Princess Academy Read Online Free PDF Page B

prince’s cousins are punished when they choose to misbehave, though I think I’ll employ slightly different methods for you. Follow me, Gerti.”
    The tutor led Gerti out of the room. The rest of the girls sat motionless until Olana returned with two soldiers.
    “Gerti is in a closet thinking about speaking out of turn. These fine soldiers will be staying with us this winter. Should any of you have ideas about questioning my authority, they are here to make it clear. Each week that you show a marked improvement, you are permitted to return home for the rest day, so let us continue our studies with no further interruptions.”
    At sundown, the workmen on the roof stopped hammering and Miri first noticed the noise for its absence. Pa and Marda would be home by now, white dust wafting from their work clothes. Marda would say how she missed Miri, her conversation, maybe even her cabbage soup. What would Pa say?
    In the dining hall, the girls ate fried herring stuffed with barley porridge, onions, and unfamiliar flavors. Miri suspected it was a fancy meal and meant to mark a special occasion, but the strange spices made it feel foreign and unkind, a reminder that they had been taken away from home.
    No one spoke, and the sounds of sipping and chewing echoed on bare stone walls. Olana dined in her own room, but no one could be certain if she was listening and would emerge at the first sound, trailing soldiers in her wake.
    Later in their bedchamber, the tension had wound so tight, it burst into a flurry of whispered conversations. Gerti reported on the closet and scratching sounds she had heard in the dark. Two of the younger girls cried for wanting to go home.
    “I don’t think it’s fair the way Olana treats us,” Miri whispered to Esa and Frid.
    “My ma would have a thing to say to her,” said Esa.
    “Maybe we should go home,” said Miri. “If our parents knew, they might change their minds about making us stay.”
    “Hush up that kind of talk, Miri,” said Katar. “If Olana overheard, she’d have the soldiers whip us all.”
    The conversation lagged and then stopped, but Miri was too tired and anxious to sleep. She watched the night shadows shift and creep across the ceiling and listened to the low, rough breathing of the other girls. Her pulse clicked in her jaw, and she held on to that noise, tried to take comfort from it, as if the quarry and home were as near as her heart.

n
    Chapter Four
    n Tell my family to go ahead and eat
    To make it home I’d have to move my feet
    But the mount’s made stone where my feet numbered two
    And I’ve swallowed more dust than I can chew
    n
    T he next day, the workers finished the repairs and left the academy, leaving Olana, Knut, two soldiers, and an unfamiliar silence. Miri missed the pounding and scraping and beating, sounds that meant work in the quarry was going on as usual and no one was injured. The quiet haunted her all week.
    In the mornings before lessons started, the girls spent an hour doing chores, washing and sweeping, fetching wood and water, and helping Knut in the kitchen. Miri spied the other girls stealing minutes of conversation at the woodpile or behind the academy. Perhaps they did not mean to exclude her, she thought, perhaps they were simply used to one another from working together in the quarry. She found herself wishing desperately for Marda at her side, or Peder, who had somehow remained her friend, unchanged, over the years.
    She glanced at Britta carrying a bucket of water to the kitchen and wondered for the first time if there was more to her silence than just pride. Then again, she was a lowlander.
    Near the week’s end, the girls could barely follow their lessons, so rich was the anticipation of being able to sleep by their home fires and attend chapel, to see their families and report all they had suffered and learned.
    “We can walk home tonight,” Esa whispered to Frid when Olana left the room for a moment. Then she turned to Miri,