The Reluctant Queen

by Sarah Beth Durst

  “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.

  Chapter 8

  Home.

  Gray roof, bark-brown walls, blue shutters, with pots of pepper and tomato plants on the windowsills and a basket of herbs hung by the door, to soak in patches of sunlight—her home, that she’d bought with Renet, fixed with a hammer and nails bartered in exchange for her charms, shaped with their love and laughter and pain—Naelin had sunk her heart into this place. It had kept her and her family safe from wind, rain, wolves, bears, spirits, shielded them from both winter cold and summer heat. It had cradled them through all the important moments, the momentous moments like Erian’s and Llor’s births and the quieter moments like when she tucked them in at night or when they shared breakfast on a lazy morning. The kitchen floor boasted scuff marks from all the times they’d scooted their chairs closer to the table, and the bathroom still had water stains from the time Renet had tried to rig a shower. Llor had lost his first tooth in between the floorboards, and Erian had once scrawled doodles on the wall before Naelin had taken away her pencil. She hadn’t planned to ever leave.

  Now she had no choice.

  Naelin sped toward it, up the ladder, and inside. She threw herself into the kitchen and her arms around Erian and Llor. “Pack quickly,” she told them. She kissed both their foreheads. “Only what you need.”

  “Mommy, I don’t wanna—” Llor’s voice pitched into a whine.

  His sister shushed him. “Don’t you know her serious face?”

  Llor screwed his face up like a shriveled apple. His lower lip quivered, and Naelin realized she’d scared him when she burst inside. “Everything’s all right, sweetie, but we have to take a trip. Just for a little while. You can bring Boo-Boo.”

  He brightened and scampered to fetch his stuffed squirrel, the one Erian had sewed for him out of old bedsheets and extra buttons. Its tail was an old scrub brush that she’d cleaned and dyed. With the boy on a mission, Naelin retrieved three sacks from the rafters and began to stuff them with clothes, charms, bedding, and medicines. To hers, she added a few kitchen supplies: a paring knife, a tea strainer, forks and spoons, a ladle that had been her mother’s. As she packed, she tried hard not to think about anything but practicalities: there wasn’t time to sift through the layered memories, to linger over the lopsided owl carving that Erian had made or the shredded baby blanket that had been Llor’s or the pastel sketch of her wedding day. She still had the dried circle of roses that she’d worn in her hair, and up in the rafters, neatly packed away, was her wedding dress with the beaded embroidery on the bodice that had taken her grandmother six months of sewing every night . . . I’ll go to my home village, she decided. Ever since the day her parents died, she hadn’t gone back. She rarely even mentioned the place. No one would ever guess she’d gone there. With luck, her old house would be uninhabited, though the roof had probably caved in by now—

  She heard her husband stomp his feet at the door, knocking off the debris, and she felt a lump in her throat. There was no point in keeping the dirt out, not anymore. Stop, she told herself firmly. She didn’t know she wouldn’t come back. All she had to do was find a place to lie low until this blew over, until the spirits forgot, until the neighbors moved on to other scandals, and then she could return. A month, maybe more, and then it would all return to normal.

  Or mostly normal.

  “You won’t be coming with us, Renet.” She didn’t turn around.

  “You’re leaving?” She heard the shock in his voice, as if she’d hit him with a frying pan, and all she felt was tired. He couldn’t be surprised. He’d set this in motion. How did he expect it to end? Naelin blinked hard and told herself firmly that she would not cry. Over her home, yes. Over her life here, the cozy comfortable life she’d carved out for herself and her family, yes. But later, not now.

  “You went too far this time, Renet. I can’t forgive this.” She bustled over to Llor and added a blanket to his pack, as well as warm socks. She checked Erian’s pack and added her brush. Erian’s eyes were overbright, trying hard to be brave. Naelin squeezed her hand and tried a smile, failing dismally. She then loaded the pack onto Erian’s back. “Did everyone make a pee? Llor, do you have to pee?”

  Lip still quivering, he shook his head. She watched him wiggle on a chair, and then she pointed t
o the bathroom door. He scooted in, and she crossed to the window over the kitchen sink, the one with a view toward town. She didn’t know if the champion and the guard would come after her again, or if they’d give up on her as too much trouble. She didn’t have much hope for the latter. Regardless, the spirits wouldn’t forget this place so fast. You know you have to leave, she told herself. Quit dithering.

  Renet was standing in the middle of the kitchen, running his hands through his hair as if he were totally blindsided by this. “Naelin, be reasonable. You’re overreacting.”

  She faced him finally, and in a low voice she never thought she’d need to use, said, “I’m not going to do this in front of the children. I’m not going to talk badly about you in front of them, not now and not later. You can be the sweet, doting father in their memories. But you cannot come with us now. We aren’t safe with you.” And with that, she shepherded Llor and Erian toward the door and left Renet with his mouth hanging open, his face slack, his eyes as stunned and hurt as a shot deer.

  I won’t cry now.

  Carrying their packs, they climbed down the ladder and hurried across the forest floor. Llor was whimpering. “Why can’t Father come with us? Where are we going? I don’t want to go. I want to go h-h-home, with Father.”

  Erian clutched Naelin’s arm. “Mama, look.”

  Slowing, Naelin looked up and saw a face peering at them from within the bark—its eyes were like knots in the wood, and its face was curved with the folds of the bark. “Keep moving,” Naelin whispered. It would lose interest once she had some distance.

  But it didn’t.

  And even more came.

  An earth spirit, with a body like a badger and a face like a wrinkled man, crawled out of a hole between two roots. Three air spirits, no larger than Naelin’s palm, flitted between leaves, pacing them, above. She caught a glimpse of a fire spirit, bobbing in the distance, just at the edge of her sight so that she wasn’t certain if it was a trick of her eyes. Her skin prickled, and the air felt like it crackled, as if the entire forest were watching them pick their way toward the ladder that led to the bridges. Naelin helped Llor over a root. He was puffing from the exertion—his little legs weren’t going to keep up if they needed speed. She could carry him, she thought, for a little while, but not also the packs, and they’d need them, if they were to camp—