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their comm as a minimum punishment.” Damaya knows this, though she resents the knowledge. Parents who cared about her would risk, wouldn’t they? “Your parents could not have wanted to lose their home, their livelihood, and custody of both their children. They chose to keep something rather than lose everything. But the greatest danger lies in what you are, Dama. You can no more hide that than you can the fact that you are female, or your clever young mind.” She blushes, unsure if this is praise. He smiles so she knows it is.
    He continues: “Every time the earth moves, you will hear its call. In every moment of danger you will reach, instinctively, for the nearest source of warmth and movement. The ability to do this is, to you, as fists are to a strong man. When a threat isimminent, of course you’ll do what you must to protect yourself. And when you do, people will die.”
    Damaya flinches. Schaffa smiles again, as kindly as always. And then Damaya thinks about that day.
    It was after lunch, in the play-yard. She had eaten her bean roll while sitting by the pond with Limi and Shantare as she usually did while the other children played or threw food at each other. Some of the other kids were huddled in a corner of the yard, scratching in the dirt and muttering to each other; they had a geomestry test that afternoon. And then Zab had come over to the three of them, though he’d looked at Damaya in particular as he said, “Let me cheat off you.”
    Limi giggled. She thought Zab liked Damaya. Damaya didn’t like him, though, because he was awful—always picking on Damaya, calling her names, poking her until she yelled at him to stop and got in trouble with their teacher for doing it. So she said to Zab, “I’m not getting in trouble for you.”
    He’d said: “You won’t, if you do it right. Just move your paper over—”
    “ No, ” she’d said again. “I’m not going to do it right. I’m not going to do it at all . Go away.” She’d turned back to Shantare, who had been talking before Zab interrupted.
    Next thing Damaya knew, she was on the ground. Zab had shoved her off the rock using both hands. She tumbled head over heels literally, landing on her back. Later—she’d had two weeks in the barn to think about it—she would recall the look of shock on his face, as if he hadn’t realized she would go over so easily. But at the time, all she had known was that she was on the ground. The muddy ground. Her whole back was coldand wet and foul, everything smelled of fermenting bog and crushed grass, it was in her hair and this was her best uniform and Mother was going to be furious and she was furious and so she’d grabbed the air and—
    Damaya shivers. People will die . Schaffa nods as if he has heard this thought.
    “You’re firemountain-glass, Dama.” He says this very softly. “You’re a gift of the earth—but Father Earth hates us, never forget, and his gifts are neither free nor safe. If we pick you up, hone you to sharpness, treat you with the care and respect you deserve, then you become valuable. But if we just leave you lying about, you’ll cut to the bone the first person who blunders across you. Or worse—you’ll shatter, and hurt many.”
    Damaya remembers the look on Zab’s face. The air had gone cold for only an instant, billowing around her like a burst balloon. That was enough to make a crust of ice on the grass beneath her, and to make the sweatdrops go solid on Zab’s skin. They’d stopped and jerked and stared at each other.
    She remembers his face. You almost killed me, she had seen there.
    Schaffa, watching her closely, has never stopped smiling.
    “It isn’t your fault,” he says. “Most of what they say about orogenes isn’t true. There’s nothing you did to be born like this, nothing your parents did. Don’t be angry with them, or with yourself.”
    She begins to cry, because he’s right. All of it, everything he says, it’s right. She hates Mother for