Maniu T's Arc

Chapter 4 of 9

Thursday morning, Mark's seat was empty. So was the seat beside it. Only one child sat in the schoolroom, a small boy with his hands folded tight in his lap. He looked at the two empty chairs, then at the door, then at Maniu. Maniu knew that look. It was the look of a child counting how long before he ran too. "Wait here," Maniu said. "Read the board. I'll be back before you finish the list." He walked the road to Mark's house. The door opened before he knocked. Raina stood in the frame with flour on her hands and her jaw set. Mark's mother. The woman who had stayed when the landowner threatened her fields, and stayed again when the giant came down from the ridge. "He won't come today," Raina said. "He had a bad dream. He wet the bed. He's six." "I know he's six." "Then don't ask." Maniu did not ask. He stepped back from the door and sat on the low stone wall by her garden. He waited. Raina watched him from the doorway with her arms crossed. "If Mark isn't there," Maniu said, "the other two will go home by noon. Then there's no school by Monday. Then the giant wins without walking down the hill." "That's not my problem." "It is. Because next week he comes for your field anyway. You said that yourself, at my yard, with a hoe in your hand." Raina's jaw shifted. She looked past him at the road. A rider was coming up it. A white horse, clean as chalk, and on its back Princess Letter, her lettered dress bright against the dust. She had said she would ride the border towns this week. She had ridden here instead. She swung down without ceremony and walked straight to the doorway. "Where's the boy?" she said. "Inside," Raina said. "Scared." "Good. Scared means he understands." The princess crouched at the threshold and called into the house, gentle but plain. "Mark. I brought a letter for you. A blue one. B. It's yours if you carry it to school." A pause. Then small feet. Mark came to the door holding his slate against his chest. The princess held out a wooden B, painted blue, the edges worn smooth from other hands in other towns. Mark took it. "You don't have to be brave," she said. "You have to walk." Raina put a hand on her son's shoulder. She looked at Maniu. She nodded once. They walked back together. Three students at three desks by the time the sun cleared the roof. Maniu wrote B on the board beside the A from yesterday. That afternoon, a rider from the east side left a folded paper nailed to the schoolhouse door. The landowner's seal. Maniu had held the seat. Now the man with papers wanted his answer in person.