Verity and Ada

Ada walked to the very front of the line. She stood right before the noun, peering over her spectacles at the scruffy terrier.

“One dog,” Ada said softly, tapping the letter D with her finger. “Just a single, lonely pup. See him?”

Verity squinted. “Sure. He’s right there.”

“So when he comes to you for an action, you have to answer him in the singular,” Ada explained. She pointed a slender finger at the glowing brass charms on Verity's leather belt. “For a single subject, in the present tense, you must use the -s ending.”

“The -s?” Verity repeated, touching the small, curved piece of metal.

“Exactly,” Ada said. “The dog barks. The dog runs. Try it now.”

Verity unclipped the plain, flat ending she had forced onto the verb. She reached for the polished -s charm and snapped it onto the tail of run. The metal clicked, a sharp, clean sound that echoed in the rafters.

“The dog runs,” Verity said aloud.

Immediately, the terrier’s hind legs straightened. The dog sat up, panting happily, its tail wagging against the wooden frame. The word yard lifted off the floor, and the entire sentence settled into a perfectly straight line. The tense silence in the workshop dissolved into an easy, comfortable hum.

Verity stared at her belt, her mouth slightly open. “Oh,” she whispered. “It wasn't looking for a bigger, fancier word.”

“No,” Ada smiled. “It just wanted the one that matched.”

A student named Perry had been watching them from the scrap heap. Perry was fourteen, with grease on his chin and a habit of building difficult sentences just to watch them collapse. He walked over, dragging a heavy iron frame behind him. On the frame, he had bolted a particularly nasty set of words. It was the kind of sentence adults used when they wanted to make children feel foolish.

“Try this one,” Perry said, a mischievous grin spreading across his face. He tapped the metal letters: The box of crayons...

He looked at Verity, holding up two different verbs like a magician showing cards. One was is, and the other was are.

“So, which one goes on the shelf?” Perry asked. “There’s a whole bunch of crayons in there. Dozens of them. So it has to be are, right?”

Verity’s hand drifted toward her plural ending, her fingers hovering over the brass hook. Perry’s logic seemed solid. Crayons were plural; there were red ones, blue ones, and yellow ones. Surely a crowd of colors needed a crowd of verbs.

“Wait,” Ada said. She reached out and gently caught Verity’s wrist. “Don't let the crowd distract you, Verity. We must find the true subject.”

Ada stepped closer to the heavy iron frame. She did the thing that was her special gift in the workshop. She didn't look at the loud, colorful words in the middle. Instead, she cupped her hands around the phrase of crayons. She blew a soft breath over them. The words dimmed, fading into a quiet, translucent gray. They were still there, but they no longer demanded attention. Only the very front of the sentence remained glowing in the dim light.

“What is left shining?” Ada asked.

Verity squinted at the bright letters. “Box,” she said. “Just the word box.”

“And how many boxes do you see?”

“One,” Verity realized. “Just one cardboard box.”

“Exactly,” Ada said, stepping back. “The crayons are just visiting inside it. The box is the actual leader of this sentence.”

Verity felt a sudden surge of clarity. She bypassed the plural hook entirely. She grabbed the singular verb is and slotted it firmly into place.

“The box of crayons is on the shelf,” she declared.

The sentence rang out like a struck bell. It was perfectly balanced, solid, and undeniable.

Perry let out a dry, appreciative chuckle. “Darn,” he muttered, though he looked pleased. “I thought I had you with that one.”

Verity turned to Ada, her eyes wide with a new kind of respect. “You looked right past the noise,” Verity said. “I never do that. I just run in and start throwing actions around.”

“You have the energy,” Ada said, her eyes crinkling behind her glasses. “I have the patience. That is why we make a good team.”

“Why does a single dog need an -s?” Verity asked, kicking a stray comma out of her way. “It seems backward. Usually, the -s means there are more of something.”

“For nouns, yes,” Ada agreed, adjusting her spectacles. “But verbs are different. They are the givers of action, not the receivers.”

“A single subject is a heavy burden for a verb,” Ada continued. “It needs the extra support of the -s to hold it up.”

“And if there are many dogs?” Verity asked, leaning against a stack of adjectives.

“Then they share the load,” Ada said. “They don't need the extra support. The dogs run. No -s required.”

Verity thought about this, her fingers tracing the smooth brass of her charms. It was like a system of levers and pulleys. If one side was heavy, the other side had to adjust to keep the balance.

“What about this one?” Verity asked, suddenly eager to try her new skill. She dragged a dusty wooden frame from under her own workbench. On it, she had spelled out: The players on the team...

She looked at Ada, her eyes bright with anticipation. “Okay, let's see,” Verity said, mimicking Ada's analytical posture. “The subject is players. But there is a phrase in the middle: on the team.”

“Excellent,” Ada said, nodding encouragingly. “Now, what do we do with the middle phrase?”

“We dim it,” Verity said. She cupped her hands over on the team and imagined them fading away. The words seemed to lose their luster, leaving only players glowing brightly.

“Players is plural,” Verity said, her voice confident. “There are many of them. So they share the load.”

She reached for her plain, unadorned verb practice. She snapped it into place.

“The players on the team practice every day,” she read.