I can feel the girls behind me staring, hard, like this is the most entrancing shit they’ve ever seen. Something they’ve fantasized about their whole lives: the day they get magic.
After a few more swats with the stick, the Sorter seems satisfied she’s found whatever she was looking for. Then she shoves a thumb into the side of girl’s mouth, pulling it open and looking at the girl’s teeth.
What the hell is this, an auction?! I cannot. She’s not touching my teeth. She’s not touching me period. I’m not being paraded on stage like property. Hell, the fuck, no. I have half a mind to leave. I look around; Patrol is everywhere. Would they even let me?
“Hmph.” The Sorter grunts, but it’s, like, an approving grunt, if there is such a thing. She mutters more words I’ve never heard and I could swear someone behind me snorts. A few more seconds pass, and then she faces the crowd. “Zruki.”
Zruki? The hell is a Zruki?
A burst of applause rings out from the front row and a woman with her hair in an unkempt bun clutches her chest in relief. The man next to her with black-stained fingers presses his forehead to hers. They smile. Must be something good, I guess.
Sorter Lady points a bony finger toward the sign that says BINDING and the girl’s pallor returns. It’s only then that I notice the old woman only has a thumb and a pointing finger. I gulp. I probably should have asked who all these people are, what being Sorted and Bound entails, something. But that would have required talking to him.
We ain’t talked my entire life. Why start now?
Been figuring shit out on my own all this time.
This ain’t no different.
Sorter Lady gestures for the next person in line and the girl in front of me disappears toward the platform. She’s wearing a crimson dress in a shiny material. Taffeta? Silk? Some shit. She sashays on stage like it’s a dance and the crowd ooohs and ahhhhs. The elder woman taps her stick at the spot where Crimson Girl is supposed to stand, apparently unimpressed with the flashy entrance. Crimson Girl blushes and hurries to her place, but not before fanning out her arms. Gilded peacock feathers sprout from her collar like her head is set on a pedestal shrouded in gold.
I’m next in line and my sperm donor’s full on smiling now. I don’t want his smiles. I don’t want anything from him… I don’t want…
“Next, daughter of Aasim,” Aasim says.
I don’t want to be called that.
Aasim says his piece then sits, pride alight in his eyes. The Chancellor’s stare is on me like dead weight. Standing on the platform, I can really see just how wide and deep the theater seating goes. A collage of bright blues, deep rusty oranges, and every hue in the rainbow colors the crowd’s made-up faces and matching ornate hairstyles. My heart flutters a million miles a minute. A woman in the audience with rose-shaped hair folds her arms and I can practically feel the chill from her shade. Glittered strands of hair hang in tendrils around her face, a sharp contrast to the stank eye she’s giving me. Deep red stain colors her lips, dark and glossy… probably sticky…
Sticky like…
Red like…
My throat constricts and a stubby forefinger and thumb beckon me onto the stage. Sorter Lady’s looking away from me as she gestures. I come. My feet are lead, but I come.
Our eyes meet and the chill I felt from Red Lips is as warm as a summer day compared to the ice of this old lady’s stare.
“Na!” She bangs the ground, her eyes as wide as the moon on a cloudless night.
“Uhhh?”
“Na! Y’gi na.” She scowls, blocking the path between her evaluation deck and the BINDING sign where Redhead and Crimson Girl exited to be Bound to magic.
“Na, Zruki. Na, Dwegini.” She turns to the Chancellor and her nostrils flare. “Na!”
She’s not feeling me. At all.
“Naaaa!” She hisses like a snake. I back up several steps and the crowd erupts in chatter. I can leave. I don’t wanna be here no way. Be sorted Zruki or whatever the hell the other option is. I spot my wannabe kin on the far end of the stage and he doesn’t move or speak, just chews his bottom lip.
The Chancellor’s eyes haven’t moved.
Still on me as he strokes his chin.
Stick Lady points at me like she did the others, but she points toward the exit. As in leave. I don’t get to be Bound, apparently. Does that mean I get to go home? Because that’d be great.
The crowd is harder to see as I descend the steps from the platform, backing up until I bump into something. “Oops,” I say. “Sorry.”
Papers spill on the ground and the noise on the platform dies down. The Sorter woman is in a tizzy, arguing with some military-type dude with a scar under his eye. He doesn’t look like he’s playing, but the way she’s shouting, she ain’t playing either. I turn my back on the commotion to a smiling face covered in freckles, unruly blond hair, and red square glasses.
“It’s fine.” She reshuffles the papers in her hand.
Was I supposed to bring paperwork to this thing?
“Don’t mind her,” she says, pointing at Stick Lady. “People say she smokes jpango leaves all day. Pretty sure her brain’s fried at this point. They say the only words she knows are ‘Zruki’ and ‘Dwegini.’ Which, for her job, covers it. So!” She snorts.
I look back at the old woman and needles prick my spine. “Nah, something tells me she knows much more than that.”
The girl shrugs. “Maybe. But don’t let her get to you. Even if she won’t sort you, you can probably still be Bound. You’re Ruler Aasim’s daughter.”
Her words are sandpaper on my skin. “Oh no, it’s cool. I mean… wait, ruler?”
“I know you’re new around here,” she says. “Half-human and all. Gossip mill spreads fast. But you want to be Bound. Trust me.”
“I mean, not really. For what? To play dress-up every day? What’s the point?”
She laughs, then stops when she realizes I’m foreal. “It’s so much more than that. The capabilities are wild. You’ll see.” She gestures at the air like she’s grasping for my name.
I let her.
I don’t know this girl.
She sticks out a hand. “Ajebria.”
Well, shoot… she’s being friendly as hell. “Ah-juh, what?”
“Just call me Bri. It’s what everyone calls me. If I had friends, that is… I mean…” She facepalms. “I prefer Bri. Sorry for being weird. I don’t talk to many… I mean I don’t have…”
“I’m Rue.” I offer dap and she stares, confused. I take her hand, ball it into a fist, and pound it on mine. “Dap.”
“Dap.” She slow nods.
“Dap.”
We laugh. “You said Ruler Aasim… is he like…”
“You’re not serious. You have to be kiddi—” She must read my face because she changes her tone, quick. “Yeah.” She bats flyaways out of her face like they’re a flock of gnats. “Third in command around here. So not like ruler, ruler, but like real close to the top ruler. He works right under the Chancellor.”
Aasim works right under the boss man? That why he on stage in that little bitty chair?