Breakfast, after the dull misery of her dormitory room, was homey and comforting. Juele waited in line behind half a dozen other sleepy students. She slid a tray along a wooden track, peering over it at the glass hatches to see what she would like to eat. None of the food on offer was terribly inspiring, merely fuel for the day, but it was all familiar. Grain flakes in bowls, eggs cooked any which way, and tea and toast seemed to be the items most common to the few who were there for an early meal, although there was room for variation in the hot food section. Depending upon who was reaching for what, a plate containing an ordinary cooked breakfast of bacon and sausage and fried sliced tomatoes might become chunks of fish in white sauce with chopped onions with rye bread. Or kedgeree, rice porridge, and pickled vegetables. Or cold pizza, its congealed white cheese faintly greasy on the hot plate. Juele made a face and picked up the nearest dish, and was relieved to see the exotic foods on it give way to a fruit-covered waffle and a couple of sausage patties. The food smelled good. She was hungry, and not feeling adventurous. The Salon had been an exhausting experience, but so exciting. She hoped she would be able to go there again soon.
She was on her own. Mayrona had gotten up and gone out to her shadow class before Juele had awakened. Juele regretted not having a chance to ask Mayrona's forgiveness for keeping her up past midnight when she had a dawn class. In future Juele promised herself she wouldn't come in so late, for either of their sakes. She was weary, too. Only the prospect of her trip into town and her new classes put spring in her step.
The great dining room wasn't so overwhelmingly glum in daylight. The windows, set high into the wall above the oil paintings, threw rays on the darkly varnished paneling, picking out a ruddy tinge in the wood, and gave a gleam to the gold frames. The serving ladies, wearing shapeless black uniform dresses under white aprons, all looked like someone's mother. The last one, who handed her her pot of tea, gestured kindly toward the tables.
"Sit where you'd like, dear," she said.
Juele glanced around. At the ten tables, there were only eight people, one to a table, and all strangers. But breakfast, being a casual meal, might be the ideal time to strike up an acquaintance. She smiled tentatively at the first person to meet her eyes, a man in his thirties with a bushy beard and a tweed suit. Hastily, he looked down at his food. All right, Juele thought, not him. Palpable tension built and mounted as Juele walked through the hall. The people she passed quickly turned their attention to their breakfasts. She felt almost physically repelled away from some of the benches. No one else would meet her eyes. Too shy to intrude deliberately on any of the preoccupied diners, Juele chose one of the two empty tables and put her tray down on it. Once she made her decision, the room seemed to relax again.
The next person who came from the serving line, a plump woman with a long tail of black hair, took the last empty table. The room filled again with tension, like an unpleasant aroma. Juele watched with interest as the following person, a slightly balding man with a long nose, had to sit down at a table already occupied. He maneuvered carefully so he was not directly beside another human being (or otherwise—the girl at the farthest table from the door, under the dais, was eating like a bird, standing on the edge of her plate on tiny clawed feet and pecking away at bacon and toast). Subsequent diners arranged themselves in a kind of table chess, sitting as far from one another as possible until propinquity was absolutely unavoidable. Only after there were more than three people on a bench did anyone begin to speak to anyone else, and only in a gentle murmur quieter than the sound of footsteps on the stone floor. Two more people had joined her table, both intent on their own thoughts and meals. They weren't close enough for easy conversation. She would have to shout, and she didn't feel comfortable breaking the silence.
She started to pick up a piece of toast, and the tray vanished from the table top. Juele looked up, wondering where it had gone. Suddenly, the room shifted position. Juele let out a squawk of surprise. Her tray was in its place before her. The room hadn't moved, but she had. A fourth diner, an older woman with very dark eyes, had joined them, and the three already present at the table had automatically been rearranged to accommodate her. The room itself was moving people, Juele thought indignantly. Well, what if I'd like to sit with someone?
The arrangement left her across from a man with a brown beard and heavy eyebrows. She gave him a shy grin. With a look of surprise, he picked his napkin off his lap, wiped his mustache, and tossed the napkin onto his plate. He got up and stalked out. Juele looked after him, shocked. She hadn't meant to offend anyone. Was it forbidden to take any notice of one's fellow breakfasters? She spread her napkin on her lap and began to eat.
"New here, aren't ye?" a thin voice asked in plummy tones. Juele looked at her companions. None of them glanced up from their meals. The voice didn't sound as if it was coming from beside her. Juele cast around for the speaker. She heard a thin whistle overhead. "Up here, child."
Puzzled, Juele looked up, and met the eyes of one of the dark-varnished paintings on the upper walls across from her. "That's right, gel. How d'ye do?" The portrait depicted an elderly gentleman with a round face. His thinning white hair was pulled back into a queue and tied with a ribbon. His prominent blue eyes and apple cheeks bulged with good humor, and the painted grin was amiable. Apart from the meticulous representation of a ruffled jabot at his throat, his costume had been only roughly sketched by the artist. Juele got the impression of a dark, fine fabric suit, but little detail. "Eh? Hard of hearin', are ye?"
"No, not at all," Juele said. "I'm doing fine, thank you. How do you do?"
"Well enough, well enough," said the portrait. "Devil it is that children don't eat decently these days. What's that flat thing there?"
"A waffle," Juele explained. "It's made of flour and eggs and, er, ironed."
"Ironed! Hah! Looks like they didn't get all the lumps out."
"No, sir," Juele said.
"You ought to have meat! Go up and tell those drab-feathered harpies to give you a good slice from a haunch of venison, child!"
"Let the girl dine in peace!" snapped a voice from a darkly varnished canvas. Juele could see little of the face except for the glint of the image's eyes and a line showing the curve of an ample jaw. "Too early in the morning for heavy food or talk. Imposing your palaver on her, indeed!"
"Oh, you don't mind a bit of fatherly concern, do ye?" the first painting asked. "All well meant, truly, all well meant."
"I . . . suppose not," Juele said, eating a bite of sausage, wondering whether she'd be better off with the attentions of a friendly bully or a considerate curmudgeon. The first painting let out a triumphant crow, so she swallowed hastily and added, "Sometimes, that is." The second painting emitted an amused snort.
"Might we make your acquaintance, gel, if it's not too much trouble?"
"I'm Juele Caffyne," she said. "I've just arrived at the School."
"Gladiolus Mignonette," said the cheerful face. "First Chancellor of the School of Light. Proud to meet you."
"Darius Somnolent," said the gloomy face. "Second Warden. A pleasure."
"I'm very happy to know you, gentlemen," Juele said. She glanced up at the clock that hung on the wall above the door. The time was fast approaching nine. She ate the last bite of waffle and put her fork down. "I'm sorry, but I have to go. It was nice to speak with you."
"Never fear, never fear, you'll see us again," said Chancellor Mignonette. "We never go far. Ha ha ha!" Warden Somnolent turned his shaded face away even farther from view with a rumble of disgust.
Juele stood and picked up her tray. Where did one put dirty things, she wondered? She heard a gasp of surprise and saw a sea of faces turned her way. Everyone was looking at her. She heard mutters and whispers of "new, doesn't know." Confused, she sat down. A young man with a defiant expression got up from his place, and keeping his gaze focused on Juele, walked away, leaving his plate and cup behind on the table. Another diner left, abandoning her dishes where they lay. But the dinner ladies walked toward the tables clucking and shaking their heads. Juele thought for a moment. Her natural impulse was to tidy up, but that seemed to go against tradition. Yet the way she had been raised, cleaning up was the considerate and expected thing to do. She sat frozen as her upbringing fought with peer pressure. Well, she must not be forced out of doing what was right.
She rose, hands on the tray, but the stares were so onerous they felt as if they were pressing against her. Juele felt the force of opinion as strong as influence around her limbs. She slid the tray along the surface of the table. The hiss it made was as loud as a waterfall in the silence of the hall. At the last moment, she lost her nerve and walked away without the tray. She couldn't do it. One person, the newest and youngest student at the School, could not force herself to be openly different, not on her very first morning.
On her way out of the hall, she passed the dinner ladies. They looked disappointed, but unsurprised.
The pressure abated once she was outside in the sunshine. She stood for a moment, just breathing, wondering why she felt so guilty about trying to do things the way her mother and father had taught her. Rutaro was right: the School had its own opinions of how things should go, and they didn't coincide with the way things were outside the walls. She didn't like that very much. It was rude to leave messes for other people to clean up. Was she meant to defy convention? There was a lesson in this, but she didn't know just at the moment what it was.
The clock began to chime nine. Juele started, not wanting to be late for her date with Bella and the others. She made for the gatehouse, almost dancing with anticipation.
Last night, the others had caught her off guard with their mode of dress. As Juele was getting ready before breakfast, the shabbiness of her small room gave her an idea. She'd be in full style when she joined the clique. None of her clothes were of the correct chic black, nor did they have the insouciance of anything worn by Bella's set, but she had a dark green blouse and skirt that she had put on under her smock.
Now, with the greatest of concentration, the same she'd devote to a class assignment, Juele constructed a dense overlay illusion of dark black shadows on the skirt and billowing blouse, even touching her lips with the same hue, the way she'd seen Daline made up the night before. She laid a curse of shabbiness on the smock, making the sleeves appear as if they'd been sanded almost bare, and graying the fresh, light pink cloth to the miserable tint of a hundred washings. If she'd dared to do that to her real garments, her mother would skin her alive, no illusion!
Juele stopped before a shaded window to admire her reflection. The effect was all that she could hope for. The smock was threadbare, like a rag out of the cleaning basket, and the underneaths looked smoky and mysterious. Around the black lipstick, her skin was bleached almost colorless. Brilliant, she thought. She added an illusion of a more sculpted jaw and a slight hollowness around the eye sockets that made her look five years older. Now she would look like one of them.
Feeling a little naughty and not at all like herself, Juele sauntered toward the gate, past artists catching the early morning light on their easels and small knots of people in smocks chatting. She patted a few of the hundreds of bicycles milling here and there throughout the campus. Never in all her life had she seen so many. There were bicycles leaning against walls, hitched to posts and stands, espaliered against walls, halfway up staircases and trees, and simply wandering freely. Nobody seemed to own any particular steed; if one needed a ride, one reached for the nearest set of wheels, and off they'd go!
She didn't see the clique right away, until she was almost at the door of the quadrangle—and if Daline hadn't tossed her head in that very characteristic way, she would not have recognized them. Bella, blond today, wafted her hands expressively, describing a minor illusion on the air. They were clustered on the path not far from the entrance to the school grounds at the far end of the playing field, chattering in loud voices. None of them were wearing black! Not one! The girls were all clad in very smart dresses of muted earth tones, and their smocks, worn unbuttoned over these outfits, had a soft luster as if they'd been woven from cashmere or camel's hair. The boys had their hair slicked back. Their shirts and robes were dyed in rich colors, but their trousers were the same neutral color as the girls' smocks.
Juele slid to a slow walk, hoping they hadn't seen her. But of course, they had. As one, the whole group turned toward her and began to laugh. There was no escape from their scorn. Laughter bubbled up out of the pavement, echoed out of the nooks and crannies, of the vaulted ceiling of the gatehouse, came down from the very skies. Other people on the grounds turned to look at what was so funny. Juele's face burned with shame. She felt like ducking behind the wall to hide, but forced herself to keep walking forward. As she passed under the cool shadow of the gatehouse, she started to undo her work. If she was quick, she could don a mass illusion to make the dark clothes look like velour so the black would seem deliberately chic. A glance down told her that she'd failed. She didn't have the knack to give the outfit that tailored fit without the help of a mirror. She was mortified. This was a Humiliation Dream of the lowest level, above only stark nudity. Even then, she wouldn't have had a choice of what she was wearing; this time she'd done it to herself. Tears stung Juele's eyes, and she stumbled to a halt. She should turn back and go to her room. She could study her symbolism textbook until her noon class.
As if sensing her withdrawal, Bella waved and called out to her.
"Oh, darling, we're not laughing at you, we're laughing with you. Come on." But the girl's tone still had that derisive note in it. Juele started to back away.
"No, I'd better stay here and study," she called to them. "I just came to tell you . . ."
"Come on," Bella said, impatiently, stamping her foot. "We're going in a moment. It just won't be the same without you. Come on."
Juele was barely mollified, but she felt the force of invisible hands on her back pushing her forward. Very reluctantly, she crossed the playing field to join the group. It was the longest walk she had ever taken in her life. Bella came up in the last ten feet and clasped her firmly by the upper arm, steering her toward the others.
"Good!" she said. "Juele, meet Soma, Sondra, Erbatu, Colm, Tanner, and you already know Daline and Cal."
"A pleasure," Juele said, smiling hopefully at them. She expected them to snub her the way they had the day before, but to her surprise, they clustered around her.
"Darling, how do you do? How do you make your hair do that?" Sondra asked. She ran a hand down the length of Juele's hair, though never quite touching it. Puzzled, Juele put her hand up to her scalp. Unless it had changed since she'd looked in the glass a hundred yards ago, her hair was stick-straight and medium brown.
"Do what?"
"So nice to meet you," Erbatu said, grasping Juele's hand in an iron clasp. Her hands were very large, and the nails were perfect ovals. She was dressed in the statutory taupes and tans, which went well with the deep tone of her skin. Her curly hair was combed fiercely back and secured at the nape of her neck with a tortoiseshell comb. She had a bright, multicolored scarf around her neck. Juele peered down at her own hands for reassurance. They looked equal to any task. So was she, she reminded herself. She was here by invitation.
The others introduced themselves, with elaborate gestures and eye-rolling. Juele viewed Colm with fascination. His coloring was entirely without black, like a pastel painting. His hair today was somewhere between blond and red, his eyes a surprisingly pale blue, and the skin of his rounded face and pudgy hands was light with a dusting of freckles. It was only the sharp pupils of his eyes that reminded Juele he wasn't as soft as he looked. None of them were.
Once the introductions were over, the group settled back to the conversations they'd been having before she arrived.
"Darling Daline, your ensemble is so beautiful today, dear," Soma said. She held up a hand as if searching for a word. "So . . . original."
"Oh, Soma, thank you so much," Daline said, the gray of a knife's edge showing in her eyes between her mascaraed lashes. "I must say your look today is . . . classic. Did you find that dress in your grandmother's attic?"
The air between them became dangerous and sharp to the touch. Their very breaths clashed noisily like swords sharpening. Juele decided she'd better keep well back out of the way. The others listening looked amused by the scathing byplay and were not at all concerned. Juele was a little puzzled as to the source of the disagreement between the two girls. To her eye, they were dressed almost exactly alike.
She'd never known anyone at home like the clique. They sent out such mixed signals, she couldn't guess what to expect. Today, instead of being haughty and aloof, they were almost overwhelmingly nice, but Juele felt that the change in manner was only an outward one. They paid one another extravagant compliments, but the kind words were always spoken with a sneer, as if the speaker would rather die than be in the same condition as the person to whom she was speaking. They accepted comments with a casual toss of the head and a quick laugh, appearing to be carefree, no matter what had been said to them. It inhibited Juele, who would have offered them wholehearted friendliness, if only she wasn't afraid of having it thrown back, ever so sweetly, in her face. Juele saw images of knives in the back, stumbling blocks ahead on the pavement, and small, looming clouds that threatened to hang over their heads, but the group seemed to avoid them all.
"Let's go, my dears," Bella said, with a glance at a tiny gold watch on her wrist. "I've got things to do later." She sauntered toward the gate, mincing along in her dainty shoes. The others fell in line behind her. Not wanting to have any more attention paid to her outfit, Juele kept well to the rear of the crowd and sought to remedy the situation.
Nothing in the Dreamland remained the same for long. She ought to have guessed that the clique would change what they considered in vogue. They were creative thinkers, like herself. They wouldn't stay fixed on the same idea forever. The only one of the group wearing dark colors, she felt rather like the missing tooth in an otherwise perfect smile. Quickly, she let go of the overlay of black, letting the green of her costume show through. The threadbare illusion on her smock was harder to dispel. She'd worked hard on it, and it was fixed in her mind. The smock held on to its ragged appearance despite her efforts. Look new, she pleaded with it. You are new. My mother finished sewing you only two days ago.
The group turned out of the gate into a small residential avenue lined with white-painted cottages and young trees. Juele eagerly drank in all that she could see. Within the confines of the school, all the buildings were very grand and had an air of ponderous authority. She rather expected Mnemosyne itself to be similar. It was the capital of the Dreamland. But instead she passed by houses and buildings not too different from those in Wandering. What made them seem different was the aura of importance she sensed. Whereas her village was an ordinary place, this was the capital city of the whole world.
The paved sidewalks were full of little children playing, romping about with jump ropes and balls and tricycles. On the front porches, mothers rocked babies and chatted with their neighbors as the men walked out of their front doors, kissed their wives, and donned their hats before walking out of their garden gates. Juele felt a little homesick watching all those happy families. A part of her wished she could be the same as they were. She gathered up a fold of the cloth in her hand and squeezed it, seeking something of home in the cloth. She felt it squeeze her hand back with familiar maternal warmth. Her mother must have left a little influence in the garment for love. Juele smiled, remembering that she should be happy to be where she was. She had the best wishes of all the people at home behind her. In no time she'd get over feeling lonely and out of place. She looked down at herself and realized she'd let her whole illusion slip, age makeup and all. Her pink smock glowed like a petal in the spring sunshine. She undid the two buttons at the top so it swung open like the others' and looked every bit as nice. When she looked up, Soma was staring at her.
"My goodness, how changeable of you," the older girl said.
And then the superior, derisive, snickering laugh. Hurt, Juele started to retort, but she clamped her mouth shut on the angry words. Everybody changed in the Dreamland. It was normal. Soma watched her with a half smile on her face, waiting. Juele suddenly saw the trap looming, a big, metal, sharp-jawed thing with a cage behind it hovering just above her. Soma was trying to draw her into one of their mannered exchanges. Juele knew that if she fell for the bait, she'd never escape from the endless round of insults. She didn't understand the rules, and she didn't feel capable of improvising a clever retort. Carefully, keeping angry words from fighting their way out over her tongue, she smiled at Soma.
"Thank you," she said, and immediately slowed her walking pace, so the other girl overshot her. Soma, startled that her victim had refused to play the game, sped up further to catch up with Erbatu. The trap itself vanished. Left alone, Juele concentrated on her surroundings.
The group turned out of the avenue onto another tree-lined road filled with pedestrians and slow-moving traffic. Juele looked back to note the name of the street from which they had just come. Just as she caught sight of the sign, lettered in gold on a black slate high up on a ridged gold pole, a horse-drawn carriage rolled into the way, blocking her view. When the carriage drew off, the street looked the same, but the sign was nowhere in sight. There wasn't another on any of the other corners. She realized that she had better pay close attention to the way home and hoped the streets wouldn't rearrange themselves while she was gone. She couldn't be late for her afternoon classes.
"I can't stay out past twelve," Juele said, raising her voice over the traffic so the others could hear her. Only Cal and Bella glanced back at the sound of her voice. "I've got shadow and color today."
"Then you'd better watch the clock, hadn't you, darling?" said Erbatu, fluttering her hand casually as she walked. The others gave a disinterested sniff or a chuckle. Juele drew back. She'd have to rely upon herself. These people would love it if she humiliated herself again, and they wouldn't do a thing to help. Subtly, over the course of several blocks, Juele changed the shade of her own overdress from light pink to a rose taupe so she matched more closely with the day's fashion. Bella, whom Juele had already picked out as being the nicest of the crowd, gave her an approving nod.
Juele caught more than one person staring at them, and many a couple drew together and murmured something to one another as they watched the group of students go by. A man driving a landau coach past them looked openly envious. Juele edged closer to the others.
"Why do they keep looking at us like that?" she asked.
"It's the smocks. Everyone knows we're from the School," Cal said, with a superior sneer at a milkman driving a wagon filled with cans and cows. The stocky driver looked as vacant as his bovine passengers. "Peasants. We're as far above them as the Sleepers."
Not from where Juele stood. Some of the curious onlookers had to be royalty, or at least very wealthy, from the abundance of gold jewelry and fine clothes they wore. She pointed this out to Cal, who shook his head. "Mere things. They have material wealth, but they'd die to have the talent we possess. They can never get where we are."
A broad, green parkland opened up to one side of the street, and the students crossed over to walk along it. Juele admired the handsome elms and beeches, green with new leaves, and stared in appreciation at the majestic oaks with their strong branches stuck straight out as if defying gravity. Not far from the walk, there was a lamb perched on a bench, its white, woolly head bobbing as if it was dozing. At the sound of their footsteps, it startled awake. It noticed Juele, blinked, and then baaed loudly. Suddenly, a lion leaped out from behind a bush and ran toward them. Juele gasped.
"Look out," she cried, preparing to run for her life. The others turned. The lion reached the lamb, which clambered down off its bench. Then the two animals lay down together side by side in a most artistic fashion, with the lion's sandy, tufted tail wound protectively about the lamb's small flanks.
"Oh, how wonderful," Juele breathed. Her hands itched for her art box, wishing she had something with her to record the image.
"Hackneyed," sniffed Daline, giving it no more than a momentary glance. "Trite. Ignore them."
"Ignore them?" Juele asked, dumbfounded.
"Happens all the time," Daline said, rolling her eyes toward the sky. "It's the smock, darling."
An orange tabby cat, on its way along the gravel path that paralleled the sidewalk, leaped to chase a yellow butterfly in the sun. Juele cocked her head at it with interest. The bright colors hovering over the green grass presented another very artistic prospect. The others hurried her on, not letting her stop to look. The cat seemed to shrug. He ceased his leaping about and nonchalantly resumed his walk as if nothing had interrupted him. Across the broad lawn of the park, a shepherd and a goose girl clung to one another, looking deep into one another's eyes. Around their knees peered a representative from each flock.
Juele stopped short. This scene was too wonderful to pass by. She could at least make a sketch of it and put it in her pocket to work on later. Such a romantic couple. And how cute they looked, with the sheep and the goose looking suspiciously at the other around their guardians' legs. Juele couldn't resist another moment. She could just do an outline and fill it in when she got back. She reached out for a strand of sunshine and was pulling it to bits when a shadow cut off her source of light. The filaments of light unraveled and faded.
"We don't have time for that, child," Sondra said, flipping her hand casually, as if she'd just been brushing away a fly. "There are better things to do."
"It won't take a moment," Juele said, wistfully. As if they could hear her, the goose girl tilted her head back just a little to gaze into the eyes of her lover, who smiled a warm, protective smile. Juele's heart ached for them. The others took her by the shoulders and walked her away.
"Pay no attention to them at all," said Bella, turning Juele's head forward with strong fingers as an eagle flew to the top of a flagpole and posed with its wings out. "Such exhibitionism. Everybody wants to be a model. If you make an image of one of them, the others will never let you alone. We'd be here for years!"
More animals came into view, flinging themselves into all manner of picturesque attitudes when they saw the students in smocks. Juele sighed, seeing one artistic opportunity after another fleeting as the others kept her moving along, pulling and pushing her.