Nell grimaced. Susan sounded like somebody’s mother, like she’d aged ten years all of a sudden and would soon be a hundred if somebody didn’t stop her. She was tired, all right. But Nell worried sleep wouldn’t be enough to fix it.
By the time Kate and Jean returned, holding a new letter from Max, Susan was fast asleep on the bed, still frowning. Jean went to wake her.
“Leave her!” Nell said. “Can’t you see she needs her sleep?”
Now I’m sounding like somebody’s mother, she thought bleakly.
“But this one’s harder than the other,” Jean said. “She’d want to read it, wouldn’t she?”
“I’ll read it,” Nell said. “And we’ll show Susan when she wakes up.”
To her surprise, Jean handed the letter over. “Go on,” she said. “It’s even longer than the first one.”
Nell’s heart raced a little as she unfolded the letter. Maybe this time Max had found something worth writing about!
“‘Dear Jean,’” she began as Jean and then Kate jumped up beside her on the bed. “‘I’m sorry I haven’t been able to visit as much as I wanted. I know waiting is hard, but great discoveries take patience — I’ve read that more than once. It’s historically right there in all the books. As it is, I’m working as hard and as fast as I can.’”
Nell hoped it was true. She raced on:
“Tur Kaysh says it’s important not to break concentration, and I’m trying my best not to because concentration is so important here. Maybe it is always, but it’s different here. I’m starting to understand some things. You know how at home there can be some big kids who just outweigh everybody and push them around because of that? Maybe you haven’t seen that so much yet in your grade. I have. Scientifically, it’s just body mass, right? Like this advantage they have with this body they got into, and they throw it around and make things happen (like getting people’s lunches or whatever). Well, here it’s different. Here it’s how sharp you can think that makes things happen. That is, it’s a gift to have good concentration, like the Guide says, but you have to work for it, no matter what. When I think of it like that, I think that Ganbihar is better than home in that way. Fairer, right? At home people are always saying things like it’s what’s on the inside that counts, but here it really does. The Guide says the city is like a pit that we fell into from forgetting. He means the people here, but I was thinking that it could apply back home, too. Anyway, so don’t worry, I’m learning a lot and I’m going to figure things out and then we’ll all be able to get back. Just, I’m thinking that maybe it would even be better if we could go back and forth. Maybe I’ll figure that out, too.
Your brother,
Max”
Nell sat looking at the letter a second when she’d finished. She glanced over at Susan. If Max could see Susan now, would he still want to come back to this place? She wondered.
Kate often wore a strange and penetrating look, full of yearning, as if she would readily shed her own skin and take on another’s, take Nell’s or Susan’s, if she could. Nell disliked it and Susan humored it, and Kate, unaware, went on looking with eyes like garden spades meant for digging. She wore that look now, watching Susan. Susan had gotten up from sleep no better than when she lay down. To Nell, it looked almost as if she hadn’t gotten up at all, only opened her eyes and moved to sit stiffly at the desk, still dozing. Above her, the weaving of the man emerging from the water jumped in the lamplight, but Susan, though her face was lifted to it, did not see. She had lost all pretense of busying herself, and not even a book sat open before her to hide her distraction.
“Susan? What are you looking at? Hey, Susan!”
She called two or three times and then went and nudged her sister. Only then did Susan turn, frown in Nell’s direction, and pull a book from the pile. But she only pretended to read. Nell watched her with mounting panic.
This time, Nell took Jean with her when she left the room. Jean, though not as watchful as Kate, well understood the meaning of the tight silence that filled the room and was happy to escape it.
“We’re going to get Max,” Nell said to her, and Jean’s face lit up.
It wasn’t as straightforward as that, unfortunately. Nell realized that she didn’t even know where Max slept, though she had heard that the boys were housed on one of the upper floors of the first band. Minna had told her that families inhabited the far side of the band, but this side, the side facing west, was home to all the children who had come parentless to the sanctuary. Nell could only think to knock at the door of the woman who oversaw the younger girls, Mistress Dendra.
“You knock,” she said to Jean. “She’ll expect you to ask a question.”
Mistress Dendra wore her hair in a thick black braid. She had a habit of playing with it, and Nell had seen her, taking Jean’s group through the first garden, tugging at the end of it as if leading herself around on a dark leash. Mistress Dendra was pretty, and young, and not nearly as annoying as the Shepherdess.
She opened the door, looking sleepy.
“Jean? Are you all right? Is there a problem?”
There was, but no amount of arguing would convince the young woman that she should call for Max, and certainly not the Master Watcher, whom Nell brought up reluctantly. Boys were not allowed to visit after hours, even brothers.
And so Nell and Jean trudged
