Four Years Ago
The first time the Queen of Swords was truly tested was Halloween too—the first time we were allowed to go trick-or-treating on our own. I was twelve, Deirdre nine. And there was a blizzard, an actual, old-fashioned blizzard that started the night before. We saw it coming as wings of orange-white cloud stretching over the rooftops, blotting out the stars. The whole house shuddered as the wall of snow slammed past, a curtain lashing and howling across the street.
Mom and Dad had promised us we could go trick-or-treating alone that year, though, and there was no way we were missing out. Deirdre and I were a united front, my stubborn folded arms the bedrock for her impassioned pleading. Our only concession was to wearing bulky snowsuits under our dresses. We made ungainly, marshmallowy queens that way, our bodices straining at the seams, but we still had our dramatic capes and our crowns: mine spiky aluminum foil sprayed with black, imitating iron; Deirdre’s painstakingly twisted out of Dad’s electrical wire.
And my mittened hand could still hold a sword.
The sidewalks were knee-deep in snow. Hardly anyone else had braved it. The only sounds were our voices, the rasp of our snow pants, the whisper of the snow falling, falling, falling. But the jack-o-lanterns were golden islands on the doorsteps, beckoning us up the walks, and people emptied their bowls into our pillowcases, laughing at our determination, admiring our costumes, telling us not to get too cold.
We made it all the way up the hill before people stopped answering their doors, before the porches and the windows went dark and cold. It was time to return; Halloween was well and truly over, our pillowcases so full we had to sling them over our shoulders as we headed home. We trudged through a playground, where a couple of teenaged shadows laughed and shouted on the monkey bars, back out onto the road. Deirdre kept glancing behind us into the dark.
“I think they’re following us,” she muttered.
“We should double back,” I whispered, thinking it was part of the game we’d been playing. We were seeking provisions for battle against the Snow Queen, and the citizens of the city, long besieged by winter, were overjoyed at our arrival, filling our coffers. “Come out behind them, set an ambush—”
“No, for real,” she said. “Behind us.”
“What, them?” The teenagers from the park were shambling through the snow at the top of the hill, silhouettes in the orange light. “Give me a break, Deir, they’re going home. Just like we are.”
“They’re following us,” Deirdre insisted. “I heard them.”
“They are not.” I quickened my pace, pulled ahead of her. “Come on, don’t be ridiculous. It’s not like they’re sneaking up on us or anything.”
“I want to call Dad.” Her whine set my teeth on edge.
“No.” If our parents caught wind of that kind of worry, they’d never let us do this again. The Queen of Swords would not be ruled by fear. “Come on, just walk.”
She did. But she kept looking back, and irritation flared high in my throat. I didn’t bother to let her catch up. Why was she always like this? Why couldn’t she be bold and fearless just this once? Worse, the voices behind us intruded on my attention now, growing closer. I wouldn’t listen. I wouldn’t let Deirdre’s fear infect me.
“Skye—!”
“Relax, would you?” I threw the words over my shoulder. “It’s not—”
But then she cried out, and when I wheeled around, someone—some girl, no taller than me, anonymous in a jaunty ponytail and parka—had hold of the pillowcase, leaving Deirdre clinging desperately to the other end.
“Give it here,” the girl said, the words casual, disdainful.
“Let go,” Deirdre whimpered. “Skye, help me!”
It wasn’t that I froze, that I couldn’t move, that my limbs wouldn’t obey me. I just didn’t react. I stood there, a few yards down the sidewalk, and calm wrapped me like a blanket. Deirdre was freaking out over nothing, as usual. It was fine. Everything was fine. My sword stayed point down in the snow, my pillowcase clutched in one hand between my knees. I watched. I just watched.
“We’re bigger than you,” the other girl said, grabbing a handful of the pillowcase. “Come on.”
“No,” Deirdre wailed, “that’s not fair! You can’t just take it. It’s mine!”
“What are you going to do about it?” the first one demanded. “Are you going to cry? Are you going to call your daddy, princess?”
“I’m a queen!” Deirdre’s voice rose a notch, and they laughed. “And my sister will hurt you! Skye, do something!”
“Yeah, Skye, do something,” they echoed, mocking. Daring me to wade in and take them on.
But I didn’t. I didn’t move.
Together, they yanked the pillowcase back and forth like they were taking a toy from a dog, and Deirdre lost her grip and fell headlong into the snowbank. They retreated back up the hill as she floundered free, spitting snow, her crown askew. They didn’t even bother to run. Their laughter clattered back down to us. The snow was falling thicker now, shrouding them from sight, letting them disappear.
That’s when it occurred to me that I should speak. That’s when it broke over me: fear. The knowledge that something bad had happened, shouldn’t have happened—that she’d been right.
“Why didn’t you do something?” Deirdre cried, staggering upright. Snow clung to her hair in clumps. “How could you just stand there?”
I had no explanation. There wasn’t one. “I thought—I don’t know, I just thought—”
“Some champion you are,” she sniffed, and soldiered past me.
“Deirdre, I’m sorry,” I panted, finally coming unstuck to catch up to her. “I don’t know what happened. I just—”
“Whatever,” she said bitterly. Not looking at me. We slogged the rest of the way home in silence.
“Wow, that’s quite a haul,” Dad said when we pushed through the door. “But, Deir, where’s yours?”
“Hers ripped,” I said, before she could speak. “So I put it in here. This is both of ours.”
Halloween tradition demanded that we sit at the kitchen table afterward and eat as much candy as we could stomach. Deirdre took a listless bite of a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup as I fielded questions from our parents, hoping my cheerfulness sounded natural, that they wouldn’t notice her silence.
“Mom,” I said abruptly, “I want to take karate or something. Some sort of martial arts. Can I do that?”
She blinked, looked up from the computer.
“Uh, sure, I guess, if you want. What brought that on?”
“So I can be the Queen of Swords,” I said. “The Queen of Swords knows how to fight.”
“We don’t have to worry about you getting into fights or anything, do we?” Dad said it like it was a joke, but it was a real question underneath.
“No.” I looked at Deirdre. She met my eyes steadily, grave and regal. “I’ll only fight monsters.”
Mom and Dad exchanged a glance, and Mom shrugged and pulled up a browser window. “I’ll see what I can find.”
“Here,” Deirdre said, pushing a Mars Bar across the table to me. They were my favorite. “Spoils of war.”
* * *
Some champion you are. After that Halloween, I was the perfect champion, thank you very much. Mom’s digging unearthed a little club that trained at the university, run by a grave-faced biochemistry professor, semiretired—Sensei Matt, to me—and his lieutenants, Sensei Ayesha and Sensei Alex. I loved it from the second Sensei Ayesha greeted me at the door to show me how to bow my respect every time I came in. Warm-ups, katas, sparring—all of it was magical.
That was my kingdom.
And the next time—when Deirdre stood red-faced, her hands balled in useless fists, outside a laughing circle with some girl in the middle, holding her sparkly pink notebook aloft to read it aloud—I didn’t hesitate. I plunged through the line, seized the ringleader’s hand in both of mine, twisted down and away until she squawked and dropped Deirdre’s notebook in the snow.
It happened so fast. It was so easy. I held her there, staring into her wide frightened eyes, and stood transfigured, draped in righteous calm. It was a whole different world.
“You’d better leave her alone,” I said.
I let her scuttle off to join her friends, who had scattered away from me to regroup across the yard, and turned my back on them.
“That was amazing,” Deirdre breathed, the notebook clutched to her chest.
“I’m the Queen of Swords,” I told her, and let my grin escape. “Just don’t tell Mom and Dad.”
It worked so well for a while. It was like keeping lily beetles in check, picking them off before they multiplied. But last year Deirdre hit seventh grade—like it was a brick wall—and suddenly she was too tempting a target to ignore. They’d found their champion too; with Tyler egging them on, laughing, fearless, the goblin hordes weren’t scared of me anymore. And there was only one of me.
But I don’t think about Tyler. I won’t follow the path down into the valley, not even in my mind.
I’m thousands of miles away, and I will never walk there again.