Setting off for parts unknown. on Sandbox

Tatiana Vorontsova

July 19, 2017 1:20 PM

Setting off for parts unknown. by Tatiana Vorontsova

Olga Vorontsova stood in the narrow center aisle of the wagon, her robes almost brushing the feet of some of the youths crowding the benches, and looked around. The vast majority of the students were unlikely to understand the disapproving remark she made to her husband, but any who were (as was more significantly more likely) looking at the adult witch in a broad hat and sparkling with large pieces of jewelry from her ears to her fingers who was for some reason on their wagon might have discerned a certain skepticism in her expression.

“I am sure it is quite safe, Olenka,” said her husband Andrei, also speaking in Russian. The members of Tatiana Andreyevna Vorontsova’s family who had crowded onto the wagon behind her had a total of parts of three other languages between them – Andrei, Tatiana, and Katerina all spoke varying degrees of English, Andrei and Olga both spoke decent French which the two of their four daughters with them could understand bits and pieces of, and Olga additionally spoke German – but Russian was everyone’s first language, the one they spoke at home.

“I do not like it, either, Mama,” said Katerina loyally, shying close to her mother’s side.

Tatiana, in the lead and struggling to carry her three-year-old brother Alexei as he gazed around at all the strangers wide-eyed and maintained a death grip on the necklace of small-to-medium-sized graduated black freshwater pearls around her neck, glanced over her shoulder. “Don’t worry, Katyusha,” she said reassuringly to her sister. “If it will not kill the Americans, it will not kill me.”

“Do not touch anything,” ordered Olga. “You will soil your gloves.”

Finding an empty seat, Andrei secured his daughter’s luggage. “There go,” said Andrei, speaking in heavily accented English as Tatiana settled down. He bent his smallest finger and thumb down to his palm, leaving three extended, and blessed Tatiana again, even though this part of leavetaking had already been done at home. And at the wagon stop in Juneau, Alaska, while they were waiting for the wagon to drop by. Repeatedly. Her mother did the same, and ran her hand down Tatiana’s cheek just as she had five minutes earlier while hanging an amethyst amulet she had almost forgotten around Tatiana’s neck, the chain long enough for the pendant to disappear beneath Tatiana’s robes but part of the golden chain showing beneath her pearl necklace. Alexei began to cry indignantly as their mother took him away from his sister, which set Katerina off again, her eyes welling up as she darted in for one last hug, almost knocking her sister’s hat (forest green to match the plain uniform robes, but Tatiana had insisted on embellishing it a bit with a peacock feather, a hatpin shaped like a feather but studded with glass stones, and a green-on-green embroidered band) ajar. Olga reached down to adjust it and nearly lost an earlobe as Alexei seized her earring. Then, all at once, so fast it almost made Tatiana feel dizzy, it seemed they were all in retreat – Alexei still whining a bit from his disappointment over being taken from Tatiana, Andrei talking about Tatiana would outshine all the Amerikantsy, Olga reminding her to always be kind and obedient so everyone would love her, Katya waving and crying and promising to write all the time, but all definitely moving away from her even as they did so. She clutched her hands tightly in her lap and tried not to burst into tears.

A few minutes later, though, after a wagon take-off which made her immediately disobey her mother’s instruction not to touch anything so she could grab the sides of her seat and an adjustment to the velocity of flying, Tatiana began to take more of an interest in the people around her. She wondered how all of their mamas and papas had fit onto the wagon to tell them goodbye and help them with their things if more than one of them had ever gotten on at one stop, and whether they also had lots of siblings who were somewhere else, and whether they had understood Papa when he said she was better than them. Finally, she turned to one and spoke, careful to enunciate as well as she could in English.

“Hello,” she said to someone sitting near her, the word distinctly accented but understandable. She was very careful to keep her tone solemn and her face, framed in brown curls falling from beneath the hat, unsmiling, lest her new acquaintance think she was mocking them. “My name – is – Tatiana Andreyevna. Your first time going here also?” she asked, carefully raising her inflection throughout the last sentence to make it clear she was asking a question and taking care not to fidget with either of the two thin bracelets on her left wrist or the one on her right wrist. Fidgeting, Mama always reminded her, was rude, even if – or even especially if – it did happen to draw attention to her jewelry.

16 Tatiana Vorontsova Setting off for parts unknown. 1396 Tatiana Vorontsova 1 5

Parker Fitzgerald

August 10, 2017 4:01 PM

So much to see! by Parker Fitzgerald

Parker Fitzgerald was taking everything in as best he could, but it was still a lot. He fidgeted in his seat turning to see all of the people he could. Not being sure where he was off to next, but wanting to observe and understand as best as he could.
Sullivan had told him to get on this wagon, and as he had done the last few days Parker had simply done what Sullivan had told him to do.
Now he sat looking around at the other kids his age coming into the wagon. Parker noted that most of them wore the robes that he had been instructed to buy. He wondered if these kids were also "muggle-born" as Sullivan had said, like him, or if their families knew all about this new world Parker was becoming a part of.
Parker fingered the juniper leaves he picked the day Sullivan had come to tell his family that he was accepted to this new school. This school with magic.
As he watched the other kids get on, some alone, others with families he was surprised that none of them looked Native American, as he had assumed most of the magic people in America would be from this group.
One girl about his age came on with a whole bunch of people Parker assumed were related.
They were speaking a language he didn't understand, with the father giving disapproving looks sometimes to the mother, but he did see the way the mother kept saying things and the little brother and sister interacted with the girl. It reminded him of the way Lyssa and his mom had acted before he left.
Lyssa had been crying non-stop for a few hours, but had said that she would write to him at every chance, cause Sullivan had said he could get mail. His mother had given him instructions to obey Sullivan as best as he could, but to be sure to follow what he thought was right. Then she had pressed a note into his hands that was sealed and told him to open it once he got to his bed. The unopened note still sat in Parker's bag as he decided he would open it once he got to the school.
John Sr had stood with his arms folded, looking slightly confused. He still didn't understand this stuff Sullivan was saying, but he was glad he didn't have to pay for much in the way of tuition apparently. He wished his youngest son luck, but then had simply stood off with his oldest, John Jr who stood off glaring on the side.
He was lost in the memory of his sister when the girl talked to him in English. Her way of speaking reminded him of his friend Jose from the Oddballs back at school, which made Parker like her almost immediately, and made him feel a bit more comfortable being on this wagon.
"Hi," he responded, "to be honest, I still am not sure where we are heading, so I don't know where here is." He tried to speak a bit slowly and tried to remember what Jose had once told him, that when Parker spoke fast, as he did when he got excited, which he had been since Sullivan had showed up, it was really difficult to understand him.
Parker stuck out his hand noticing that the girl had a lot of nice jewelry on. Maybe, Parker thought, that was what girls in this new world wore.
"My name is Parker. Where did you learn English?" he asked, hoping the question wouldn't be rude. He was just always in awe of kids in his old school who could sit still long enough to learn more than one language.

41 Parker Fitzgerald So much to see! 1402 Parker Fitzgerald 0 5

Tatiana

August 10, 2017 5:28 PM

And decipher. by Tatiana

High. That word meant ‘something up in the air,’ but it also meant roughly the same thing as privet, a sort of informal hello. Tatiana assumed it was safest to assume the American meant it in that sense. He also said ‘honest’ – that was good, she did not wish to speak with a liar. ‘Head-ing,’ though? Had she heard that right? Head was the thing the brain was in. How did one modify it with ‘ing’?

She decided to ignore it and focus on words she did know, such as not sure and here. Unfortunately, those words didn’t help her figure out what he meant. How could he not know if he had been to Sonora Academy before? Had he had a terrible accident with a charm in the past and never regained all his memories? If so, how was he able to go to school now? She thought about what she had said and tried to think if any of the words had been wrong, but she couldn’t see anything wrong with them….

He knew his name, anyway – apparently. Park-er. That did not sound like a name to her. Park was one of those words that sounded the same in English and in Russian and referred to some kinds of outdoor areas. Odd name. Nadezhda had told her that Americans did not spell their family names properly or use patronymics, though, so she couldn’t tell if he didn’t know his full name or if he didn’t have one. She shook his hand.

“Mine is Tatiana Andreyevna,” she said. “I learned on my house.” Should that have been ‘at’ or ‘in’? Most of the time, when she thought it was one of those three, ‘at’ ‘in’ or ‘on,’ Anton Petrovich told her she was using the one that English speakers wouldn’t put there. “You learned somewhere else?” she asked after a few seconds, having had to compose the sentence in her head in Russian and then translate it into English. Anton Petrovich said she should practice thinking in English, but she didn’t know enough words off the top of her head for that. She was currently busy feeling proud of herself for making a sentence she hadn’t rehearsed.

16 Tatiana And decipher. 1396 Tatiana 0 5

Parker Fitzgerald

August 11, 2017 10:58 AM

Remembering Jose's Words by Parker Fitzgerald

As she shook his hand with a smile on her face, Parker had a few moments of panic when he realized he had never asked Sullivan if the lessons would be in English. It was entirely possible that the lessons could be in another language, maybe Russian, maybe something else. He hoped if it was another language it was Spanish, since he had picked up a bit from Jose.

Then Parker froze mid handshake. Tatiana had said her name twice, maybe she was the one going into new experience and new language.

He quickly thought through what he had just said. He thought it was simple, but maybe it wasn't. He also remembered Jose's words in the first grade, "No correct me. You correct speak."

"I also learned at home. I only learned one language." He said completing the hand shake. He hoped it wouldn't be too hard to speak with others he might meet, but Tatiana was the first person beside Sullivan, and Sullivan wasn't likely going to be at school with him, so he decided to see what he could learn from her.

Slowly and simply at first, Parker thought.

"My family lives in Nevada and are...," he thought for a moment, trying to remember the word Sullivan used with his parents, "Muggles. Your family?"

He hoped she had understood most of what he was asking.

41 Parker Fitzgerald Remembering Jose's Words 1402 Parker Fitzgerald 0 5

Tatiana

August 11, 2017 2:34 PM

Making progress, I think. by Tatiana

Nadezhda had told her it was normal in America, but Tatiana was surprised by Parker’s statement that he only knew one language. Tatiana had no proficiency in any languages other than Russian and English, but they had tried to teach her French and German at home, arguing that it was important to know all the languages so she could travel and show herself as a well-educated young lady and despairing of the fact that she mostly had only ever learned a bunch of words but not how to put them together properly. What had he studied with his tutors, or even in a village school? She knew the villagers did not usually know as much as those who could afford proper tutors, but Tatiana knew that most of them were actually more comfortable with English than she was, at least the boys; Anton Petrovich had argued with her parents until he got permission for her to play with them sometimes over the past year so she could speak English outside of their lessons, in actual conversations.

Maybe he really had a Charms accident, she thought. It would take more time for him to recover other languages.

Family was a word that Tatiana at least got the sense of – her brain went to ‘familiya,’ surname, but that wasn’t what it meant in English. It was related, though, she remembered that even thinking quickly. Nevada seemed to be a place, one she assumed was part of this country. Technically, her village was part of this country too, Alaska belonged to the Americans now, but Tatiana’s geography lessons had focused on Russia and Europe and Africa. She did not know much about places in the south. Muggle – that was Magl. There were a very few such people, she had heard, in town, mostly from the Motherland…

Occupied with this, she answered the question she heard first. “It is Vorontsova,” said Tatiana. “Vorontsov, you say,” she said disapprovingly. “But it is not right – and I also am not right,” she interrupted herself abruptly, realizing her error. “My family – volshebniki, all, not Maggly like yours. There are many Maggly in Nevada?”

16 Tatiana Making progress, I think. 1396 Tatiana 0 5