This was Ven’s sister! Daleina had forgotten she was a canopy singer, if she’d even known that. Ven didn’t talk much about family or his childhood. “I’m so pleased to meet you.” She wanted to ask her a hundred questions about Ven: what was he like as a child, did she know any embarrassing stories about him, had he been born with a sword in his hand? But the singer’s questions were more important. “Yes, he did. And yes, he lives with Queen Naelin in the untamed lands . . . which I suppose we can’t call ‘untamed’ anymore, at least not their part of it.” Vast stretches of untamed lands still existed, of course—no one knew how far they stretched—but Renthia itself had grown.
Ven’s sister clapped her hands. “Oh, the stories he must have for me! Thank you!” She then stepped forward with arms out, as if to hug Daleina, then suddenly remembered this was the queen and dropped into a curtsy.
Laughing, Daleina hugged her anyway.
She then called to the air spirit to carry Ven’s sister back to the treetops. Daleina heard her singing as she flew. “It’s nice to have good news to share,” Daleina said to Hamon.
Hamon held out his hand. “Shall we give them all more good news? Are you ready to marry?”
Looking down at her nightgown, Daleina laughed again. “Not quite.” She then shooed him out of the room and called to the palace caretakers to help her prepare.
She wore a dress of silken lace that felt as if she were wearing clouds, and for jewelry, she asked the spirits to decorate her in flowers. Vines wreathed her arms, with just-bloomed sprays of pink blossoms on her wrists. Around her throat, she wore the necklace her family had given her when she became queen: wood carved in the shape of leaves. Her crown was woven branches with white flowers, in remembrance of those lost.
Once she was dressed, Belsowik opened her chamber doors, and her parents and her sister rushed in. She embraced all three of them. “Oh, my baby girl,” her father said. “You grew up.”
“We’re so proud of you,” her mother said. She kissed Daleina on each cheek.
“Are you ready?” Daddy asked.
Am I?
Daleina remembered she’d once asked Queen Fara if she’d been ready when she became queen. But how could anyone be truly ready, when you never knew what path your life would take? “I’m happy,” she told him.
It wasn’t an answer to his question, but was perhaps even better.
She then looped her arm around Arin’s and followed her parents and Belsowik out the door of her chambers. “Are you happy?” Daleina asked Arin as they walked toward the Sunrise Room.
“Yes, I think I am,” Arin said, a faint blush staining her cheeks. “You’ll have to come visit as soon as you can. Mama and Daddy will be coming back with me after your wedding. They want to meet Cajara. And I want to show them Semo.”
“You should ask them to move there with you so you won’t be alone,” Daleina encouraged. She knew her parents would visit Aratay, and Arin needed them more.
Arin smiled. “I’m not alone. But I think . . . maybe I will.”
And then they reached the Sunrise Room, and the palace guards flung the doors open. Morning sun streamed through the windows, lighting the room so that it glowed amber. Hamon waited for her by the open window.
The wedding itself was only for family . . . but all of Aratay bore witness.
Outside, the people of Aratay were crowded onto the branches, as many as could fit, overflowing the trees. The song of the canopy singers flowed inside with the sweet autumn breeze. Daleina’s parents and sister escorted her to Hamon, and Daleina and Hamon stood facing each other, by the window so all could see.
Looking into Hamon’s eyes, Daleina thought she’d never been happier.
And when they sealed their vows with a kiss, all of Aratay rejoiced with them.
Naelin had told them all no castle. “It’s frivolous,” she’d said everyone who asked—and everyone did ask. Her new people had waited so long for a queen that they wanted all the trappings: a gleaming city of splendors. Naelin gave them all the same answer: no, no, and no. She wanted only a simple house, built only a walk from the cave of the Great Mother, no larger than the houses of anyone else in her new land.
It was harder, though, to say no to the spirits. They wanted to build. Out in the untamed lands, everything they’d created had been so quickly destroyed that now they yearned to create something that would last. She felt that yearning like an itch until at last, she gave in.
She gathered Erian and Llor to her. “Tell me: what should we make?”
“Trees,” Erian said promptly. “Like home.”
“Mud castles,” Llor said. “Like these.” And he plopped into a mud puddle, with mud splashing in a wave around him and spattering his pants. Naelin winced but said nothing as he scooped up fistfuls of muck and dribbled it to make towers.
“Llor, you’re all dirty now,” Erian informed him.
“If you sit, you can be dirty too.” He patted the puddle next to him. “Mama’s going to make me take a bath anyway.” He shot Naelin a look that clearly conveyed what he thought of that idea. “Bayn never makes us take baths.”
“That’s because Bayn lacks hands to wash you,” Naelin said. “He’ll be happy when you smell better. Wolves have an excellent sense of smell.” She knew she should scold Llor for drenching himself in muck, but a smile kept tugging on her lips. Kneeling, she scooped up a handful of mud and squeezed it, dribbling out a tower of dirt. “All right, but we’ll make the towers out of rocks so it’s less messy to live in, and we’ll grow trees around it.”
Llor cheered, clapping and spattering mud on Naelin and Erian.
“Mama!” Erian squealed.
Naelin met Erian’s eyes. She wiggled her eyebrows, then shot a significant look at the puddle and at Llor.
“Really?” Erian asked.
Grinning, Naelin nodded.
Whooping, Erian scooped up mud and flung it at her brother. He squealed and threw mud back at her. Then Naelin joined in, tossing mud at both of them, until they ganged up on her, spattering her from hair to feet.
Laughing, they collapsed in a heap in the puddle, and Naelin reached her mind out and touched the spirits. She etched in her mind an image of towers made of rocks, and the earth began to bubble, as did the spirits’ excitement. Earth spirits scurried over the land and within it, pushing upward, and Naelin felt the ground shake as stone burst from the dirt: black-streaked red stone twisting into spirals that jutted up toward the sky. Calling for the tree spirits, she released them to grow a forest around it. One muddy child on either side of her, she watched as trees sprouted and thickened.
Under her command, the water spirits corralled rivers and guided them into a lake that spread across a patch of desert. She instructed other earth spirits to create cliffs, and the water spirits joyfully led the water to cascade in thundering waterfalls.
“Oh, Mama, it’s beautiful!” Erian cried.
The fire spirits were fidgeting anxiously in her mind, and she sent them in: lighting fires in hearths in the homes of all her new people. Careful, controlled fires, but plentiful so that the new palace towers and all the stone homes blazed with light.
Reaching out to the ice spirits, she let them have a turn: freezing one of the waterfalls. It crackled as it crystallized, each torrent of water solidifying in midair. Glistening in the sun, it looked like a work of art.
As the others worked, she sent the air spirits out across her country and beyond the borders of her land, into the far wilds that were still untamed, to bring seeds of flowers from everywhere they could reach. They swept the seeds across the land, and she guided the tree spirits to plant them and the water spirits to help, until a riot of flowers blossomed at once for miles in every direction: reds, purples, blues, yellows, and the land was bathed in color.
With her arms around Erian and Llor, Naelin watched as her spirits danced across the land, drenching it in beauty. She decided she’d let them continue creating once they finished, but she’d send them beyond the capital, pushing them outward so the people could live their lives while the spirits lived theirs.
It might not be peace, but it’s close.
“I think I’ll like it here,” Erian said.
Kissing her mud-spattered hair, Naelin said, “Me too.”
Her children curled against her, watching as the land was reborn.