Three years passed more quickly than Joe expected.
Simon had entered the Talent Hall at seven. Now he was ten.
The difference showed.
He had grown leaner and broader through the shoulders, and he was considerably stronger than most boys his age who spent their days helping around the fields. His posture had changed as well. Even when relaxed, there were traces of the stances he had repeated thousands of times, and his movements carried more control than they once had.
His personality had changed much less.
Simon was still Simon.
He enjoyed praise far too much, exaggerated whenever given the opportunity and possessed enough confidence for several children. Three years inside the Talent Hall had only provided him with more subjects to be confident about.
He was also still kind.
When Mary fell, Simon was usually among the first to pick her up, even if he complained while doing it. Once, when an older boy mocked one of the poorer children at the Hall, Simon had apparently stepped between them despite Lily's repeated instructions not to involve himself in other people's trouble.
According to Simon, the older boy had backed down because he knew Simon was stronger.
According to one of the other village children, Mr. Hall had arrived before anything happened.
Simon preferred his version.
Joe considered his brother arrogant, loud and occasionally exhausting.
He also trusted him.
Simon, for his part, had developed the strange habit of arguing with Joe's advice before following it anyway.
If Joe corrected a written character, Simon would insist he had written it properly before checking and fixing it. If Joe warned him that something sounded like a bad idea, Simon usually explained at length why it was actually an excellent idea, then quietly abandoned it later.
Neither of them discussed the pattern.
Joe suspected Simon would rather fight Thomas than admit his younger brother's opinion mattered that much to him.
Joe himself had changed as well.
His seventh birthday arrived near the end of Deepwinter.
He knew the date because nobody else cared enough to track it precisely.
Years earlier, Joe had started carving a small mark into the old tree behind the house each morning. At first, the marks had been neat. Several years later, one side of the trunk looked as though it had been attacked by an unusually patient animal.
Joseph discovered what Joe had been doing only after hundreds of marks already covered the bark.
He stood behind the house for several moments staring at them.
"What happened to my tree?"
Joe looked at the marks.
"I was counting days."
Joseph turned toward him.
"For how long?"
"About three years."
Joseph stared at the tree again.
"You've been cutting my tree every day for three years?"
"Not every day. I missed some and corrected the count afterward."
That did not appear to improve matters.
"Why?"
Joe considered explaining the difficulty of tracking exact dates in a household that measured time mostly by seasons, harvests and festivals. Instead, he settled for the simpler answer.
"I wanted to know when my birthday was."
Joseph remained quiet for several seconds before nodding toward the far end of the yard.
"Use another tree."
Joe accepted the ruling.
Several days later, Joseph saw him walking toward the same trunk with a small knife.
"Didn't I tell you to use another tree?"
"I already stopped."
Joseph looked at the knife.
"I'm cutting cord."
"Oh."
He continued walking.
Joe watched him leave.
His grandfather's memory appeared to operate according to rules Joe had not yet understood.
The seventh birthday itself brought no pale words.
Joe waited through the morning, then the afternoon and finally the evening. Nothing appeared.
That disappointed him, although not enough to ruin the day.
Five and six had produced nothing either. There was no reason seven had to be different.
More importantly, turning seven finally made him eligible for the Starlight test.
Unfortunately, Starlight was still nearly eight months away.
Joe had been born near the end of Deepwinter, while the festival came after the main harvest in early autumn. Being officially old enough therefore accomplished very little beyond allowing him to begin waiting legally.
Eight months suddenly seemed longer than the previous three years.
At least he had prepared as much as he reasonably could.
His reading had long surpassed the level Simon brought home from ordinary lessons, although access to new material still restricted him. He knew every character Simon could provide and much of the basic arithmetic taught to younger Hall students.
His body had developed well too.
Among children his age in Green Hollow, Joe was probably toward the stronger end. He was healthy, coordinated and had spent years gradually preparing himself without pushing hard enough to interfere with growth.
A few children from wealthier households were still noticeably better developed.
Joe found that unsurprising.
Better food mattered.
Money affected food.
Being intelligent did not repeal either fact.
He had never tried to make himself unusually muscular. At seven, that would have been pointless. What mattered was balance, stamina, coordination and entering the Talent Hall physically prepared if the stone accepted him.
According to the fragments Simon brought home, physical condition did not determine qualification.
It mattered afterward.
A stronger and healthier beginner could tolerate foundation training more easily, recover faster and spend less time struggling with weaknesses that had nothing to do with martial talent.
That was enough reason for Joe to maintain what he had built.
Everything else remained outside his control.
Whatever the black stone measured, Joe could not deliberately train for something nobody around him properly understood.
That irritated him more than he liked admitting.
Joe preferred problems where effort changed the odds.
Starlight did not appear to be one of them.
By spring, the family began discussing his upcoming test more often.
The atmosphere was very different from the year Simon turned seven.
They hoped Joe would pass.
They did not expect it.
Two children from the same household qualifying close together was uncommon enough that most people in Green Hollow treated Simon's success as something that had probably used up the family's luck for a while.
Lily said so openly one evening.
"Don't spend the whole year thinking about that stone. Simon already passed. Two boys from one house getting into the Hall would be unusual."
Joe nodded.
"If I fail, I fail."
Lily gave him a suspicious look.
"You say that now, but I know how you are. You'll spend three days thinking about why the stone didn't like you."
"I don't think the stone likes anyone."
"There. That."
Joe paused.
"What?"
"That way you answer everything."
Simon laughed into his bowl.
Joe looked at him.
Lily pointed toward Joe with her spoon. "You always have another sentence ready. Just listen for once."
Joe decided that this was an excellent opportunity to do exactly that.
Simon, encouraged by his silence, straightened.
"I still think he'll pass."
Lily looked toward him more gently.
"You barely passed yourself."
Simon immediately lost his smile.
"I did not barely pass."
"You came out white as flour."
"Because they made us run."
"You looked half dead."
"I was tired."
"You were seven."
"Exactly."
Joe watched the argument develop.
Simon had apparently been waiting three years to defend the quality of his original Starlight performance.
Lily had apparently been waiting just as long to disagree.
"I passed on my first try," Simon continued. "Mr. Hall said the stone reacted properly, and I was faster than two older boys during the physical test."
Mike looked up from his food.
"You were still not racing them."
Simon ignored him.
"The point is, I passed."
Lily sighed. "Yes, Simon. You passed. Everyone in Green Hollow knows. You've made certain of that."
Pam laughed.
Simon turned toward her. "Grandmother, you told more people than I did."
"I had better material."
"What does that mean?"
"I told them you passed. You told them how you stood, where Hall looked, how many times Theodere breathed—"
"I never said that."
"Give yourself time."
Simon began defending himself while Lily tried not to smile.
Joe stayed out of it.
Pam was less optimistic about his own chances, although her reason was more interesting.
Her knees had worsened over the last few years, and she no longer moved around Green Hollow as easily as she once had. Somehow, this had done very little damage to her ability to collect information.
Pam had grown up with half the older women in the village, knew relatives scattered through several surrounding settlements and regularly learned things nobody remembered telling her.
One afternoon, while Joe helped shell beans beside her, she brought up Starlight.
"Don't worry too much if the stone doesn't react."
Joe dropped another bean into the bowl.
"I wasn't worrying."
Pam looked at him.
"You've been thinking about it."
"How do you know?"
"Your face."
Joe considered asking what exactly his face was doing.
Pam continued before he could.
"They say what the stone finds isn't only strength."
"I know physical strength doesn't decide it."
"No, I mean something else. Something natural."
Joe stopped shelling.
That was new.
"What?"
Pam shrugged.
"Something people are born with. Or gather. I don't know. Martha explained it badly."
"The elder's wife?"
"How many Marthas do you think I talk to?"
Joe knew better than to answer.
"What exactly did she say?"
Pam frowned while trying to remember.
"Something about it coming from nature and returning slowly. Families that produce one talented child usually don't produce another close together."
Joe considered the statement.
"Why?"
Pam looked at him.
"If I knew that, I'd be Theodere."
Fair.
She continued shelling beans.
"They say whatever Simon had, he may have taken most of what your family could give."
That explanation made very little sense as stated.
Joe did not dismiss it.
Pam was repeating information she had received from someone else, who may have been repeating something they had only partly understood themselves. The original explanation might be completely different from the version that reached her.
"Does Father know?"
"Everybody knows something."
"That's not the same as knowing."
Pam laughed.
"There you go again."
Joe looked at her.
"What?"
"Always pulling words apart as if there's something hidden inside them."
She shook her head, though she was smiling.
"You really are strange."
They returned to the beans.
After a while, Pam spoke again.
"Sometimes I wish you'd been born first."
Joe looked up.
"Why?"
Pam answered immediately.
"You've always been quicker than Simon."
That was not entirely fair.
Simon was an ordinary boy growing up in Green Hollow. Joe had entered childhood carrying decades of another life and several inexplicable talents.
Comparing the two directly made little sense.
Pam did it anyway.
"Simon has a good heart," she continued, almost as though she realized her first statement had sounded harsher than intended. "But that boy's mouth reaches places before his head does. You think first."
Joe smiled slightly.
"Sometimes."
"Most times."
Pam glanced toward the doorway before lowering her voice.
"And you actually listen when I speak."
There it was.
Joe suspected that mattered almost as much as intelligence.
Pam and Simon were too similar in one unfortunate way. Both liked having an audience, and neither enjoyed becoming one.
"With your head," Pam continued, "you would've done well at the Hall if you'd been the first boy to test."
Joe returned to the beans.
Whether his mind mattered to the stone was exactly the problem.
"The order might not matter."
Pam shrugged. "Maybe. Martha thinks it does."
"Martha also told you the First People came down on pillars of light."
"That was my grandmother."
Joe looked at her.
Pam frowned.
"Or Martha's grandmother."
Joe smiled.
Pam pointed a bean at him.
"Don't become clever with me."
Unlike Lily, she sounded amused when she said it.
By early summer, Mike had become the most openly optimistic member of the household.
He rarely understood Joe's preparations in detail, but he noticed results.
Joe was healthy, rarely became sick, could already read better than most adults in the family and had enough discipline to keep marking days on a tree for years simply because he wanted an accurate count.
To Mike, those things seemed connected.
One evening, he watched Joe help Simon correct a written passage before looking toward Joseph.
"I think he'll do well."
Joseph was repairing a basket.
"Simon?"
"Joe."
Joseph glanced over.
"Oh."
Mike waited for something more.
Joseph returned to the basket.
After several moments, Mike continued anyway.
"He's always been different."
Lily, working nearby, snorted softly.
"Different isn't always better."
Mike smiled.
"You know what I mean."
"I know exactly what you mean. He's seven and already looks at us like we're answering his questions incorrectly."
Joe looked up.
Lily caught him.
"See?"
"I didn't say anything."
"You didn't need to."
Pam chuckled.
Lily glanced toward her mother-in-law and wisely said nothing.
Mike seemed entirely unconcerned.
"If the stone takes him, I think he'll go far."
Simon looked up at that.
The expression lasted only a moment before disappearing.
Joe noticed anyway.
Simon had spent three years as the household's great martial hope. Hearing Mike speak about Joe that way could not be entirely comfortable.
Still, Simon did not argue.
Instead, he looked toward Joe.
"If you pass, don't expect me to carry you through training. Victor says first-years complain constantly."
"I thought you said you never complained."
"I didn't."
Pam made a sound from beside the hearth.
Simon ignored her.
"I'm serious. The first foundation hurts more than it looks, and you're going to think you understand it before you do because that's what you always do."
Joe considered the warning.
That sounded surprisingly reasonable.
"I'll remember."
Simon nodded, apparently satisfied.
Then he added, "You'll probably be better than most beginners anyway. You already know how to read, and you're annoyingly good at remembering things."
Joe raised an eyebrow.
Simon immediately corrected himself.
"Not better than I was."
"Of course."
"I was very good."
"I'm sure."
Simon narrowed his eyes.
Joe went back to his food.
Eight months of waiting gradually became six, then five.
The fields turned greener, the days grew longer and Starlight remained frustratingly distant.
Joe continued preparing because there was nothing else useful to do.
He read whatever Simon could bring home, maintained his body, helped around the household and listened whenever Pam found another piece of questionable information about the talent test.
Whether any of it would matter remained unknown.
At seven years old, Joe had spent most of his second life solving problems through observation and patience.
The black stone offered neither.
When Starlight finally came, he would place his hand on it and discover whether the path Simon had entered three years earlier was open to him as well.
Until then, all he could do was wait.