Free Princess Academy by Shannon Hale Page B

take care of it some evening.
    Miri’s eyes went to the painting of the house. Wishing to leave her mountain felt like giving up on her pa, and she could not bear to do that. But with that house, she could keep her family close and still travel to new places and learn new things. And if she won, Marda would never have to kill a rabbit and wash off the blood in a snowdrift. Pa would never have to add more water to the gruel to get them through a late-winter dinner. They could sit in the shade of their large house and sip sweet drinks, learn to play lowlander instruments, and stare at the flowers.
    Mount Eskel’s scattered trees and dull grasses could not stand up to the lowland’s gardens. It made Miri wonder if rumors were true that the lowlanders had a gift for making things grow.
    Knut entered the classroom and stopped short when he saw Miri. “I thought you were all outside. I just came to clean.”
    “Hello, Knut,” she said. He did not respond or even nod, and that made her laugh. “Are you forbidden to talk out of turn, just like us?”
    Knut smiled then, and his short beard stuck out even more. “More or less. But I don’t think she’ll put me in the closet for saying hello.”
    “I promise not to tell. Knut, have you ever seen the house in this painting?”
    “What, the princess house? No, I don’t believe so, though there’re plenty of the like down in Asland and the other big cities. Pretty garden that one has. My father was a gardener for such a place most of his life.”
    “You mean all he did all day was work in a garden?”
    “Yes. Leastways that was his profession. He also liked to play a fluty instrument called a jop in the evenings and take me and my sister fishing on rest days.”
    “Hmm.” Miri tried to imagine the kind of life where fishing was a holiday game instead of a way to get food. “Not many gardens here.”
    Knut rubbed the gray in his beard. “Not many? I’d say not a one.”
    Miri felt her face go hot, and she was trying to think of something to say in defense of her mountain when Knut turned his smile to the window and said, “Not that you need them for scenery with these mountaintops taking your breath away.”
    And immediately Miri decided that Knut was the best sort of person. She asked him about gardens and the lowlands, heard about farms that stretched so far you had to ride a fast pony to get from one end to the other before noon, and the fancy gardens the rich had, full of plants just to look at instead of to eat. He taught her the names of several flowers and trees in the painting.
    “My name is Miri, like the pink flower that grows around linder beds. Do you have miri flowers in the lowlands?”
    “No, I think miri must be a mountain flower.”
    He startled at a sound from outside. “I should go.” He looked out the door and around, as if checking to see if Olana were nearby, then leaned toward Miri and whispered, “I don’t like the way she treats you. It should change.” He gestured to the book in her hands. “Keep reading that one, Miri, and you won’t be sorry.”
    So Miri sighed, sat down, and reopened Danlander Commerce . Even Olana’s obscure lecture had been easier to understand. Olana had said that Commerce was the trading of one thing of value for another thing of value. The only thing of value on the mountain was linder, so Miri thumbed through the book, scanning for any mention of it. She found a passage in a chapter titled “Danlander Commodities.”
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    Of all the building stones, linder is most favored. It is hard enough to hold up great palaces and never crack, yet light enough to haul long distances. It is highly polishable, and linder one thousand years laid still gleams like new silver. Chapels must be made of wood, but a palace requires linder. In Danland, the only known beds of linder are found on Mount Eskel.
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    Miri brushed her fingertips over the passage. She had not known that linder was so rare. “That makes Mount Eskel