The Alyssa Chronicle

by Michael Strelow

  She stopped to catch her breath, and I told her I was hiding in the wall and heard the whole thing. The part in the Council room, anyway.

  And then she said, “You should have popped out right when I finished and there we would have been, the two of us. Double right! Double spectacular!”

  “I thought about it, believe me. And then I thought that if we wanted to get back to places we wanted to be, we’d have to work this out a different way. I look at your garden on the farm and think how much you’d like to be there. And I go through the milking and haying and weeding while longing to get back to my studies in the castle. Some other way. There will have to be some other way.”

  Eugenie rubbed her hands together like she was getting ready to work on something. I thought she might spit on her palms, but she didn’t.

  She began slowly and then picked up speed. “Okay, here’s what we have to do. The whole castle is fuming at me. Well, some are fuming. Some others are just tsking. And tsking some more. And a few are just surprised and maybe waiting for whatever I do next. I don’t think I made you any friends, alas.”

  I could see her sigh was meant in fun, a big fat alas with a little bit of eye roll. But she laughed and went on.

  “So where I did make you some friends, I think, is in the rest of the kingdom. Apparently no one in the castle had even considered that every garden in the kingdom wasn’t the property of the crown. Some kind of ancient right to be alive that all came from God then the King and then from the King’s supporters. Everything is the King’s because the King was selected by God to be His organizer on earth. I guess I’ve always known some version of this. We all did. But until that whole idea jumped on everybody’s flower garden, I didn’t think much of it. It was just an idea. Well, now it’s back in the conversation, thanks to me. Thanks to you!”

  And there we were again. The whole switching thing had finally come to bite us. What she did was mine to own. What I did was going to be her. If we did nothing, neither of us would have any problems, but doing nothing was suddenly not possible. So she sighed again, and I sighed too.

  “Eugenie, do you think we could fix all this by, you know, just telling everybody everything?” I was trying out the idea, something I usually did only in my head. But there it was, hanging in the air.

  “That would certainly change everything from the way it is now.” She pushed her hair off her forehead in thought. I always thought, “our hair” when she did that.

  We stared at each other for a long time. I was thinking what it might be like having everyone know about our wonderful swap: people’s big eyes, the whispers behind hands as we walked by together, the whole business of “which one are you?”—that thing twins must get all the time. But even more important than the two of us would be that one of us was illegal. One of us was assaulting a thousand years of the kingdom’s bloodlines and privilege. One of us would have to be punished for her cheekiness and her arrogance.

  Of course, the other one—Eugenie—would be scolded and sighed over and lectured on how she risked being injured, how the whole kingdom was counting on her, and she must promise never again to be so silly. I could imagine a giant finger wagging in her sad face while I was hauled off to the dungeon and my parents driven off their farm and Jake was forced into the army at age eight.

  I didn’t know what Eugenie was thinking, but it wasn’t that.

  Finally, we both tried to speak at the same time. Stopped. And then did it again. You go first no you go first.

  It turns out Eugenie was thinking about my difficult situation but also how awful it would be to spend her life back in what she called the “brittle, empty castle.”

  “…the brittle, empty castle—that would kill me,” she said sadly. “I don’t know what I would do.” She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. It didn’t even qualify as a sigh. It was something else. She seemed to take in all our woes at once and then let them out like blowing out some invisible and unhappy candles. And then after waiting for the air to clear, she said, “You know what we can do?”

  Yes, yes, I thought. Hurry up. What can we do? My whole life seemed hanging from a thread that dangled there from Eugenie’s thoughts.

  “I think we can do anything WE want, what WE think is right. And then make it fit with everything around us. The King, the Queen, our shared mother and father. Jake.” She brightened up at her own thought of having everything. “All at once! That’s how we spring it. We plop ourselves right in the middle of everything. They won’t be able to do a thing about it.”

  And that’s sort of what we did. Here’s how we did it. Or how it happened to us, anyway.

  Chapter Eight

  The plan was simple, but timing was everything. The big wedding was now days away, and the castle was filling with honored guests. I would have to sneak back home the way I got in just so my mother and father wouldn’t miss me. Eugenie would have to serve her temporary exile in silence. And I would have to find the old man and the old woman and see if they could help us.

  On the way home I passed by the old couple’s garden. It was still glowing with bright flowers and around the edges a trellis of beans, lettuce and bursting tomato plants. And, of course, not a dead flower or wilted piece of lettuce. It was as if the whole plot of ground was somehow outside the real world, like a painting on a wall of a beautiful woman who never grew old, never failed to smile like sunshine. I had to hurry home, but there it was. I stopped. Birds hopped through the leaves and branches eating insects as if they had been specially invited to be there. A rabbit sat outside the garden and looked confused by something. All that lettuce, but he didn’t hop in and eat any. Finally, he went away, not so much hopping as scooting through the grass back into the woods. This garden would be the first stop for the King’s men tomorrow as they came out with wagons to pick fresh flowers for the wedding. I would try to be in a good place to see what happened then. Maybe the rabbit had the right idea. We’d see.

  Jake saw me coming before I saw him. Jake saw everything from his perches in the trees. He swung down and landed very near me before I even heard him. Of course, he knew everything about Eugenie and me. But he didn’t talk about it. Ever. He called me Alyssa just as if I were the real thing, the real substitute thing—that is, Eugenie—he had grown used to. And, as Eugenie had asked me to, I was kind to him, asked about his day, still read to him now and then, and always waved to him when he was high in a tree surveying the farm or whatever he did up there. I wondered aloud if he had seen anything at the old people’s place. If he knew anything about them, something only he could see from his perch.

  Jake, who was usually a child of many words, only said, “Nope.”

  “Nope, what?” This was the chore of trying to draw him out. So again I asked. “Nope there’s nothing you know or nope there’s nothing you can see.”

  “Just nope.” And he walked a little way with me, kind of skipping but more shuffling along the path kicking up dried leaves just to hear them rustle. Then he said in the same tone as the rustling leaves, “They are magic, I think.”

  Well, there it was. The whole story. I laughed and said that, yes, it was a good guess. There was something going on there that wasn’t happening anywhere else, and I guessed that was the definition of magic. Or one definition, anyway. Jake made noises and nodded his head to approve.

  “I could find out more,” he offered.

  And I know I shouldn’t have, but I did. He usually seemed to enjoy my silliness. I said, “Unless, they capture you and turn you into a cat or other small animal that would be useful to them. They already have a cat, so it might be…a mouse! To feed the cat! No. That would use up all their magic just for cat food. They might keep you and eat you themselves. Probably have to fatten you up a little.” I pinched his arm gently to assess his fatness. He smiled but not his usual smile. Not his “who cares” smile. Clearly he was thinking about being fattened up to be cooked and eaten. I went on; I couldn’t help myself. “But at least they will cook y
ou with fresh vegetables. Did you see the tomatoes they have? And the beans. Who else has beans like that?”

  He was walking with me but squirming a little too. I used to do this to him when he was little. Mother kept an eye on my fooling and told me not to scare him. Fooling around was fine. But not too far. And as he grew older I had to go further with the fooling to get any kind of reaction from him. So my stories got a little richer, more dangerous, more detailed. Jake said, “Nobody does. Not beans like those.”

  I knew that Jake was fond of raiding my—Eugenie’s—garden for baby beans and tiny carrots with the dirt still on them. Eugenie’s plan was to plant enough so he could have all he wanted, especially the small peas with the flower petal still clinging to the pod. He’d pick those by the handful and eat them. So Eugenie’s pea row went on and on to both feed the family and the little raider. I asked him, “Did you ever sneak into the old people’s garden? Just once?”

  He was quiet a long time as we marched along. Then he said, “I was going to. But I didn’t.” I let him collect his thoughts, and he continued, “I wanted to, that is. I went in the evening, almost dark. But then…” And we walked along in silence again. “Then I got closer and the garden wasn’t there. It wasn’t where it was. I thought I’d got turned around in the dark so I tried a different way. But it wasn’t there again. I sat right down where I thought the middle of the garden had to be. But it was just grass, like the grass at the edge of the woods. That was the only time I did that. It was very, very strange.”

  Jake was used to saying just what came to his mind. Sometimes the order was not perfect, but I could see the word wheels spinning there behind his eyes, words flitting to and fro anxious to come out.

  “Do you think you just got lost in the dark?”

  His answer was efficient and full of things left unsaid. “No.”

  We walked together in that noisy quietness of the woods: leaves under foot, far off birds and close up birds saying bird things to each other. I began to think how lucky Eugenie and I had been to sit on the garden bench among those magic flowers, to sit and talk and catch sight of the old woman and her ghostly watering can filling up the air with invisible water. They must have chosen us to be allowed into the garden. And I began to think back to what I’d really seen there. Eugenie and I had been so intent on our plans and our jabber about everything from the castle and everything from the farm that I hadn’t really noticed what was around us. Nice flowers. Clean bench. Something peaceful and welcoming. But what was there? I couldn’t say. I didn’t remember anything except two girls saving the kingdom. At least that’s what I thought at the time.

  Jake and I came into the farmyard past the garden. I reached in and got him one of the small peas he loved and tossed it to him. He popped it into his mouth and smiled.

  My mother had been looking everywhere for me. She had jobs for me to do. But I was back in enough time, and in the company of Jake, so that she didn’t think twice about my absence. Tomorrow would be when all the pieces of this wedding business would come together. Tomorrow would be a very busy day.

  The day dawned like one of those early summer surprises, you know, that you weren’t expecting until later in the heat of late July. Cicadas sang until it sounded like every tree had a tiny saw screeching away in competition with all the other tiny saws. Birds were about their business with special joy. Maybe they were eating the cicadas. Maybe today the whole thing that Eugenie and I made over these many, many months, maybe that would end today. I planted my feet next to my bed before getting up. I could hear my mother stirring below in the kitchen. It was early but already the day seemed completely on fire.

  The King’s men and the flower collectors—flower thieves, Eugenie would say—arrived in our barnyard and wordlessly set about harvesting every flower in Eugenie’s garden. They took the dahlias, the daisies, the baby’s breath and the delphiniums—whatever was not damaged by the storm. Big flower or little flower didn’t seem to matter; they even took the buds. Silently they worked their way through the garden handing cut flowers to the waiting servants. Behind them the bare-stalk stubble poked up from the brown earth like sorry sticks pointing nowhere.

  In a very short time they were done. One of the King’s men, one who looked like he was in charge, cornered my father and began to ask him questions in a loud voice so that from across the yard I could hear the questions but not my father’s answers.

  “Your neighbor, the old people with the garden. I hear they are peculiar. What do you know about them?” he asked.

  My father seemed reluctant to say anything. He looked down at his shoes and said something quietly, something very short.

  The captain boomed again. “You must know more than that. They have lived right there at the edge of your farm for many years. I have to know more about who they are. Who are they?”

  Again, there was a long pause and then my father said a little something, but I could see it wasn’t what the captain wanted to hear, and he spoke up again.

  “You know there are other ways to get them to cooperate with us. By law, all land is the King’s land. I think you know that. I think they know that. If a whale washes up on the beach, why that whale belongs to the King as sure as he owns the deer in the forest. Your flowers, the old couple’s flowers, why even the flowers of the deepest woods—they all belong to the King. I don’t see why this is so difficult. My men have been to the old folk’s garden, but every time they try to pick the flowers, something happens. We don’t know what. But you do. Or someone around here does. And they better speak up soon because our patience is growing very short. If there is magic or foul play, we have to know about it. Where are the old people? Who is hiding them? We have ways of dealing with magic the same as we have soldiers to fight battles.”

  I could see that my father said nothing, even when the captain paused to take a breath. The captain seemed to be waiting for my father to confess or tell on the old couple. Something! But my father stood with his head bowed listening respectfully. He knew what the soldiers could do to him—to us. He also knew that listening was the least trouble-making thing he could do. I waited. It seemed to me the whole world paused.

  The captain continued in his loud voice. “I don’t suppose you know anything more than everyone else we’ve stopped and asked.” He suddenly sighed. “This is not going to be easy to explain to the King or to the wedding people. You can see, can’t you, this will be bad for me and my family. I have six children.” A small whine had crept into his voice. “We are all asking you to tell me something to take to the King so that I don’t lose my job. My head!”

  My father quietly said something that I couldn’t hear. The captain put his hand on my father’s shoulder but not in a mean way. It looked to me as if he were asking for sympathy from my father more than threatening him. I wanted to edge closer to be able to hear better, but as soon as I tried and my father saw me and shooed me away with the back of his hand. I stayed away under the tree.

  Jake had scooted up the big maple tree as soon as the soldiers arrived. Now he was in the topmost branches where no one could see him, and he swayed there in the wind, a part of the branch, like a big bird hiding in its nest.

  The captain sighed again so loud I could hear it, and then he walked in circles around my father, then bigger circles, maybe hoping he could change everything that was making him angry just by moving and moving some more. I knew the feeling.

  In my early days in the castle after Eugenie and I had changed places, everything was so new and so tiring to remember and my whole world was topsy-turvy that some days only moving from place to place—long walks down the castle hallways—made me feel better. It was like the moving made sense of everything. Maybe that explained the captain’s bigger and bigger circles.

  Finally, with all our flowers gathered onto a wagon, he and his men left to go back toward the old couple’s house. I wanted to run to the shortcut through the woods and hide and see what happened. But my father saw I was edging
away and called me back. I glanced up into the maple tree and saw that Jake was gone. Somehow he made his way from tree to tree. I knew exactly where he was going.

  Chapter Nine

  Here’s what Jake told me happened. I have tried to adjust all this and translate it from Jake talk. He only told parts of things, so what I know is really half of what Jake told me and half of me making up things to fill in.

  We were in the barn, back behind the cow stalls where we could see if anyone came through the door. The barn was hushed with all the animals outside, only one owl now, and he was probably sleeping. I realized how fond I was of the leather and hay and even the manure smell, how fond I was of Jake and his excited talking style—what I had traded for the castle and tutors and silk dresses.

  He told me he had been looking down on the whole thing. The King’s men, the servants gathered around the edges with their empty baskets, a small wind waving the top branches above him and then in the path from the woods, the old woman and the old man were just standing there. They weren’t moving, not saying anything, like pictures instead of real people. And, as they had before, the soldiers tried to enter the garden but as soon as they stepped in, they got confused, forgot what they were there for and finally stepped out again scratching their heads. Then the next group entered. Same thing.