Skip

She tried this new method the very next morning. It worked. She reached a hundred sheep in only fifty counts, cutting her time in half. The total number remained the same. The sheep, she noted with a small, secret smile, had not noticed the difference.

Emboldened, she experimented further. She tried counting by threes, then by fives. The method grew more efficient with each attempt. By the time she was nine, her father overheard her one morning at the night-pen. He had considered teaching Wren formal arithmetic, but decided she wasn't ready. Now, he heard a rapid-fire recitation:

“Seven, fourteen, twenty-one, twenty-eight, thirty-five, forty-two, forty-nine, fifty-six, sixty-three, seventy, seventy-seven —”

He stopped, mid-stride, on his way to check the fences. He listened intently. He had never heard a nine-year-old count by sevens with such speed and precision.

“Wren,” he asked, his voice a low rumble. “How did you learn that?”

Wren paused her counting. “It’s faster,” she explained, shrugging. “The sheep don’t know the difference. I count by sevens. I get to three hundred and thirty-six in forty-eight counts. Then I just count the last six sheep one at a time. The whole flock takes me about half as long now.”

Her father, a man who thought deeply even without academy training, sat down on the night-pen fence. He looked at his daughter, a flicker of understanding in his eyes. “Wren,” he said slowly. “You are doing *multiplication*.”

Wren had never heard this word. “What is multiplication?” she asked, tilting her head.

“It’s when you count one number a certain number of times,” her father explained. “Forty-eight sevens is three hundred and thirty-six. That’s exactly what you just said. You are multiplying forty-eight by seven, all in your head, without writing it down.”

Wren considered this. “I’m only skipping,” she insisted.

Her father smiled, a warm, knowing expression. “Yes,” he agreed. “Skipping is multiplication. They are the same thing. The academy people write it as ‘48 × 7’ and they get the same answer. You’re doing it in your head while you count sheep. It’s the very same operation.”

Wren’s eyes widened. A new world of numbers seemed to open before her. “What about 48 × 8?” she asked, curiosity sparking.

“Try it,” her father encouraged. “Count by eights forty-eight times.”

Wren began, her brow furrowed in concentration. She got to three hundred and eighty-four. (She started over twice; eights were definitely harder than sevens, requiring more focus.) Her father pulled a small slate from his pouch and scratched out "48 × 8 = 384." The two answers, her mental calculation and his written one, agreed perfectly.

Wren was hooked. The world of numbers, once a tedious chore, now shimmered with possibility.

By the time she was thirteen, Wren could count by any number up to twelve. Her mental agility with numbers grew sharper with each passing year. By fifteen, she could compute any times-table answer for digits one through twelve, all in her head, without needing paper or a counting frame. The family no longer asked her to count sheep. Instead, they relied on her to calculate the family’s precise grain requirements for the winter, a task that demanded careful, accurate sums.

When she was eighteen, she encountered the academy through a travelling scholar who stopped at Tally. The scholar, impressed by her quick calculations for a local merchant, remarked, “You should not be counting sheep. You should be teaching multiplication.” Wren had never considered such a thing. She spent the next year thinking about it, turning the idea over and over in her mind like a smooth river stone. The following spring, she walked the ten miles to Tally, caught a wagon to the next town, then boarded a boat to the academy capital. She arrived, demonstrated her unique abilities, and was admitted.

She has been at the academy for thirteen years now. She is universally called Skip, even by her father, who visits twice a year. She still refers to multiplication as skipping. Over the years, the academy has adopted her terminology for younger children. They understand skip-counting long before they grasp the abstract concept of multiplication. It’s the same operation, but Skip’s word is the kinder, more accessible one.

In her classroom, Skip begins every first-day lesson the same way. She writes on the board: 2, 4, 6, 8, 10. Then, she turns to the class, her expression bright and inviting. “What comes next?” she asks.

The children, without fail, chorus, “Twelve!”

Skip smiles. “Yes. How did you know?”