The oath was supposed to take five minutes, and I’d been dreading it for five days.
It happened on Tuesday evening, under the third Acacia tree, the one that stood beside the fountain.
The sky had turned the color of ripe mango.
Most of the students had already gone home or to the canteen.
A few were walking across the quadrangle with their bags, but nobody looked twice at us.
People never did.
Aris had explained that an oath ceremony was shielded by the Anchor itself, and ordinary eyes slid right over it.
“Ordinary eyes are lazy,” he said.
“They look for things that make sense.”
“And a bunch of students standing around a tree doesn’t make sense?”
“A bunch of students with their hands on a tree in the middle of the evening? It makes a very specific kind of sense. Most people assume it’s a club activity and walk away.”
“That’s kind of sad.”
“It’s convenient.”
I stood on the grass in my cleanest jeans and a borrowed gray cardigan that Sol had insisted on lending me.
My braid was tied up properly this time.
My form, with all seven signatures, was tucked into a plain folder in my hands.
The coin was in my pocket, hidden deep.
I could feel it against my leg, warm as a tiny stove.
Please don’t glow, I begged it silently.
Please, please don’t glow.
* * *
The Council stood in a half-circle in front of the tree.
Sean Ocampo had put on his sash, the blue one with the gold stripe, and he looked so official that I almost curtsied.
Dom stood next to him with his back as straight as a flagpole and his taped forearms pressed against his sides.
He was wearing a clean shirt that was one size too small.
Cheska Tan held her tablet against her chest and watched me with cool interest.
Pia was a little way off, leaning against the fountain with her hands tucked into the sleeves of her jacket, smiling at me like a person who’d rather be somewhere quiet.
Sol stood beside me.
She had insisted on being close, and nobody had argued.
She was holding a notebook and a paper bag from the canteen.
And behind the Council, a little to the side, Aris leaned against the trunk of the second Acacia with his hands in his pockets.
He looked sleepier than usual.
Dark smudges shadowed his eyes.
I’d noticed, when I first arrived, that the knuckles on his right hand had gone purple and swollen, with a bit of dried blood across two of them.
He saw me notice and moved the hand behind his back.
I looked away quickly.
“Friends,” Sean said.
He didn’t need to raise his voice.
The Anchor carried it.
“We’re here to witness the oath of a new member of the Archivists of the Prime Nexus. It’s an old ceremony. It’s short. I’ll ask the Applicant to approach the tree.”
I walked forward.
The grass was damp under my sneakers.
The Acacia rose in front of me, broad and old, its trunk wider than three people could reach around.
The bark was dark and rough and covered in tiny cracks.
A few leaves fluttered down as I came near, shining gold in the light.
“Place your right hand on the trunk,” said Sean, gently.
“Palm flat. Don’t be afraid.”
I put my hand against the tree.
It was warm.
I had expected that, after Aris explained it.
I hadn’t expected the pulse.
It moved under my palm, slow and steady, like a heartbeat in a very large chest.
It matched the rhythm of my own, and then, for a moment, it pulled ahead, as if it was leading me somewhere.
“Repeat after me,” said Sean.
* * *
The oath was seven lines long.
I’d read it twice on the form and again on my phone while brushing my teeth.
It sounded different when I said it out loud with a tree under my hand.
Each line seemed to hang in the air for a second after I finished it.
“I will remember what is forgotten.”
“I will remember what is forgotten,” I said.
“I will carry the names of those who cannot carry their own.”
“I will carry the names of those who cannot carry their own.”
“I will pay what is owed, in the coin that is asked.”
I paused.
The coin in my pocket flickered, a tiny pulse of heat.
I took a breath and kept my voice steady.
“I will pay what is owed, in the coin that is asked.”
“I will keep faith with the living and the dead.”
“I will keep faith with the living and the dead.”
The Acacia hummed under my palm.
A faint vibration ran up my arm into my shoulder, and I heard Pia let out a soft breath behind me.
“I will tell the truth to those who ask, and keep silence for those who need it.”
“I will tell the truth to those who ask, and keep silence for those who need it.”
“I will stand where I am needed.”
“I will stand where I am needed.”
I stopped.
My lips had gone dry.
The seventh line wasn’t on my form.
I looked at Sean, who had the same startled look I did.
He glanced at Cheska, who shook her head.
Then he looked at the tree.
“It’s not in the standard oath,” Sean said slowly.
“Say it,” Aris said from the second Acacia.
I turned my head.
He hadn’t moved from the trunk.
His hands were still in his pockets, but his eyes had opened wide, and he was watching the tree like someone watching a stranger recite a poem he’d written years ago and never shown anyone.
“I will not stand alone,” I whispered.
The Acacia flared.
* * *
A wave of warm golden light rolled through the quadrangle.
It started at my palm and spread through the bark, up the trunk, and out along every branch.
Thousands of leaves lit up at once, so that the tree seemed to be made of gold.
The light washed across the grass and the fountain and the faces of the people around me.
Dom gasped.
Sean’s mouth fell open.
Cheska’s tablet slipped in her fingers, and she caught it with a hiss.
The light was brighter than any ward I’d seen.
It’s my coin, I thought, panicking.
They’ll see it, they’ll know.
I clenched my pocket with my free hand, feeling the heat climb through the cloth.
It was glowing, I was sure of it.
A sliver of light must be escaping through my jeans.
“Pancit canton!” Sol shouted.
I flinched.
She’d stepped forward, pulled a paper bag out of nowhere, and shaken it open in the air.
Little brown packets exploded in all directions.
Dom yelped and jumped for one.
Sean reached out instinctively and caught two.
Cheska flinched backward, and a packet hit her tablet.
“Free merienda!” Sol cried.
“The Math Society donated them! Eat! Rejoice! Celebrate the new Archivist!”
“Where did you get these?” Dom asked, tearing into a packet.
“The Math Society.”
“They donate to the Archivists?”
“They donate to anyone who shows up.” She winked at me over Dom’s shoulder, quick and barely visible.
The gold light flickered.
Sean, with a packet of pancit canton in each hand, looked at the tree, then at the people around him, and then at me.
“A good sign,” he said, and there was a tremor in his voice.
“That doesn’t usually happen.”
“What does usually happen?” I asked.
“Nothing.” He laughed, a little breathlessly.
“Usually a leaf falls off.”
As if the tree had been listening, a leaf drifted down from the nearest branch.
It was broad and golden, and as it fell, a line of tiny black letters wrote themselves across it, like frost forming on a window.
It spun in the air and landed in my open hand, light as a feather.
PROVISIONAL NO.
PV-0417.
Archivist: Espiritu, Lira.
Entered.
The light dimmed, slowly.
The Acacia settled back into its ordinary dusk-colored green.
A dozen packets of instant noodles lay scattered across the grass.
I looked down at the leaf in my palm.
The number shimmered once and went still.
* * *
“Kalasag,” said Aris, in a tone that had gone suddenly weary.
I turned.
The cat had been sitting under the third Acacia the whole time, perfectly quiet.
Now he’d crept across the grass toward Aris, belly low, tail stiff.
He stopped a foot from Aris’s sneakers and stared at them.
Aris looked down.
“What?”
Kalasag growled.
It was a very low sound, a long, steady rumble in the throat.
His whiskers twitched.
His yellow eyes were fixed on Aris’s feet with an expression of unspeakable disapproval.
“They’re clean,” said Aris.
The growl deepened.
“I washed them. Last week.”
The cat sniffed the left sneaker.
He recoiled.
He sniffed the right and recoiled again.
“What did he smell?” I asked.
“Hollows,” Aris said.
His ears had gone slightly pink.
“I was out last night. They get in the laces.”
Dom started to laugh.
Sean pressed a fist against his mouth.
Pia leaned against the fountain with her shoulders shaking.
Even Cheska’s cold face cracked in a smile.
“Don’t encourage him,” said Aris.
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” said Sean.
* * *
I looked up once, as the Council drifted toward the canteen to share their noodles.
The Main Building rose above the quadrangle, pale in the dusk.
On the third floor, in the tall window at the end of the Faculty Wing, a green lamp burned.
A thin figure stood behind the glass in a gray suit, with his hands clasped behind his back.
Professor Alcantara.
He was watching us.
I couldn’t see his face from that distance, only the outline of his shoulders and the pale blur of his hair.
He didn’t wave.
He didn’t move at all.
But I felt the weight of his attention settle on the quadrangle like a hand on a table, and I knew that he had seen the light.
I tightened my grip on the leaf.
He saw the Acacia flare, I thought.
Nobody else would have noticed, but he did.
I felt the coin in my pocket go cold, all at once, as though it had heard.
* * *
We ate in the canteen, and it was loud and warm and ordinary.
Dom told a long story about a goat.
Sean argued with Cheska about whether noodles counted as a vegetable.
Pia sat beside me with her chin resting on her palm, and quietly asked whether my shoulder still hurt, and when I said it was fine, she said, “Good,” and smiled so gently that my throat tightened.
Sol ate with her notebook open, writing in between bites.
I looked around the table and thought: These are the people I’m going to fight beside.
It didn’t feel real yet.
I hadn’t asked for a war.
I’d asked for a scholarship.
But the hand I’d put on the tree had felt warm, and the line I’d said at the end, I will not stand alone, had felt true all the way down.
At half past eight, I excused myself.
I told Sol I wanted air.
She looked at me over her notebook and said, “Take your time,” and I loved her for it.
I walked across the quadrangle in the dark.
The grass was cold and wet.
The lamp posts glowed.
Behind me, the canteen windows spilled yellow light, and laughter drifted out of them.
At the foot of the bell tower, I stopped.
A narrow stone staircase spiraled up into the shadows.
I’d never climbed it.
Aris slept up there, in the rain, on the roof.
I’d seen the light.
I put my hand on the cold rail.
In my other hand, I held a small white box from the infirmary.
Pia had slipped it to me in the canteen with a wink.
Inside were two rolls of gauze, a tube of salve, and a strip of adhesive bandages.
For his knuckles, she’d whispered.
He won’t ask.
I climbed the first three steps and stopped.
The tower loomed above me, dark and quiet.
I couldn’t go up.
He’d know I’d come.
It would turn into a conversation, and I didn’t have the right words yet.
I set the box on the fourth stair, where he couldn’t miss it, and tucked a folded note under the lid.
Wash first.
Then salve.
Then wrap.
— L.
I went back down quickly, with my heart pounding for no reason.
* * *
At the edge of the quadrangle, I turned around.
The bell tower stood against the night sky, dark and tall, with the Acacia branches swaying below it.
High on the roof, a faint blue light flickered once, then twice, and settled into a steady glow.
It might have been the wind, or a lamp, or a person sitting up.
I stood there for a long moment with the golden leaf in my hand.
Then I smiled, and went back to the noise and the noodles.
[Registry update. Subject: Espiritu, Lira. Provisional No. PV-0417. Status: Observed.]
[Classification: Pending.]
[Note: Acacia 3 produced an unscheduled response at 19:42. Cause unlisted.]