Part II - The Family Name

The next morning, while the older students slept, the first-years gathered in the great hall for their jackets and an early breakfast. Archie’s excitement caused him to toss and turn through the night until the softest light coming through the window gave him an excuse to get up. He wandered around the lower building for a while, marveling at the kitchenware. He peeked out the window and saw someone jogging around the lake.

Finally, once more students woke up, they made their way up to the great hall. Archie looked for Nori but didn’t find her. Instead, he hovered awkwardly around Oliver, hoping to draft off the boy’s natural charisma in order to make new friends. After a few fruitless minutes, a much-needed jolt of energy dashed into the room.

“Who’s ready to be a Chef?!” Aubergine called out as he jogged in from the kitchen. Each step sent a drizzle of sweat from his shirt onto the stone floor. “Let me just wash up real quick and I’ll grab your jackets.”

Aubergine jogged through the great hall and out toward his quarters, giving little nods and hellos to the students as he passed.

Archie wished the headmaster would run faster. Archie had waited for this moment for years. As a kid, his favorite shirt was a bright orange one that had fake buttons sewn onto it to make it look like his parents’ jackets. He’d wear it when his parents let him cook, although since they never had food to waste, that wasn’t as often as he would have liked. During lean months, he’d go out to a swampy ditch to make mudpies and demanded that the other kids call him “Chef Kent.”

Several nervous minutes passed before Aubergine finally returned in his red jacket, carrying a stack of sand-colored, unaltered kalypo jackets.

“Alright, let’s see here.” Aubergine stopped at one of the long tables, setting out stacks of jackets by size. “We should have one in everyone’s size. Small ones down there, big ones here.”

Aubergine set the last stack of jackets down near Barley, who grabbed one and raised it to his chest. The sleeves barely reached his elbows and the lower hem rested near his bottom rib. It would never fit as a jacket, but it’d make a decent bib.

Aubergine made a popping sound with his lips. “Alright, big ones down there, small ones here.”

Barley set the jacket back down, revealing orange fibers where his hands had touched. This color faded as Archie’s excitement intensified. He scrambled forward, pushing someone else aside. He grabbed from two stacks, comparing their sizes and making everyone else wait before putting one back. He stepped away to savor the moment, holding the jacket up high.

Color spread from his hands to the rest of the jacket, turning it into an orange that was more autumn leaf than pumpkin. Archie slipped into it, pulling the overlapping flap across his chest and clicking the single line of buttons that went down the side of his ribs. Archie adjusted the jacket and smiled as it turned into a uniform orange. A perfect fit—although a little hot for the summer. He rolled up the sleeves and secured them in place with a button.

He didn’t watch anyone else grab their jackets. He was too busy looking down at his own. He thought back to the orange shirt of his childhood and the way he’d always put on his father’s jacket and imagine it changing colors.

This was it. His dream. Only a couple of advancement stripes separated his orange jacket from his parents’. And even while proud of his orange, he thought of how he’d wear yellow and green and red and white. All the colors that he would achieve. He’d be the first Kent in three generations to wear the white jacket. He just knew it.

“Congratulations,” Aubergine said to them all. “You’re officially Chefs.”

The students laughed and celebrated as they donned their jackets. Nori still had not shown up. Archie grabbed a small jacket, holding onto it for her. The other students went to the main kitchen to make their breakfasts, grinning and laughing and “yes Chef-ing” each other as they celebrated their new identities. Archie waited alone for Nori as the spare jackets were taken away.

Cress returned with a spare plate for Archie, and Akando joined them, turning the conversation onto their homeland of Kuutsu Nuna.

“So…the Kuutsu is like an invisible herd of buffalo?” Archie asked the pair.

“Well, I don’t know if invisible is exactly right. They’re like…” Cress hesitated.

“Unseen,” Akando finished.

“Yeah, unseen.”

“I don’t understand,” Archie said. “What’s the difference between invisible and unseen?”

“To see an invisible thing, it must be made visible,” Akando explained. “That is a change. We do not change the Kuutsu.”

Cress continued. “If the Kuutsu are unseen, it is us that must change to see them. It’s like…a big thing. The Kuutsu are godly. They cannot be changed.”

“What do you mean, can’t be changed?”

“You can’t move them,” Akando said. “You can’t stop them. They have followed the same path since the dawn of time. Time is the only force that can best them.”

“So in Kuutsu Nuna,” Cress said, “all of our towns are built around the migration of the Kuutsu but not in their way. They follow the same migration path every year. If you were to build a town in their path, they wouldn’t change their pattern. They would simply trample your town back into dust. So we build around them.”

“They cannot be changed,” Akando reiterated.

“So how do you…see…them?” Archie asked.

“There is an herb,” Akando answered. “Sunagrass. Suna, meaning seeing. It grows where the hair of the Kuutsu falls. In a sacred ritual, we smoke this sunagrass and it allows us to see for a time.”

“It is a rite of adulthood to spend a summer following the Kuutsu,” Cress said. “You aren’t considered an adult until you’ve done it. So technically, Akando and I are talking to a child.”

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Archie mimicked a frown. Cress laughed.

“There is a tribe that follows the Kuutsu year-round,” Akando said. “They collect the dead Kuutsu. It is only when the Kuutsu die that they can be changed. We celebrate them by ensuring nothing of their bodies go to waste. We make hides, tools—”

“And the best damn brisket in the world,” Cress added.

“Yes,” Akando, a hint of laughter slipping into his steely voice. “The best damn brisket in the world. Cress and I were chosen to come to the Academy and apprentice at Kuutsu Kaana.”

“We receive shipments of Kuutsu meat and prepare it for the people of Ambrosia City. It’s our way of spreading our culture.”

“That’s amazing,” Archie said. As a child, Archie’s world extended about ten miles around Sain, and occasionally another ten or so for his occasional visits to Ambrosia City. The thought of a world beyond that excited him. For a brief, flickering moment, he daydreamed not of being Chef Kent of Sain, but of exploring the world. But then Petrichor made its way back in his mind, bringing along a little pang of guilt that he had dreamt of anything else, even if only for a moment.

“Well, there’s a lot more to the story of the Kuutsu whenever you want it,” Cress said. “And maybe in the summer you can go follow the Kuutsu. If you’re ready to stop being a kid. I make the ceremonial smoke with a…little something extra.” She laughed and got up to leave.

Akando shook his head in lighthearted disapproval, rising with Cress.

Just as they left, Nori sat down with a plate of eggs.

“We got our jackets?” she asked as she looked around at the other students. Her loose-fitting white long-sleeved shirt and tight-fitting leather pants made her stand out in the crowd of orange jackets. She looked at Archie as she spooned eggs into her mouth. “Yours looks good on you.”

Archie stared at her, wondering how she could seem more preoccupied with her food than the unknown state of her jacket.

“Don’t you want to know where yours is?” he asked.

“Hm?” Nori chewed through a piece of bread. “I’m sure it's around here somewhere.”

Archie had put her jacket on the bench next to him. He grabbed it and tossed it in a heap onto the table.

“Oh!” Nori seemed pleased but hardly thankful. “You held onto it for me. Thanks.”

She picked it up just to fold it with one hand, setting it back down on the table and taking another bite.

“Aren’t you going to put it on?”

“After breakfast, sure.”

Archie couldn’t believe it. For years, he had fantasized about this day. For Nori, it wasn’t even as important as breakfast.

Nori noticed Archie’s confusion. “What?”

“I mean—it—it’s…” Archie struggled to put such a fundamental truth into words. “It’s a big deal. Getting a jacket.”

Nori watched him as if expecting him to say something to strengthen his point. When he didn’t, she raised her eyebrows and took another bite. “I guess. It’s just an orange jacket.”

The words slapped Archie across the face, sending him into a momentary daze. Nori continued eating in blissful ignorance.

“Yeah,” Archie sneered. “It just means that you’re a Chef. You know, just like one in every what…one, two thousand people? How unexceptional.”

Nori leaned back, stiffening her neck in an exaggerated movement. “Saaaaah-ree.” She returned to eating with a nonchalance that matched her tone. “Being a Chef is cool, yeah. But like, being an Orange Jacket Chef is whatever. It’s…the bare minimum.”

Another slap.

“My parents are Orange Jackets.”

Nori scrunched up her face in momentary confusion. “I thought you said you were from some big family of Chefs.”

Slap slap.

“They dropped out of the Academy when my grandfather died.”

“Oh. Sorry. But I mean, they could have still tested for a higher rank. Was your grandfather a Chef? What rank was he?”

Archie sucked on his teeth. He knew little of his grandfather. Arty had never been in the mood to talk about him. Archie only knew two things about the man—he graduated from the Academy still an Orange Jacket and he started the long, slow process of turning Sain into a ghost town by ruining the area with magically infused salt.

Archie had to force the word out of his mouth. “Orange. But his father was a White Jacket.”

Nori shrugged. “Oh. Okay. I can see why it’s a big deal to you, then.”

Slap slap slap.

“So what, your family is just full of White Jackets, then?”

Nori spoke through her full mouth. “My dad’s a White Jacket. My mom’s a Black Jacket, but I don’t think they’ll ever let her be a White Jacket. Not that she’s not good enough. And I have some other Black Jacket cousins. I guess that’s why it’s not a big deal to me. I’ve known since I was three that I was going to get an orange jacket. It’s the colors that come after that matter.”

Archie exhaled through his nose. “You manifested at three years old?”

“Yeah. When did you?”

“Last week,” Archie said flatly.

Nori nearly spit out her food as she contained a laugh. Archie glared at her as she coughed.

Slap slap slap slap.

“Sorry, that’s just…” She cleared her throat and swallowed. “That’s dramatic. You must have been nervous.”

“Yeah.” Archie spoke with the accumulated bitterness of so many failed festivals that had ended with him crying. “A little nervous. You don’t know what it’s like to go your whole life not knowing if you’d be a Chef or not.”

Nori seemed unbothered.

“You mean your whole life so far. You get to go the rest of it knowing, so that’s nice. And since your parents are just Orange Jackets, it’ll be easy to make them proud. At least you have that going for you. I’ve already disappointed them by staying here. They’d have me killed if I stalled out anywhere before a Black Jacket.”

Just Orange Jackets.

Slap slap slap slap slap.

Archie embraced his rising bitterness and used it to sharpen his voice into a point at Nori. “Yeah, it’s nice to have all the pressure of the family name riding on me. Otherwise I might have become an entitled brat and show up late just to have someone else hand me my jacket.”

Nori seemed bothered.

She set down her fork, took a deep breath, and looked Archie in the eyes. “Yes, Archie, you’re the only one with problems. Tell you what, at the end of the school year, when they give me my yellow jacket, I’ll be sure to be on time. Try not to drop out by then.”

Knockout punch.

Archie jumped up and stormed off. He wanted nothing to do with Nori, spoiled brat that she was, but only managed to get two steps away before the cruel irony of destiny strode through the door.

“Archie!” Rowan said as he entered the great hall. “And you must be Nori. I’m Rowan. I hope you two are ready to spend the year together!”