High above the tiny house in the woods, Ven perched with Alet. “She’s lying.” He watched the woodswoman emerge from the front, check in all directions, and then climb onto the roof of her house. She had a basket of charms dangling from the crook of her elbow. She began to lace the roof with them.
“You’d rather believe the idiot husband?”
“I know when people are hiding secrets.”
She snorted.
“I’m not boasting,” he said. “It’s truth. I’ve had to learn.” He thought of Fara—he hadn’t known what the queen was hiding, but he’d known she had secrets. “It’s the palace. You can’t survive there unless you learn to read people. With time, you’ll learn it too.”
“Right, O wise and experienced one. Explain this secret, then: Why would a woman marry the kind of man who’d deliberately endanger her? If he’d been wrong, she and the children would have died horribly, and he’d be a murderer.”
“But he wasn’t wrong.”
“Unless he was,” Alet said. “You saw all the brand-new charms in that house.”
He’d seen them, but he’d seen something else too, the fear in the woodswoman’s eyes. She’d tried to hide it, but he was used to looking for it—you could learn a lot about an opponent by deducing what they were afraid of. I’m right.
“Even if it’s true and she’s hiding tremendous secret power, it doesn’t matter. You don’t want an unwilling candidate. You know firsthand how difficult the trials are, and that’s for someone who wants to pass.”
“She’d want to pass,” Ven said. “She wants to survive. All those charms in the house? She’s desperate to survive. And for her family to survive.”
“So?” Alet said.
Ven glanced at his companion. She wasn’t going to like what he was about to propose. Frankly, he didn’t like it much either. “I think her desire to protect herself and the people she loves will outstrip any unwillingness. I think she’d fight for them, if she had to.”
“If she can,” Alet said. “I still say she may not have any power at all.”
“Then we need to talk to the villagers, learn more about her, and if she seems suitable, we test her,” Ven said. “Test both her power and her willingness.” Looking down again, he watched the woodswoman venture onto one of the limbs. She was clearly an experienced climber—she’d balanced herself correctly to compensate for the thinness of the branch, which wasn’t an easy or obvious maneuver. Stretching, she affixed a charm to the next tree over. There was determination in her. He could see it even from this distance.
He felt Alet glaring at him. “You want to do exactly what that husband of hers did,” she accused. He heard the disgust in her voice, but he refused to let it affect him. He didn’t take this job to be nice. “You want to trick her into using her powers, if she has them.”
“I will get her to tell the truth, no tricks involved,” Ven said. “But yes, I intend to make her use her powers. Unlike her husband, though, we’ll be able to protect her if things go wrong.” And then . . . We’ll see what she’s really made of.
“Things will go wrong,” Alet predicted.
Ven shrugged. “They always do.”
At dawn, Naelin filled her pockets with protective charms, kissed her sleepy children, and informed her husband that if he let them leave the house, she’d let the spirits tear his arms off. He only grunted at her and rolled over in bed, wrapping the blanket around him like a cocoon.
Hesitating in the doorway, she looked back inside at her comfy, snug home. Toasty warm, it was bathed in amber light from the fireplace. Her favorite chair was by the hearth, piled with quilts. A half-knit sweater lay on the tiny table next to it. Maybe it would be smarter to stay home. Surely she could cobble together a few meals—baked roots, at least. They were out of flour, though, and also eggs and sprouts. Realistically, she couldn’t feed all four of them for more than a day or two without needing more, and it was safer to travel the well-worn bridges to the market than for either her or Renet to venture into the forest to hunt. After a dinner or two of baked roots, Renet would insist on heading out. I don’t want to have that argument. Or any other argument, for that matter.
She locked the door carefully behind her and checked the ladder—all clear below. The forest felt crisp and awake, sparkling with morning dew and alive with the chirp of cheerful birds. Or territorial, amorous birds.
She climbed down the ladder and lowered herself onto the forest floor. Hurrying, she stepped over roots and around underbrush, aware of every twig that broke under her feet and every bit of dirt she disturbed, but she didn’t see any spirits. Up ahead was the main road: the rope bridges that spanned the forest between Everdale and the neighboring towns. Quickly, she scurried up the ladder to the relative safety of the familiar path.
As she continued on, she began to relax. It was nice to be out of the house and away from Renet’s accusations. By the end of the night, “coward” was the kindest thing he’d called her, as he ranted on and on about how she’d ruined her family’s one chance at future happiness.
She wasn’t a coward; she was practical. Any overlap between the two was coincidental. Renet was delusional if he thought people like the champion and the guard, whose lives were intertwined with royalty, offered safety and security. In fact, the opposite was true. Look at how many had died during the last trials and during the coronation. All but one.
You could sing all the songs and tell all the stories you wanted about it, but it didn’t change the fact that most people who used their power didn’t become queens. Most died.
He’d accused her of having no ambition and she wanted to shout right back, You’re right! She was a woodswoman, and she liked being one. She didn’t want to be anything else. She liked her life, except when Renet decided it would be fun to turn it upside down. She liked her home and her family and her neighbors and the forest and everything exactly as it was, thank you very much. She did not need champions and royal guards squeezing into her warm, snug home, making her children starry-eyed, and encouraging her husband’s ridiculous notions.
Yes, she had power. But she didn’t have enough power. She wouldn’t be one of the few who survived; she’d be one of the many who fell, and what did that gain anyone? Was it worth her death for Renet and the children to live in a bigger house, wear nicer clothes, eat fancier spices, and collect shinier knickknacks? They had everything they needed—a roof over their heads, clothes on their bodies, and food on their table. Why can’t he be content with that? I am!
Inhaling the fresh forest air, Naelin steadied herself. She was supposed to be calming down, not riling herself back up. The champion and his companion were gone. Renet would reconcile himself to that, eventually, and life would return to normal. She simply had to be diligent with their protections, and everything would be fine.
Up ahead, she saw the center of Everdale. Colorful tents had been pitched on the platform, and from the sound of it, the spaces between them were already packed with people. She heard voices and laughter overlapping, and she felt safer already. Spirits wouldn’t dare attack a crowded marketplace. Joining the flow of shoppers, Naelin stepped onto the platform.
Men and women fell silent as she passed. Heads turned, and eyes tracked her. She heard whispers start up in her wake, and she told herself it was her imagination—they weren’t talking about her. She greeted a few neighbors she knew by name as she hurried by, and they warily waved back.
Trying to ignore the stares and whispers, she chose her supplies, haggling only when the miller tried to inflate his price beyond what was reasonable. She handed him a small pile of coins, the bulk of what she’d earned selling her last batch of charms, and he accepted them with a loud moan that she was bankrupting him. She thanked him as if he weren’t being ridiculous, and she tucked the sack of flour into her larger pack.
Across the market, the town hedgewitch, Corinda, waved to her. “Naelin!” Corinda hurried through the crowd, jostling people out of the way with her plump elbows. “Oh, Naelin!”
“Corinda, I’d been thinking that I should bring you more charms to sell—”
The woman embraced her. “I’ve been so worried for you!”
Naelin patted Corinda’s back awkwardly. All right, that’s . . . nice? She wasn’t outwardly affectionate with people who weren’t her children very often, and Corinda had never greeted her with a hug before. “You have? That’s . . .” She searched for the right word. Sweet? Odd? Alarming? “I’m fine. We’re all fine. Why would you be worried?”
Corinda leaned close enough for Naelin to smell the honey-bread on her breath and faintly sour sweat on her skin. “Because of them. You know. I was there when Renet told them about you. I tried to shush him, but you know how he is.” She hugged Naelin again. “Oh, I thought they’d take you for sure!”
Naelin wished that Corinda wouldn’t talk so loud. She glanced right and left—the other shoppers were listening in, and a few didn’t bother to hide it. “There’s no reason for them to take me,” Naelin said in a loud, steady voice. “I have no powers.”
“But they think you do,” Corinda said. “They’ve been in town, asking about you.”
Naelin felt herself grow cold. I didn’t fool them, she thought. I should have known. “I thought they’d left.” She pulled away from her friend and glanced through the crowd, half expecting to see the champion and guard watching her. Her skin prickled with goose bumps. “I have to get home.”
“Of course,” Corinda said. “Go safely. But Naelin, you should know that they’re talking to everyone. And people are mentioning . . . you know.” She nodded significantly northward, toward the school.
Oh, no, Naelin thought. She’d hoped that everyone had forgotten. It had been years since anyone had mentioned it. Erian had been little, younger than Llor was now, when a rogue wood spirit had split the base of the tree that held the school. The tree had teetered, all the children trapped on the platform high above. Down below, with the other parents, Naelin had seen it all happen. She remembered knowing with absolute clarity that if she didn’t do something, the tree would fall and all the children with it. And she remembered watching, with the other parents, as the spirit was forced to heal the tree, knitting the base together, strengthening the trunk with vines, holding it upright until the children could be rescued—and then Naelin had fainted, which was when the rumors began that she had done it. “No one has any proof.”
“People don’t need proof to spread rumors,” Corinda said. “You’d better get home and lay low. The queen’s own champion, well, it’s the most exciting thing to happen in Everdale in ages, and everyone wants to talk to him. Pretty soon, they’ll be making up stories about you just for the chance to look at the man who chose the woman who became queen.”
“I’ll stay home,” Naelin promised. “Once they move on, people will forget. Something else will happen, and they’ll talk about that.”
Corinda brightened. “Ooh, you could always have an affair with someone. That would change the conversation. Or I could have an affair with someone . . .”
Naelin flashed her a smile, and hoped she didn’t look as worried as she felt. “Thank you for the warning.” Waving goodbye, she abandoned her plan to buy enough supplies for the week and instead hurried through the market.
As she pushed through the crowd, Naelin was acutely aware that people, her neighbors and supposed friends, were indeed staring at her and whispering about her, and she felt anger grow in the base of her stomach, right next to the fear. Those strangers had no right to come here, to her home, and muck up her life. She’d made a nice life for herself and her family. She fit in, or she thought she did. She’d worked hard to be just another woodswoman. It wasn’t right that they’d torn all that open.
Reaching the rope bridges, she didn’t stop. She hurried over the swaying path, glancing back over her shoulder frequently. She’d never felt unsafe in the market before. It was supposed to feel familiar and friendly and—
Rounding a corner, she halted. The champion and the guard lounged against the rail of the bridge, casually, as if they’d been waiting for her, and her anger bubbled over. “What are you still doing here?” Naelin demanded. “I told you I’m not who you need.” Part of her recoiled. I can’t talk that way to a champion! But she didn’t back down. This wasn’t just about her—she had to be strong for Erian and Llor.
“We like what we heard about you,” the champion said.
“You heard lies.” Naelin tried to hold on to the anger—it was better than feeling the fear. “Everdale is a boring little town. You’re exciting. People will tell you whatever you want to hear, just so you’ll stay longer.”
“Except you,” the guardswoman pointed out.
Is that what gave me away? Naelin wondered.
“I’d like to propose a test,” the champion said, watching her. “We will rile up a few spirits. If you lack the power to send them away, we will leave you alone. If you don’t . . . then you drop the lies and listen to what your queen and country require of you.”
Naelin backed along the bridge. This was . . . unfair, her brain supplied. Dangerous. Stupid. Stupidly dangerous. “You’ll get me killed.”
“Not if you use your power,” the guard said.
“I have children at home,” Naelin pleaded, “two young, beautiful children who need their mother. Don’t make me do this.” She glanced back and forth between them, trying to find a shred of sympathy in their eyes. The guard’s expression was colder than a mountain stream.
“They’ll be well provided for, regardless of the outcome,” the champion said, as if that would soothe her. “The Crown has funds for families such as yours. Your husband and children will never want for anything ever again.”
“Except for their mother!” Naelin’s voice was shrill. Her muscles screamed at her to run, run, run! But she knew she couldn’t outrun two trained warriors.
The guardswoman clucked her tongue. “That’s not a winning attitude. Use your power, and you’ll survive.”
And then you’ll take me away, Naelin thought. She couldn’t win. This was a trap. Use her power, and they’d take her away from her family, to the capital, where she’d face worse and worse tests until one finally killed her. Or don’t use her power, and risk dying here and now. “You’re condemning me to death. If the spirits come after me, I won’t be able to stop them, and you’ll be murderers.”
“The queen will pardon us,” the guard said cheerfully. “Good luck!”
“Use your power,” the champion advised. He then grabbed on to a rope above the bridge and shimmied up. The guard ran and leaped off the bridge, landing squirrel-like on a branch several trees away.
Naelin stood frozen for a moment. What was she supposed to do? Go home, and risk whatever “test” happening there? Stay here, all alone? Or return to the market?
Market, she decided. The champion wouldn’t dare “test” her while she was surrounded by innocent people, and her family would be safe. Spinning around, she ran back toward the platform. It wasn’t far. Just around the bend.
The rope bridge shook under her, and she shot a look behind her.
Three wood spirits, laughing gleefully, were loping toward her on all fours, like gangly squirrels. Naelin ran faster, her side pinching and the bag of flour pounding on her back. Ahead, she saw the platform—“Help! Help! Spirits are coming!”
On the platform, her cry was repeated, and people scattered, screaming. She kept running, her calves burning and her breath raking her throat. A clawed hand snagged her skirt. She felt a tug and heard the fabric tear.
Swinging her bag off her back, she threw it full in the face of the nearest spirit. The flour sack burst against its face, and the white dust plumed all around them. Coughing, the spirits slowed. She scrambled forward and onto the platform.
Ahead, in the market, it was chaos, as people ran for weapons and to hide. Stands were knocked over and used as barriers. Children were snatched up by parents and hidden inside barrels and behind boxes. Someone was shouting orders, and Naelin ran into the center of the tangle of people. She’d made it! Now the champion and the guard had to come! They wouldn’t let the spirits hurt innocent people, right?
“More above!” someone shouted.
Looking up, Naelin saw air spirits swooping between the branches. Leaves spun in whirlwinds in their wake. They plucked at the scarves that had served as tent covers, and the fabric swirled through the air as if this were a celebration—a terrible, terrifying celebration.
Caught up in the press of people, Naelin was swept backward toward the shops. She pulled charms out of her pockets and began handing them to everyone she could reach. “Keep these out,” she commanded.
But the spirits didn’t attack. They circled the crowd—air spirits above and tree spirits on the platform. Screaming, people shifted out of the way, flattening against the shops, as the spirits slinked through the market, looking in every corner and sniffing the air, as if they were searching for someone.
For me, Naelin thought.
She’d be found if she stayed here, out in the open. Glancing behind her, she saw a familiar shop—Corinda’s! With a burst of speed, she wove through the throng of people and pushed her way to the door.
Standing in her shop doorway, the hedgewitch was busily handing out charms. “Pay me later; take it now,” she was saying. Seeing Naelin, she cried, “You should be home!”
“Shh! You don’t see me!” Naelin squeezed past her inside and crouched by the window. Outside, six tree spirits stalked back and forth across the platform. Six! They hissed at the crowd, and people held charms in front of them with shaking arms. Don’t attack, she thought, but she didn’t let the words escape her own mind.
With the champion and the guard out there somewhere watching, she didn’t dare use her power. Naelin ran to the shelves. The flour had stunned them, and the charms repulsed them—what if she combined the two? Corinda’s shop had every ingredient a hedgewitch would ever need. Naelin pulled canisters from the shelves and began dumping the contents into a bowl. She recited the recipe in her mind, multiplying the ingredients and then stirring. She felt a faint tingle on her arms, raising her arm hairs. Almost done.
Cradling the bowl in her arms, Naelin ran to the window. She peeked out. Across the platform, by the fallen stands, she saw the miller pointing a shaky finger at Corinda’s shop. Silently, she cursed him and his overpriced flour.
The tallest tree spirit swung his head toward the shop, and Naelin shrank back. She hugged the bowl of herbs tighter against her chest. Her heart was beating loud, and she thought of Erian and Llor—Erian with her smile that lit her eyes and Llor with his cheerful grin. She pictured them curled up in bed, peaceful, and awake, Erian talking about her day at school and Llor tugging on her skirt, asking her to play.
Sniffing the air, the spirit stalked toward the shop. It gestured, and the others fell in behind it, fanning out. The air spirits hovered inches above the platform. Corinda backed inside. “Hide,” she whispered to Naelin. “They’re coming!”
Crouching beside the door, Naelin readied the bowl.
Corinda slammed the door shut.
Outside, the spirits howled. Corinda shoved a barrel in front of the door to brace it, and then she was knocked backward as the door burst open. Wood splintered in all directions. Now! Lunging forward, blocking her fallen friend, Naelin hurled the contents of the bowl at the spirits as they spilled through the doorway.
The spirits squealed. Scraping at their bodies, they howled. Their arms lashed out, and Naelin retreated. Grabbing Corinda’s arm, she dragged her away as the spirits boiled inside, covered in herbs and shrieking as if she’d burned them.
One of the spirits charged, though, plowing into Corinda. Its claws raked her, and Corinda cried out. Naelin threw herself forward, trying to pull the spirit off her friend. The spirit slipped through her fingers and launched itself at her, sinking its fangs into her shoulder. Naelin screamed, and it bit harder. The pain blanked out all reasoning, all memory, just the desire for it to stop, stop, STOP!
The thought flew out of her like an arrow, and she felt the word yank at her skin as sharply as the spirit’s teeth. Her blood on its fangs, the spirit reared back as if she’d hit it. Naelin clutched her shoulder, and saw the spirit had stopped.
All the spirits had stopped.
Cringing, they clustered just inside the shop. Holding her shoulder, Naelin pushed herself up against the wall. She glanced at Corinda. There was blood on her friend’s arm, and she was moaning.
The champion and the guard strolled through the smashed doorway. Smiling, they walked past the cowed spirits. “You did it,” the guardswoman said. “Congratulations!” Her voice was loud enough to echo across the platform, and Naelin saw people outside, crowded together by the door and window, listening to every word.
“The two things that a true queen needs are the instinct to survive and the instinct to protect,” the champion said. “You have both. Your queen and country need you.” He held out his hand and commanded, “You will come with us.”
Naelin looked at his hand, at her wounded friend, and then at the spirits who were watching her with wide, hollow eyes. This champion and guard had let the spirits come here, where they’d hurt an innocent person and terrified others. The spirits could have killed Corinda. Or Naelin. Or everyone in the market. And the champion and guard would have let them, all in the belief that what the country needed was more important than ordinary people’s pain, more important than their lives. Stupidly dangerous, she thought.
Clearly and loudly, Naelin said, “No.”
The champion shook his head. “You don’t understand.”
She understood enough. Fixing her eyes on the spirits, she formed a deliberate thought and threw it at them, Help me escape. Keep them here.
Snarling, the spirits leaped toward the champion and guard. The guard drew her knives, and the champion—Naelin didn’t stay to see what he did. Clutching her bleeding shoulder, Naelin bolted past them, out the door, and across the platform.
Outside, the crowd shrank away from her, and she saw people she’d known for years—friends of her late parents, shopkeepers she’d visited weekly, woodsmen and woodswomen who had bought her charms from Corinda’s shop, neighbors she’d seen daily on the forest paths and in town—staring at her as if she were as dangerous as a spirit. No one called out to her, and no one tried to stop her.
Naelin ran onto the rope bridges, toward home.