistress Meva, they crossed through the first garden, skirting fruit trees and jumping over flower beds in their haste to keep up. Unlike the Master Watcher, the Shepherdess, despite her speedy pace, said hello to everyone and waved at the ones too far to speak to. Nell wondered why she wasn’t out of breath by the time they reached a wide set of double doors in the inner wall of the first band, but she never slowed as she beckoned them into a long passage that smelled invitingly like breakfast and hurried them toward a second set of doors.
“You’re in for a treat now!” she said to them as she pushed through.
They came to a dead stop on the other side. Susan’s head snapped up, and Nell grinned.
“It’s a library,” Susan whispered.
Nell breathed in the scent of old paper and warm dust and the lemony aroma of polished wood and thought that if it was, it was one that had swallowed a pill and become a giant. They stood beneath great cliffs of books, walls like mountainsides made of volume after volume without end. The books soared toward distant ceilings, where skylights poured sunlight onto the
