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.”
“Aye, and you’re not the only one who thinks so.” Caragh turns and smiles out of the side of her mouth. “But hold your tongue when we get there. They’ll be angry enough as it is that it’s you and I who have come, instead of your grandma Cait.”
Jules nods. She tries not to think ahead to the Black Cottage and what they will find there, instead daydreaming about returning to Wolf Spring, getting out of the hot, scratchy dress and into the cold, fresh water of Sealhead Cove, near Joseph’s house. On bright days she can see clear to the rocky bottom.
“Caragh!”
They turn to see a tall boy following them down the path, shaking leaves out of his hair and brushing dust off his vest and slacks. It is Matthew, Joseph’s brother, older than him by a full eleven years. Jules shouts his name and runs up the path to jump into his arms, and he tickles her belly until she is breathless.
“Matthew!” Caragh exclaims. “What are you doing here?”
“I missed you. So I waited a day and followed on horseback.”
“But you aren’t supposed to be here. And put my niece down. She’s had too much Sandrin influence already, cavorting with Joseph.” Despite her tone, Caragh goes and kisses Matthew’s cheek.
“She’s not the only Milone with a weakness for Sandrin boys,” he says.
“What’s ‘cavorting’?” asks Jules.
“Nothing,” both adults answer together.
“What are you doing here, Matthew?” Caragh asks. “I mean really.”
“I really did miss you,” he says. “And I couldn’t let you show up alone. Not with the grand crowds and caravans the Arrons and the Westwoods will be towing.”
“So Jules and I together is a shame, but you and I and Jules is not?”
“One Sandrin makes all the difference.”
“You know, there’s always the chance we could miss them. I didn’t push the horses to hurry through the mountains.”
Matthew shakes his head. “The sisters leave at the same time.” He bends down to Jules and makes a face. “Pulled apart screaming, like they’re pulling clots from wet wounds.”
“Matthew, that’s only a story,” scolds Caragh as Jules giggles. “And a terrible one.”
“Jules can handle it. She has picked her share of scabs. And if you wanted to shield her, you shouldn’t have brought her.”
The wind picks up and rushes through the trees, cold from coming down the face of Mount Horn and through the glen. It rattles branches and sends leaves flying past Jules’s cheeks.
“Seems like the Westwoods are just arriving.”
Maybe it is the elemental gift, or maybe it is only a spring breeze, but it makes Jules feel very insignificant suddenly, and she tugs on Caragh’s long, flowing skirt.
“Don’t be afraid, Squirt,” says Matthew. “That and one lonely rain cloud probably exhausted half the Westwood clan.” But as he finishes speaking, a great bolt of lightning cracks through the sky and touches the rocky summit of the mountain.
Caragh scoops Jules up and plants her on her hip. They walk fast toward the Black Cottage and the high meadow without another word. Jules cannot help but cry, though she does so as softly as she can.
They reach the meadow and look down through the glen. Even from such a distance, the Black Cottage looms large beneath the shade of tall oaks. The yard, wild with growth—seeded grasses and flowers—is bordered on the east by a broad stream, which finds its source deep beneath the rock of Mount Horn. The cottage itself is not actually black but brown brick with white wood and dark brown timbering. In the warmth of the May day, no smoke rises from any of the chimneys atop its gabled roofs. Jules gazes at it in wonder. It is not what she imagined, but it is grand. And then Caragh stops short and puts her down in the grass.
Two small crowds stand in the meadow, all dressed in black. One is led by a tall, imposing woman with white blond hair pulled back into a tight bun. Their faces seem frozen into stern expressions, heads tilted slightly back. The other is led by a woman in a soft, flowing cloak, with bright blue gemstones sewn into the hem. Later, Jules will remember nothing else about her, aside from those gemstones and the nervous way she clasped her hands.
“Milones,” an older woman says to Caragh and Jules. She is thick around the middle and through the legs, her dark blond hair turned stiff with gray. “You are late.”
“We are late, but we are here, Midwife,” Caragh replies, and Jules tugs on her arm. Surely Caragh should not speak so to the woman presiding over the ceremony. “Though I’m sorry if we kept you.”
“We can’t be that late,” says Matthew. “Wasn’t that light show the Westwoods just arriving?”
The old woman looks at Matthew sternly, and Jules thinks he must be very stupid. Even she can see that the lightning must have come from the tall little girl with black hair and eyes, holding on to her sisters, a storm cloud and sweat across her brow.
They are the queens. Jules thinks she ought to bow, but she cannot stop staring. The three little girls are all alike in coloring, with black hair and eyes, but otherwise, they are each different, no two the same height or with similar features. They are nearly Jules’s very same age, though they seem older, even as the smaller two weep fiercely.
“That’s enough, Mirabella,” the Midwife says.
The girl in the center of the triangle shakes her head. Her black tresses blow across her cheeks and tiny shoulders.
“No,” she cries. “They are afraid, Willa!”
“That one is ours,” says the matriarch of the Westwoods. She cocks a smile at the Arrons, gathered at the adjacent edge.
“Clearly,” the tall Arron woman replies. “Sparking storms and misbehaving. Emotional and unreliable, as so many elementals are.”
Every proud Arron face wears a frown so deep they look like scars. They are a pale family, Jules thinks, though she has heard others describe their beauty as “icy.” After three poisoner queens, they are the strongest family on the island, and the richest. Joseph once told Jules that they had become so strong, even their blood had turned to poison, but Grandma Cait and Grandpa Ellis said those were only wild tales. In the old days, they said, a poisoner’s blood could turn toxic, but only a queen’s. And even then, it was rare. How do they know? Jules asked, wondering whose job it was to taste the queen’s blood, and her grandma Cait had made Ellis stop teasing.
In the middle of the meadow, the three queens listen to the insults spoken between their new families with wide, frightened eyes.
“My Goddess,” Aunt Caragh murmurs. “They weren’t prepared for this. Look at them. They are only children.”
“Poisoner Queen Katharine,” the Arron matriarch says. She holds out her hand for the girl to come, but the queens only huddle closer together, so she sighs and snaps her fingers. “Willa. What kind of spoiled girls have you raised? Separate them. Now.”
The Midwife stares into the grass. She seems so tired, and sad, and Jules wishes the girls would not be taken away. That Willa would not be left alone again inside the Black Cottage, alone until the next generation of queens is born. It is a great honor for a priestess to serve as Midwife, but to Jules it seems very hard.
“Come along now, Queen Mirabella,” Willa says. “Let them go.” She does not look at the little queens when she says this, but they look at her, all betrayal and tears.
“Let me go with them,” Queen Mirabella begs. “Just to get them settled!” She grips her sisters tightly, and the Arron woman clears her throat.
“Oh, do it yourself, Natalia,” Willa snaps.
Natalia Arron strides forward on long legs. Her blond hair is tied back in a bun so tight that the elemental wind cannot touch it. To Jules she seems ageless, too strong and beautiful to be old, too hardened and commanding to be young. Jules watches in wonder as little Mirabella raises her chin and stares her down.
“You will protect her,” she says as she holds her sisters tight. “And treat her like a precious stone?”
The look on Natalia’s face says she would very much like to slap the girl, but she does not. Mirabella is a queen. Instead, Natalia shouts, “Westwoods!”
And the Westwoods come forth. Such is the clout of the Arrons after so many years of ruling the Black Council. The Westwoods grasp Mirabella by her thin arms and pull, and the younger queens start to scream, reaching for their sister only to have their hands slapped away. Jules hides half her face in Caragh’s blowing skirt as Mirabella rages. The wind rises, loud enough to cover the Westwoods’ words of comfort, but not enough to mask the queens’ cries.
Soon, Mirabella is gone, dragged into the trees of the Greenwood, and the storm goes with her. In the meadow, two little queens stand together, chest to chest, wrists locked behind each other’s backs.
“Caragh,” Jules whispers, and tugs on her arm.
“Shush, Jules. Wait our turn.”
But Jules cannot watch them be pulled apart again. And she knows the name of the queen they have come for. Arsinoe. Arsinoe the naturalist, who will be hers to take care of, and Joseph’s too, whether he likes it or not. So she pulls free of her aunt, and steps into the meadow.
“Queen Arsinoe?” she asks, and holds out her hand.
The queens’ heads raise from each other’s shoulders. The taller of the two looks at her, and Jules knows she is Arsinoe. Jules smiles. She points to herself and then to her aunt and Matthew.
“I’m Jules Milone. This is my aunt Caragh and our friend Matthew. We’ve come to take you back to Wolf Spring.”
Arsinoe’s cheeks are streaked with tears and dirt. She looks at Jules, and Jules holds out her hand again. Then the queen looks back at her smaller sister and whispers to her.
“No!” the littler girl says. “They are mean!”
“You have to go, Kat,” Arsinoe says. “And be good. We will see you again.”
For the first time, Natalia Arron acknowledges Caragh, Matthew, and Juillenne. Her eyes slide over them only for a moment, but Jules dislikes the way the look feels, and stands up straighter.
“Good,” Natalia says, and takes the littlest queen’s arm. “Come, then.” She stalks away, nearly too fast for the girl to keep up, dragging Katharine along as she stares back over her shoulder.
Suddenly, Katharine pulls back hard.
“Arsinoe!” she shouts, and Arsinoe springs forward like a cat. She scratches wildly at Natalia Arron’s arms and face, drawing blood before Willa can pry her off. When Arsinoe’s arms are held fast, Natalia slaps her across the face.
Caragh and Matthew gasp, and in Jules’s stomach, butterflies fight with wasps, afraid and outraged.
“You do not strike a queen,” Willa growls.
“That one is no queen crowned,” Natalia says. “That one is walking dead.” She pulls Katharine, crying, out of the meadow, and the Arron procession follows into the trees.
“Come on, Caragh Milone,” says Willa, and softly strokes Arsinoe’s wild black hair, stuck down with sweat and snot and tears. She kisses the girl once and then turns away, back down the meadow toward the cottage. She has raised the queens from birth. And now her work is finished.
Arsinoe stands by herself. A queen should not look so sad or lost or beaten. Jules walks closer, and when Arsinoe does not move, she takes one more step and folds the other girl in her arms.