Caroline Stevermer [College o A College of Magics (retail) (e

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.”“What do you mean, similar?”“You’re from the same part of the world.You’re from the same sort of background.Not like me.I’m as plain as a potato.At my interview, the proctor made me promise faithfully to keep my shoes on and to stay no matter how desperately homesick I feel.And that was that.I was accepted.”“Are you homesick?”Odile smiled.“Not really.It’s too flat here and they have the wrong kind of trees and not enough of them.But I’m not desperate.”Faris sighed.Odile regarded her closely.“You aren’t either, you know.There’s no excuse for being homesick yet.You have far too much to do these first few weeks.After the novelty wears off, you might be on your guard.But for now, don’t think about trees.Think about Greenlaw.”2“What do you think standards are for?”With Odile’s help, Faris made her way into the pattern of life at Greenlaw College.She followed steep staircases and winding corridors from lesson to lesson: grammar, logic, rhetoric, natural history, natural philosophy, Latin, Greek, algebra, geometry, dance, and deportment.The sheer amount of work would have overwhelmed her if she’d felt obliged to do any of it.But she had noticed with relish that no one seemed to care what she did or when she did it.Within the confines of Greenlaw College, she was quite free.“No one expects anything of new students,” Odile confided, over the evening meal at the end of Faris’s first full day of classes.“If you turn your work in promptly, you’ll be all right.”Faris refrained from mentioning that she had no intention of turning work in, promptly or otherwise.“But what if it isn’t finished?”“Turn it in anyway.” Odile stirred the gray soup in her bowl and frowned at the residue on her spoon.“I hear we are to have an English cook this year.I see it must be so.Pass the bread, if you please.”Faris passed the basket of bread.“What if it isn’t any good?”Odile inspected the bread carefully.“It’s from the bakery in the High Street, same as ever.Of course it’s good.” She selected a roll and broke it over her bowl of soup.“Not the bread.My work.”“Oh, don’t be an idiot.Of course it won’t be any good.How could it be? You don’t know anything.” Odile gave Faris a swift and brutal summary of those in the student body she considered to be from backgrounds similar to Faris’s.Faris sheltered her thoughts behind her habitual expression of composure.“Some of them are all right, I suppose,” Odile conceded.“But most are like the Roman.She’s third-year, mercifully.A Russian grand duchess, if you please.They say even her family can’t bear her and I don’t blame them.They also say the proctors tried to send her down during her first year but it made no impression on her.She couldn’t get thrown out if she tried and she’s too lazy to try.The pity of it is, she has a voice.She just can’t be bothered to practice.A wasted space.” Odile shook her head sadly.“I don’t know why she bothers to honor us with her presence.”Odile’s diatribe made Faris think again about the merits of doing nothing.If it were difficult to get expelled, it might be tempting to accept the challenge.But although it might bother her uncle a trifle to have her sent down, Faris knew it wouldn’t inconvenience him for long.The world was full of finishing schools.He’d find one that would take her, no matter what crime she contrived to try the patience of the proctors.But to Faris, failure at Greenlaw would be dishonor, whether she was sent home in disgrace or—far worse—kept on condescendingly, as a wasted space.It would be good to be home in Galazon, true.But it would be better to come home a witch of Greenlaw.“Do you think I’ll be able to catch up with the other students?”“You are at a disadvantage, arriving so late in the term.What possessed your uncle? Anyone would think he wanted you to fail.”“Harvest was late this year.School fees don’t just materialize out of thin air, you know.”“I know.Oh, I know.” Odile nodded sagely.“It’s not impossible to catch up, if you stay out of trouble.Do your reading.Leave the other students alone, particularly second-years.They’ve been here long enough to know how to get into trouble, and they still have the energy to bother.”What Faris liked best about Greenlaw was that no one paid her the least attention.She took Odile’s advice about keeping to herself.Also on Odile’s recommendation, Faris cut classes judiciously and used the free time to make up her work as it was called in and graded.The first lecture of the day was the only event that required attendance, the rest were subject to the students’ discretion.There was far too much work assigned in each class to make attendance at all of them possible.Her fellow students at first had given Faris the impression of high intelligence and strange intensity.Even slight familiarity taught her that this impression was, if not entirely mistaken, sadly incomplete.In fact, her fellow students were simply exhausted.Fatigue took strange forms.One day in the dining hall, Faris sat across the table from a first-year student who stared blankly at the single artichoke on the plate before her.“That looks good,” said Faris.The artichokes had vanished before she’d arrived and she cherished a faint hope that her classmate disliked them, perhaps enough to barter for it.“Extremely good,” agreed the first-year, dashing Faris’s hopes [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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