The Unready Queen, стр. 15
“It’s no big deal, Mom,” Tinn said. “Really.”
“I’m canceling this weekend,” she said. “I should never have agreed to an overnight in the first place. You probably shouldn’t be going to the cliffs at all.”
“What? No! Please, Mom,” Tinn said. “I need to learn how to control it. That’s the whole point.” He looked to Cole for support, but his brother shrugged.
“I don’t know, Tinn,” Cole said. “Maybe it’s too much too soon. Maybe you should just be . . . you. For a little while. We could just be us again. Like normal.”
Tinn shot his brother a betrayed look. “Normal isn’t possible anymore! Neither of you understands. I need real practice with real goblins. If I don’t know how it works, then I can’t stop it from happening. Mom. Please.”
Annie pursed her lips.
“You’re sure nobody saw you?”
“Nobody,” Tinn said. “Well. One body. Evie saw.”
“What did you tell her?”
Tinn sucked in a breath through clenched teeth. “Oh. Just . . . you know . . . everything,” he said. “It’s fine, though. She’s fine with it. Really. She understands.”
Annie rubbed her face with one hand. “We practiced for this, kid.” Tinn shuffled his feet. Annie sighed and composed herself. “You know I love you. And you know you have nothing to be ashamed of. It’s just . . . dangerous. Even Fable understands that you can’t just go telling people everything.”
Across the street, Evie leaned in close to Fable. “I want to know everything.”
“Okeydokey,” said Fable.
“If your mom’s a queen, does that mean you’re a real-life princess?”
“Probably.” Fable cocked her head. “Maybe. What’s a princess?”
“You know, a princess. Like in stories.”
“I think my mama told me different stories than yours did. Are princesses predators or prey?”
Evie leaned against a fence post and considered this. “Well, storybook princesses are always getting locked in dungeons or carried off by dragons. So . . . prey, I guess? Mostly they wear pretty dresses and get married to gallant knights.”
“Hm. Pretty sure I’m not a princess, then. Well, maybe the part with the dragons could be fun.”
“But your mom’s a queen.”
“Yeah. So?”
“So that means you’ll be a queen someday, right?”
“I guess.”
“I’m pretty sure that makes you a princess.”
“Am not. Shut up. You’re a princess.”
“I wish,” said Evie. “I’m not an anything.” She picked at a splinter on the fence post.
“Of course you’re a something! I bet you have all kinds of adventures! I bet you go walking down real streets wearing real shoes all the time, and buying things with money with faces on it, and saying stuff like, How do you do, my good fellow. Cheerful porkpies to you. I bet you even use umbrellas when it rains.”
Evie giggled. “That isn’t adventure stuff. That’s just boring life.”
“What’s an adventure, then?”
“I don’t know, maybe learning actual magic straight from the all-powerful Queen of the Deep Dark?”
“Blarg.” Fable stuck out her tongue. “You want to get judged by stupid trees all day, you can be my guest.”
Evie bit her lip.
“What?” said Fable.
“Could I, though?” she said. “Be your guest? I know absolutely everything there is to know about the Wild Wood already. I have three books about it. Well. One of them is just a book about forests, and the other two are journals that I filled with facts and stories that my uncle Jim told me. I would give anything to go on a completely real adventure in the Wild Wood, though.”
Fable considered Evie.
Evie’s eyebrows rose eagerly.
“Fine.” Annie relented. “You can still visit the horde this weekend.” Tinn pumped his fist in silent victory. “But you have to positively promise me you will be more careful. I mean it. You need to keep your secrets. But not from me. No secrets from me.” She let out a puff of air. “Family secrets.”
“I got it, Mom.”
They made their way back across the street to where Evie and Fable were talking.
“Ahem. Hello, Evie,” Annie said. “So, I understand you had an . . . informative day at school today?”
Evie smiled innocently.
“Evie’s gonna come visit me in the forest,” Fable blurted out. “And we’re gonna find sprites and jump out of trees and I’m gonna try to teach her how to be a bear.”
“Wow. Okay. Nope. None of that,” said Annie. “Good Lord. Can none of you children remember anything we practiced?”
“It’s okay, Mrs. Burton,” Evie said. “I won’t tell anybody about Tinn. Or about Fable. Nobody listens to me, anyway.”
“Thank you very much, Evie.”
It was then that Oliver Warner shuffled up the road toward them, and they said their goodbyes. Before they turned the corner, Evie glanced back behind her father and mimed locking her lips tight. Tinn flashed her a thumbs-up.
Annie and the boys accompanied Fable as far as the creek near the twins’ old knotted climbing tree. Across the trickling stream, the forest waited patiently for Fable’s return. She was no sooner on the opposite bank than a familiar cloak emerged from the shadows. The queen acknowledged Annie with the faintest nod before she and Fable melted back into darkness.
“It was the best day, Mama.” Annie and the boys could hear Fable’s voice through the underbrush. “I wore my new dress, and I saw a house just for pooping, and I did school, and a building exploded, and I made a new friend! Oh no! I forgot to ask if we’re forever friends. I’m pretty sure we are, though. It feels like forever friends.”
“Fable.” They heard the queen sigh. “Fable, no.”
NINE
“After I do my chores today, can I go back to the people village?”
“No.”
The morning sun washed the glen with highlights of gold. Fable had been up already when the queen awoke, still buzzing from yesterday’s adventure.
“Okay. Before I do my chores today, can I go back to the people village?”
The queen pursed her lips. “I should never have indulged this. No, Fable. The human world is not our world. It is not safe. Theirs is a world of unnatural machines. They have traps and guns and”—her voice caught in her throat—“and bullets,” she finished more quietly.
“Mama, you have no idea