Ninka Evertrue's Arc

Chapter 22 of 29

Storm walked the tree line. The thread under Ninka's ribs held one mile out. She had bought an hour, maybe two. She still did not know what her children could do when the fight came inside. She crossed the meadow to the stone hall her teachers used as an office. Rebecka followed. The fire pit out front was cold. Ninka pushed the doors open and set a notebook on the balcony table by the window. "I need to know which of them can help," Ninka said. "Kaia is empty. The sparks boy sets fires in his sleep. I have nine others and I don't know what half of them do awake." "Then ask them," Rebecka said. "If I ask wrong, one of them tries to prove it and dies out there." Rebecka set a glass bottle on the table. The cork was a rainbow crystal. The liquid inside moved on its own, pale and slow. "Katia sent this up with me. One drop on the tongue tells a gifted child what their gift is for. Not what it can do. What it is for. A child who is meant to hide will know to hide. A child who is meant to stand will know to stand." Ninka picked up the bottle. It was warm. "And if it says wrong?" "It doesn't. That's the point of the name." Ninka called the children into the hall one at a time. She gave each of them a single drop from the crystal cork. She wrote what they said in the notebook. The sparks boy cried and said hide. She sent him to the cellar with a blanket. A girl with silver eyes said hide. Ninka sent her down too. A thin boy who had barely spoken since he arrived said, "Stand. I can make him not want to be here." Ninka wrote fear-push and set him by the front doors. A freckled girl said stand. She could pull water from the well through the walls. Ninka put her at the back window with a bucket. Kaia came last. She had no gift left. The drop still worked. "Hide," Kaia whispered, ashamed. Ninka kissed her forehead and sent her to the cellar to count heads. Nine children placed. Two to stand. Seven safe below stone. Rebecka watched from the doorway. "You used the whole bottle." "I used what I had to." Outside, Storm's voice carried across the meadow, short and even. "He's at the tree line." The thread under Ninka's ribs went slack. Her father had stopped walking. He had felt something new inside the school and was deciding. Ninka closed the notebook. She had two children at the doors and a warrior in crystal plate at the edge. It was not enough, and it was what she had. "Ready," she said to the hall.