by Guy Antibes
The teacher rubbed her eyes. Sam smelled the unmistakable stench of burned pollen, while Miss Featherstone shook her head as she collected her wits.
“You could have killed Sam Smith. You could have killed me! What were you thinking?” she said to Glory.
“You shouldn’t have stood so close,” Glory said to Miss Featherstone. She narrowed her eyes at Sam. “You should have stood closer.”
That was more than enough for the teacher. “Miss Wheeler. You will spend the rest of the day in the schoolmaster’s office writing an essay about respect for your teacher and your fellow students.”
It was nearly time for recess, so Miss Featherstone excused the class a few minutes early. Sam worked on rubbing out Glory’s desk a bit more, but the fire had damaged a spot on the surface.
“What did you learn?”
“Aside from not trusting Glory Wheeler? I thought that the gold tip would trip a ward, but it didn’t. The iron does, and I suppose someone’s touch would. Glory learned too much from her brother. She said he didn’t teach her anything.”
“You believed her?”
Sam shook his head in exasperation. “I didn’t have any reason not to. I wouldn’t believe anything she says from now on. She is a danger.”
Miss Featherstone nodded. “To herself and to others. That was such poor judgment. She didn’t know you would be triggering the ward until after she had made hers. I don’t think it was personal.”
“It was personal the moment I put the gold tip on her ward and neutralized most of it.”
~
Glory never returned to school after that day. Sam didn’t miss her. He had misjudged the girl, but he didn’t know how to remedy that. He wondered if he was too naive. Addy had laughed at him one evening and called him that. He suspected every younger brother was accused of such a thing by his more worldly older sister.
Ward-making was over, and pollen-manipulation returned to make various items, but now that the notion of layers had been taught, Miss Featherstone instructed the class in more advanced techniques.
One day, the schoolmaster poked his head into the schoolroom. “Smith, I need to talk to you.”
Sam shrugged and left the classroom, following the schoolmaster to his office.
“You have been accused of vandalism, young Mister Smith. What do you say?”
“I haven’t damaged anything. Who accused me?”
Schoolmaster Bank puffed out his chest. “That is neither here nor there,” he said.
“What was I supposed to have done?”
“You’d know that better than I.”
Sam sat in the chair, not knowing how to handle the situation, so he just clammed up and let the schoolmaster do the talking.
“Well?” Bank said.
“I honestly don’t know what you are talking about.”
The schoolmaster huffed and rose from his desk. “Come with me.”
Sam followed him to the seventh-year book bag shelves.
“Does this look familiar?”
“I pass it every day,” Sam said.
Bank glared at him. “You should confess.”
“I didn’t do anything.”
“Of course you did. The pollen decoration has been damaged.”
“What? I can’t see pollen.”
“You can’t…What?” the schoolmaster’s voice faded a bit.
“I can’t see pollen. How could I destroy what I don’t see?”
“I see,” Bank said.
“And I can’t.”
The schoolmaster descended to his haunches, pointing at a specific bag. “You don’t see anything here?”
Sam shook his head. “I see a book bag.”
He rose up and led Sam back into his office. “Someone is stealing food and trinkets from the book bags and destroying personal decorations. They are using something made out of gold to do it.” His eyes drifted to the wand at Sam’s waist.
“I didn’t do it. Are all the book bags covered with pollen cloth?”
“Yes, students decorate their bags with pollen cloth.” Bank clasped his hands on the desk.
“They don’t use wards?”
“Your class just learned about wards. Any fool can see they are covered with decorations.”
Sam pursed his lips. “Call me a fool. I’ve been accused of worse,” he said.
“If you don’t want to be expelled, then find the real criminal, if I’m not already looking at him.” The schoolmaster narrowed his eyes at Sam and stalked back to his office.
Sam looked at the bags. They were always put there during pollen practice. He examined his own but didn’t see anything. He wondered if Schoolmaster Bank had searched his bag. It was empty of contraband.
A female student walked past. Sam stopped her. “Are pollen decorations on all the bags?” he asked.
She raised her eyebrows and pointed to his bag and the one that Bank had pointed out. “Those two don’t. This one’s decorations are damaged.” She pointed again at the bag that was missing something. She folded her arms and tapped her toe on the floor. “Is that all?” She looked at Sam with wary eyes.
“Yes, it is.”
“Then I will head back to my class.” She lifted her chin, turned, and continued on her way.
Sam stared at the book bags and looked at the girl who seemed much older than twelve or thirteen. She ducked into the sixth-year class, giving him an emotionless glance as she exited the corridor.
With nothing else to do, Sam returned to his classroom. The students were just leaving for lunch. He shrugged in response to an inquiring look from Miss Featherstone and left to see whose bag had supposedly been burgled.
“Excuse me,” he said as he jostled past a few students to see Wally Scrivener carrying out the bag with the broken decorations to eat lunch out in the schoolyard with Gob and a few other friends.
Sam went back in to see Miss Featherstone. After telling her of his encounter with Schoolmaster Bank, she patted Sam on the shoulder.
“Don’t worry about anything right now,” she said. “You can’t see decorations.”
“But someone used gold to destroy the cloth covering on Wally’s bag, so claimed Schoolmaster Bank.”
Miss Featherstone looked out a window. “There is more than one way to damage pollen cloth. An open flame will do what gold does, for example,” she said.
“Am I being accused of something I didn’t do?” Sam said.
“When was the decoration broken?”
“During pollen class,” Sam said.
She shook her head in disbelief. “But you were here the whole time.” Miss Featherstone looked at a paper on her desk. “Wally Scrivener left to use the washroom just before the schoolmaster barged into the classroom. Two students did, as well, but earlier. Was he the one who reported the vandalism?”
Sam shrugged. “Schoolmaster Bank didn’t tell me. He just pulled me out of class. I need more information.”
“So you do,” Miss Featherstone said. “I’ll help you, but I can’t do the investigating, or it will look like favoritism.”
“I wouldn’t mind a little favoritism some time,” Sam said. He looked at his teacher. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.”
“And you feel that you are being targeted. I’ll find out who accused you before you leave today. You need to eat your lunch.”
Sam walked out of the classroom, not knowing whether he felt better or not about the whole thing. His book bag, the other one without a decoration, was the only one left. He went out into the schoolyard and found that someone had smeared something red in his bag, staining his rented books. He took out his food and ate the mess anyway. The red stain was some kind of berry juice. Someone was definitely out to get him; he was sure of that. He looked out over the yard. Wally and Gob sneered at him from across the field. Curiously, the girl from the corridor sat between the pair.
He took his bag over to Wally. “Did you do this?” he asked, opening up his bag to show the crimson inte
rior.
“How could I do such a thing?” Wally said, his voice filled with contempt.
Sam looked at the girl and then gazed at her hands. He could see the rims of her fingernails were redder than they should be. It dawned on him that the pair could have worked together to frame him and mess with his own bag.
“Your new girlfriend?” Sam said, looking at the girl.
“Fara Kirtle? She’s not so new,” Wally smiled at the girl and took her hand. “But she is with me.”
Sam nodded and left. He knew who had done what, but he had no idea how to prove it to Schoolmaster Bank.
Miss Featherstone hadn’t been able to pry the name of his accuser from the schoolmaster by the end of the school day. They would be off for the two-day weekend, so Sam would have to wait until the beginning of the week to confirm that Wally was the accuser.
After showing the books to his mother, she said that lemon juice would make the stains lighter. He knew where he might be able to get some for free. After dinner, he knocked on the Washjoy’s door. The baker and his family lived in a house behind the bakery facing the next street.
Mrs. Washjoy answered the door. “Sam, come on in. What brings you to our house?”
He stepped inside and showed her his book bag and books. “My mother said that lemons might remove the stains.”
“Tom has something better than that,” she said. “Let’s walk over to the bakery. He is finishing up a few special orders for tomorrow.”
Sam followed her through the back gate to the bakery. When Sam had arrived, the front of the shop was dark, but now he could see lights in the back when they walked through the door.
Tom turned around. “Sam, what brings you here at this hour?”
“He needs some help with his book bag,” Mrs. Washjoy said.
The baker peeked inside the bag and poked his nose inside. “Fingerberries.”
“What are fingerberries?” Sam asked.
“They are like a raspberries but about three inches long. I didn’t even know they grew around Cherryton. Your mother is right. Lemon juice will work, but I’ve got a cleansing powder that might be a bit better. I import it from Wistall. Since they use it to remove wine stains, it is better than bleach for cleaning my countertops. I’ll give you some. The right concentration is one in twenty. All you have to do is dab it on. I use a stronger version, but that might damage your bag and your books. It will take you some time to get everything cleaned up.”
He fetched a brown bottle and poured a few measures onto a sheet of waxed paper and twisted it up. “I’ve meant to talk to you.”
Sam didn’t like the serious look on the baker’s face. “Is something wrong?” He saw a similar expression on Mrs. Washjoy.
“The way you fixed the cart makes it easier to deliver baked goods.”
And, thought Sam, if it were easier, Tom Washjoy would have his eleven-year-old son do the deliveries.
“My son is going to take your place. I’ll pay you double next week to train him.”
Sam nodded. “Do I owe you for this?” he said, his stomach roiling from the bad news.
“No, not at all. I’ll still give you access to the stale goods, anytime. You have done a great job for me.”
Sam managed a smile. “Thank you. You both hired me when no one else would. I have liked working for you. I’ll take this,” he lifted his book bag, “ and be on my way.”
The walk home was long, lonely, and it was all Sam could do to fight off the hurt of rejection. What a deplorable day.
“What happened?” his mother asked.
“I have a week’s worth of work left at the bakery,” Sam said. “I’ll be out on the streets looking for work after that.”
“No,” Rolph said. “You’ve already earned enough for the books if you can clean them up. Your mother told me about the prank at school. I’ll give you a try at the smithy.”
“I refuse to work with him,” Mark said. “He isn’t like us.”
Tru shook his head. “He’s your brother. Give him a chance.”
“A chance is all you’ll get,” Mark muttered to Sam.
“I’ll be there when my deliveries end on Firstday,” Sam said. He had no realistic hopes of becoming an apprentice at the smithy. His father used pollen to make a lot of implements, but at least he would avoid having to plead for jobs around the town.
Sam spent the next few hours carefully removing the stain from his books and then finished cleaning his bag. At least he would avoid returning unusable texts.
CHAPTER FIVE
~
“F INGERBERRIES?” ADDY SAID AT BREAKFAST THE NEXT MORNING. “There are only two fingerberry thickets anywhere near Cherryton. I would know, my girlfriends and I love berries, so we have scoured everywhere we can find good sources. We can go to the biggest thicket after you finish your morning deliveries.”
Sam never had anything to do on weekends. Morning deliveries didn’t take too much time, even if he did have the Washjoy boy trailing around behind. He and Addy walked through the woods that bordered their house at the edge of Cherryton.
“We have half-an-hour or so of walking,” she said, “but it will be worth it.”
“Hi, Addy!” two older girls called to them coming from a different direction.
“Your friends are coming with us?” Sam said.
“Of course. If we are investigating, we can’t be too obvious, you know.”
Sam sighed. “I am not snooping.” Snoop was the general term for a person who performed investigations.
“Yes, we are,” Addy said.
While the four of them walked through the woods and across a field, Addy filled them in on Sam’s school situation.
“Poor snooping boy,” one of the girls said. She ran her hand over his head.
“I am not a pet,” Sam said.
The girls laughed, so Sam vowed not to react to anything they said. He had to endure their conversations about boys and beaus. Like Addy, they were two years older than Sam and worked part-time at various shops in the town, waiting for the right boy to sweep them off their feet.
Sam kept shaking his head at their little stories of crisis about the tiniest of things. They giggled and laughed, and he had to admit, Addy and her friends were having a very good time, not quite at his expense.
“Why don’t you have a girlfriend, Sammy?” one of the girls said.
Addy winced. “His disability restricts his social life.”
The girls went silent for a bit, but then one talked about another girl’s claim to be courting the son of the man who owned Cherryton’s best inn, and their conversation took off again.
They approached a wood. This one rose up ahead of them, covering the top of one of the rolling ridges in the Cherryton area.
“It is close to the top,” Addy said.
The girls giggled. “My mouth is watering already,” one of the girls said.
Before long, they approached a thicket. Tiny blue flowers poked out of the leaves. Sam could see the vines had been harvested before, but there were plenty of berries left. The girls quickly made pollen baskets and began to collect the fingerberry bounty.
Sam picked up one of the fingerberries. He was going to put it in his mouth, but Addy stopped him. “You can’t eat the core. I mean you can eat the core, but you won’t like how it tastes,” she said. “Help me collect berries, and we will use water to remove the bitter parts.”
Sam looked at the berry and plopped it into the basket. “What if I just ate the berry around the core?”
“Too messy,” she said as she continued to put more berries in her basket. It didn’t take them long before the baskets were full, but they left plenty of berries for others. They walked through the woods to a quick-running stream.
“This is the biggest thicket,” Addy said. “The other is much closer to town.”
Sam sighed. “Then why did we walk all the way here?”
“It’s so much more fun to stroll here,” one of the girls sa
id. “Not really. The other berries are on private property, and the owner doesn’t like trespassers. We like coming here better, anyway.”
Sam paused. He hadn’t realized that sometimes the journey was more fun than the destination. It gave him something to think about.
They made little water channels out of pollen guides, and then each girl also made a mat of pollen to kneel on while they worked. It looked like his sister and her friends had done this often. With a stream of water, the berries could be coaxed to slide off the core. Sam could only watch them all do their work without seeing the baskets, sluices, and kneeling mats.
He stood and watched Addy work as the girls continued their never-ending conversation. He leaned over and plucked a berry from his sister and put it in his mouth. Fingerberries were good, but he liked others better. He looked at his hand and saw traces of the same color stain that had decorated the inside of this book bag.
Sam washed the juice from his hands and looked at the dark red rim around his fingernails, just like he had seen on the fingers of Fara, Wally’s girlfriend. He still needed proof that the pair worked together, but he had no doubt who had falsely accused him.
“Where is the other thicket?”
Addy colored. “It is on the Kirtle farm, and they don’t like trespassers.”
“Fara Kirtle?” Sam asked.
One of Addy’s friends nodded. “She is well on her way to being thoroughly stuck-up,” the girl said. “Acts like she is a queen or something.”
“She is Wally Scrivener’s girlfriend,” Sam said.
Addy put her head back and laughed. “What a perfect pair! I didn’t know about that.” She looked at him with playfully narrowed eyes. “You are a good snoop, aren’t you?”
“I read a novel on snooping last year. It was exciting,” one of the girls said. “The snoop, Harrel, saved a noble lady from being murdered while finding out who stole the gold candlesticks from the manor house. They became lovers during the book. So thrilling!”
Sam groaned. She was serious about loving the book. He drifted to the back and let the girls have just as good a time chatting and giggling during their walk back to Cherryton.