Chapter 2

By the age of ten I had graduated from what was essentially a nursery – known as the Ward – and gone to stay with the older children in the western wing. This change was non-negotiable, not that I’ve ever heard of a ten-year-old arguing when being told they were moving up in the world. It was framed as an upgrade, with all the flowery language and notes of envy in the voices of my maidens, when they broke the news. A few looked sad, and that made me a little happy, as it meant that perhaps I was going to be missed. What other reason would they have for being sad? I couldn’t think of one.

It did strike me as odd that I was never once given a reason for such a big move. If I’d asked, I’m sure I would’ve been met by answers like “the nursery is too small for you! You’re a big boy now.” It was all true. I’d long since outgrown even the most interesting flecks of paint on the walls of my old room, memorized down to the last speck in my boredom. The games and lessons held there were of no further excitement for me either, perhaps because they were structured to engage all the children beyond the age of five. I can’t tell you how boring it was listening to the same distractions year after year, but: “patience is a virtue, as is obedience” the maidens would always say, sometimes with a distant look on their faces that made me feel lonely.

All this meant that I was bouncing on my toes the whole way over to the western wing, or “the mannerly hall” as it was known. I wasn’t the only youngling headed there, of course; the maidens tended to send children over in groups or two or three as they aged out of the Ward, usually together with their friends or those with kinship, as they were told. Children typically graduated once or twice a year, sometimes more – a loss which was offset by the steady trickle of new younglings being brought in from… somewhere. By their parents, we were told, the same as ourselves.

Now it was finally my turn, and along with me was my best friend in the whole entire world, Dornell.

Dornell – I called him Dorny – was a blond-haired boy who looked like he kept a secret with him at all times. A couple inches taller than myself and a bit larger of build, Dornell was a year older than I was, which made sense. At first I thought him shy; but after getting to know him better, I learned that he simply liked keeping things close to his chest until he felt he could share them with someone. He actually began talking a lot after we became buddies. But also yeah, I guess he was just a bit shy.

I was surprised but delighted to learn that the two of us were leaving together. Depending on who I asked, the answer was either that I was very smart and getting moved a year earlier than most, or that Dornell was a just little bit dumb, and therefore, he was being moved a year late. Personally I didn’t believe either of these reasons, as Dornell seemed perfectly smart to me – always pointing out things I hadn’t seen or finding answers to questions that had never even occurred to me – so I suspected they were just moving us together because we were friends, and neither of us had many other friends inside of that place.

I remember grabbing at his hand and trying to get him to hop with me as the marble floors slowly gave way to polished mahogany, and the ceilings began to grow taller, and more ornate. The entire western wing gleamed with a more “grown-up” look, and it delighted me to no end.

“Look, Dorny! See how the ceiling arches here? Maiden Toofive says that’s because this part of the Estate was built long before the Ward – and that the craftsmen who designed it had it in their heads that they were building a palace! I guess it pretty much is a palace anyway. But this is so much prettier than the Ward! Don’t you agree, Dorny?”

Dornell’s eyes swept over the walls and ceiling before slanting towards my own. A small grin took over his face, and that was volumes being spoken by Dorny, as he rarely smiled all the way. “Yeah Veille, I guess it is.”

Anyone meeting Dorny for the first time – or even the first many times – might assume that he was always just a little bit bored and uninterested in the things going on around him, but I knew better. Sure, sometimes he was bored, but he always paid extra-careful attention to every detail, especially the ones that had nothing to do with him.

I’d asked him once if he cataloged all that information and why he kept it. He’d just shrugged and said, “some of it, I guess. Might come in handy one day.”

He’d also confided in me that the reason he liked me as a friend was because I noticed things, too, and that I just didn’t see it yet. But the look in his eye made me think he was making a funny joke of some kind, and that he was proud of it.

Dornell pinched my hand. “But maiden Foreate also told me that the Ward wasn’t built any later than the rest of the Estate. It was designed that way because it had a different purpose than any of the other wings, and that clients of the Estate never came anywhere near there anyway.”

“But then why should it be so plain? Kids like nice-looking places, too.”

“Not sure. Maybe kids don’t usually think about these things, unlike us.”

We’d both gasped when the maidens led us into the massive room that was Mannerly Hall. Neither of us had ever seen a place so large or so open, apart from my glimpse out over the balcony of the northern wing many years ago, which I’d confided in Dornell about.

This place was as ornate as it was sensible; wide-open spaces between columns that looked to be made of brass took up most of what we could see, and even these spaces were full of tables and shelves and all manner of other furniture, only seeming inconsequential next to the sheer height of everything else. I gathered that most of these spaces were likely used for studying, or maybe arts and crafts, as somehow the games we were all used to felt suddenly frivolous beside the importance of whatever surely took place here.

The maidens led us between columns, between walls between the columns, ducking around couches and bookshelves in a perfectly deliberate pattern until eventually we wound up in a side-passage that led down into a barracks. This barracks was actually a bedroom, I noticed after a few blinks; not so very different from the Ward in design, but leagues different in size and in occupancy.

Bunk beds lined the walls that housed windows every few yards or so, letting in the warm glow of sunlight through glass not fully transparent, like the Ward also used. The place looked certainly more grown-up than I was used to. But perhaps the biggest difference was in the people: there were fewer children here than in the Ward, though it might just have seemed that way compared to the largeness of the place. Oh –  and “children” hardly seemed fair, either, for these were less like kids and more like… actual young adults.

It was hard to believe that these were indeed our peers. At least, some of them were; some were obviously more than a few years older than myself or Dornell, probably in their late teens, or near to.

I felt my jaw drop as I caught sight of one girl in particular. This one couldn’t possibly be the same age as me, as her face – and her body – reminded me more of Madam Dro than any of the other girls my own age. Her feminine beauty was intoxicating to me in more than just a fluttery-blushy type of way, though I felt those things too.

Like the others, she was watching the two newest additions to the group with obvious interest. Her eyes drifted first over Dornell and then onto me, and her face suddenly lit up in a smile that wiped years of tantrums and snotty boogers from my soul in an instant, and made those things seem so infantile, so foul in their immaturity that they surely couldn’t, in any way, remotely, even possibly be connected to myself or to the child I had once been. I was a man now; that much was suddenly beyond any debate for me, and I would bite at anyone who said otherwise.