Hanathue

“K.M. has presented a unique challenge to the assessment board. Her scores for intellectual functioning are uneven, with superior mathematical ability and below average reading comprehension, and her verbal and social skills are extremely lacking. No records exist from her previous education (which may have been interrupted for several years). Because of the extenuating circumstances, we cannot be sure if her lack of language is due to selective mutism from trauma, an underlying developmental disability, or a combination of these factors. It is the board’s recommendation that she remain in her current class and grade, with 5 hours of pull-out services (3 S.T., 1 S.W., 1 O.T.) per week. We will reassess in 6 months. If she shows academic decline or behavioral problems, we will consider moving her to an alternative classroom.”

-from “Kino Mejia: Educational Progress Assessment, Grade 3”, Traver City E.S. 17, Special Education Division

Traver City on Hanathue was a dark, dirty place full of yelling, angry people, and Kino hated every second she spent living there. It was better than being in quarantine, but only marginally.

The worst part of it was being separated from Bina. The second worst part was going to school.

She had never been around that many people her own age in her life, and she was beginning to find that she hated them. They were so loud, loud, loud all the time, and it made her want to cover her ears and cry. She didn't cry, though, and she stoically came to school every day.

"If you're good," they said, "you can come visit your sister in the afternoon." So she had to be good, and she had to do what they said, all day long, even if all she wanted to do was to go outside and look up at the birds who circled the skies above the city.

In the first year of being on Hanathue, Kino had lost most of her childhood pudginess. She wasn't starved, but the food tickets they got as refugees didn't go very far. Everyone else who had come from Falmar was in the same situation. The other children at school could pick her out as a Falmar kid out from the crowd. Maybe it was the way that everyone from endlessly flat farms were universally awed by the massive buildings of the city, no matter how long they lived there, or the way that they all tended to speak New Imperial in a accent that was completely different than the Hanathue drawl. Whatever it was that made them stand out, it made them targets. People thought they were bad luck. Even the teacher did.

When Kino walked around in the hallways, no one would let her shoulder brush hers. No one would shake her hand, or pick up her pen when it fell on the floor. No one would sit near her at lunch, and in the classroom anyone assigned to the desk next to hers would scoot as far away as possible. Although she hated people touching her, usually, and she didn't even want to talk, Kino could see that this was a targeted campaign against her. She held her head high anyway. She had been through quarantine. There was no way she was still contagious. And even if she was, sitting an extra few centimeters away wasn't going to protect anyone.

This particular day had started out on the wrong foot. It had been raining in the city. Rain didn't bring back bad memories for Kino, not precisely, but when the sky grew dark and cloudy and a certain light filled the air, she couldn't help but remember those last few days on her family's farm. Dashing through the storm from the barn to the house with her dad, listening to the rain hit their roof in rattling static bursts.

She trudged alone through the city streets from the group home to school. Most of the other people in the group home were older than she was, and all of them were Hanathue natives. She was the only person from Falmar who had come to that particular home. Bina had been sent to a foster family, since she was so young. And cute. Bina was cute, but Kino was not. Bina would laugh and talk. Kino would not.

Kino stepped through the streets, carefully treading along the same pattern of bricks she stepped on every single day, rain or shine. When there were puddles in her way, she carefully tiptoed. Adults, walking to their jobs, and other children walking to school all passed her by in a mad and constant rush. She kept her own pace, and arrived at school at exactly the prescribed time.

The first bell shrieked as she walked in the door, and she hunched her shoulders up and yanked at the sleeves of her uniform miserably. She hated the stiff fabric, and she hated wearing so much of it. She was too warm all the time. The school was a squat, older building that had not been renovated even as the taller buildings around it had. It was dingy and underfunded, and the hallways were crowded with kids rushing this way and that. Kino stared down at the floor as she trudged up the three stairways to her classroom. Her homeroom teacher, Mr. Nietzal, would yell at her if she was late.

She squeaked in the door just in time, and slid into her seat.

"I was hoping she wouldn't be here today," someone whispered behind her. Kino ignored it. She kept her head down, and just stared at the flat, blank surface of her desk. There was no pattern to the scratches there. Nothing she could latch on to and let her mind go blank. She missed the birds.

"You think she's ever washed her uniform?" Someone else giggled. She had to ignore it.

"Ewwwwww." Kino didn't know what they were reacting to. She didn't look up. She didn't look up.

Mr. Nietzal came into the room as the bell rang again. It always shook Kino when it did, and she jumped in her seat.

"Good morning," Mr. Nietzal trilled. "Did you all remember that we're having an event this morning?"

"Only because there wasn't breakfast!" one kid shouted from the back. Please be quiet, Kino begged internally. Please.

"They were setting up the cafeteria for the special guests we're having. Do you know what it's for?"

Everyone shook their head or mumbled out suggestions. Mr. Nietzal counted them back down into silence. "Three, two, one…" The class quieted down.

"So, I don't know how much you know about this, but every few years we test all of our students–"

A veritable riot broke out at the word test. Kids started groaning and complaining. Kino put her head down on her desk and covered her head with her hands.

"Five, four, three, two, one," Mr. Nietzal said and the class quieted down. "It isn't a school test. You don't have to do anything, just talk to one of the nice people, okay?"

"What happens if we fail?" one of the other students yelled.

"We need to raise our hands when we ask questions," Mr. Nietzal said. There was a moment of silence. "Yes, Jaylinn?"

"What happens if we fail?"

"This isn't a test where you pass or fail. It's like the tests we do to see if you need glasses."

"My mom doesn't want me to wear glasses," someone yelled.

Mr. Neitzal took a deep breath. "You're not getting glasses, this is for something different. And please raise your hand before you yell something out. Yes Cadwell?"

"What's it for, then?"

"Some people, very rarely, have something special about them, and they need to go to a different school because of it. We're just going to check for that. Lamber?"

"Good special or special special?" Someone groaned, and someone else protested.There was the sound of a slight scuffle behind Kino. She ignored it as best she could, keeping her head on her desk.

"Let's be polite and keep our hands on our own bodies, okay? I'll explain it, if you stay settled in your seat. I'm waiting." Eventually the noises in the room returned to their normal level. "I have a video that we were given to show you. Give me one second to get it set up."

"Yesssss!" Watching a video was apparently the favorite pastime of half of her class. Kino didn't particularly care for it over the lesson. People were just as badly behaved, whether a video was playing or not.

"Let me get the lights!"

"We don't need to turn the lights off–" The light peeking in between Kino's desk and face abruptly vanished. "But I guess we can have the lights off if you really want." Mr. Nietzal was a long suffering man.

Music thrummed from the front of the classroom, a jaunty and childish sounding song. Kino picked her head up off the desk slightly, so that she could see the video. It showed a woman, dressed in a long, black coat, walking down a path surrounded by green trees. The camera zoomed in on her, and she stopped her walk and smiled at the camera. The whole thing was already very saccharine and artificial.

"Hello, and welcome to the Academy entrance exam testing session. My name is Karleigh Thorne, and I'm a graduating senior at the Academy on Emerri. I'm here to explain the testing process to you and to answer any questions you might have.

"Right now, you may be wondering exactly what you're about to be tested for. Don't worry! This isn't an academic test, and you don't have to do anything. This also isn't something you can pass or fail. What we're doing is looking to see if you are a sensitive." The word 'SENSITIVE' flashed up on the screen, in bold letters. The woman resumed her walk down the path, chatting conspiratorially with the camera.

"Do you know what a sensitive is? You may have heard of them before, but you probably haven't ever met one. About one out of a million people are sensitives.

"Sensitives are just like you, except for one little difference. They all have a power granted to them by God, and they can use it to do all sorts of incredible things." She smiled at the camera. "I myself am a sensitive. If you don't mind, I'd like to demonstrate a little bit of what I can do."

"Look at this apple." She pulled an apple out of her pocket and held it up. "I can make it move by itself." The apple whirled around, hovering above her hand. Kino wasn't very impressed. Anybody with a camera and a computer could do something like that. "I can cut it, too." The apple split into neat segments, as though it had been cut by an invisible knife. One of the segments floated over to the woman's mouth, and she took a bite out of it.

The camera cut away to still shots of a planet floating in space. The same woman's voice continued as a narrator. "But most of what sensitives do isn't just fun tricks. Sensitives are the only people who can create the stardrives that make ships work." A ship jumped into the empty space around the planet. Wiggly green illustrations of radio waves moved between the ship and the planet. "Sensitives also create ansibles, to allow planets to talk to each other faster than the speed of light. Our whole Empire depends on their contributions."

The camera returned to the woman, now walking toward a building. "You've probably seen famous sensitives in the news. For example, our leader, the Voice of the Empire, First Sandreas, is a sensitive. Many other leaders in planetary governments are sensitives also. It's because these people have such great potential to help the Empire, that we test the whole population to find them.

"It looks like testing is happening in here now. Let's go see how it works."

The camera cut to the interior of a building, though Kino was suspicious that it wasn't the same one that was shown from the outside. The production values on this were really low, she thought. Her dad had always liked watching movies, so Kino had seen enough to judge what was good entertainment and what wasn't.

Onscreen, there were a group of kids, between the ages of maybe five and ten, all standing in a line. A man holding a strange tube stood in front of them. The woman came up to him and smiled.

"Dr. Yopa, are you testing people today?"

"That's exactly what I'm doing, Ms. Thorne. Do you remember when you were tested?"

"Of course, how could I forget?"

"Would you mind being my tester for a moment? I want to show these kids how it's done," the man said.

"Of course!"

"Alright, just sit right here for me. Now kids, watch what I'm going to do for Ms. Throne here." The woman sat down on the chair, and the man took his tube and waved it all around her head. "Ms. Thorne, could you focus on this video for me?" The man handed her a tablet that was playing some sort of video. The camera was oriented such that Kino couldn't see what was being shown.

"Excellent," the man said. "And just like that, we're all done. Congratulations, Ms. Thorne, you are a sensitive." They both laughed like it was the funniest joke in the world. "Alright, now which one of you is next?"

The woman stood up and walked out. Over her shoulder, the screen showed one of the kids sitting down on the chair and going through the same procedure, but it didn't linger on them. The woman was back outside, now.

"So you see, it's a very quick and simple procedure to be tested. In the rare case that you are a sensitive, we will notify your parents or guardians and let you know what's going to happen. It's very unlikely that anyone in your school will be a sensitive, but we test everyone just in case. Thank you for your cooperation and understanding!"

The film cut to more jaunty music and credits. Mr. Nietzal was standing by the lightswitch, and he turned them on. Kino was momentarily blinded by the light, and she winced. She wasn't really sure what to think of the whole thing. It didn't seem like… well… Kino had never made anything fly around like that, and she had certainly never built a stardrive, but there was… She didn't really want to think about it. She was going to be tested, and that would prove something, one way or another.

She hadn't ever told anyone about her hot rocks. She liked to keep things quiet, in general. Her parents would have been mad at her for stealing eggs, probably, so she had never mentioned it. And it wasn't like Bina was old enough to care.

"Great, so, as the video said, it's unlikely that this will affect any of you, which is why we test the school every couple of years, rather than every year. You shouldn't have to go through this again. We just have to wait until we're all called down by class. You can have, uh, some free time until then. It shouldn't be more than a couple minutes. Stay in your seats, please, voices at level three."

Immediately, kids disregarded that instruction and scooted their chairs around to talk loudly with their friends, or got up to wander the classroom. Mr. Nietzal leaned against the wall, mentally checked out.

Kino stared at the surface of her desk, and pulled out a pencil. She needed to know. Could she make it fly? She concentrated on it so intensely that her head began to hurt.

"What are you doing, sicko?" one of the other kids asked her, leaning in closer than most people would. "You think you're special? Hah." He blew hard across her desk, and the pencil rolled off it and fell to the floor. Kino leaned down to pick it up, and he kicked at the legs of her chair, making her almost fall to the ground. She wanted to go home. She clutched the pencil tightly in her hand. It was true that she hadn't managed to make it fly. There probably wasn't anything going on with her.

It had even been a long time since she had made the rocks hot. It had been a long time since she had been peaceful by the river, and she hadn't tried it since. There was a part of her that now was worrying that she had imagined it. Perhaps she had just fallen asleep and dreamed about eating eggs. Perhaps the time she had burned her hands, she had actually just fallen and scraped them. Perhaps watching the birds drift higher and higher had nothing to do with her thoughts or actions, and had only to do with random happenstance and the sun shining warm over patches of ground.

"Class 3C, please report to the cafeteria for testing," the intercom announced. Mr. Neitzal interrupted everyone's chatting, and luckily distracted Kino's tormentor from his teasing. He got the class to line up, not without difficulty, and escorted them all down towards the cafeteria.

Kino was at the end of the line, where she preferred to be. At the back, no one could bother her from behind, and there was a little bit of extra room for her to dawdle anywhere. They made it to the cafeteria. There was a long line of students, and several people testing them with machines. The video that they had watched was apparently accurate, because the process took less than a minute for each person, and there was no kicking or screaming, so it must have been less painful than getting one of the vaccine shots they gave out sometimes. Kids just sat down and were told to look at a screen while someone pointed a weird device at their head. Kino bounced on her tiptoes in line, waiting her turn. The line crawled forward, and the cafeteria was loud with so many people in it. She was grateful that they called people down by class. She couldn't imagine having the whole school in here at once.

Actually, she could imagine it, and she hated it. Kino always did her best to escape whole school assemblies, with their loudspeakers and close quarters groups of kids crammed in. It was much better to hide in the bathroom whenever one was coming up. No one ever took attendance, so she was able to get away with it, most of the time. She had to stay for this, though. Her shoulders crept up to her ears, trying to block some of the noise, and she pulled relentlessly on the sleeve of her shirt, further fraying the already unraveling hem. The woman who ran the group home would be mad if she noticed that Kino's uniform was getting destroyed, but Kino couldn't stop her nervous pulling and picking.

Eventually, it was her turn, and she walked on tip toes to the testing area, sitting down in the chair just like everyone else had before her.

"Kino Mejia?" the tester asked. Kino nodded. "Great. Can you focus on this picture for me?" He pointed at a screen set up so that only people sitting in the chair could see it. It didn't look like much to Kino, just a mass of swirling static. She looked at it, trying to see if there were any patterns. It mostly just made her eyes sore.

"Hey Karl, I think my meter just died, do we have a spare?" her tester asked, shouting over the din of the cafeteria toward one of his coworkers.

"It died? What do you mean?"

"I'm not getting any reading over here."

"Alright, let me check it out." Another man wandered over to Kino, and studied the device in the first man's hand. Kino looked away from the screen to watch what they were doing, nervously. "Try it now," Karl said.

"Same result." Her original tester was frustrated, and slapped the device against his palm. Kino wanted to ask if everything was ok, if she was causing a problem, but the words were stuck in her throat.

"Try it on me?" Karl asked. The first man held the device up to his coworker's head, then checked the reading.

"Oh, that's very weird." The two men frowned at it.

"Kino, sweetie, let's try this again," the first man said. "Pay very close attention to the screen, please."

Kino obediently focused on the screen, opening her eyes as wide as they would go, and staring so intently at the blurry swirls that her eyes dried out.

Karl whispered to the first man, clearly not intending for Kino to hear, but she heard anyway. "Is she, uh, all there?"

"I'll ask her teacher." Her first tester walked off to talk to Mr. Nietzal.

"You don't have to look at that anymore, sweetheart," Karl said. Kino blinked and sat back in the chair, grateful to not need to look at the screen anymore. The first tester came back, a somewhat relieved look on his face.

"Well, that answers that question, I guess."

"It's a no, then?"

"Of course it's a no, I just thought the machine was broken at first." The two men laughed. "You're all set, Kino." Kino got up and left, glancing backwards at the two men. She wondered what exactly had gone wrong with her test, and what Mr. Nietzal had told them. It couldn't have been anything good.

Even though there wasn't anybody in her school who had passed the test, as far as Kino could tell, this rejection, in particular this way that they asked if she was All There, that hurt. It hurt more than she had expected. It was as though her whole life on Falmar had just been a dream. A dream of having a family, a dream of being able to do things, a dream of feeling like a human being, a dream of–. A dream of being happy. And she was rudely awakened from it again and again by the harsh noises of the city, of her classmates, of her alarm clock in the group home, blaring at her. She covered her ears.

No, that wasn't the group home alarm clock. That was the fire alarm. Teachers, roused from their lazy positions leaning against the walls, started assembling classes into lines and ushering them out the door. The men doing the testing stood around looking confused as children rushed around them toward the emergency exits. Kino stood still, trembling in the floor for a moment and covering her ears, until one of the teachers came around and grabbed her by the elbow, escorting her out of the building.

Though the scene on the street was chaotic, with children standing in haphazard lines and teachers calling out names for attendance, the blaring of the alarm was muted and the air was fresh and clear. The sky had cleared into a pale blue, and it was brisk and a little windy out. Something in the smell of the air reminded Kino of Falmar, and she smiled for the first time in a while. As she stood in the back of her class line, she was finally able to let her hands drop off her ears and stare up at the sky.

Birds wheeled and tumbled in the air above the city, dashing from signs to light posts to building awnings to trash cans. Kino watched their dance with a familiar patience. There were no massive thermals here to sweep the birds higher and higher, but little birds or big birds, they all flew the same. She loved them, and she watched them go, tuning out the noises of her classmates and the dull blaring of the alarm within the building. Her mind drifted away into that calm place she remembered.

Just out of curiosity, Kino glanced around the sidewalk where her class was lined up, and saw a nearby piece of landscaping filled with rocks surrounding small flower pots. She stepped out of line, not really caring or paying attention, and took one, feeling its satisfying, cold weight in her hands.

She stared up at the birds, and clenched the rock in her fist. She focused on it, drowning out everything else. She could feel it growing warmer and warmer, but was that just her hands heating it up? How could she know that it was real?

"Kino, back in line," Mr. Nietzal shouted from further down on the sidewalk. "And please don't touch the flowerbed."

"What do you need a rock for?" somebody asked. Kino was jolted out of her reverie.

"She's gonna put it in up her nose so it can rattle around with the rest of them in her brain."

Kino stood still, frozen, listening to the taunts of her classmates. Maybe they were right. The rock grew hotter and hotter in her hand. Hotter, and hotter, and hotter.

"Can I take a rock, too?" Someone else asked Mr. Nietzal.

"No. Kino, put the rock back, please."

She was frozen in place, like she couldn't move a muscle. The alarm screamed behind her; the other kids screamed in front of her; the birds had a shrieking chorus overhead.

"Give me the rock!" Someone lunged at her, a boy with slicked back brown hair. Kino was holding her hands in front of her, clutching the rock, and he pried them apart. "Ahh! She bit me!"

Mr. Nietzal rushed over, seeing the altercation. Kino hadn't bitten anyone. She was so still, holding her rock as it burned her hands. She walked away. The rock had burned someone else, too. It was real. She knew what she had to do.

"Kino, come back here!" Mr. Nietzal said. She ignored him, and carefully pushed through the crowd of students, cradling the rock in her hands. She didn't want to hurt anyone else, but she needed to prove to someone else that this was real. The testers were leaning against the wall, watching the relative chaos of the student scene. They had abandoned their equipment inside as the fire alarm rang, and they were waiting along with everyone else to go back in. They were shivering slightly; their work clothes were much thinner than the school uniforms of the kids.

Kino stood in front of them resolutely, her fingers burning. They looked down at her. She held her hands out, opening them up like a flower. She saw the red welts on her hands where her rock had burned her.

Mr. Nietzal arrived to grab Kino just as the tester yelled out for someone to get the nurse. The scene devolved into chaos, and Kino's hands kept smarting long after someone shook her arms enough to get her to drop the stone. It rolled onto the street.