address printed on it. Riverside, the house was called. What would it be like to live in a house so big it needed its own name?
Thalia wrote hastily to Nutall, explaining her situation in brief. She did not outright ask Nutall to come to her, but she hoped he would accompany her things. Putting it down on paper for Nutall made it all seem, if anything, less likely. As she sealed the envelope with wax, Thalia silently scolded herself for taking Professor Evans at his ill-informed word.
Nell showed Thalia the bell rope to ring for a servant to collect the letter and find a messenger to deliver it to Mrs. Morris’s boardinghouse. “If you get hungry or need anything else, just ring. Any time, day or night. We have an excellent staff.”
A maid answered the summons with a neat curtsy and took the letter Thalia offered her.
“Come to think of it, you never ate your sandwich.” Nell told the maid, “Have Cook send a dinner tray.” The maid curtsied again and left. To Thalia, Nell said, “I’m happy to help you with anything I can. Do you have any questions?”
Thalia regarded Nell blankly for a moment. She had a hundred questions. Sitting there in the quiet simplicity of the nursery, Thalia could think of only one. “How do I Trade?”
Nell stopped smiling. “I can’t tell you that because I don’t know. I’ve only just learned how I Trade myself. It’s different for everyone.”
Thalia hung on tight to her patience. “All right. Tell me how you Trade, then. You said something before. You find a common thread? What does that mean?”
“That’s right.” Nell paused to gather her thoughts. “Since I’m a Trader, I have two forms. To Trade, I figured out what the two forms have in common. I Trade to an otter. When I want to Trade, one form to the other, I think about how funny it is to be an otter. Then, when it’s time to come back to this form, I think about how funny it is to have fingers and toes.”
“That’s it?” Thalia sat back in her chair, trying to hide her disappointment. There was nothing funny in her situation.
“It’s different for everyone,” Nell reminded her. “What do you Trade to?”
“I don’t know.” Thalia tried to find words for that night in Philadelphia. “My hand turned white.” She did her best to describe the experience to Nell.
By the end of Thalia’s story, Nell was wide-eyed. “That’s wonderful. Whatever you Traded to was a form that let you slip that handcuff. That rules out lots of things.”
Thalia didn’t know exactly what her own facial expression was, but something about it made Nell say soothingly, “Don’t be sad. You’re safe from the manticore and you’re in the best possible place to learn to Trade. Once you’ve Traded properly, you’ll know exactly what your other form is. It often runs in families. What does your family Trade to?”
“I don’t know. Nutall told me that my mother’s parents Traded. That’s all.”
“What about your father?”
“I don’t know. He was an orphan. I don’t think he was a Trader at all.”
“If you’re a Trader—and you are—then both your parents were Traders,” Nell assured Thalia. “It takes two to make a Trader child.”
“Oh.” Thalia thought that over. “Even if I do Trade ‘properly,’ and find out what I am, I’ve just begun, haven’t I? I’ll need to control my Trades. I’ll need to get the Board of Trade to give me an ordeal, won’t I?”
“You will when you’re ready.”
“What about your ordeal?”
Nell gave a tiny shrug of her shoulders before she answered. “I don’t know what it is going to be. That’s up to the Board of Trade. But there are two other parts of the process of coming out in society. I need to Trade on command. I need to resist the urge to Trade.”
“Right. Good. Three parts.” Thalia thought it over. “What if I don’t pass it?”
Nell waved Thalia’s concern away. “Don’t worry about that now. No one takes their ordeal until they’re sure they’ll succeed.”
“Why is that?” asked Thalia. “Or don’t I want to know?”
“You need to know,” Nell assured her. “If you fail the ordeal, you can’t Trade back. You stay in your other form.”
“How long?” Thalia demanded.
“Until you die. No, Thalia, don’t look like that! It’s not that bad. We usually die in our other form anyway, because being a Trader means we are hard on ourselves. When our memory starts to go, it’s easier to live in