Kingdom of Crowns and Glory

by Laura Greenwood et al.

  I waited for him to go on. He rarely spoke about her unless I brought it up and something about the way he hesitated now was different. I got the impression there was more he wanted to tell me, but the only noise was the crackle of the fire. Impatiently, I nudged him.

  "Are you saying you think she had magic?"

  This time he shook his head, giving me a smile that didn't quite reach his eyes. "Of course not. I'm just...well, I guess I’m saying beliefs like magic give us a framework to explain our world when things don't make any sense otherwise. Your mother's absence has affected me greatly, and it's still affecting us every day she's not here with us. But it helps me to believe I will see her again someday."

  "You mean, like in heaven?"

  He smiled but his eyes slid away. "Yes, just like in heaven. That's what I meant." He made a show of looking at the clock and stood abruptly. "Goodness, look at the time! You have school tomorrow, young lady, and I'm tired from the warmth of the fire. It’s past time for bed. We can talk more about this another day."

  I took a deep breath and closed the book before giving my dad a kiss. "Sure, Dad. I'll see you tomorrow."

  I walked up the stairs to my room and it struck me as my hand reached out to turn on the light that he hadn't actually said he didn't believe in magic. Instead, I was left with the feeling he wasn't comfortable speaking about it.

  The last thing I saw as I fell asleep was the music box on my nightstand. It made me smile, wondering what he’d say if I asked if he thought mermaids were real.

  Chapter 6

  I began the week in a new frame of mind. I was going to work on being a better person. If the weekend had taught me anything, it was that intentions could manifest whether we wanted them to or not. This meant I needed to work on my heart, STAT.

  I couldn’t let my jealousy hold me back and age me bitter, or worse, cause me to do things against what I knew my mom and dad wanted. While I may not have any magic or even care if it existed or not, I could feel the weight of jealousy causing me to do less than my personal best.

  It was exhausting always wishing to be more like someone else. I could use that time and energy to work on myself instead.

  I didn’t have many opportunities to practice. The early part of the week involved pop quizzes and lots of studying, and as I didn’t share any classes in common with Melissa, I wasn’t sure if I was getting better or if my equanimity was due to lack of contact.

  The next time I saw her more than in passing was on Thursday. It had been one of those days. I practically flew through the morning after missing my first bus and showing up with barely enough time to throw my bag into the locker before the last bell rang. To my surprise, Melissa was still standing in front of hers.

  Her color was horrible, and even from the quick glance I’d given her as I pulled up to my locker, I could see she was moving slower than usual. Her best friend Rachel was standing beside her with a concerned look on her face. I tried not to be obvious about eavesdropping, but I was so curious to find out what was happening I couldn't help trying to listen.

  "Please, Melissa. I think you should go home. You don't look good. Don’t worry, I can let the teachers know."

  Rachel's voice was quiet and insistent but Melissa shrugged her arm off.

  "I'm fine. My sister just decided to share a cold she brought back from school last week, that's it." She made a production of sniffing like she had a runny nose, which caused her to break into a deep hacking cough.

  I grimaced. I didn't know much about cold symptoms but it sounded more like pneumonia from where I was. I could see Rachel wasn't buying the cold story either.

  "Well, have you at least seen a doctor? You’ve been sick for almost two weeks now."

  Melissa shook her head, irritably slamming her locker shut. "I don't need to see a doctor. I'm fine."

  Melissa looked up, catching me staring. I flushed and looked down at my books. I didn't want to get into anything with her if she was angry at her best friend.

  When I looked up again, both girls had started walking, evidently done talking. I looked at my watch, gasped, and bolted down the hall in the other direction, knowing my math teacher was going to give double homework if I didn't get there in the next sixty seconds.

  The rest of the day passed in the usual blur. I received homework in almost every class, standard operating procedure for teachers this close to exams. I had almost forgotten my concerns about Melissa just trying to keep up with my own stuff, but during a brief lull in activity, I found myself thinking about her again.

  On the one hand, I congratulated myself on not being as jealous of her now, but I suspected it was because I was perplexed by what was happening, not because I’d grown as a person. Her normally effortless look had vanished over the course of the week; she was pale, her clothing was rumpled, and if I wasn't mistaken, looked as if it was getting too big for her. Had she lost weight?

  To my great disappointment, I hadn’t managed to speak with her yet. It wasn’t entirely my fault. For one thing, I didn’t see her much outside of drama club, since we didn’t share any classes this term. I also wondered if she had been around less than usual. Perhaps she’d stayed at home because of her cough.

  But while that explanation was more logical, it didn’t feel right. It seemed as if she was slowly fading away before my eyes, and I couldn’t stop thinking about what I’d read in the book about magic.

  Was there something or someone else making her sick? Could it be a curse, or something else unexplainable by reason and science? While the more practical part of my brain rejected these thoughts, I couldn’t stop thinking them.

  That night at rehearsal, things came to a head. For the first time ever, Melissa was unable to finish her number. Halfway through the simple piece, she started coughing. Within seconds it was obvious she couldn’t breathe. The teacher in charge made it to her side and caught her just as she collapsed.

  I hesitated as the entire drama club surrounded her until she coughed again, weakly covering her mouth. The noise broke my inertia and I grabbed her water bottle, passing through two people in front of me and squeezing through to sit beside her on the floor.

  "Here, have some water. Maybe that'll help."

  Without speaking, she nodded slightly and accepted the bottle from me, taking several tiny sips as she tried to catch her breath. She’d been coughing into her sleeve and her elbow during her attack. When she stopped, I saw bright blood on the white shirt.

  My eyes widened and she followed my gaze down, then looked at me again as her face paled even further. This time when our eyes met, I was certain this was not a cold.

  Melissa was very, very sick.

  "Mrs. Henderson, I think you should call the ambulance."

  Melissa protested vehemently. "No. Don't. I'm fine."

  Almost before the words were out, she began coughing again, struggling to breathe between paroxysms. The teacher looked at me, and with a grim face, pulled out her phone to dial 911. From that point on, things moved fast. The paramedics arrived in minutes, loading Melissa at the same time her mother burst into the room with fear in her eyes.

  "Melissa! Your teacher says you collapsed. What’s going on?"

  Melissa, now on the stretcher, gestured weakly at the oxygen mask the paramedic had put over her face. "It's nothing, Mom. I’ve just had cough. I couldn’t stop so they called EMS. But seriously, everyone’s totally overreacting."

  As the tension in her mother's face began to ease, I placed my hand on Melissa's forearm and shook my head.

  "No, Mrs. Torres, I don't think anyone's overreacting. Melissa’s downplaying things. She’s been coughing more over the last week, but tonight she collapsed and coughed up blood. I know she's saying she has a cold but I can't think of any cold that would cause either of those things to happen."

  I waited for Melissa to tear my head off, certain any politeness she'd shown me to date would be outweighed by fury, but she just laid back, looking paler and thinner than an
yone should.

  She closed her eyes but I heard her mumble, "It's just a cold. I'm fine."

  Her mother gave me a tight smile, then bit her lip and looked down at her daughter. "Thank you. I can't think of any cold that would cause that to happen either." She briefly met my eyes again as she escorted Melissa and the paramedics out. While it hadn’t been a long interaction, I knew it was important to share my concern, no matter if Melissa wanted to keep insisting she was fine.

  Clearly, she was not.

  The room was deathly silent as we watched them go. A macabre thought crossed my mind— I hoped it wasn't a harbinger of things to come. My stomach twisted into knots as I thought about the way Melissa had collapsed, and I couldn't get the image of blood on the white sleeve of her shirt out of my head.

  Out of nowhere, the thought this was because of magic floated through my head again. I tried to shove it away. How absurd!

  But the more I tried, the more the idea settled in and stuck. I'd only read a few chapters in the book but so far, everything pointed to an unnatural cause. Could she have been cursed? Or had she traded her own health to win the role?

  The idea that lingered the strongest and refused to leave me alone was my own conscience, whispering that somehow, all this was my fault. Maybe if I hadn’t been so jealous, she wouldn't have become sick. Her cough had started when I was jealous of her singing, and as the cough had progressed, my jealousy had improved. I told myself I’d been making an effort to work on myself before I’d become worried, but still. I had wished I was more like her.

  Was that enough to make someone sick?

  I looked around the room at the others present, wondering if anyone here could have wanted to hurt Melissa intentionally. I knew there was a logical explanation not based on magic, but it felt wrong how swiftly she’d become ill. If I followed magic as a potential cause, the next step would be to determine how many people stood to gain if she was out of the way.

  I was at the top of my list of suspects as her understudy. Not only did she have the role I’d wanted, but I was hoping for a scholarship she could potentially be competing for with me. She was leaps and bounds above the other girls in the group and they mostly seemed to idolize her; so for now, I ruled them out. None of the guys in the drama club could hurt a fly, so I doubted it was them either.

  Taking that line of reasoning further, I considered the rest of the school. Melissa was near or at the top of honor role and high in the running for valedictorian. If she was out of the running, who stood to benefit? That added in a whole new group of people, including her friend Rachel, who from what I gathered, needed an academic scholarship to be able to attend the university of her choice.

  I flashed back to the weekend and the odd way Rachel had looked through me after coming out of that store. What was in there anyway? Could Rachel be messing around with things she shouldn’t?

  My thoughts refused to return to practice but luckily, Mrs. Henderson recognized others were having the same problem and called it quits early.

  "Make sure to practice tomorrow and over the weekend. We’ll run through the whole play again on Monday. Remember – the concert is next week on Friday, so this is not a reprieve. It’s a chance for you to work on the things you need to. I'll expect you all back at seven sharp Monday night. Don't be late!"

  We slowly trickled out, a quieter bunch than usual. The idea I wouldn't hear Melissa singing after my voice lesson filled me with an odd sadness. As much as I wanted to improve, I had always enjoyed listening to her sing. She had a gift, and I wanted to hear her sing again. Regardless of my insecurities, I loved music more than I could ever envy someone else’s singing ability.

  More than anything else, I hoped the crazy idea I had about her illness being caused by something magical was simply put there by the book I’d been reading. Because if it was true, it meant that everything I believed about the world was false.

  Chapter 7

  The entire weekend, I was plagued by the horrible thought that someone had caused Melissa to become sick. At the worst of my fears, I wondered if that someone could have been me. But how could it be my fault when I hadn't gone out of my way to hurt her?

  I mean, if I’d had the ability to wish someone out of my way, why hadn't I accidentally done it in grade three when Dana Sabatini had embarrassed me in front of the entire class? Usually that one voice of reason in the mind-expanding situation allowed me to refocus.

  I pondered the specifics. What kind of illness would make somebody cough up blood? I didn’t have any clues, but clearly it couldn't be good. I asked around her friend group, even sitting beside Rachel in the next class we shared, but no one knew anything they were comfortable volunteering and I wasn’t close enough with any of them to probe without feeling awkward.

  On Sunday after another uneasy sleep, I decided to check out the store Rachel had been in. With curiously shaky insides, similar to the way I felt right before a performance, I headed downstairs with my purse to find my dad sitting at his desk as usual.

  “Dad? I’m going to the bookstore. Did you need anything? I’ve been studying all weekend and could use a walk.”

  The day was sunny and mild and for what it was worth, it was true. My brain was feeling more like scrambled eggs than full of knowledge and nothing helped clear my mind more than walking at least an hour through Montreal’s beautiful streets.

  Barely looking up, he smiled. “What? Oh, no. Thanks, dear. I’m in the middle of an important section here. You have fun. Be home for supper.”

  I leaned over to give him a hug and a kiss on the cheek. He patted my back absently and returned the kiss before looking down at the browned papers on the desk. I knew he wouldn’t notice I was gone when he was in the middle of something. If I wasn’t home for supper, the most likely outcome would be that he wouldn't eat.

  The fresh air helped with my mood and my thinking enough so that by the time I’d reached the street where the bookstore was, I’d almost convinced myself I was jumping to conclusions the same way cavemen and medieval humans had.

  But as I halted on the sidewalk in front of the building, all my worry came rushing back. The paint was chipping on the front and one of the windows was cracked. The sign itself was faded and clearly old, but the words seemed bright against the sun-faded wood background.

  A small sign in the corner of the window proclaimed the hours. I wasn’t sure if I was happy or not when I compared it to my watch. Crap. They were open. I took a deep breath and pushed on the door. It swung easily and a deep bell tone sounded from somewhere inside, reminding me of the Adams’ family house.

  I gulped, almost coughing at the dryness in my throat.

  “Good morning. Can I help you with something?” A deep woman’s voice came from beside a curtain made of beads and I jumped.

  “Oh, hello. Um, I saw the sign and I was curious. Do you tell the future?”

  The woman was a little shorter than I was but had a presence that made her seem larger, as if she couldn't contain all of her energy in her body and jolts of it were coming from her eyes, which were a dark brown unlike any I’d seen before.

  Normally, dark-colored eyes seemed restful to me, but hers were alight with...something. She was dressed well but without ornamentation and didn’t look the way I’d expect a fortune teller to. Her simple, dark green shift dress with an earth-toned shawl to keep out the chill were lovely and not at all fitting the stereotype.

  She looked regal, and for a moment I had the urge to bow. But as she stared at me, I began to get uneasy. Maybe I shouldn’t be here. I took a half-step toward the door when she held up a hand.

  “You are looking for answers.”

  “Um, yes, I guess so.” I laughed nervously. “But aren’t we all?” I was verging on babbling, I could tell, and not for the first time, I wondered what was wrong with me. “I was walking outside and saw your sign.”

  She smiled then, a mysterious smile that didn't tell me anything other than what I already knew.
>
  This place was creeping me out. I took another step back, this time turning toward the door and stopping when I saw a shelf of books. She followed my gaze and her eyes narrowed with interest.

  “You like to read?”

  I smiled nervously. “Yeah, er, um, yes, ma’am. My dad and I spend a lot of time reading together. It’s my favorite pastime.”

  She nodded in approval. “This is good. Reading can expand the mind, but you must choose your subjects wisely. The unaware can make mistakes. Not all mistakes are able to be repaired.”

  My desire to leave suddenly vanished. “What are you saying?”

  She gave another half-smile, as mysterious as the last one.

  “Some things we read in books are for education, others for entertainment. The problem begins when you mistake which is which. The problem grows when you begin to believe there are easy answers for solving difficult situations. Be alert; the danger is all around. Once Pandora’s box is opened, the demons are often hard to stuff back in.”

  She met my eyes and held them for a long moment. What was I supposed to say to that?

  “Thanks for the advice?” I winced when I heard my voice tremble and go up at the end.

  To my surprise, she laughed and walked over to the shelf. Taking a slim red volume off the top shelf, she passed it to me. “Here. I believe this is the book you were looking for.”

  “Oh, but I wasn’t—.”

  She smiled again, pressing the book into my hands and before I realized what was happening, I found myself back on the sidewalk. I whirled around in time to see the open sign flipped over and hear the snick of the lock on the door and the light inside turn off.

  I looked down at the small book in my hand.

  Curses.

  Frustrated and uneasy after my strange encounter and reading the book about curses the woman had given me without warning, I attended my first rehearsal as the lead on Monday.