The Unready Queen Read online

  “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 what the human world is!” said Fable. “You should’ve seen it! There’s fancy buildings and fancy food and fancy people.”

  “I am well aware of the people,” said the queen wearily.

  “Why do you hate them so much?”

  “I don’t hate them. I just want them to stay on their side.”

  “Why do there have to be sides?”

  “Because there are.” The queen closed her eyes. “There are sides. You can’t just make the world what you want it to be, Fable.”

  “Why not?”

  The queen hesitated. It was not the question but the intensity in her daughter’s voice that disarmed her. She squared her jaw. “Because you can’t. Try letting the world make you what you need to be, instead.”

  Fable scowled, but did not argue any further.

  “Listen, child. I’m glad you had a nice time with your friends,” the queen said. “Really, I am. Of all the people in the whole wide world, you might have found the very best ones. But you went into town without my consent, and that sort of disobedience I cannot abide. This is serious, Fable. Endsborough is off-limits until I say otherwise. Understood?”

  Fable rolled her eyes. “Understood.”

  “Thank you. Now, go finish your chores. The winds last night tangled up a lot of the southern witching knots, and they’re not going to sort themselves out.”

  Fable grudgingly made her way off into the forest to tend to the wards.

  The queen leaned against the trunk of a broad elm. The elm leaned in to meet her.

  “She will be ready when she needs to be,” the queen said aloud. The leaves rustled above her. “Me? I’m not sure I’ll ever be ready.”

  The forest did not respond.

  The queen felt an uncomfortable prickle running up her spine. She stiffened. Something was wrong.

  The queen listened. All around her the wind whipped through the treetops a little too quickly, and the forest rang with a sudden jarring pain. It rippled through twisted roots and high branches. The queen cringed. Her stomach turned.

  Before she knew what she was doing, the queen was running.

  Her feet scarcely touched the forest floor. The woods bent around her and rushed past her on either side, drawing her forward. After several minutes, her lungs burned, but she hardly felt them. The ache in her bones was growing stronger as she neared the northwest corner of the woods, and she realized where the forest was pulling her—she was nearing one of the Grandmother Trees.

  From the distance came a rhythmic screech of metal teeth on wood and the murmur of men’s voices. The queen’s blood was hot in her veins. No. They would not dare.

  She slowed as the foliage around her thinned and the light of the sun cutting between tree trunks made her eyes ache. Palpable waves of distress rolled off the Grandmother Tree. Ahead of the queen lay a broad clearing. The edge of her domain. And the world of men.

  “Clear out!” a voice yelled.

  The queen lurched to a stop as a spasm shot through her like electricity.

  “Here it comes! Warner—back up!”

  The great, towering Grandmother Tree had begun to make an unsettling series of pops and groans. The queen was close enough now that she could see the men jogging away up the nearby hills, axes and long, wicked saws still clutched in their hands. She was too late.

  Crack!

  Numbly, she watched the ancient pillar tip forward.

  There were more sickening snaps and pops, the wood shrieked, and then the whole thing came down with a deafening CRUNCH.

  It was over.

  The queen felt sick.

  All around her, she could hear the quiet whimpers of the nymphs and the pixies. Their voices melted into a whispered dirge, and it made the queen’s chest ache.

  In the clearing, men began to laugh.

  The queen’s jaw shook. Her fists vibrated with fury as, above her, the sky grew cloudy and the wind blew cold.

  “Whoo-ee. She nearly took your head off there, Oliver!” somebody shouted. The men were clapping one another on the back.

  The queen’s muscles tensed. She’s about to take all of your heads off, she thought. Her pulse pounded in her ears. She could feel the vines beneath the soil waiting for her command. The air crackled with furious anticipation.

  “You best be more careful,” shouted another man. “I do not want to be the one to tell that little girl of yours her daddy’s not coming home.”

  The queen froze.

  “Good job, everyone. Let’s get back to work, now! Stokes, you and Lambert get started on those branches. Be nice to get this thing stripped before those clouds open up.”

  The queen turned away. This she could not watch.

  The winds died and the forest fell quiet. The queen drew slow, shuddering breaths as she stalked away. With each chuckle and boisterous hoot that followed her, echoing between the trees, she felt a hot ball of wrath rise again in her throat. With great force of will, she swallowed it back down again.

  She became aware of many eyes peering at her through the leaves as she walked away. The faces of several grieving nymphs melted into the bark of the nearby trees, and a fluttering pixie light dimmed behind a low fern. A raspy voice drifted down from a mossy branch. “She does nothing?” it uttered in Spriggan.

  “There are times when doing nothing is better than the alternative,” the queen answered. She took great care to keep her voice measured and even. “Violence,” she said, “is not
strength.”

  The moss above her quivered. “And nothing,” the raspy voice answered, “is not something.”

  Ten

  Salty air rippled across dry grasses as Annie, Cole, and Tinn approached the cliffs that evening. The voyage through the Wild Wood to the goblin horde had once seemed impossible, but the Burtons had now made the trip half a dozen times. It was no more than an hour’s travel if they kept to the secret goblin path, which skirted around the worst of the forest’s obstacles— and the protection the queen had granted them was enough to ward off most of the creatures who might wish them harm.

  Chief Nudd met them at the mouth of the passage that led to the horde’s cliffside village. Kull was at the chief’s elbow, and a pair of sentries with drab green freckles and very sharp spears stood behind them.

  Nudd greeted Annie with a tip of his coal-black top hat. “I trust the forest behaved herself.” The bright plume of cardinal feathers danced in the ocean breeze. “Good ta see ya again, boys.”

  “It was fine,” Annie replied. “There’s some pink heather coming in along the stream. It’s quite cheery, actually.”

  “That’s grand. Mind ya dinna pick any. Brownies are thick this season, an’ they likes ta nest in shrubs. Take yer finger right off if ya give ’em half a chance, little blighters. Ha, ha.”

  “Good to know,” said Annie.

  “Are you absolutely sure you want to spend the whole night here?” Cole whispered to Tinn. “You could just visit for the day, like last time.”

  “You know I’m sure,” said Tinn. “I’d barely get started before it was time to walk home again.”

  Cole nodded, but he knew that if his brother were being honest, he’d admit he was anything but sure. Tinn was probably terrified. Cole certainly was. He could not remember a night he had slept without his brother right across from him. They had shared a bedroom, shared a tent, and even slept under the open stars together once or twice. It had always been the two of them against the world. But this was something Tinn had to do alone.

  “Are you gonna be okay?” Tinn asked.

  “Me?” said Cole. “I’m always okay. You know that.” His voice was almost convincing. “I’m not the one who’s gonna be sleeping in a drafty cave all night.”

  Cole would have gladly slept in a drafty cave if it meant he could be a part of this adventure with his brother; he would have slept in the mouth of an active volcano. But the goblins had made it abundantly clear that humans were permitted in the horde only under the most extenuating circumstances. The mere proximity of the humans as they dropped off Tinn each week had been rankling some of the more traditional goblins.

  Cole tried to manage a cheeky smile as he socked his brother in the arm. “Don’t get into too much trouble without me,” he said.

  Kull, who had been rocking back and forth with excitement from the moment the boys had crested the hill, finally shuffled forward. “Tinn! Got a new scroll picked out fer today. Goblish shanties. Dinna worry, I done transliterated it inta human, but I thought we could work on yer vocalizin’. Proper gnarls and howls are as much a part of goblin culture as eye gougin’ or ferret stew.”

  For just a moment, Tinn glanced back, and Cole saw in his eyes the same Tinn who had dropped out of their school play after just a week of rehearsals because he was sure he would mess up his lines in front of an audience, the same Tinn who had crumpled up his geography project because he would have had to present it by himself at the science fair, the same Tinn who had never dared do anything, really, unless Cole had done it, too. If he really pressed Tinn right now, this was the moment Cole could talk his brother out of it. He took a deep breath.

  “Well?” he said. “Go on. You’re gonna be the best goblin ever.” His smile very nearly reached his eyes.

  “I’ll tell you all about it when I get back,” said Tinn. “Bye, Cole. Bye, Mom. Love you! I’ll see you tomorrow!”

  “Little does yer brother know,” Kull was saying as he led Tinn down the narrow ledge along the face of the cliffs, “that the best goblin ever was Gripp Ap Mull back in the era of the Ratty Badger. I’ll work a bit o’ that inta our Goblish history lesson tomorrow mornin’.”

  Annie wrung her hands as she watched her son vanish around the curve of the cliffside.

  “Yer lad’s in good hands,” Nudd assured her. “The whole of the horde will be lookin’ out for him. When shall we be expectin’ ya, then?”

  “Tomorrow afternoon—no, wait. Early evening, actually, if it isn’t too much trouble. It’s just that I’ll be starting a new job in the morning.”

  Cole looked down at his feet while they talked. He didn’t want his mother to start a new job. Not so soon. Not on the same day Tinn was going to be gone. Cole would be left utterly alone in a silent, empty house all day. It made his stomach feel funny just thinking about it.

  “Oh, aye?” Nudd said. “Good on ya. Humans have such fascinatin’ careers. Whatcha workin’ at? Fire brigade? Detective? What’s the one with the lions and elephants in the big tent?”

  “Nothing so exciting,” Annie said. “Just stocking shelves in a shop. How does around six o’clock sound? Half past at the latest.”

  “No trouble at all. We’re happy ta have the lad.” Nudd gave a wave of his hand, and the sentries turned to follow Kull and Tinn down the narrow path.

  Annie nodded. She put a hand on Cole’s shoulder and took a steadying breath. “Let’s go, big guy.”

  “Take good care of him,” Cole called after the retreating chief.

  “Always do,” Nudd answered back. “Dinna worry about yer brother, lad. His trainin’ has been goin’ very well.”

  “It’s going terribly,” said Tinn.

  He and Kull stood alone in the broad cave that served as their training room. A narrow opening to one end let in a fresh breeze and the sound of waves breaking against the rocks below.

  “I still can’t figure out how to control the transformations,” Tinn went on. “My whole hand turned black as ink this time. And I couldn’t make it stop. I almost blew my whole secret and showed the entire class that I’m a goblin.”

  “Ah.” Kull nodded. “And that’s . . . bad. Right.”

  “I don’t get it. That never happens here with you. It never happens when I’m just practicing at home with Cole, either.”

  “Well, ya dinna have ta keep a secret in those places,” Kull said. “Hard ta break a secret when yer na keepin’ it.”

  Tinn leaned his back against the cave wall. “I just don’t see why it has to be so hard for me. Do other changelings have this much trouble controlling their powers?”

  Kull hopped up on a worn old stool and rubbed his splotchy head. “Other changelings are na you,” he said. “Ya got ta understand, lad, most changelings dinna stay human more’n a few days. Once, in the era of the Manky Basilisk, a changelin’ managed ta stay human fer a full fortnight. They wrote all about it. It was a big deal. And after they come home—well—that’s it. Most changelings dinna have any magic left after the first go-round. None of ’em have ever touched the fabric o’ the universe fer a recharge the way you did. They get their big day, impersonate a child, and then they’re back in the horde, just one o’ the lot with nothin’ ta set them apart except a fine story ta tell.”

  “What does that mean for me?” asked Tinn. He had been impersonating a child his whole life, although it had never felt like an impersonation before. He hadn’t known how to be anything else. He was beginning to feel he didn’t know how to be anything at all.

  “It means yer unique,” said Kull. “Ya gotta learn how ta be you an’ stop worryin’ about how ta be someone else.”

  “What if I’m never any good at changing?” Tinn asked. “I mean—I haven’t gotten it right once. Not really right. What if I never do?”

  Kull regarded him thoughtfully for a moment. “Hm. Ya see them lights?” Along the ba
ck wall was a line of messy wires hung with bright, glowing coils in glass tubes. Tinn had marveled at the electric lights on his first visit. Endsborough still relied on oil lamps, but Tinn had heard all about electricity from his classmate Hana Sakai, whose parents had taken her to Glanville for the fair last year. On his first visit, Tinn had asked Kull if he could touch one of the coils, and Kull had said, “Sure!” So Tinn had poked it, and the jolt had sent him tumbling backward across the floor. It had been hours before the feeling had fully returned to his arm. Goblin education looked different than human education.

  “Rigged those lights up myself,” Kull said. “I knew nothin’ about electricity when I started. First time I turned ’em on, they didn’a do a thing. Hummed a bit is all. Made my tongue tingly when I gnawed on ’em. So, ya know what I did?”

  Tinn shook his head.

  “I adjusted. Tinkered with the couplin’s, turned up the generator, added a bit more solder ta the connections. Second go-round, I blasted a burnt strip clear across the wall and gave three o’ my neighbors heart attacks. I didn’a wake up fer days. Nudd tells me he had good money on me fer dead.”

  “Wait—you almost died? You let me poke those!”

  “Oh, huck up. Yer fine. Point is: what do ya think I did as soon as I finally woke up?”

  “Got medical attention?”

  “I adjusted. And I tried again. And again. I learned more each time, see? I learned about fuses and dampeners and conductivity. Iffin it wasn’a fer all the times my plans didn’a go the way I wanted ’em to, we’d still be in the dark right now.” Kull jabbed a stubby finger at Tinn. “Yer still sortin’ out how ya work, boy. Yer learnin’ what ya can do and who’s inside ya. Dinna be afraid of a few sparks or a burnout from time to time. That’s na failure. That’s fine-tuning.”

  Tinn nodded. “I think I understand,” he said. “Although gnawing on live wires probably isn’t the best way to learn about power.”