Inyanga's Star and Other Constellations

I.ii If Inyanga Gets In

But this was her dream. Hers. How she could be expected to accept a mundane education and career at this point, she certainly didn't know. Live forever and never learn magic? It was unfathomable. The thought made her stomach sick.

Even though she would live forever, the school almost never accepted anyone except straight out of primary — and that was a whole issue, so unfair, when she got to be a hundred would she not be smarter than she was at nineteen? How about at four hundred, or nine hundred, or two thousand?

If she kept learning, kept studying, surely the passing years would make her a more ideal candidate for a magician's license, not less. Maybe it would change in a hundred years or a thousand, but right now it was as everyone said: "That's just the way it is."

Magicians college admissions happens after the last year of primary, they said. That's all she would get. Unless she broke the world apart, and reordered how it all worked, which was pretty much what she planned to do at this point if she didn't get in.

And the other thing "they" said at Praịmarị Atọ was more of a question. "They" always asked: "How many will get in?" Because here's the thing: Inyanga's class at Ato Primary is the most competitive in generations. That was why it got so hard for Inyanga to hold on to her front row seat. The race for top marks was tight, not between two students or three, but between all of them. The whole class. It seemed as if they were a year of gifted scholars and prodigies — but no way was Constellation Univasiti going to admit thirty of them.

Some days Inyanga tried to motivate everyone, when they were losing hope. "I bet all of us get in," she would say.

"Never going to happen," Amafu had lamented over a hundred school lunches.

When they got back from lunch, of course everyone talked about the one thing Inyanga didn't want to talk about: who would get in.

"Ahihia? Hell and starsfire no, didn't you see her faceplant the last spell scavenge and choke at debate on the stage? They aren't going to take a student with performance anxiety, not from Atọ."

"How can you say that? She has a perfect mark in every subject," said Iwu.

"Who doesn't?" said Esperanza.

Iwu's mouth opened and then closed again, and then Esperanza, catching it and for sure aware that Iwu did not have a perfect score in every subject, rolled her eyes with a mean smile and said, "All of us have perfect grades, starfire brains. If they took everyone with straight cents, what would the pre-spell decathlons and the spell chases be for? Extracurriculars are todo, ya? That's why I'm not going to get in — I did the scuola paper and wiequi stones club, that's not impressing anyone at the universidad board."

Esperanza acted like she didn't even want to get into Constellation University. Her chin raised a little higher when she added, "I won't give up writing poetry for anything, not even to go to magicians' college. And I'm all right with that."

"You're going to be a poet?" said Iwu. "Forever? Nobody pays for that, nobody hires a poet, you'll never make any money. No starborn for you."

"I don't want money and I don't plan on having children, thanks."

"How will you support yourself, live with your madre forever? Eternal life in your parens' basement?" The debate raged on and on until Esperanza's eyes began to glisten, but she would not, could not, give up her pride and joy for poesy.

"I want to write, and that's it. If I have to mop floors non-magically a mano all the millions of years of my life in order to write every day, I'll do it."