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Scurry, Sommerland,” called the Artisan woman at the microphone. Her voice was bored.

In the pockets of my skirt were two differing vials of Idia’s blood. I gripped them tightly as I moved forward toward those wide-open doors.

Patrick was gone. Kenton Hill had been called along with Lavnonshire already. Hours ago, it seemed.

What do we do? I had begged.

Nothin’ , he’d said, pulling me back from the alley into the rabble of waiting children. Nothin’ to be done.

It’s all pretend. All decided!

Yeah. He’d looked as though I’d taken the words and beat him over the head with it.

I’d stomped my foot. There’s always somethin’ to be done. Always. We cannot simply do nothin’.

And for a moment, Patrick had stirred there in the courtyard, filling with something.

But then he let out a long breath, and his head fell forward.

He had wiped his nose on his shirtsleeve and looked away.

He said, I was gonna be on that train home, one way or another.

Then, Fuckin’ dictators . And, with more venom, I could kill every last one of ’em .

For a frightening moment, I’d believed him.

I’ll never… I’ll never be an Artisan , I’d whispered. The hidden parchment jabbed into my stomach. He looked at me with so much pity that I wanted the earth to swallow me.

I thought he might invite me back to Kenton Hill again.

I thought I might say yes.

“Kenton Hill!” came the call. “Lavnonshire!”

Patrick cursed. He picked up the hands laying limply by my sides, and I felt cool glass press against either palm. His blue eyes, now afraid, were still astonishing. You’ve got a mind of your own , he reminded me. Don’t let those fuckers take it.

Then he leaned down, pressed his lips briefly against my cheek, then walked through those double doors the way a man walks to the gallows.

He turned to look back at me once, mouth quirking upward awkwardly and then falling. He looked brimming with things to say but pressed his lips tightly closed. All the weight of Belavere Trench held in the mouth of a miner’s boy.

Thus, Patrick Colson was gone, and I believed I would never see him again.

The children of Scurry and Sommerland pressed through the doors to the National Artisan House to find out how they would spend the rest of their lives.

I felt a deepening pity for them all. I wondered if there were any like me, who had been banking on a life better than the one they’d left.

“Five lines,” the Artisan woman called and I heard the familiar clacking of heels on the tile. We’ve got just about all the Artisan children needed this year.

The hall inside was splendid and overly decorative.

Ornate paintings hung from the walls, none of them smaller than me.

The vaulted ceiling unbalanced me, every inch of it artfully reticulated in gold.

But nothing glistened anymore. It didn’t swallow me the way I always imagined it would; the way it might have, if it weren’t a lie.

The children of Scurry formed queues in front of the oak tables waiting at the hall’s far side. A kid shoved me from behind in my hesitation to move toward one.

Voices rose to the high ceilings and bounced around the open space so that one hundred people sounded like a thousand. Ahead, a boy strained to see better. A girl kept turning to grasp the arms of a friend and proclaim her need to be sick.

“You think it’ll taste bad?”

“What if I can’t drink it?”

“I heard that a boy dropped dead last year.”

“Me sister said it were like swallowin’ lightnin’.”

“Next!”

They shuffled up their lines in their handed-down church clothing, in their barely contained hairdos and cracked lips. When was the last time a child from Scurry had become an Artisan?

I couldn’t think of a single one.

Happens less and less these days. Dad had told me. It’s all about the bloodlines, you see? And you ain’t got the genes for absorbing idium. You got no chance.

“Next!”

I kept my hands in my pockets as I shuffled forward, my thumb sweeping over their tops and feeling the wax and cork alternately. Artisan and Crafter. Not a destiny, but a choice. It seemed an easy one to make.

But it seemed a dangerous one, too.

“Next!”

I wished I could see Patrick nodding at me. I wished my mother had never left.

“Next!”

Each child said their name, pulled the cork out, swallowed, waited. Nothing. Down the halls they left in single file. Back to a train that would take them northeast to little futures.

“Next!”

Inside my skirt pocket, I used my thumb and forefinger to peel the wax away from the cork. It only took a second.

“Next!”

I walked forward.

Behind the glistening oak tabletop, a man no older than twenty perused a lengthy piece of parchment. He did not look up as I approached.

“Name?”

“Harrow. Nina.”

He checked off the name with a quill and ink. I wondered vaguely how the man knew which names were Artisan and which were Crafter.

“Is this one for me?” I asked, lifting the vial for his examination.

The man squinted at it a second. “Ah…” he said. “Where—?”

“It was on the floor,” I said blankly. “Must have fallen from the crates.”

The man spared a glance sideways at the precarious stack of discarded boxes.

“Idium is finite. Thank God it didn’t smash on the tiles,” I said with a pointed look to the woman in the obnoxious heels. She watched the officials like a hawk.

“That is… I need to ensure the dosage is correct.” Beads of sweat emerged over his brow.

“They’re all the same,” I said then. “Aren’t they?”

I had the sudden, vicious desire to hear him say it. To contradict me out loud. Then I could point and scream red-faced to everyone in the hall that they were, each of them, liars.

And then I’d return to Scurry, and nothing would change.

The administer cleared his throat, shot a furtive look at the high-heeled woman. “Yes. Well… if you please,” he said ruefully.

I swallowed back the bile climbing up from my insides. I had the sense that I was doing something catastrophic. But there was that teeming ocean in my mind, swelling and crashing in color and sound and a constant desire to seek, and I pulled the cork out. I wasn’t going home.

I tipped the vial to my lips and drank it all.

Then I waited.

The dilution tasted of metal against my tongue. It was oily. Cold. It slipped down my throat reluctantly, clinging to the sides.

At first, there was nothing. A small tingling in my chest, maybe. A clenching of my stomach.

Then, there was everything.

I felt dust particles touch my cheeks as they fell. Light rays that separated into singular photons and pierced the air, pierced my skin. I felt every mechanism of my body at once, in perfect harmony. And the color.

Color bloomed everywhere. It deepened and lightened and shone. I could dissect the minute differences of blues in the canvas painted into oceans on the far wall. I could hear music in the city sounds and the way they were interwoven.

I felt how easy it would be for my hands to mimic life : on parchment, on walls, in stone and wood and dirt.

I felt, for a sheer fleeting moment, absolutely, incontestably filled with answers.

And then the feeling was gone.

I shuddered. Blinked.

“Hold each one in your hand,” said the administer, pushing forward a small wooden box with a brass clasp. He ran a finger down his list of names without further regard, clearly ignorant that the person before him had just been irrevocably morphed by something holy.

My breaths rattled. I could hear nothing else as I reached forward. I had the sudden impression that it would sting to hold anything against my skin.

The official sighed and looked up at me impatiently. “Go on,” he ushered.

I swallowed. My fingers neared the box.

Nothing happened. The wood did not rattle in place or tip over. An object from within did not tumble toward me—another planet falling into the orbit of its sun. The glass of water at its side didn’t quake.

But there was a tremor within me . A pulse in my fingertips. Even more prominent was the sensation of my mind expanding, clawing, searching.

“Pick them up, miss,” the official said. Pushing the box even closer. It clattered noisily across the desk.

And with the movement came a small cloud of dust. The unbrushed particles of the stones and gems within.

I saw each particle as they rose, and watched as they spun in the stagnant air, and so did the administer. He froze in place, pen leaking ink onto the page before him.

More dirt rose, but not from the box this time.

It wormed out from the tile crevices, from the soles of shoes, from creases of skin.

It swept in from the doors, curling over the steps and stealing inside.

A squall rose, dust swirling in every direction.

The children shrieked and covered their eyes.

The officials stood, their chairs knocking, falling. Voices were swallowed in the storm.

And I felt like a giant. A god. All around me, the universe pulsed.

Something in my chest recoiled—the snap of elastic stretched too far, and abruptly, the surge died. Dirt rained to the floor. Silence blanketed us all.

In the palm of my hand, a small mound of dust collected, no larger than an anthill.

I smiled at it, forgetting for a moment where I was or from where I’d come. I was only aware of the small weight in my hand, its exact texture.

How many times had I felt dirt at my fingertips, and yet none of it had made my mind burst into a kaleidoscope?

Around me, I heard the delayed feedback of hurried footsteps. The click-clack of heels seemed far away, then abruptly beside me. It took several moments to notice the eyes stabbing me from every corner of the room, down the entire length of the table.

It took longer for the shapes of their lips to form coherent sound. Words I understood, though never, even in my wildest imaginings, in reference to me.

Earth Charmer.

Earth Charmer.

“Earth Charmer!”