Lovers of Babel by Valerie Walker Page A

advance my powers further than his own, made him all the more eager to send me off. My mother on the other hand, was not so keen on sending her five-year-old to some unknown place by herself for a year of schooling. She preferred that I go to a normal school in town and have a normal childhood. Sure I would have powers, but they wouldn’t be the center of my life. Despite my mother’s old fashioned plan for me, my father’s authority trumped her simple aspirations for my future. My suitcase was practically already packed.
    I’m not sure if I would’ve ha ted the life that my mother wanted for me. I wouldn’t have had so much responsibility and pressure to improve my powers.  Still, if I had grown up a simple girl I wouldn’t have a reason to investigate some of the secrets of our beginnings and I also wouldn’t have met my friends.
    T he next day my parents and I got dressed and ready for the journey to Power School. The blob was already inflated and hovering by the door when we reached the living room. We loaded into our black hover car and followed the blob as it sped through New Washington like a pinball. Once we got to the outskirts of the city, the blob ascended higher up into the sky. We were now amongst the colorful clouds, much higher than a domestic car usually flew. We traveled for hours and hours until finally the school appeared in the distance. From the outside, the school seemed to have no windows. It was huge, round and silver and it sat on top of a body of water. It appeared to float there. The blob zoomed away from us and disappeared into the liquid structure of the school building. Thousands of blobs from all different directions were flying into the school in the same way. They looked like drops of mercury coming together to join one giant blob. The school was sitting in the middle of the ocean where there was not another building in sight, except for the other two smaller replicas sitting on either side of the main structure. We landed our car in the water right in front of the sphere building. We waited a while to see what we should do next. We saw other cars that were on the water drive into the building and disappear. My father decided to do the same. We began to drive toward what looked like a shiny silver wall. I braced myself and my mom shrieked as we collided into the structure and came out on the other side as if nothing happened. I looked behind us and saw the ocean.
    In front of us was a city filled with all sorts of people walking along the sidewalks chatting about the day’s events. The city looked like autumn in New York. The few times I visited I remembered the different colored trees that lined the streets to decorate the environment with subtle beauty. This place looked like something out of the old world in its simplicity, but I could tell there was something magical about it.
    We exited the car with my luggage and began walking toward the crowded city. When we arrived at the middle of the square I saw a wealth of book stores lining the street. There were so many types of bookstores, from children’s books to geology textbooks. No two stores were alike. The people in scarves and sweaters were going in and out of stores some carrying books and others reading them along the way. We walked further down the street and there in front of us stood a red brick building with the words: The Power Society in big letters above the front doors . As we entered the elaborate building I noticed moving murals on the grand ceiling and marble floors. My parents were too busy looking for someone to direct us to the school to notice. Finally, a fair-skinned woman with round eyes appeared before us.
    “Mr. Riley and family, it is a delight to have you here. I trust it wasn’t too hard finding us. We like for first-timers to get a personal perspective of the city,” she said with an Icelandic accent.
    “ This is a city?” My mother asked.
    “Oh, have you never been here before? Aren’t you wife