Franklin Goes to School

The Fold

Franklin was not at the estate when the fold opened, so he got the story afterward, from Colt, who told it the way Colt told everything, flat and true and a little too observant.

They had been about to step through - Dustin with his hand out doing the thing that made a place where a place had not been, Colt with his shoes on for once, T'ven steady on his feet again and only bringing one cane out of habit - and Runi had stopped, one foot from the fold, and gone still.

Not the dangerous still. Colt was very clear about that later, because Colt knew the difference better than anyone alive. Not the still that came before the knife. A different one. Runi had put one hand flat against his own chest, over the place a heart would be if he used it, and tilted his head the exact way a man tilts his head when he thinks he has heard someone call his name from another room.

"What," Colt had said.

"There is a pain," Runi had said, and that was all, and then he had stepped through the fold anyway, because they were going, and a six-thousand-year-old man does not stop a whole visit over an ache he cannot place.

But he had touched his chest three more times before they cleared the fold. Colt counted. Colt counted everything about Runi; it was the job.

The Pineapple Ranch

By the time Franklin got there on the afternoon shuttle, the Ranch had already been thoroughly conquered by the guests, which is to say Dustin had found the kitchen.

"He has eaten," Beverly reported, with the grim awe of a woman who had cooked for hungry children her whole life and met her match, "four whole pizzas. He is nine. He weighs as much as a backpack. I do not understand where it goes. I have a four-year degree and I cannot account for it. I have started to suspect the dimensional thing he does is partly a digestive strategy."

"It might be," said Franklin, who had wondered the same.

Colt was on the plaza teaching two of the Ranch kids a card game that Franklin was fairly sure Colt was making up as he went, because the rules kept changing in Colt's favor and the kids kept catching him and Colt kept saying "that's the Bronze Age rule, you wouldn't know it" with a completely straight face until all three of them fell over laughing. T'ven was sitting in the sun with Sella, the two of them not talking, which Franklin understood was the highest compliment two people who felt too much could pay each other - just sitting, near, quiet, off, resting the thing that never rested.

And Runi was standing at the edge of the plaza, in his black robe, looking at the horses, and touching his chest.

Franklin felt it before he understood he was feeling it. That was how it always went with Franklin. Something came off the quiet man at the edge of the plaza and landed in Franklin's own chest, a low note, a splinter of somebody else's ache, and Franklin turned toward it the way you turn toward a sound, and Marky appeared at his elbow with a cookie and a question.

"You feel that too," Marky said. It was not really a question.

"There's a - " Franklin frowned. "There's a hurt somewhere. He's got hold of it. I only get the edge of what he's got. What is it?"

"I don't know," said Marky. "He doesn't either. I asked. He said, and I'm quoting a six-thousand-year-old vampire exactly, 'there is a pain in this region and I have not decided yet whether it is my business.' And then he asked if he could see the schools."

"The schools?"

"The kids are choosing, right, the four doors. He heard about it and he wants to see the one on the ground. Mountain Oaks. He says a place built for children to learn in is a thing he has never seen and would like to, before he is any older." Marky shrugged. "I said sure. I'm sending the whole circus over tomorrow on a tour. You're coming, you go there, you can translate. Try to keep Dustin out of the ceiling."

"Why would Dustin be in the ceiling."

"I don't know, Franklin, but he's nine and he can fold space and we're taking him to a building full of air vents. Use your imagination."

The Tour Begins

Principal Wilson met them at the front doors of Mountain Oaks and did not blink at any of it, which Franklin decided was the single most impressive act of professional composure he had ever witnessed.

She was handed, in the space of ninety seconds: a nine-year-old who could bend space and was already eyeing the trophy case in a way that suggested he was calculating whether he could fold himself inside it; a twelve-year-old carrying, though she could not have known it, the complete memories of a Bronze Age monarch; a seventeen-year-old telepath with a cane he didn't need; and a small, ancient person in a floor-length black robe who looked about nine and radiated a stillness that made two hall monitors quietly decide to be somewhere else.

"Welcome to Mountain Oaks," said Principal Wilson, to all of them, warmly, as though ancient robed telepaths toured her building every Tuesday. "I run the academic side. My colleague Principal Daniels runs behavior, and he has asked me to tell you that if the tiger is coming, it needs a visitor's badge like everyone else."

"Sparkles has a visitor's badge?" said Franklin.

"Sparkles has a visitor's badge," said Principal Wilson, "laminated, because we tried paper last time and he ate it, and Principal Daniels believes rules are rules. It's on a lanyard. He wears it with tremendous dignity. Now. Where would you like to start?"

And Runi, the quiet man, who had said almost nothing since the fold, looked down the long bright hallway lined with children's paintings and lunchboxes and a hand-lettered banner that said BE KIND YOU MIGHT BE THE ONLY ONE WHO DOES TODAY, and touched his chest, and said, very softly, "Anywhere. Wherever the building takes us. I find I would like to simply walk through it. If that is permitted."

"That's the best way to see a school," said Principal Wilson. "Walk. It'll take you where it wants you."

Colt shot Franklin a look. Franklin caught it and did not know what it meant yet.

Things That Happened On The Tour

A great many things happened on the tour, and Franklin would remember all of them, because they were warm and they were funny and they were, though he did not know it, the last easy hour of the afternoon.

Dustin did get into the ceiling. Nobody saw him do it. One moment he was admiring a science-fair volcano and the next his voice came down cheerfully from an air vent forty feet away asking whether anyone else could hear how good the acoustics were up here, and it took Colt, Franklin, a janitor named Pete, and eventually the offer of a fifth pizza to get him down, and Principal Daniels arrived to witness the extraction and said only, "Visitor's badge," and Dustin, upside down and halfway out of a vent, produced it from his shirt pocket and Daniels nodded, satisfied, and left.

Colt discovered the library and had to be physically led away from it. He had never, Franklin realized, watching the boy stand in the stacks with his mouth slightly open, been in a building where the books were simply there, free, for anyone, no fortified house, no six-thousand-year-old collection behind glass, just shelves and a sign that said TAKE ONE BRING IT BACK OR DON'T WE HAVE MORE. "This is the most valuable room I have ever been in," Colt said, with total sincerity, standing in a K-12 library, and a librarian named Mr. Osei, who had been a teacher for thirty years and thought he had heard everything, had to go into the back and have a moment.

T'ven found Mrs. Tenna's class, and Mrs. Tenna, who taught the little ones and had a sixth sense for a person who needed to sit down, put him at the back with a cup of the terrible teachers'-lounge coffee and let him just be in a room full of six-year-olds learning to spell, and Franklin watched through the door as the seventeen-year-old who had spent his whole life afraid of what he could hear sat in the loudest, most chaotic, most emotionally deafening room in the building - twenty small children feeling everything at maximum volume all at once - and slowly, slowly, unwound, because it turned out that a room full of kids who felt everything and were ashamed of none of it was the most restful place a young telepath had ever been. He stayed the whole period. Mrs. Tenna gave him a gold star at the end. He has it still.

They saw the subspace room, where Sella sat with three other Ranch kids in front of a screen, in a Vulcan Academy class, and a Vulcan instructor named Sovar was patiently explaining a theorem to forty students scattered across a dozen worlds, and one of the Ranch kids raised a hand and asked if the theorem had a point, and Sovar said, "That is the theorem's second lesson and I had not planned to reach it until spring, but yes: it does not, and learning to find a pointless thing beautiful is the entire purpose of geometry. You are ahead of schedule. Well done." And Sella, who had chosen door three precisely because Vulcans did not pry, wrote the exchange down in her notebook and underlined it twice, and did not have to explain to anyone why.

Franklin offered a ninth-grade PE class combat training. The teacher declined. Franklin took it well.

And Beverly fed all of them lunch, the guests and the students and a tiger with a laminated badge, and pretended it was nothing, and it was everything, and Franklin caught Runi watching her do it - the giving, the pretending it was nothing - with an expression Franklin had no word for, and Runi touched his chest, and turned, and drifted a little further down the hall, toward the ninth-grade wing, toward something, and Franklin, who was carrying a tray and laughing at something Dustin had said, did not follow him, and would think about that later.

The Quiet Man

Because the whole afternoon, under the volcano and the vents and the library and the gold star and the pointless beautiful theorem, the quiet man had been getting quieter.

Franklin had clocked it and not clocked it, the way you notice weather changing without deciding to. Runi had started the tour walking with the group and had, hour by hour, drifted to its edge, and then behind it, and then off it entirely, always in the same direction, always toward the ninth-grade wing, and every time Franklin's empathy brushed him the splinter was sharper, the ache louder, the low note lower, until by the middle of the afternoon Franklin had stopped being able to enjoy the tour and had started, without admitting it to himself, to dread.

Colt found him by the water fountains.

"You feel it," Colt said.

"I've felt it all day. I thought it was him. I thought Runi was - hurting, or remembering something, six thousand years, they've got a lot to remember." Franklin swallowed. "It's not him, is it."

"No." Colt was watching the black robe move slowly down the far hall, alone now, a shadow the students parted around without quite seeing. "It's never been him. He's just the only one big enough to hear it from a whole dimension away. He felt it at the fold, Franklin. At his own front door, before we crossed. That's how loud it is and that's how far away it started. He's been walking toward it all day pretending he hasn't decided it's his business, and he decided it was his business the second he felt it, he just does that, he pretends the choosing is still coming so nobody watches him make it. He made it at the fold." Colt's jaw was tight. "He's almost on top of it now. Whatever it is. It's in that wing. Get T'ven. Get Dustin. Right now. Don't ask me why, just get them, because when Runi finds the loudest pain in a building he doesn't knock, he just sits down next to it, and if he's about to sit down next to a hurting kid I want the boy who can hear a single voice across the dark and the boy who can open a door to anywhere standing there when he does."

Franklin got T'ven. Franklin got Dustin.

They came fast, because Colt had said Runi's name in a certain way, and everyone who had been through the war knew that way.

The Classroom

The ninth-grade room was Mrs. Okafor's, and fourth period was study hall, which meant thirty teenagers pretending to work, and in the back corner, alone, at a desk turned slightly toward the window, was a small red-haired boy who had not turned a page in twenty minutes.

Franklin knew him. Everyone knew him a little. Trent Waterloo, fourteen, small for it, the boy who used to get shoved in the halls until Damien Dax - reformed now, adopted now, a different Damien now - had appointed himself Trent's shadow, best friends across a three-year gap that nobody questioned because you did not question a thing that was clearly holding a person together. Trent, whose sister had gone missing in the attack, weeks ago now, and who had never once, in all the weeks, been told a body was found, which everyone had quietly decided was worse than being told one was, because it meant the not-knowing just went on.

Runi was already there.

He had come in without anyone seeing, the way he came in everywhere, and he had crossed the room without disturbing a single one of the thirty teenagers, and he had lowered himself down into the empty desk beside Trent Waterloo's, this small ancient thing in a black robe, and he was sitting there, not touching the boy, not speaking, six inches of respectful distance, with his hand flat on his own chest and his no-color eyes closed and his whole six-thousand-year-old attention bent on the one loudest pain in a building full of children.

Trent looked up. Saw the strange small robed person sitting next to him. Was too tired and too far gone to even be startled.

"You're not a student," Trent said dully.

"No," said Runi, and opened his eyes, and they had a color in them now, faint, the color of very old ice at the very edge of thaw. "I am a visitor. I have walked through your whole school today and it is a good school, the best I have ever seen, and I have never seen one before so you may weigh that as you like." He paused. "I have also, I must tell you, because I have decided not to lie to children anymore, I have felt you since this morning. Since before I was in this world. There is a pain in you so large that a person felt it across a fold from another dimension and could not put it down, and walked all day toward it pretending he had not decided to, and here he is. I am sorry. I know that is a strange and frightening thing to be told. I am very old and very tired and I have stopped being able to be gentle in the ways that take time, so I am being gentle in the only way I have left, which is to simply tell you the truth: I felt you, and I came, and I am not going to leave, and you are going to tell me about her."

Trent's face did something terrible.

"About who," he whispered, but he already knew, they always already knew.

"Your sister," said Runi.

And behind them, at the classroom door, T'ven made a sound.

Franklin turned. T'ven had gone white, whiter than the day the fold hurt him, and he had both hands pressed flat to the doorframe, and his eyes were huge and fixed on nothing, on the far dark past the walls, past the world, and Jax was not here to hold him and so Colt lunged and got a hand on his sleeve just in case, and T'ven said, in the voice of a boy who has spent his whole life learning to hear one thing in the noise and has just, for the first time, heard the thing that matters:

"I can hear her."

The study hall did not notice. Thirty teenagers pretended to work.

"She's alive," T'ven breathed, staring at the dark only he could see. "She's - she's so far, she's on the other side of a whole - I can barely - but she's there, she's real, she's not dead, she's just far, she's the far side of a world and she's been calling the whole time and nobody could hear her because nobody was listening on the right - Trent. Trent." He came off the doorframe, unsteady, urgent, alive. "Your sister. Jena. Is that her name. Jena?"

Trent Waterloo stood up so fast his chair fell over.

"Jena," said Dustin, quietly, from the doorway, and he was not smiling now, the nine-year-old who ate five pizzas and lived in the ceiling was not smiling, he had his hand half-raised and his head tilted the way he tilted it when he was finding the shape of a door that did not exist yet, a door to the far side of a world, to a single voice that had been calling into the dark for weeks with no one on the right frequency to hear it. "I can get there. If he can hold the sound, I can get there. T'ven, don't lose her, whatever you do, don't lose the sound - "

"I won't lose her - "

"Runi." Colt's voice, low and certain, both hands full of T'ven's sleeve, his eyes on the old man in the child's desk. "You found it. You walked across a dimension and a whole school and you found it. Now what do we do."

And Runi rose from the desk beside Trent Waterloo, the quiet man, the shadow the whole school had parted around without seeing, and he put out one ancient hand to the small red-haired boy whose sister had been calling into the dark for weeks, and he said the thing that began it -

"Now," said Runi, "we go and get her."

Authors Note:

A warm one, mostly, on purpose - a whole afternoon of a nine-year-old in the ceiling and a tiger with a laminated badge and a Vulcan teaching thirty worlds that a pointless thing can be beautiful - and under all of it, a quiet man getting quieter, walking toward the one pain in the building that a person could feel from another world. I wanted the school to be so warm and so funny that you almost forgot he was drifting down the hall, the way the children forgot, the way Franklin forgot with a lunch tray in his hands. That's how it works. The good day is real and the ache is real and they happen in the same hallway. Jena Waterloo is alive. She has been calling the whole time. Nobody could hear her, until an ancient thing on his way to look at a school felt a boy's pain from a whole dimension away and could not put it down. This is not the rescue. This is the beginning of the rescue - and yes, before the Cliff Hanger Police fill out the paperwork, it stops right as it starts, but I would argue "now we go and get her" is the warmest place I have ever stopped a chapter, and I have stopped a lot of them warm. Next time: the far side of a world, a voice in the dark, and a door. Have fun reading. She's alive. Hold that. Trent has been holding it alone for weeks. Now he doesn't have to.