A little while after that, Moffin transferred out and they promoted Jaxin’s ma to take his place. Administor Rance seemed a lot quieter and a lot more thoughtful than Moffin, but nobody doubted her commitment. She had lived on Linnea almost since the day the gate first opened. She knew almost everything about Linnea. Shortly after she took over, Jaxin and several of the other scouts went back to Linnea, and some new scouts came in to replace them. And after that, things got a lot stricter. But also a lot more fun. Both at the same time. We took our language tests, which were both written and spoken and lasted two days. And even though some of the family stumbled over a lot of unfamiliar words, we still did well enough as a group to graduate to second grade. We were all pretty happy about that. And besides, it qualified us to start building our own house, just like we would do someday on Linnea. But first we had to build a great-wagon, which was kind of like a covered wagon, only built to the same scale as a great-horse, so it was more like building a two-story house on wheels—big wheels, almost as high as the horse’s rump.
