by Jenny Moss
He came at me, his dagger’s sharp tip all I saw.
I heard Kenway yell my name. I heard Eldred’s voice inside my head. When you stand before him, think of us. Let us in.
Let them in, let them in. Time stretched out.
I thought of Kenway and felt his loyalty inside me, like it was my own, and of Piers and his fierce heart, and that was in me, too, and then of Eldred and his wisdom, and of Kendra and her quest for justice, and Ingen and her strong faith.
I thought of my murdered father. I felt his strength.
Mostly, I thought of my mother, dying as I took my first breath. I told her I would leave my anger behind, that she must leave her grief behind and come to me, to us. We all called to her.
My body tingled. I dropped the sword. I didn’t need it.
I braced myself, but felt no pain when he hit me. I was protected by a cushion of sweet, soft air. Erce. She is here. Fyren bounced back, falling toward the edge of the wall, reaching for me. Instinctively, I put out my hand. He grasped my fingers, a wicked grin upon his face. A whirl of wind took him up, yanking his grip from mine. He fell backward, his dagger clanking down onto the stone. Tripping over the short wall, he plunged to the ground below.
I heard screams and shouts from the crowd. Fyren had been there in front of me and now he was gone.
I crept up to the side and looked over the edge.
Fyren’s body was splayed on the ground. An ugly sight.
His blade hadn’t pierced me. With the strength of the kingdom in me, he could do no harm. Erce had protected me. That was why the crowd had to see it, so they would believe.
I heard their voices. Peasants. Knights. Ladies.
Did you see it? It was a wild wind that took him down. Who is she? She looks like our dead Queen Anne, wearing her favorite green, the color of a kingdom once fertile. It was Erce. She was the wind. She protected the girl.
Lord Llewyn bowed down. “You look exactly like your mother, Your Grace. Why did I not see it before?”
Fay fell to her knees, holding her shaking fingers to her lips.
“It is the true queen,” Lord Llewyn said to the lords and ladies below. “Queen Anne’s daughter. Do you not see?”
I heard the chanting begin. I went to Kenway, who struggled to sit up.
“Lie still,” I said.
He dropped back to the stone floor.
“Get someone to help,” I ordered Fay. “Now.”
“Yes, Your Grace,” she said, hurrying to the bolted door.
I put my hand on Kenway’s arm, listening to the people below, my people.
“Our queen. Long live our queen.”
Or was it Erce’s voice I heard?
Chapter Thirty-Eight
I stood at Devona’s window.
Behind me, Kenway rested in a comfortable chair, out of bed for the first time in five days. He was still weak from the loss of blood, but much improved.
The ladies of the court had whispered behind white hands about the strangeness of my request. No, not request: my command.
Yes, it is the best room, the warmest, the one with the brightest light. But, still, they murmured to one another, what is she thinking? Putting him in the room of the queen who was not a queen and had tormented her so?
They feared Devona’s ghost and thought the past could be locked away with a heavy door and a key. But Devona wasn’t here. Only sorrow and fear and wild imaginings could keep her here. We would have none of that.
I’d discovered that life’s pain must be folded into its sweetness, and that the soul would remember the sweetness, if we let it.
Like our memories of Devona, and of Fyren and his apples. Had not my own mother come to me in the sweetness of the apple, carried to me by my father’s killer? Should I forget the one—the sweetness—because of the pain?
Love is worth it, Kenway had assured me. He’d been right. We could bear much, if we had the strength. I knew I had the strength.
Erce had given me that. She had taken her time about it. But, now, the cares of the people pulsed through me to her and back to us again. Like breath in and out.
Nature’s green fingers pushed out of the newly fertile soil, covering the fields with hope. Empty stomachs rumbled, but they would soon be filled. We would recover. Just as Kenway would recover.
I turned from the warm breeze to look at him. His head rested against the back of the chair, and his eyes were closed. He was so still. His pale face made him look closer to the grave than to the altar.
“Queen Audrey,” said Eldred, who stood behind me. He was ever at my side these days.
“Yes?” I asked, my eyes still on the patient.
It seemed that Eldred had wanted Kenway to marry me all along. I would need a loyal prince at my side, he said. I wondered if Kenway would refuse.
Eldred sighed. “A country needs an army, Your Grace.” He was returning to a disagreement I thought we had put aside two days ago.
“Not the army we have. Send those home whom we have forced into conscription. Let us build an army of willing soldiers.”
He nodded, with tight lips. Not pleased.
“Have you found Stillman or Piers’s father?” I asked.
“Not yet.”
“It must be done, Eldred.”
“Yes, yes. We will keep looking.”
Piers was usually on Eldred’s heels, although this morning I had heard his shouts in the royal yard. From my perch at the window, I had spied him running from Cook, a large crème pie in his hands.
“And Kendra? Will she forgive and come back to live with us?”
“She has no wish to do so.”
I thought of her in her windblown hut by the ocean and felt a pang of envy. To be there, free of all these concerns, tugged at me. But a solitary life was not to be my fate, not the life I was given.
“But you will bring Ingen to me,” I said. “And Tayte and her sons.”
“As I said I would,” Eldred replied, “Your Grace.”
“We must introduce the people to Erce,” I told him.
“Yes, but not too quickly,” he said. “People are slow to believe.”
I nodded. “Especially those in the south, who fancy themselves above faith.” I sat beside Kenway. Our chairs faced the window. “Eldred, leave us, if you would.”
Eldred seemed about to speak, but said nothing. His robes swished as he left the room. I knew Deor was fortunate to have such a man to advise their novice queen. It had surprised me how quickly he and I had fallen into our roles of counselor and ruler.
I put my hand on the arm of Kenway’s chair, not touching him.
The first three days, he rarely spoke. Then, just yesterday morning, suddenly lucid, he had asked about his father. I had been in a chair beside his bed, reading another report by one of our spies, who had news about our enemies to the west, the Torsans. As I read, I worried. Deor had more troubles before her.
But I’d been glad to put these worries aside when Kenway had spoken. I’d propped him on a pillow and given him sips of water, back to nursing him as I had in Stillman’s hut. I reassured him that his family was safe. They would be here as soon as his father recovered from the head cold he’d caught while imprisoned in his own dungeon.
And now, on this day, as I studied Kenway’s face, I thought of how well I knew him and how much I didn’t know. His feelings flowed through me, but were lost in the jumble of the hopes and fears of others. I barely felt that great wave of the people’s emotions any more. Now, it was a gentle ripple across my heart.
His eyelids flickered and flickered. He awoke, looking at me silently.
“You are awake,” I said.
“You are here.” He took my hand.
I twisted the gold ring on his finger, remembering Devona doing the same.
“My mother gave me this,” he said. “It was my father’s.”
“It is a simple design,” I said, “not much like him.”
“It was how he used to be. My mother to
ld me this,” he said, looking at me, “after she died.”
I paused. “After?”
“She appeared to me many times, after her death, when I was just a child,” he said. “Every time I was alone, she would be there, sad and reaching out for me.”
I could not help but shiver. “Your ghost?” I whispered.
He nodded. “I didn’t understand it. She’d been such a strong presence in my life before her death, so filled with caring. But then she was haunting me. And I didn’t know what I had done to provoke it in her.”
I waited, knowing this was something he had not revealed to anyone before.
“But now,” he continued, “after seeing Ete, Tayte, Kendra, Erce…and how they love their children, I think I understand. My mother didn’t want to let me go. Her love was so strong, her spirit could not leave me.”
I nodded. “I see that.”
Finally, he closed his eyes. Thinking he was sleeping, I stood, but his fingers found mine.
“Stay with me,” he said.
“All right, but Eldred will return soon.” I sat back down. “He’s teaching me. There’s much to know.”
“There are things I can teach you.”
“What things?”
“You are King Alfrid’s daughter,” he said. “You must hold a sword like a ruler, not like a woman.”
“You try to provoke me.”
“I am returning the favor, if you will remember.”
He reached for me, putting his hand behind my neck and pulling me toward him. There was a question in his eyes. At that moment, we were not shadow and knight, or knight and queen. We were the same and together, joined in the space between, and that space stretched before us.
I put my hand on his cheek and leaned in for our most perfect kiss, yet.
Acknowledgments
Much thanks to:
my agent Nancy Gallt for pulling Shadow out of slush and beginning things and letting me say “Really? Really?” a bazillion times when she called to tell me the news
awesome editor (and author) Lisa Ann Sandell, who edits and writes beautifully, and to the committed-to-books Scholastic team
the many people who read Shadow prepublication: Sally Barringer, Megan Crewe, Joyce Harlow, Mary Ann Hellinghausen, David McKissack, Melissa Marr, Jackson Pearce, Bettina Restrepo, Christine Suffredini, and John Suffredini
my friends, online and off: the Debs; the Taylor Lake Village gang, especially Malise Fletcher, Lynda Gavin, Natalie O’Neill, and Nancy Stansfield; LJ’rs; Blueboarders; the St. Paul community, especially Heidi Clark, Norma Dempsey, and Sharon Reed; and the SCBWI-Houston folks, especially the Yellow House Writers
belatedly, my lovely niece Miss Lilly Lauck
John and Christine, always and always and always
About the Author
Jenny Moss is a former NASA engineer who secretly wrote at night. She earned a master’s degree in literature, a job as an adjunct writing instructor, and is now a full-time writer. Shadow is her second book.
As a teen, Jenny liked disappearing into imaginary worlds of mystery, royalty, romance, dungeons, dark forests, ghosts, and castles. As an adult, she wrote Shadow to find those places again.
Jenny lives in Houston, Texas, with her family.
Copyright
Text copyright © 2010 by Jenny Moss
Cover art © 2010 by Brian Despain
Cover design by Lillie Mear
All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Press, an imprint of Scholastic Inc., Publishers since 1920. SCHOLASTIC, SCHOLASTIC PRESS, and associated logos are trademarks and/ or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Moss, Jenny
Shadow / by Jenny Moss.—1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary: When Shadow, whose job all her life has been to stay close to the young queen and prevent her prophesied death at the age of sixteen, fails in her task and the castle is thrown into chaos, she escapes along with a young knight, embarking upon a journey that eventually reveals her true identity.
ISBN: 978-0-545-03641-2
[1. Fairy tales. 2. Imposters and imposture—Fiction. 3. Kings, queens, rulers, etc.—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.M8533Sh 2010
[Fic]—dc22
2009014209
First edition, April 2010
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eISBN 978-0-545-28323-6