The Young Queens

by Kendare Blake

  Or so her grandparents say. Jules of course does not remember, any more than she remembers her mother, who left Jules and the island when Jules was three years old. Another unlucky sign.

  Jules steps away from the daffodils and wipes the dirt from her hands onto her pants, on the sides and the back, so Aunt Caragh will not see. Behind her, the grass rustles, and her best friend, Joseph Sandrin, shoves her and says, “Boo!”

  “I heard you coming,” she says.

  “Did not.” He bends to inspect the spot where she buried the pearl, and Jules waits with held breath for his nod of approval. Even at six years old, she knows that something about Joseph is special. Something that is not like other boys, and her stomach clenches around the feeling—it is exciting and scary. Then he squints up at her, and whatever it was disappears, and he is just Joseph again.

  “It was the one I said, wasn’t it,” he says.

  “Maybe.”

  “It was. It was the oyster I chose. The one I brought you.”

  The oyster he brought her was delicious and salty, but it held no pearl. Though he was born to a mostly giftless family (his oldest brother Matthew is able to charm fish), Joseph thinks he has a touch of the sight gift, and no one on the island can convince him any different.

  They stand together in her aunt Caragh’s garden of radishes, green tomatoes, daffodils, and sunflowers. Two children with dirty trouser legs and matching blue shirts. Joseph and Jules, inseparable since birth.

  “When do you have to go?” he asks.

  “I don’t know. Pretty soon.” Jules looks back at the house. The season has started off hot, and Aunt Caragh’s familiar, a lean brown hound named Juniper, lies in a patch of dirt to stay cool. It is only the four of them in the house now, only Jules and Aunt Caragh, Grandma Cait and Grandpa Ellis. Great-Grandma Sasha died in her sleep and was burned before the first snow. Her ashes feed the daffodils on which Jules and Joseph now stand. Jules reaches out and strokes a yellow, velvet petal. Birth and death and rebirth. These are words she knows, and she thinks with sudden panic that they are words she should understand. That somehow they are tied to this day and these queens in a way that is important.

  “I don’t know why you have to be the ones to take her,” says Joseph. He has never much cared for change and has spent most of the last few weeks trying to figure a way out of Jules taking in another girl.

  “Because she’s a naturalist,” says Jules. “And because we’re the guardians.”

  “My ma and pa say that it doesn’t look like she’s anything.”

  “Well, Aunt Caragh says that’s what being a naturalist looks like,” she says, and shoves him.

  Joseph scowls. “She won’t be with us all the time,” he says, half a question, half a demand, and looks at Jules with stormy blue eyes.

  “Hardly at all. She’s a queen. But we have to be kind to her.”

  “Because she’s a queen.”

  Three dark queens are born in a glen. But only one will rule. Jules knows the rhyme by heart. But in her young mind it is only a rhyme. She has not thought about the other queens and who they are. Where they must go.

  Aunt Caragh calls for Juillenne through an open window.

  “Guess you have to go put on a dress,” says Joseph. “Glad I don’t have to.”

  “Me too,” says Jules, and they laugh.

  “Want to take the boat out and swim when you get back? Or we can just swim off the dock.”

  “I don’t know. Aunt Caragh says the journey will take a long time. And when we get back, she’ll be here.”

  Joseph frowns. “Well . . . you’ll have to bring her along, then, I guess. She can’t be that bad.” He walks through the yard and waves when he gets to the edge of it, and Jules waves back. She can’t be that bad, he says, but what does he know? The girl is a queen. Even though they say she is a naturalist, she could still be terrible.

  Jules stretches her hand out toward the patch of blue oat grass that grows beside the daffodils, in the shade of the trees. For a moment, gentle energy moves from the center of her out to her fingertips, and she breathes in, unafraid, mostly impatient that she cannot ripen the fields yet like her grandparents or bloom a rose in her palm like Caragh.

  The oat grass turns to her like she is the sun, but it grows no taller. Not yet. When she comes into the fullness of her gift, she will be able to grow a garden as lush as this one, with nothing more than wishes and coaxing. Grandpa Ellis says that the naturalist queen Bernadine, whose familiar the city of Wolf Spring was named for, could bring a field to harvest with a thought. But that was a long time ago, and besides, Jules is no queen.

  “Juillenne!” Caragh shouts. “Stop dallying in the garden!”

  Jules runs to the house and scoops up her grandpa Ellis’s familiar-dog, Jake, to use as a furry white shield against Caragh’s impatience.

  THE BLACK COTTAGE

  Willa watches the young queens as they ready themselves in eldest triplet Mirabella’s bedroom. Though the bedroom belongs to all of them, really. Neither Arsinoe nor Katharine has spent a full night in her own room since . . . well, since they traded their cradles for beds.

  “No,” says Arsinoe, and throws her formal black dress on the floor. “It does not fit right.”

  “It does so fit,” says Mirabella. She takes it from little Katharine, who has retrieved it from the rug. “It fits how it is supposed to.”

  “You would know that if you ever wore one,” Katharine adds, and sticks out her tongue.

  The girls are being difficult. Katharine likes her dress but does not want to have her hair braided. Mirabella’s hair is done, but she is unsatisfied with her sash. And Arsinoe . . . Arsinoe refuses everything.

  That, Willa supposes, is her fault. She has raised them according to their designated gifts and let Arsinoe run wild in the woods. Let her tromp through the streambeds and dive after crayfish. Sweet Katharine has been primped and spoiled, and they have all looked upon her as their own special treasure. As for Mirabella, Willa remembers well the words of the queen. Mirabella is chosen. Strong. Born to rule. It shows in the way that she is with her sisters, always in charge of them and always the mediator. Or perhaps that, too, is due to how she was raised. Camille’s prediction was impossible to forget. So even though she was not supposed to, Willa has groomed Mirabella over her sisters for the crown. As soon as the girl could read, Willa spent hours in the cottage library with her, poring over the history of the island.

  But today is the day. Their claiming day, when the elemental, poisoner, and naturalist families will come to take their queens away. She has known forever that it was coming. But six years is a long time, full of long days of growth and laughter, and Willa has come to look at the queens as hers. Her queens. Her girls. More so even than she had with Queen Camille, perhaps because she is older now, and this generation will be her last.

  “Queen Arsinoe, come to me.”

  Arsinoe does as she is told, trudging across the room to stand before Willa with her head hanging. Willa reaches out and wipes a streak of dirt from the little girl’s cheek. Before the day is done Arsinoe will find a way to become filthy. She has such a knack for it that Willa half believes that Camille really did mistake her gift, and she truly is a naturalist made for digging in the soil.

  “Raise your arms,” Willa says. “Out of that shirt.”

  “May I wear trousers under the dress, at least?”

  “No. Not today. But you are going home with the naturalists. Good working people, by the sea. You will like it there. And I doubt that they will make you dress too formally, except for on festival days.”

  Arsinoe sighs and lets Willa get her out of her clothes and into the dress with minimal tugging. When she is finished, the queen goes dutifully to her sister to have the tangles brushed out of her hair.

  Perhaps due to the strain of the day, Katharine begins to cry, and it is hard for Willa not to comfort her. Mirabella and Arsinoe stop, as if they should turn and wrap her in their ar
ms. But they do not. It is time for Katharine to learn to stand on her own, and after a moment, she quits crying and wipes her cheeks.

  The Arrons will not be pleased with her. When the poisoner gift does not come, they may treat her even worse than they treated Queen Camille. Once, Willa feared what would happen as the queens grew and their families began to suspect they had been switched. But they will never come to suspect. Weak-gifted or giftless queens are no longer uncommon, where it is unheard of for a queen to be designated wrong at birth. And Willa should know. She has searched through the histories.

  “Mirabella is chosen,” Willa whispers, and makes a pious gesture, left over from her days as a young priestess, before she felt the Goddess pulling her into service at the Black Cottage. “And if she is chosen, the other gifts will not matter.”

  They may never even be an issue. Neither Arsinoe nor Katharine has shown the slightest hint of a gift, not their true ones or any other, whereas Mirabella’s elements showed when she was four years old. Perhaps sooner than that, but that was when Willa first saw her playing with the candle flames: putting them out and lighting them again with her tiny, pointed finger. Other elements followed after: a tremor in the ground when she was frightened, or overcast skies when she is nervous like today.

  So it seems that Queen Camille was right.

  Katharine, eyes dry, steps up to the mirror beside her sisters and quickly organizes the brushes and combs and bits of ribbon on the dresser. She is such a pretty, delicate queen. And somehow sweet despite being spoiled.

  “You look odd with your hair like that,” she says to Arsinoe.

  “You look odd all the time,” Arsinoe says back, and Mirabella tugs on her braid.

  “No fighting.” Mirabella reaches for a length of black ribbon. “This is our last day together.”

  “But we will see each other sometimes. At festivals,” says Arsinoe.

  “We will see one another when we are all grown up,” Mirabella corrects her. “That is what Willa said. When we are tall.”

  “Then we will never see Kat again. She will never be tall.”

  “And you will never be smart!” Katharine hisses, and Mirabella laughs. They are so different, in character and in feature. Arsinoe’s scowl was apparent from the age of two. When Mirabella lost her baby cheeks, her fine bones and slender neck made her look every bit the oldest. And Katharine’s large, heavily lashed eyes were impossible to miss. Willa has not needed to use colored cords or buttons to tell them apart since they could crawl.

  “What if we do not like them?” Katharine asks. “The people who come to take us?”

  “You will,” Mirabella says. “You are going to Indrid Down. The capital city! Someday we will visit you there, and you must show us all around it.”

  Willa turns to leave them alone. The families will arrive soon, and she must still get ready herself. The young queens’ laughter rings out and follows her down the hall.

  “Have this, your last day as sweet girls,” she whispers. “For when you next meet, you will remember none of it.”

  THE CLAIMING

  Jules follows Aunt Caragh down the seldom-used path through the Greenwood that leads to the Black Cottage, where the queens are born. The path is not well-groomed, and brambles and prickers catch on the hem of her black skirt, and scratch against the leather of her boots. When they get back to the carriage, she will have to pick bits of plant from Juniper’s floppy ears and the pads of her paws.

  “Keep up, Jules,” says Aunt Caragh, and Juniper turns and woofs. Jules does her best, a small girl on small legs—nothing like her aunt or even like the photos she has seen of her mother, Madrigal. Everyone in Wolf Spring talks about those Milone girls, with their shining light brown hair and swaying limbs like a willow’s branches. It makes Jules wonder who her short, dark father was and resent him a little.

  In the carriage, Caragh had changed into her best black dress, the modest one with the high collar and shining buttons. She anointed her wrists and forehead with oil and swept her hair high off her neck, and though the rest of the family says that Madrigal is far prettier, to Juillenne, Caragh is very beautiful. Jules tried to do her hair like her aunt’s, but it was too wild and wavy. It fell out of its pins, and Jules feels ugly, and tied tight by the fastenings of her dress.

  “Why didn’t we take the carriage to the Black Cottage?” she asks.

  “Because the claiming is held in the high meadow,” Caragh replies. “And because this is queen business and all ritual. We must come from different directions and take them away in different directions.”

  “That’s stupid.”

  “Aye, and you’re not the only one who thinks so.” Caragh turns and smiles out of the side of her mouth. “But hold your tongue when we get there. They’ll be angry enough as it is that it’s you and I who have come, instead of your grandma Cait.”

  Jules nods. She tries not to think ahead to the Black Cottage and what they will find there, instead daydreaming about returning to Wolf Spring, getting out of the hot, scratchy dress and into the cold, fresh water of Sealhead Cove, near Joseph’s house. On bright days she can see clear to the rocky bottom.

  “Caragh!”

  They turn to see a tall boy following them down the path, shaking leaves out of his hair and brushing dust off his vest and slacks. It is Matthew, Joseph’s brother, older than him by a full eleven years. Jules shouts his name and runs up the path to jump into his arms, and he tickles her belly until she is breathless.

  “Matthew!” Caragh exclaims. “What are you doing here?”

  “I missed you. So I waited a day and followed on horseback.”

  “But you aren’t supposed to be here. And put my niece down. She’s had too much Sandrin influence already, cavorting with Joseph.” Despite her tone, Caragh goes and kisses Matthew’s cheek.

  “She’s not the only Milone with a weakness for Sandrin boys,” he says.

  “What’s ‘cavorting’?” asks Jules.

  “Nothing,” both adults answer together.

  “What are you doing here, Matthew?” Caragh asks. “I mean really.”

  “I really did miss you,” he says. “And I couldn’t let you show up alone. Not with the grand crowds and caravans the Arrons and the Westwoods will be towing.”

  “So Jules and I together is a shame, but you and I and Jules is not?”

  “One Sandrin makes all the difference.”

  “You know, there’s always the chance we could miss them. I didn’t push the horses to hurry through the mountains.”

  Matthew shakes his head. “The sisters leave at the same time.” He bends down to Jules and makes a face. “Pulled apart screaming, like they’re pulling clots from wet wounds.”

  “Matthew, that’s only a story,” scolds Caragh as Jules giggles. “And a terrible one.”

  “Jules can handle it. She has picked her share of scabs. And if you wanted to shield her, you shouldn’t have brought her.”

  The wind picks up and rushes through the trees, cold from coming down the face of Mount Horn and through the glen. It rattles branches and sends leaves flying past Jules’s cheeks.

  “Seems like the Westwoods are just arriving.”

  Maybe it is the elemental gift, or maybe it is only a spring breeze, but it makes Jules feel very insignificant suddenly, and she tugs on Caragh’s long, flowing skirt.

  “Don’t be afraid, Squirt,” says Matthew. “That and one lonely rain cloud probably exhausted half the Westwood clan.” But as he finishes speaking, a great bolt of lightning cracks through the sky and touches the rocky summit of the mountain.

  Caragh scoops Jules up and plants her on her hip. They walk fast toward the Black Cottage and the high meadow without another word. Jules cannot help but cry, though she does so as softly as she can.

  They reach the meadow and look down through the glen. Even from such a distance, the Black Cottage looms large beneath the shade of tall oaks. The yard, wild with growth—seeded grasses and flowers—is bo
rdered on the east by a broad stream, which finds its source deep beneath the rock of Mount Horn. The cottage itself is not actually black but brown brick with white wood and dark brown timbering. In the warmth of the May day, no smoke rises from any of the chimneys atop its gabled roofs. Jules gazes at it in wonder. It is not what she imagined, but it is grand. And then Caragh stops short and puts her down in the grass.

  Two small crowds stand in the meadow, all dressed in black. One is led by a tall, imposing woman with white blond hair pulled back into a tight bun. Their faces seem frozen into stern expressions, heads tilted slightly back. The other is led by a woman in a soft, flowing cloak, with bright blue gemstones sewn into the hem. Later, Jules will remember nothing else about her, aside from those gemstones and the nervous way she clasped her hands.

  “Milones,” an older woman says to Caragh and Jules. She is thick around the middle and through the legs, her dark blond hair turned stiff with gray. “You are late.”

  “We are late, but we are here, Midwife,” Caragh replies, and Jules tugs on her arm. Surely Caragh should not speak so to the woman presiding over the ceremony. “Though I’m sorry if we kept you.”

  “We can’t be that late,” says Matthew. “Wasn’t that light show the Westwoods just arriving?”

  The old woman looks at Matthew sternly, and Jules thinks he must be very stupid. Even she can see that the lightning must have come from the tall little girl with black hair and eyes, holding on to her sisters, a storm cloud and sweat across her brow.

  They are the queens. Jules thinks she ought to bow, but she cannot stop staring. The three little girls are all alike in coloring, with black hair and eyes, but otherwise, they are each different, no two the same height or with similar features. They are nearly Jules’s very same age, though they seem older, even as the smaller two weep fiercely.