“This is a strange rock.” Arsinoe lays her hands on it, flat and sun-warm. “So squared off and flat. Do you think it used to be something? Part of something old?”
Jules looks down at the stone.
“I think . . . if after today, we were to come looking, we would never find it again.”
Arsinoe swallows as a chill passes from her scalp to her tailbone. To hide it, she climbs up onto the rock beside Jules.
“Let’s just . . . stay here awhile,” Jules says, and sits. “I don’t feel like going home.”
With the heat of the stone against their backs, and the soft sunlight on their faces, it does not take long for Jules and Arsinoe to fall asleep. When Jules wakes, it is from a good dream that she cannot quite remember, but there was laughter in it, and warmth. She thinks that Joseph and Caragh might have been there.
In the brush to her left, back in the shady cover of the trees, something rustles, and Jules sits up. She holds an arm out over the queen, ready to protect her or tell her to run. Jules is not much to look at, with her short legs and funny eyes, but she is brave. She will not hesitate to fight for Arsinoe. She is not afraid to be hurt.
But after a moment, her apprehension fades. It changes to a sensation of deep calm. Peace. The brush and ferns rustle again, and Jules waits, holding her breath.
The fuzzy mountain cat cub creeps cautiously into the light. It blinks its eyes, so young that they are still a little blue, and stands on big, fluffy paws. Its coat is the spotted coat of a baby.
Anyone but Jules would still be afraid, for where a mountain cat cub goes, a mountain cat mother is not far behind. But as Jules and the cub stare at each other, something clicks into place.
“Camden,” Jules says, and the little cub bounds joyfully across the meadow and leaps into her arms.
Excerpt from The Oracle Queen
Do you know the truth behind the legend of the Mad Oracle Queen? For a sneak peek at Queen Elsabet’s never-before-told story, turn the page!
On a warm summer day, Queen Mirabella sat on the front steps of the Black Cottage at Midwife Willa’s feet, having her hair braided. Her little sisters, Queen Arsinoe, younger by mere minutes, and Queen Katharine, younger by a full half hour, played together in the yard.
“It is a good thing that black does not show grass marks,” Willa commented as Katharine tripped over her own feet and tumbled, dark skirt flying.
“Ha ha,” Arsinoe taunted. She hoisted the stick she was carrying as a sword high over her head as Katharine’s large eyes began to shine and wobble. Mirabella cleared her throat, and Arsinoe glanced at her guiltily. Then she sighed and went to help their youngest sister up.
“Why do you not ever tell them to be nice?” Mirabella asked.
“I tell them to be polite.” Willa separated the little queen’s hair with gentle fingers. “It is so long now. So long and so shiny. When you are queen you must wear it down often, and never cover it with a veil.”
Mirabella fought the urge to jerk her head. Even at five years old, she knew that nice and polite were not the same things, though she could not explain exactly why.
Down in the grass, Arsinoe and Katharine had resumed chasing each other. They laughed breathlessly, and when they ran out of laughter Katharine began to sing a song that Willa had taught them that morning.
“No sight, no sound, no fault was found, no treason to be had!”
“Yet every one would die that day for Elsabet the mad!” Arsinoe finished the rhyme and raised her stick-sword. Katharine squealed and ran.
“Why did you teach us that song?” Mirabella asked. It was a queen’s song, the tale of the last oracle queen, but Mirabella did not like it.
“Everyone on the island knows the story of the mad oracle. A queen certainly should.”
“It is only a song.”
“Songs preserve history. So people remember.” Willa took a deep breath and lowered her voice, and Mirabella knew that what would follow was only for her ears. “They say that Queen Elsabet’s gift of sight turned on her. That it drove her mad until in a fit of paranoia she ordered the execution of three whole houses of people.”
“What is ‘paranoia’?”
“Being afraid of or convinced of something that is not there.”
“Were they sure she was wrong?”
“They were sure. And for her crime, Queen Elsabet spent the last fifteen years of her reign locked in the West Tower of the Volroy. And now we will have no more sight-gifted queens.”
Mirabella swallowed. She knew why that was. Because every triplet born with the sight gift was drowned. “All because of her?”
Willa peered around and chuckled at the stark look on Mirabella’s face. “Do not be so troubled! It was a long time ago.”
“How long ago?”
“Long, long ago. Before even the mist came to protect us. Queen Elsabet ruled when Fennbirn was part of the world still. Back then the ports were crowded with ships from countries like noble Centra, rich Valostra, and warlike Salkades.”
Centra, Valostra, Salkades. Names Mirabella had heard before in Willa’s teachings. But not often. Those names had been lost to the mist. They were all the mainland now. They barely existed.
“Fifteen years is a long time to be locked away,” Mirabella murmured, and Willa kissed the top of her head. Mirabella felt two tugs on the ends of her hair, and a finished braid appeared, tossed over her shoulder.
“Never mind that. Go on now and play.”
Mirabella stood and did as she was told. But for the rest of that day, and many days afterward, she thought about Queen Elsabet and the song of the mad oracle. And she wondered how much of it was true.