The Unready Queen, стр. 3
“This is stupid.” Fable kicked a pinecone across the forest. “Why do we even have to practice listening to stupid trees?”
“Listening is the most important skill a queen must master. When you listen to the trees, they will listen to you.”
“The trees don’t ever listen to me. The forest doesn’t even like me.”
“It will. You just haven’t gotten your roots in yet. You will grow, like the Grandmother Trees near the forest’s four corners. They are pillars of the forest, Fable, just as you will someday be a pillar. They are sturdy, and their roots are deep. They know where they stand, and so no wind can blow them over. You need to feel the roots beneath you and come to know where you stand.”
“I know where I’m standing. I’m standing in the middle of your vine circle for the millionth time practicing the same spells as always, even though they never work.”
“Magic takes time.”
“Not my magic! My magic is easy!”
“Fable, please.”
“I can transform! I can do slappy sparks!”
“No.” The queen was firm. “You are not practicing spark again until you’ve gotten better at extinguish.”
“Ugh.” Fable rolled her eyes. “I’ve spent hours on extinguish. I can’t do it.”
“You just have to learn to reach—”
“—reach out for the flame in my mind and grasp it with a hand that cannot be burned,” Fable recited in her mother’s voice. “I know. You’ve said it a million times. Pretty sure I don’t have the same fireproof brain-hand that you have.”
“You do. The magic is in your veins. But real magic requires discipline.”
“What do you mean real magic? I can do real magic! Last week I turned a pinecone into a hedgehog!”
“And you were only trying to make it spin! That’s my point! Fable, it’s not enough to have power if you don’t know how to use it, how to do it on purpose—how to undo it if necessary.”
“You want me to turn Squidge back into a pinecone?” Fable gasped. “But she loves being a hedgehog!”
“I don’t want you to do anything to Squidge.” The queen pinched the bridge of her nose and sighed. “I want you to concentrate on your lessons. What about compel? You’ve made real progress with compel.”
Fable took a deep breath. “You want me to try to make stuff move with my brain again?”
“I prefer to think of it as strongly encouraging things to move, but yes. Let’s review first. What sorts of things can you compel?”
“Pretty much nothing,” said Fable. “Because it’s hard and it never works right.”
“What could you move,” the queen pressed, “if it did work?”
Fable fiddled with a patch of sap in her hair as she echoed the lessons she had been taught for years. “Stones and other minerals are difficult to compel because their energy is stubborn. Wind and water can be compelled more easily by redirecting their natural currents. Plants can also be compelled, because their growth and subtle movements need only be”—she gave her mother a sidelong glance—“strongly encouraged to move more quickly or to take on specific shapes.”
“Good,” said the queen. “And . . . ?”
“And living creatures are nearly impossible to compel, although some insects will succumb to suggestion, like ants.”
“That’s right. Not all insects, though. Ladybugs are surprisingly strong-willed.”
“Birds and reptiles and other more complex animals might feel the push, but generally ignore it unless otherwise motivated,” Fable rattled on. “And people cannot be compelled at all.”
“Correct.” The queen gave a nod. “Why not?”
“Something about how a person’s life force is like a rushing current, too strong to be turned from its course.”
“Excellent.”
“Have you ever tried?”
“Tried?” the queen said.
“Compelling a person. Have you ever tried?”
“Manipulating a human being against their will would be wrong,” said the queen.
“That means you did! If you hadn’t you would just say no.” Fable grinned. “How’d it go?”
The queen pursed her lips. “I would have a much easier time keeping interlopers out of our forest if it had gone well,” she admitted. “You cannot compel a human being. It would require unimaginable power to elicit even the tiniest reaction.”
“What about dead people?”
“Fable!”
“What? I’m not gonna do it.”
“We do not meddle with that manner of magic. Not ever. When you cast a spell over something, you enter into an exchange. For a short time, you share your energy—you welcome in the essence of the subject you are compelling. When you compel a tree, you become the tree, and the tree becomes you.”
“So compelling dead stuff would make me part dead?”
The queen’s expression was dark. “More or less,” she answered. “Let’s try something lighter, shall we? What do we call it when we compel the wind?”
“Gale,” said Fable without enthusiasm. “But you know gale is one of my worst spells. I’m not going to be able to do it.”
“You will. Just take a deep breath through your lungs and let it out on the breeze.”
Fable took a deep breath in, and blew it out again.
“Try again.”
Another deep breath.
“That’s it. Now let it out on the breeze.”
Fable’s face began to turn red. “Ugh!” she finally burst. “There’s only two ways air comes out of me, Mama. The front way and the back way—and you never think the back way is as funny as I do.”
“You’ll get it. You just have to develop a bond with the forest first. You need to connect with it.”
A pinecone sailed down from the canopy above them and caught Fable hard on the head.
“Ow!” She glowered at the trees. They swayed innocently above her. “See?” she demanded. “This is dumb! Nature is dumb! Just open the wild-wall so I can go.”
The queen sighed. “One more time.”
“No! I don’t want to listen or breathe or concentrate. I don’t want to become a pillar like the stupid Grandmother Trees. And I don’t want to talk to your jerk forest. You said I could visit Tinn and Cole today.”
The queen frowned. “Yes. I did. I think perhaps that was a mistake. You have been