“Don’t worry about it,” Emmy said. “We can deal with it later.”
She finally succeeded in dragging me out of the house, and we took off down the road, our backpacks thumping against us with each step. Hers was probably full of books and practical things. Mine had practical things in it, too. But things that would only have been practical for me, specifically. Among those things were a fire blanket, a pocketknife, a general-poisons antidote that I’d basically traded my soul for at a travelling circus. And by my soul, I mean every token that I had ever saved up.
Tokens were the currency of our people, and I’d managed to save up a total of three. Well … two and a half. Not sure where the other half of the last one was. It kind of looked like someone had taken a bite out of it, but that was both impossible and unhygienic. The tokens were made of bronze metal, and they were always pretty filthy. So, I had traded my precious two and a half tokens for what was most likely a scam-potion. I was almost positive that it wouldn’t work, but I’d never come across anything like it before, so it was far too easy for them to convince me that it was the rarest of potions, and worth much more than I was paying for it. I also had another medical kit in my backpack, and a banana. Just in case I got hungry.
“Maybe they’ll choose you to go with me,” Emmy joked, peeking at me sideways.
“Pfft,” I huffed, a little out of breath, because she was so much faster than me. “They wouldn’t even let me graduate.”
“They did, though.”
“Yeah but only because I broke into the records office and made myself a star pupil.”
“I still can’t believe you did that.” She chuckled. “You graduated above everyone else. Almost above me, even, and they couldn’t do anything about it.”
“Nope.” I let my lips smack together in satisfaction as I said the word. “Those documents are official. Binding.”
“They just didn’t want to admit to Leader Graham that you managed to break into their records office and tamper with everything. He would have fired all of them.”
“Okay yeah, that’s probably a more likely explanation.”
We reached the school—which was a collection of stone houses, connected by dirt pathways—and wove through the people toward the back field, where everyone was gathering. There was a stage set up, and Leader Graham himself was standing there, a bunch of papers in his hands. I snorted, pointing at him, and Emmy glanced in the direction that I indicated, a smile breaking out across her face. Leader Graham was always trying to look important. He had easily ten pages of notes in front of him, but he only needed to learn two names. He had a whole team of village advisers behind him, but he would only announce two names.
“Good evening, dwellers,” he began, just as we took seats toward the back, peering around the heads in front of us to try and get a better glimpse of him. “As you all know, we’ve reached the end of another life-cycle, and will be sending off two of our best to attend to the sols of Blesswood.” He paused, allowing the front row of dwellers to jump out of their seats, cheering excitedly. I recognised most of them as our classmates.
“Emmy.” I poked her. “I think we’re supposed to be sitting up the front.”
She nudged me back and I slid out of the seat, creeping up the middle aisle with her right behind me as Leader Graham started talking again.
“As you all know, Blesswood was the original birth-place of the first sol family, many hundreds of thousands of life-cycles ago. The original family did not work to strengthen themselves for the gods, so they were not chosen to ascend to Topia to be with the gods. The sols of this age know better, and throughout Minatsol, they are even now gathering the best amongst their own people to send to Blesswood, to train for that very purpose. To impress the gods. Just as we are striving to serve the sols, the sols are striving to serve the gods. And we must always keep in mind that some of those sols may be chosen to join the gods, which means that our chosen dwellers will be attending to not only the most respected sols of our world, but also the future gods of our world. There is no more noble profession for a dweller in all of Minatsol.”
“Except maybe just staying put and probably accidently burning the village down,” I muttered to Emmy over my shoulder. “I think my future profession is super noble.”
She snickered, but hit my shoulder kind of hard, which wasn’t surprising. She didn’t like it when I said stuff like that. The boy whose chair I was currently crouched next to shot me a glare, and I shut up, turning my attention back to Leader Graham.
“So,” he shook out his top sheet of paper, clearing his throat, “without further ado, the selected dwellers both graduated with perfect marks in all classes, and are even siblings of the same household. May they bring honour to their family, and to this village. Emmanuelle and Willa Knight … please come up to the stage.”