Blue

by Lou Aronica

  “I’m sure you realize that isn’t what I meant, Your Majesty. What causes me sorrow is that I have no alternatives to offer you. We have found no cause for the blight.”

  “But we will.”

  “If only I could be that certain.”

  “You can be that certain, Minister. I can’t explain why I feel this way, but I know that an answer is out there. And I know that we will find it with minimal hardship.”

  Thuja seemed unconvinced. However, while Miea acknowledged that his concerns were legitimate ones, she urged him to push his staff further to find the source of the blight or at the very least offer a treatment that would forestall it without devastating ecological consequences.

  “Your Majesty, I truly wish I could share your confidence,” Thuja said as he prepared to leave.

  “Try, Minister. Perhaps confidence is what we need most right now.”

  Miea moved to the garden for her meeting with the minister of trade with a healthy sense of resolve. However, the session started erratically. It seemed that the minister’s staff was especially uncomfortable with being in such an informal setting with the queen. The goal of the meeting was to discuss ways to help the growers of bayless in their efforts to give the oddly-shaped and slightly sour fruit a larger consumer base. Miea listened to various members of the minister’s committee present programs aimed at convincing the public that the fruit wasn’t as ugly as it looked, wasn’t so strangely flavored, and was nutritionally beneficial (though most popular fruits were considerably more nutritious). Their efforts were well-intentioned, but Miea couldn’t imagine that any of them would help bayless growers make much headway.

  Miea understood that it was her function to listen to the various campaigns, receive recommendations from the minister, and then comment on them. She wasn’t in the mood to serve such a function today, though. Not when she felt so well and when the committee was so clearly missing the obvious.

  “Children,” she said, as one committee member sat down and another rose to give his presentation.

  “Excuse me, Your Majesty,” the minister said.

  “Children love sour things—especially sweet sour things. The bayless isn’t a particularly sweet fruit. To be honest, it isn’t much of a fruit at all. It is also dreadfully ugly. I’m not sure why farmers cultivate these things at all, to tell you the truth. Better they were left to the wild to add character to the landscape. However, if farmers want to invest their energies in bringing this fruit to market, then they should devise a concoction—some kind of paste or chewy substance or beverage—that uses the bayless in a sweetened and disguised form and promote this concoction to children.”

  The minister of trade smiled at her. “Turn it into candy, Your Majesty?”

  “I think that might be a better choice than trying to convince our fellow citizens that the bayless is beautiful.”

  The minister laughed politely. “I think it might very well be, Your Majesty.”

  “If this concoction is sweetened with haedrich, it will be healthful as well.”

  “That is a very wise notion, Your Majesty. I’ll set someone to work on it immediately.”

  Miea not only felt that she’d contributed, but, having preempted the last three presentations, she’d actually put herself ahead of schedule for the day. As a result, she felt she’d earned a short time alone in the garden, sipping argo and enjoying the sunshine.

  She wondered what Becky did for relaxation. Was leisure time an entirely different thing in the world the teenager came from? Miea had a feeling that there were far more similarities between Tamarisk and Connecticut than there were differences. Certainly, there had to be differences, though. What did Connecticut look like? Miea strongly believed that she understood how to bring Becky to Tamarisk, but was it somehow possible for Miea to travel to Becky’s home as well? The thought was too fantastic for such a busy day.

  Sorbus retrieved her from the garden and the rest of the afternoon was a jumble of diplomacy and problem solving. A state dinner followed this and consumed most of the night. Finally, feeling overloaded from a full day’s encounters and tired of speaking so much, Miea sat alone in her chambers, sipping one last cup of argo. It was only then that she realized Becky hadn’t returned. She had been convinced after last night that the girl would come to visit Tamarisk the first chance she got. Becky had as much as told her this when they parted. Still, she hadn’t come.

  Did her responsibilities keep her away? Maybe teenagers had much more to do in Connecticut than they did in Tamarisk. Perhaps Miea had done something to frighten the girl and prevent her from making the trip. That didn’t seem to make sense given the way they spoke and who the girl was, though. Miea was certain the meditation process she described to Becky would get her to Tamarisk—the “voice” was so strong— but of course, no one had ever used it before. Was it possible Miea had made some mistake with the instructions she gave the girl?

  If so, did that mean she’d never see her again? The thought left Miea with a surge of anxiety. She wanted to reach across the void to clasp Becky’s hand this very minute.

  They had so much more to do together.

  8

  Miea ran her hand over the replica of the Malaspina Bridge that she kept in her room. She had commissioned the model soon after she became queen, in response to the first report on the “accident” that claimed her parents. She’d demanded that the model be as accurate in every detail as possible to help her when she reviewed subsequent reports. While the artist who’d created the model did his job masterfully, the people who compiled the reports (more than a dozen in the years that followed) were less successful. Four years after the disaster, no one could tell her the definitive cause.

  Sorbus entered her chambers. “Your Majesty, it is time for your meeting with the delegation from Gunn-thorn.”

  “Please make them comfortable, Sorbus. I’ll be there in a moment.”

  Miea returned to her office to collect a folder that contained her notes from the numerous briefings she’d received in preparation for this meeting. This was the fifth such meeting with the Thorns since Miea had become queen. Throughout history, Tamarisk had maintained a wary, uneasy relationship with their neighbors to the north. The tensions descended to war only once—over a small patch of fertile land more than a hundred years ago—but their coexistence had been dotted with skirmishes, subterfuge, and posturing. The cultural differences between the two kingdoms were profound: Tamarisk was agrarian, open, and progressive while Gunnthorn was industrial, repressive, and resistant to societal change. Most difficult for Miea (and every Tamarisk monarch who came before her) to deal with about the Thorns, however, was their compulsive need to intimidate. The leaders of the Thorns wanted all other kingdoms to fear them, even those with equal or greater resources and power. Miea knew there was a network of Thorn spies in Tamarisk gathering information about vulnerabilities and creating problems for the citizenry. The Thorns made little attempt to conceal the existence of this network. They were, however, so good at working themselves into the fabric of Tamariskian society that Miea’s security forces had never succeeded in rooting them out.

  The possibility of a damaging incursion from the Thorns always existed. That was why Miea pursued these diplomatic sessions. This one carried more urgency with it than most, however. As the search for a cause of the disease infesting plant life in Jonrae remained futile, Miea considered the very real possibility that the Thorns might have found an undetectable way to poison her kingdom. If so, no level of diplomacy would be enough to prevent an all-out conflict.

  As she exited her office to walk toward the conference room, Miea found a teenaged boy in Thorn garb leafing through the pages of Sorbus’s copy of her appointment calendar, examining each page carefully. Sorbus was nowhere in the vicinity.

  “Excuse me,” she said sharply.

  The boy glanced up at her casually, bowed his head slightly in modest acknowledgement of her presence, and then continued to examine the book.r />
  “Can I ask what you are doing?” Miea said with obvious annoyance.

  The boy rubbed a page from the book between his thumb and forefinger. “This paper is extraordinary. Tamariskians are such master craftspeople. Even this appointment book is more elegant than anything we have in Gunnthorn.”

  The boy was admiring the book’s composition? Unlikely. He was surely memorizing where she would be in the coming weeks. How could Sorbus have been so lax as to allow him to do this?

  Miea walked up to the boy and peered at the page he “admired.” The week after next. She’d boost security the entire week. She hated thinking this way and only really did it when the Thorns were involved. “I assume you are with the delegation.”

  The boy smoothed the page and took one additional long glance at it. Miea nearly tore the book from his grasp. At last, he turned to her. “Yes, I’m with the delegation.”

  “Then perhaps you should be with the delegation. Allow me to escort you.”

  “That would be very nice of you.”

  Miea walked with the boy to the conference room, silently fuming. Could this Thorn teen have been more arrogant? He had to know who she was. If he wasn’t going to hide his obvious espionage, the least he could do was offer her some respect.

  Thorn Vice Chancellor Capsicum stood to greet Miea when she entered the conference room. Of course, the chancellor wasn’t here. He would never deign to journey to another kingdom.

  “Your Majesty, thank you for your hospitality,” the vice chancellor said. “Our accommodations last night were excellent as always.”

  We intentionally sequestered you to prevent you from doing any spying, Capsicum, but you probably already know that. “I’m glad you were comfortable, Mr. Vice Chancellor.”

  The vice chancellor gestured toward the boy who walked in with Miea. “I see you’ve already met my son, Rubus.”

  Miea glanced toward the boy, who now bowed toward her deferentially.

  “I didn’t know he was your son,” Miea said, “but yes, we have met.”

  “Rubus has taken a special interest in Tamarisk. He practically begged me to take him along on this trip. I hope you don’t mind.”

  “Your son is welcome in Tamarisk, Mr. Vice Chancellor. I might only request that he remain with your entourage in the future.”

  Capsicum’s eyes narrowed briefly and then he looked at his son disapprovingly. The boy would not meet his gaze. Clearly, he wasn’t as skilled at deception as his father had expected him to be. Miea was sure he’d receive more extensive training upon their return to Gunnthorn.

  The next half hour was an anticipated series of formalities: reviews of treaties, discussions about the levels of participation of each kingdom in an upcoming global conference, vague references to a revision in ex-tradition policies. Capsicum lobbied for a reduction of Tamariskian soldiers on the southernmost border between the two kingdoms, claiming the Thorn villagers on the other side felt overwhelmed. Miea declined, noting Tamariskian military policy of respect for borders and choosing not to mention that the Thorn government had little concern for its citizens and only wanted the reduction to make it easier for spies to sneak through.

  “Vice Chancellor, since we’re speaking of borders, I’d like to discuss some abnormalities in Jonrae that concern me.” Jonrae also bordered Gunnthorn, farther to the north. “Is it possible you are conducting experiments there?”

  “In Jonrae, Your Majesty?” Capsicum said haughtily. “Jonrae is a Tamarisk territory.”

  “And easily accessible from Baranov.”

  “The border between Baranov and Jonrae is well guarded by your own soldiers, Your Majesty.”

  Yet I’m sure you could find a way to cause us harm if you chose to do so. “It is possible that an experiment held within your borders might still have unexpected consequences for Jonrae.”

  The vice chancellor shook his head. “There are no experiments going on in Baranov.”

  “Would you mind if I sent a delegation there to take some soil samples?”

  Capsicum rose up in his seat. “I would mind exactly as much as you would mind if I sent a delegation to poke around Tamarisk City.”

  Rubus leaned forward. “Maybe I could go to Baranov and prepare a report for the queen,” he said. Unlike the other diplomats around the table, he obviously had no concerns about entering into a discussion between the highest ranking officials in the room.

  “The queen is simply going to have to take our word for it,” Capsicum said sternly.

  “If there are abnormalities in Jonrae, there might be abnormalities in Baranov as well. We should find out.”

  The vice chancellor smiled, though his eyes remained dark. “My son is wise beyond his years.” He turned to the boy. “Yes, Rubus; take a scientific team up to Baranov and come back with your findings. If there is something worth sharing with the queen, we will let her know.”

  The man and the teen exchanged a glance that Miea couldn’t read. Of course, nothing would come of Rubus’s “report.” Just as nothing was coming from this diplomatic conference.

  Other than Miea’s increased suspicions that the Thorns had a very active role in the new danger facing her kingdom.

  The pizza dough rose in the air and landed on the kitchen counter with an awkward whumpf . Dad had never been good at this part of the pizza-making process, but he insisted on doing it every time anyway.

  “What’s the point of the whole throwing-the-dough-in-the-air thing?” Becky said as her father retrieved it from the counter, patted it with flour, and tried again.

  “Not sure, actually. Theatrics, I think.”

  The dough slipped off the side of his hand, but he caught it before it fell.

  “This doesn’t look very theatrical, Dad.”

  He smirked at her. “Certain things take practice. If you quit after a little failure, you never learn.”

  Becky didn’t want to remind him that he’d been trying to do this since she was a little kid. “If you say so. I’ll start shredding the mozzarella.”

  “Good idea. I should be ready with this in, I don’t know, twenty or thirty minutes—assuming of course that I don’t drop it on the floor and we don’t have the start the whole thing over from scratch.”

  Dad threw her a sly glance and she rolled her eyes at him. He seemed to be in a very good mood. He had been, really, the entire week. He asked her more than the same two questions when they talked on the phone (“How was school?” “Did anything happen today?”), and he actually seemed to be listening to what she said in response. Their dinner together Tuesday night was relaxed. She got to pick the restaurant and they went for ice cream afterward and just hung out. They didn’t talk much, but she didn’t feel the way she usually did when they were quiet together—as though they were supposed to be talking but weren’t.

  Of course, that didn’t mean that there still wasn’t some weirdness there. The single biggest weirdness was that he hadn’t said a thing to her about Tamarisk after what she’d told him last Sunday. Not a word. She was beginning to wonder if maybe he hadn’t heard her. Or maybe he didn’t understand what she’d said. Well, if he wasn’t going to bring it up, she wasn’t going to, either. At first, she didn’t say anything more to him about Tamarisk because she wanted him to make some kind of move on this. It had been so long since he’d really tried to connect with her, and she was sure this was going to get him going—but he had to show her that it was important to him.

  But now she had a different reason for avoiding bringing it up. It had been a full week since her “encounter” with Miea—and she hadn’t been able to hook up with the queen again, no matter how hard she’d concentrated and how carefully she followed the directions Miea had given her. Becky knew that what happened to her had been real. But if it was real, why did it only happen that one time? She had one more thought and she was going to try it out when they went to bed tonight. She was anxious to do it now—actually, she’d been anxious to do it four hours ago—but she didn�
�t think she’d be able to concentrate enough with her father roaming around the apartment.

  For now, she’d think about pizza and shredding mozzarella. She glanced over to the kitchen counter. Her father had managed to stretch out the dough in some fashion, but he was repairing a hole in it.

  “I’m thinking olives and garlic,” he said while still bent over the brutalized crust.

  “Works for me. Do we have any hot peppers?”

  “Hot peppers? You don’t eat hot peppers.”

  “I’m evolving, Dad.”

  He glanced over at her, a wry smile on his face. “Yeah, I think we have some hot peppers.”

  “Just a couple, okay?”

  Eventually, they got to eat the pizza and it tasted great. Dad was really good at making pizza once he got past the “theatrics.” After they cleaned up, they played a couple games of Yahtzee and then put the new Johnny Depp movie on pay-per-view. Becky was supposed to go to a party with Lonnie tonight, but she decided to stay home with her father instead. It had been a while since they’d had an easy Saturday together, and it just seemed like a good idea.

  “Johnny Depp really is a smart actor,” her father said as the movie played.

  “He’s gorgeous.”

  Dad looked sideways at her and she just grinned at him. “You really think he’s gorgeous?”

  “You don’t?”

  “He’s not my type.”

  “You don’t have a type, Dad. Yes, Johnny Depp is gorgeous. This is not opinion; it’s fact.”

  “What do you mean I don’t have a type?”

  “Never mind. I want some dessert. What do we have?”

  Dessert turned out to be an apple pie Dad had bought that morning, the movie turned out to be only okay by Johnny Depp standards (not that it mattered), and Dad insisted on watching the opening segment of “Saturday Night Live” before going to bed. But in the end, they’d made it through an entire day together without any tense or mopey moments. Becky wondered what her father was thinking, what had caused this shift in attitude. Whatever it was, she hoped he kept thinking it.