“No,” says Arsinoe, and throws her formal black dress on the floor. “It does not fit right.”
“It does so fit,” says Mirabella. She takes it from little Katharine, who has retrieved it from the rug. “It fits how it is supposed to.”
“You would know that if you ever wore one,” Katharine adds, and sticks out her tongue.
The girls are being difficult. Katharine likes her dress but does not want to have her hair braided. Mirabella’s hair is done, but she is unsatisfied with her sash. And Arsinoe . . . Arsinoe refuses everything.
That, Willa supposes, is her fault. She has raised them according to their designated gifts and let Arsinoe run wild in the woods. Let her tromp through the streambeds and dive after crayfish. Sweet Katharine has been primped and spoiled, and they have all looked upon her as their own special treasure. As for Mirabella, Willa remembers well the words of the queen. Mirabella is chosen. Strong. Born to rule. It shows in the way that she is with her sisters, always in charge of them and always the mediator. Or perhaps that, too, is due to how she was raised. Camille’s prediction was impossible to forget. So even though she was not supposed to, Willa has groomed Mirabella over her sisters for the crown. As soon as the girl could read, Willa spent hours in the cottage library with her, poring over the history of the island.
But today is the day. Their claiming day, when the elemental, poisoner, and naturalist families will come to take their queens away. She has known forever that it was coming. But six years is a long time, full of long days of growth and laughter, and Willa has come to look at the queens as hers. Her queens. Her girls. More so even than she had with Queen Camille, perhaps because she is older now, and this generation will be her last.
“Queen Arsinoe, come to me.”
Arsinoe does as she is told, trudging across the room to stand before Willa with her head hanging. Willa reaches out and wipes a streak of dirt from the little girl’s cheek. Before the day is done Arsinoe will find a way to become filthy. She has such a knack for it that Willa half believes that Camille really did mistake her gift, and she truly is a naturalist made for digging in the soil.
“Raise your arms,” Willa says. “Out of that shirt.”
“May I wear trousers under the dress, at least?”
“No. Not today. But you are going home with the naturalists. Good working people, by the sea. You will like it there. And I doubt that they will make you dress too formally, except for on festival days.”
Arsinoe sighs and lets Willa get her out of her clothes and into the dress with minimal tugging. When she is finished, the queen goes dutifully to her sister to have the tangles brushed out of her hair.
Perhaps due to the strain of the day, Katharine begins to cry, and it is hard for Willa not to comfort her. Mirabella and Arsinoe stop, as if they should turn and wrap her in their arms. But they do not. It is time for Katharine to learn to stand on her own, and after a moment, she quits crying and wipes her cheeks.
The Arrons will not be pleased with her. When the poisoner gift does not come, they may treat her even worse than they treated Queen Camille. Once, Willa feared what would happen as the queens grew and their families began to suspect they had been switched. But they will never come to suspect. Weak-gifted or giftless queens are no longer uncommon, where it is unheard of for a queen to be designated wrong at birth. And Willa should know. She has searched through the histories.
“Mirabella is chosen,” Willa whispers, and makes a pious gesture, left over from her days as a young priestess, before she felt the Goddess pulling her into service at the Black Cottage. “And if she is chosen, the other gifts will not matter.”
They may never even be an issue. Neither Arsinoe nor Katharine has shown the slightest hint of a gift, not their true ones or any other, whereas Mirabella’s elements showed when she was four years old. Perhaps sooner than that, but that was when Willa first saw her playing with the candle flames: putting them out and lighting them again with her tiny, pointed finger. Other elements followed after: a tremor in the ground when she was frightened, or overcast skies when she is nervous like today.
So it seems that Queen Camille was right.
Katharine, eyes dry, steps up to the mirror beside her sisters and quickly organizes the brushes and combs and bits of ribbon on the dresser. She is such a pretty, delicate queen. And somehow sweet despite being spoiled.
“You look odd with your hair like that,” she says to Arsinoe.
“You look odd all the time,” Arsinoe says back, and Mirabella tugs on her braid.
“No fighting.” Mirabella reaches for a length of black ribbon. “This is our last day together.”
“But we will see each other sometimes. At festivals,” says Arsinoe.
“We will see one another when we are all grown up,” Mirabella corrects her. “That is what Willa said. When we are tall.”
“Then we will never see Kat again. She will never be tall.”
“And you will never be smart!” Katharine hisses, and Mirabella laughs. They are so different, in character and in feature. Arsinoe’s scowl was apparent from the age of two. When Mirabella lost her baby cheeks, her fine bones and slender neck made her look every bit the oldest. And Katharine’s large, heavily lashed eyes were impossible to miss. Willa has not needed to use colored cords or buttons to tell them apart since they could crawl.
“What if we do not like them?” Katharine asks. “The people who come to take us?”
“You will,” Mirabella says. “You are going to Indrid Down. The capital city! Someday we will visit you there, and you must show us all around it.”
Willa turns to leave them alone. The families will arrive soon, and she must still get ready herself. The young queens’ laughter rings out and follows her down the hall.
“Have this, your last day as sweet girls,” she whispers. “For when you next meet, you will remember none of it.”
THE CLAIMING
Jules follows Aunt Caragh down the seldom-used path through the Greenwood that leads to the Black Cottage, where the queens are born. The path is not well-groomed, and brambles and prickers catch on the hem of her black skirt, and scratch against the leather of her boots. When they get back to the carriage, she will have to pick bits of plant from Juniper’s floppy ears and the pads of her paws.
“Keep up, Jules,” says Aunt Caragh, and Juniper turns and woofs. Jules does her best, a small girl on small legs—nothing like her aunt or even like the photos she has seen of her mother, Madrigal. Everyone in Wolf Spring talks about those Milone girls, with their shining light brown hair and swaying limbs like a willow’s branches. It makes Jules wonder who her short, dark father was and resent him a little.
In the carriage, Caragh had changed into her best black dress, the modest one with the high collar and shining buttons. She anointed her wrists and forehead with oil and swept her hair high off her neck, and though the rest of the family says that Madrigal is far prettier, to Juillenne, Caragh is very beautiful. Jules tried to do her hair like her aunt’s, but it was too wild and wavy. It fell out of its pins, and Jules feels ugly, and tied tight by the fastenings of her dress.
“Why didn’t we take the carriage to the Black Cottage?” she asks.
“Because the claiming is held in the high meadow,” Caragh replies. “And because this is queen business and all ritual. We must come from different directions and take them away in different directions.”
“That’s stupid.”