Free The Spirit Gate by Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff Page A

hardly
conventional. The first week of your courses here will be mostly orientation.
The next worship day, there will be a ceremony in the college cesia and you and
your classmates will be officially initiated . . .” He looked her up and down,
then sighed. “It
may be difficult to find a robe that will fit you. Initiates are usually so
much younger.” He dipped his head then, and left her alone with her gaping classmates.
    Kassia’s
first week at Lorant was a blur of frustration, boredom and loneliness. Except
for one or two, her fellow first year Initiates kept her at suspicious arm’s length. Some of them
seemed honestly afraid of her. Even among those she had tutored in reading and
writing, there was fear; they’d
never seen her without her hair decorously covered with either scarf or snood.
Now, they whispered behind her back and fled before her face.
    Her only friend at Lorant, it seemed, was the old kite
master, Shagtai. Her first day, when she had retreated to the courtyard during
a break to find sun and solitude, he had been there tending his kites and had
shared a bit of his strong, black tea. It was both bitter and sweet and made
Kassia’s tongue
all but curl up in her mouth, but she so appreciated the gesture, that she
drank every last drop.
    Devora appeared with Beyla at mid-day, bringing her a lunch
of bread and honey and Shagtai produced another pot of deadly tea and a story
for Beyla. When Kassia left them to return to class, an enthralled Beyla was
following his new friend through the forest of kite strings and begging to
learn how to fly them.
    The last school day of the week ended early so that the
Initiates might take their Induction robes home and have them altered in time
for the Celek day ceremony. As for Kassia, there was no amount of alteration
that would make the child’s
gown of deep blue with its crescent moon badge and scattering of embroidered
stars fit her adult frame.
    “I’m very sorry,” Master Tamukin had said in all sincerity, “but it’s
the only one we have that would even come close to fitting you. It was made for
a rather . . . large young man several years ago, but
unfortunately, he was also quite . . . short.” The young sorcerer’s
eyes were suddenly aswim with mirth-born mist. He cleared his throat in lieu of
laughing. “If you’d come to us in a
rather more traditional fashion, we might have had time . . .” He shrugged apologetically and Kassia took the little robe and hurried
away before she said something she’d
later regret.
    Now, the robe wadded in her hands, she barely kept herself
from running all the way back down the Holy Hill to the village. The wind that
stirred the trees and fluttered about her face seemed alive with tension. It
lapped at her until she wanted to scream or cry or turn her “firebirds” loose in Damek’s
office to set it aflame. She threw herself into Devora’s shop and plowed through into the kitchens only to
hesitate in the doorway, her face plaintive and angry.
    “Mother
of Spirits!” exclaimed Devora, glancing up from a lump of dough she was kneading into
submission. “Has
old Damek insulted you again?”
    Kassia produced the Induction robe from behind her back. “I’m supposed to wear
this to the Induction tomorrow.”
    Devora eyed it expressionlessly, then turned back to her
kneading. “Ay,
that’d be
tradition, right enough. The little ones always wear the night sky and the
stars.”
    Kassia waved the thing in the air. “But that’s
the trouble, Devora. I’m
not a little one! Look at it! It’ll
come only to my knees—it’s supposed to be a
gown, not a tunic!”
    Devora stopped kneading and wiped flour coated hands on her
apron. “That’s not what this is
really about, is it—an
Induction gown?”
    “No,
it’s . . .
it’s about . . .
this whole week. I’m
not learning anything, Devora. My mother taught me what these first years are
learning when I was younger than they are. You should have