Magic Steps by Tamora Pierce Page A

She had a feeling Lark was exactly right. “Are you sure someone else can’t teach him?” she asked, though she was fairly certain of the answer.
    Lark grinned back at her, “It seems to me that teaching will be a very good discipline for you, too,” she replied, mock-serious. “Mila knows it was good for me.”
    “Was: it hard, teaching magic?” Sandry wanted to know.
    Lark nodded. “But I was older than you, and much more set in my ways,” she pointed out. “And I was so new to my own magic, coming to it late as I did, that I was convinced I was leaving out something important. I’ll tell you what Vetiver told me: don’t forget that Winding Circle is nearby. If you get stuck, ask questions.” She gathered up her scraps and put them aside. “Personally,” she added, “I think Pasco is very lucky to have you for a teacher. I think you’re going to be very good at it.”
    “I only hope I’m as good as you one day,” Sandry re marked softly. “You were so patient with me.”
    Lark shook her head. “You give me too much credit. It was very easy to be patient with you, and an absolute joy to teach you.”
    Sandry looked down, blushing with pleasure. Hearing that from Lark meant a great deal to her. Lark was pleas ant, but she also didn’t believe in compliments unless they were earned.
    When Sandry checked the heap of thread-bits, she saw they had woven themselves into one strand. Now they arranged themselves in a polite coil, as if they wanted to show Sandry they could behave. “Thank you,” she told them. “You did that very nicely, and I’m sorry I frightened you before.”
    She didn’t notice Lark’s smile. She was thinking, Thread minds me—why can’t Pasco? That wasn’t entirely fair, and she knew it. This thread came from sheep, who were docile enough if you kept after them. Silk thread would have been harder to control, since the caterpillars that spun silk worked only for themselves.
    Remembering her friend Briar at Pasco’s age, Sandry wondered if he’d been as deliberately ignorant as Pasco was this afternoon. Briar hadn’t been. He could be in furiating, and difficult, and independent, but he was also a realist. He would never argue when someone had pointed out something obvious, like his magic. That made her wonder, was it Briar who’d been unusual for his age, or the boy she had met today?
    “Pasco seems so young” she complained. “But that’s impossible. He’s two years older than any of us were at the start of our studies.”
    “But by then you in particular were no longer young,” Lark told her quietly.
    Sandry looked down. She knew what Lark meant. Two weeks locked in a cellar in a country gone mad, with her parents and nursemaid dead and no hope of Sandry’s ever being found, had worked a change on her ten-year-old self. The weeks she had spent afterward, staring at a ceiling and not wanting to leave her bed, had done still more to age her past her years.
    “Give me a day or two,” Lark suggested. “I’ll ask some of the dancers I know to recommend a teacher—some one who won’t be unnerved if Pasco’s control over his power slips.” Lark still kept the performer friends she’d made in her youth, before she took her vows. “In the meantime, begin his lessons in meditation as soon as possible. And be prepared to talk to his parents.”
    Sandry nodded gloomily. She didn’t feel at all confident about teaching.
    Lark came over and gave her a hug. “The wheel turns,” she told Sandry. “The student becomes the teacher. And you’ll do me credit—just you wait and see.”
    Sandry chuckled and returned the hug. “If I can do half as well as you, I’ll count myself lucky.”

CHAPTER 5
    Once baton practice started, it was a good idea to think about only baton practice, not about full nets or Lady Sandrilene. Pasco’s mother Zahra was feeling brisk she made them all step lively that morning. The cousins’ feet slapped the courtyard tiles as if they were step