In the Footsteps of a Knight

“Writing gives us someplace to go when we have to stay where we are.”

- Mason Cooley

The old school bus wove its way down the road, lurching across the skittery gravel to avoid potholes deep enough to lose a bike in. Double-trailered trucks carting grain to town from the never-ending miles of farms dug up the road until it was barely useable. The November harvest rain turned what was left into quagmire.

Despite the juddering and swaying, kids stood in the aisles and climbed over the seats, their bodies moving instinctually with the rhythm, balance learned through hundreds of hours accumulated in years of taking the orange bus to school. Whether it was orange from the dust or the paint underneath, no one quite knew, but the silver-haired driver arrived every morning at the end of the long driveways, waited a few minutes, buzzed via the radio, then lumbered on to the next farm, all while patiently calling for the rowdy children to sit down and stop throwing balls. Most carried on climbing the walls.

Except for one girl, who curled up on the very back seat, tucked into the right-hand curve of the vehicle’s shell. She would swing onto the bus with her overstuffed backpack, claim her torn-leather corner throne, pull out a creased paperback and reside there until the wheezing vehicle hobbled into the school bus ranks ninety minutes later. And as more children than seats climbed back on in the afternoon, that one space would remain vacant until she got on, because although she barely spoke to anyone, that seat belonged to ‘the girl who read.’

Her body was there, but if you tried to talk to her, it was clear her mind was transported somewhere else entirely. Middle Earth, the Snowy Mountains of New South Wales, or the post-apocalyptic tainted lands of Obernewtyn, the girl travelled while her body stayed perched on that cracked bus bench.

But her favorite place to go was Tortall, the magical kingdom created by master word smith Tamora Pierce, ruled by the powerful mage King Jonathan, guarded by the dauntless Alanna the Lioness, the nation’s shield and champion, it’s one and only female knight in centuries. Here, buried amid nepotism and patriarchal bias came a young warrior by the name of Keladry (Kel) of Mindelan, the daughter of an open-minded noble family, who declared she wanted to follow in the footsteps of her idol and become a female knight.

Unlike Alanna, Keladry had no magic and wasn’t chosen of the gods. In fact, she had little in the way of skills at all. She only had three things: a goal, unshakeable determination, and practice with a pole weapon that wasn’t even used in the kingdom.

An impression grew on the young reader as she followed Kel through hazing, insults, favoritism, and injustice, through the bruises of a cranky horse and early-morning chitters of a family of sparrows, from her First Test to her time as a Page, then a Squire, and finally becoming a Lady Knight. She marvelled that someone who wasn’t ‘special’ could press on against overwhelming odds due to a single character trait—determination.

Could an overweight loner girl, with a little talent for academics but not much else also achieve something special?

Through years of checking out those same four books, and eventually buying them, the girl who had no dream became infused with a spine to chase down her dreams. It was an odd match up, since the reader had no goals, and the future seems like an unknowable universe without direction. But her friend, the lady knight, taught her across space and time, across the chasm of reality and fiction that one day, when she found something she truly wanted, she could grasp it by both hands and never let go.

And that day came. The little girl from the dusty bus grew up, graduated and penned ‘the end’ on her first ever novel. Like a bolt of light from the hands of Alanna the Lioness, she knew exactly what she was supposed to be doing with her life; telling stories like the ones that had inspired her. Full of princes and determined young women, dragons, and magic. And most importantly of all, the courage to endure. Following the footsteps of Keladry, she chased down her dream, tested over and over, like Kel facing the knight’s chamber of ordeal, brushing off people who jeered she could never do it. Bruised but not down. Throwing herself back into the fray time and again like the freckled squire learning to joust. Until she too, claimed her title.

The old bus, little more than a faint memory now, rattled down the gravel road, orange dust flying in through the windows to coat the girl with a tattered book in her hands. And she smiled, because all though her body was trapped, her mind was free.

Book: First Test by Tamora Pierce