The village schoolhouse sat at the center of everything, the way schoolhouses in small villages often did, close enough to the market square that the smell of fresh bread drifted through the open windows on baking days and close enough to the well that the younger children were sent to fetch water as a kind of unofficial extension of their lessons.
Arthur was five the first time he walked there on his own two feet instead of being carried, his mother's hand in his for the first half of the walk before she let go at the edge of the square, trusting the remaining distance to him the way parents trusted small distances long before they trusted larger ones. He found the well before he found the schoolhouse door.
A girl was sitting on its low stone rim, her knees pulled up, watching the other children gather and shout and chase each other across the square with the particular detached interest of someone deciding whether any of it looked worth joining. She looked at him as he approached.
GIRL: You're new.
ART: I'm not new. I've always lived here.
GIRL: New to school, I mean. I haven't seen you before.
ART: Oh. Yes. Today's my first day.
She studied him for a moment with the particular frank assessment children brought to evaluating other children, no diplomacy yet learned, no filter between observation and statement.
GIRL: You look nervous.
ART: I'm not nervous.
GIRL: You're holding your hands really tight.
Arthur looked down. He was, in fact, holding his hands tightly together, the particular unconscious gesture of someone trying to keep something steady that wasn't entirely steady on its own.
ART: Maybe a little nervous.
GIRL: That's alright. Everyone's nervous the first day. I was nervous my first day, except I didn't have anyone sitting with me at the well, so I just had to be nervous by myself, which is worse.
ART: Why didn't anyone sit with you?
GIRL: I don't know. Maybe nobody else gets to school early enough.
She seemed to consider this a satisfactory enough answer and moved over slightly on the stone rim, the particular small gesture that meant an invitation without needing to state it directly, and Arthur, after a moment's hesitation, sat down beside her.
GIRL: I'm Elsie.
ART: Arthur.
ELS: That's a good name. Sturdy.
ART: What does sturdy mean?
ELS: Like a good chair. Doesn't wobble.
Arthur considered whether being compared to a chair was a compliment and decided, based on the matter-of-fact way she'd said it, that it probably was.
ELS: What's your ability?
The question arrived the way it always seemed to arrive between children this age, casual and assumed, the particular unthinking confidence of someone who had never once had reason to consider that the question might not have an easy answer.
Arthur felt something tighten in his chest, the first small precursor of a feeling he would come to know intimately over the following years, though at five years old he did not yet have the language for it, only the sensation.
ART: I don't have one yet.
ELS: Yet?
ART: That's what my mama says. That it'll come when it comes.
Elsie nodded, accepting this with the easy credulity of a child who had no particular reason to doubt an explanation offered with confidence, and Arthur felt the tightness in his chest ease slightly, grateful for the simplicity of her acceptance.
ELS: I can make the wind do small things. Not big things. Just little things, like making leaves spin or carrying my voice further than it should go.
She demonstrated, a small gust curling around them both, lifting a few fallen leaves from the ground in a lazy spiral before letting them drift back down, and Arthur watched it with open delighted fascination, the particular wonder children brought to abilities that weren't their own.
ART: That's amazing.
ELS: It's alright. My brother can do much bigger things. Makes me feel a bit small, next to him.
ART: I think it's amazing.
She looked at him properly then, something in her expression shifting slightly, the particular warmth that arrived when someone offered you a kindness you hadn't expected and weren't quite sure how to receive gracefully.
ELS: Thanks.
The schoolhouse bell rang across the square, the particular clanging summons that meant the day's lessons were about to begin, and the scattered children began converging toward the door in loose disorganized clusters, the noise of the morning rising around them.
Elsie stood, brushing off her skirt, and held out a hand toward Arthur with the same unthinking confidence she'd shown throughout their entire brief acquaintance.
ELS: Come on. We can sit together. I'll show you where the good seats are. Not too close to the front, not too close to the back. Right in the middle, where the teacher mostly forgets you exist.
ART: Is that good?
ELS: It's the best. Trust me.
Arthur took her hand, and together they crossed the square toward the schoolhouse door, two small figures moving through the noisy current of other children, and Arthur, despite the nervousness still sitting somewhere underneath his ribs, felt something else arrive alongside it, something warmer, something that felt remarkably like the beginning of a good thing. He did not yet know how much that good thing would come to matter.
He simply held onto her hand, and let her lead him toward the door, the way you let yourself be led on a first day by someone who already seemed to understand the shape of the world a little better than you did.