Arsinoe and Joseph walk behind Jules and her mother by at least a dozen paces. They watch the pair suspiciously and wonder who this strange woman is, the strange woman with the beautiful face, whose very presence turns their friend Jules into an affectionate pet. Joseph pulls up a long bit of big bluestem out of the meadow grass and thwacks the other stalks as Aria the crow flaps overhead. She is never far from Jules’s mother. Perhaps she is afraid of being left again.
Arsinoe tugs at the collar of her black shirt. She is the only one who has to wear black year-round, even in high summer, when it soaks up the sun and makes her so hot she might have a stroke.
“You should quit wearing black all the time,” Joseph says, and he makes it sound so easy that she wants to hit him.
“Arsinoe!”
She looks up—they both do—and sees Madrigal waving for them to come on. She is smiling, and the blades of grass move around her in a dance. She is hard to resist. Joseph runs at once, and after a moment, Arsinoe, the most skeptical and sullen queen born for at least the last thousand years, goes, too.
Madrigal grabs Arsinoe, and Arsinoe grabs Joseph, and Joseph grabs Jules, and they spin through the grass, churning up their own wind. Arsinoe and Joseph laugh, and Jules and Madrigal throw their heads back, and the butterflies come. All the butterflies it seems, from every crick and corner of Fennbirn. Monarchs, wood whites, orange tips, and black-and-yellow-striped swallowtails. They swirl into the meadow and fly over and under and around them. In the corner of Arsinoe’s eye, flashes of blue and brighter yellow ignite in the grass: the wildflowers all blooming at once.
Finally, they fall apart onto their backs, laughing. Madrigal pulls fresh blooms of flowers to her nose, and Aria lands on her chest to eat a blue butterfly. Delicate wings cover Madrigal from head to toe, opening and closing in all colors. They are on Jules, too, but Jules does not seem to notice. She stares at her mother with such love it makes Arsinoe jealous, only she is not sure who she is jealous of.
“That was a very good game, Funny Eyes,” Madrigal says. She reaches a finger out to touch her daughter’s nose, and Jules’s smile fades.
“I like your eyes, Jules,” says Joseph. “I wish I had them.”
“I didn’t say I didn’t like them,” Madrigal says. “I only said they were funny. Which they are.” She touches Jules’s hair. “It’s a pity, though, that I didn’t find a boy that Beltane with black, black hair. The butterflies look so pretty in Arsinoe’s.” She lets go of Juillenne and leans toward the queen.
“Do you feel the way they talk to you? Can you hear what they say through their beating wings?”
Arsinoe sits still a moment. She feels only their legs and furry antennae, tickling her scalp.
“No.”
Madrigal sighs. She puts one hand on her crow and then tosses her into the air before she can eat any more butterflies. “I haven’t been back on the island for two weeks, and already I’ve heard them whispering. ‘Will she be strong enough to become the queen?’ ‘Could she be?’ ‘When will her gift start to show? She is already nine.’”
“I’m already a queen. That’s why they call me Queen Arsinoe.”
“But you aren’t the only one. You know that, don’t you?”
Jules and Joseph look at Madrigal, faces bleak, as if they sense she is about to ruin a sunny afternoon.
“Fennbirn has three queens in every generation,” Madrigal goes on. “You don’t just get the crown by virtue of being born. You have to fight for it.” She prods Arsinoe in the belly playfully, and Arsinoe swats at her hand.
“I don’t think I want to be crowned anyway.”
Madrigal leans back with her elbows in the grass and clucks her tongue, like that is a very great shame. She brushes at the last of the butterflies lingering on her clothes—strange clothes from the mainland: tall leather boots with heels, and tight trousers.
“Caragh and Mum want to coddle you,” she says. “Make you happy until your time comes. They want to treat you like a loser. Like you’re dead already.”
“Dead?” Jules sits up.
“That is what happens to the queens who lose. They are killed. But don’t despair.” Madrigal cups Jules’s cheek with one hand and pinches Arsinoe’s with the other. “There is plenty of time yet to train. To grow strong. To be the victor. And I am here now, and I will help you.”
Caragh and Matthew walk the long dirt road that leads to the Milone house. It is a cool, pleasant walk thanks to the oaks that stretch their branches over the path, but still Matthew is quiet. He has been quiet all afternoon.
It is high and fading summer, as August draws toward close and minds turn toward the fall and the celebration of the Reaping Moon. It is a difficult time for naturalists, as their gift sings in anticipation of harvest but also shakes before the descending shadow of winter. In some it shakes so hard it feels like something trying to escape. For a barren Milone girl, it is a season to be driven mad as all across the island, pregnant Beltane bellies begin to show. Matthew knows this. Caragh suspects that he has always been aware of it, since he always seems aware of whatever she needs. How he knew she would need him that claiming day at the Black Cottage. How he knew that this turn of season was the first one to break her heart. In every other year, she had Jules.
The breeze moves the leaves overhead, and Aria the crow dives down on Juniper and caws loudly, making Juniper yip and scrunch her back. She tries to bite the bird out of the sky, but the crow is already up and out of danger. Caragh’s heart sinks when she hears Madrigal’s laugh, and sinks farther when she turns and sees Jules, Joseph, and Arsinoe walking up with her.
“Caragh Milone,” Madrigal says. “What are you up to with this boy?”
“You should keep an eye on your crow,” says Matthew, and Madrigal skips up to and around him. Her long brown hair flicks across his shoulder, and her fingers slide down his arms. Even when she is being a brat, she looks like a fairy. Twirls and sparkle. Gossamer wings.
“I always have an eye on my crow. Just like Caragh has on her dog.” She taps Juniper’s nose and looks back at Matthew. “I remember you. Matthew Sandrin. My how you’ve grown.”
Caragh watches Matthew over her sister’s shoulder. He stares at Madrigal like he hates her, but he still stares. Madrigal has always made everyone stare.
“Should we go home together?” Madrigal asks. “If you can keep up?” She spins away, and the children follow, as if pulled by an unseen leash. Jules does not even look at Caragh. None of them do. They are not their usual, rascal selves.
“Wait, Madrigal,” Caragh says. “You children go on ahead. We’ll catch up to you.” The three of them walk on somberly, and Caragh senses a tension in them. A fear.
“What now?” Madrigal asks, and rolls her eyes.
“What did you do to them? Jules looks ready to wilt flowers.”
“I didn’t do anything to them. We called butterflies and grew grass. Arsinoe grew nothing. She won’t last long, you know, if you keep treating her this way. She will be dead the moment the Quickening is over.”
“You didn’t speak to them of that?”
“Of course not.”
“Madrigal, they are too young. She is not ready.”
Madrigal crosses her arms. It has been more than two years since Arsinoe made any mention of her sisters. The memories have likely faded into nothing. But even if they have, she is still only a little girl. Too young a queen to start in with talk of the killing.
“Why is that your decision to make?” Madrigal narrows her eyes. “You are not Mother. You are not anyone’s mother. And if there is a guardian to the queen, it is clearly meant to be my Jules.” She says nothing else. She turns and walks with light steps onward up the road.
Neither Caragh nor Matthew move until Madrigal is gone. Caragh clenches her fists. She would like to jump up and down and scream.
“She thinks she can come here and upend everything! She arrives, ruins things, and leaves. That is what she does. And she never sees the consequences!”
Matthew slips his arm about her trembling waist.
“You’re still her aunt,” he says. “Jules still loves you. She always will.”
A heaviness forms in her throat as he speaks. She knows that. She knows she is being ungrateful, spurning the idea of being only Juillenne’s aunt after raising her for six years. To want Jules to run to her, not Madrigal, when she calls her first great fish or has a bad dream.
“Go home, Matthew,” Caragh says.
“What? Why?”
“Because that’s the first stupid thing you’ve ever said to me.”
For days and nights, the old tales of the queens haunt Jules’s every moment. She has heard the tales before—brutal, exciting stories of poison and wolves and fire. But they were only stories. Even when Arsinoe came to them and Arsinoe was real, her young mind could not fathom that one day Arsinoe would be a part of one of those stories. Joseph tries to distract her, but not even he can keep her from worrying.
“Your mum was probably fooling about. To scare us. Like around the Reaping Moon fires,” Joseph says. “And even if she wasn’t, Arsinoe’s tough.” He shoves Arsinoe, standing beside him, until she stumbles, to illustrate the point. “I wouldn’t want to fight her.”
But it is not just a fight. Arsinoe and Joseph would rather not know. They would rather forget the silliness that Madrigal said and go back to enjoying their summer. To believe it meant difficulty. It meant things that they were not prepared for.
It meant growing up.
Later that night, when Jules kneels down on the rug beside her grandpa Ellis’s chair, she is not sure what she wants to hear. She only knows she must find out where the truth lies, in all the tales.
“Grandpa,” she says, twisting a bit of the fine yarn he spins around her index finger. “What’s going to happen to Arsinoe?”
He looks down at her through the bottom of his spectacles. Unlike other adults, he does not tell her that it is nothing. He does not lie.
“You have heard something,” he says, “haven’t you?”
“Only thinking about the old stories. The queen stories. And Arsinoe is a queen. Is she a queen like that?”
“You are still young, Jules, and this will be hard for you to understand. But as the Ascension draws nearer, you will hear things. About the contest between the queens. About how they take their crown. The people will start to talk more as Arsinoe grows.”
His tone is calm. The Ascension is nothing new. The deaths of queens are nothing new. Jules feels deeply ashamed suddenly, of her youth and her ignorance. Her inability to understand what was true until now. Even knowing, it seems impossible when all the death she has ever known was the death of animals or of the old. Of fishers lost at sea or folk taken by illness or accident. But death cannot touch Arsinoe, who is young and careful. Who has become her best friend and foster sister.
“She has to?” Jules asks. “Can’t someone else?”
“No. It can only be her. Arsinoe is a queen, Jules. She is special. It is in her nature; you will see. It is her purpose.”
That night, lying in bed with Arsinoe snoring across the room, Jules cannot stop thinking about Grandpa Ellis’s words. Kill or be killed. That is her purpose. Her nature. But that is not fair. That cannot be.
“I will find a way to keep you safe, Arsinoe. I’ll protect you. I promise.”