“Because I want a winter hat?”
“Because you like the company, and it seems he likes yours.”
I snorted. “He likes the food.”
But really, Wen was right, like she always was about me. I liked his company. He stank most of the time, and he always dug up our garden, but he didn’t care that my blood grew flowers. He didn’t think I was cursed—not that foxes cared. Or understood.
“You should name him,” Papa had said the third time the creature came around, “if you’re not going to run him off.”
“I don’t own him, so why should I name him?”
“Fox, then,” Papa had suggested, and I’d rolled my eyes.
“Sure, Fox.”
So the name—or lack thereof—stuck.
The fox looked sad when I rolled up the rest of the yarn and placed it too high for him to reach. “Don’t give me that look,” I chastised him. “You made a mess, so I revoke your access to the yarn.”
“Oh, you’re mean,” Wen chided, and told the fox, “If you were at the castle, you could play with the yarn all you wanted to.”
“You’d spoil him.”
“Absolutely.”
By the time we finished all the rose bouquets, it was almost noon, and the Village-in-the-Valley pulsed with many more people than usual, all fresh up from Eldervale and Somersal-by-the-Sea for the coronation. They took the newly built railroad into town. You could see the train curving through the gentle mountains from miles away, a plume of black smoke against the otherwise cloudless sky. When the railroad first came to the Village-in-the-Valley, it mostly brought with it produce from the other kingdoms. Aloriya was a small country made smaller by the fact that the Wildwood was forbidden, and our towns were all less than a half day’s ride from one another. The Village-in-the-Valley, despite its name, was the largest city in the kingdom, home to the castle of Aloriya, so our town became the hub of trade—both inside Aloriya and between the kingdoms that surrounded us. We were affluent, and our kingdom’s coffers overflowed most years, and everyone knew why. Our fields were always golden. Our harvests were always healthy. Our people were always disease-free. It was all thanks to the crown. It could grow crops and darken the skies and move mountains if the wearer was strong enough. We existed in a life of simple splendors while the countries around us were plagued time and again with war and famine and pestilence. But those countries were also filled with new music and new stories and new universities I’d hear tell about in the tavern from merchants from far away . . .
Papa had been the castle’s royal gardener long before I was born—his thumb was the greenest in the kingdom, and he knew every flower, every herb, every seed in the castle’s intricate maze of shrubbery, because he had almost certainly planted them. And if not him, then his father had, or his father before him. The Levinas had been Aloriya’s gardeners for generations, and I’d be the next one, destined to prune Their Majesty’s hydrangeas until I died. And sometimes, sure, that thought itched at me in a place I couldn’t scratch. Trapped inside the walls of the royal garden felt safe, while the horizon, where the sun met rolling golden wheat fields, was like a yawning mouth ready to eat me whole.
I didn’t know what was beyond the valley, or past the Greenhills, or what lay beyond the Saferine Sea. I didn’t know if I could belong there. If I could even set foot.
At least here, I knew. My roots were planted, and I was happy.
The Village-in-the-Valley was home.
“Are you sure you want me and Papa at your coronation? Remember the last time Papa was privy to an open bar with elderberry wine,” I reminded, putting the last touch on the last bouquet, and felt rather proud of myself. A dozen purple roses sat in rusted tins across the counter. The tins didn’t matter—they’d be set in crystalline vases at the castle and given to all the dignitaries as a welcome presents. Wen’s late mother loved purple roses; it was a soft dedication to her.
My best friend grinned. “You mean when he lamented the Great Pig Race of the Summerside Year?”
“That one exactly.”
“I love your papa’s stories.”
“That makes one of us.”
She elbowed me in the side. “You like them, too.”
“I like to forget about them, sure.”
Wen finished her last knot in the flower crown and placed it on her head. She looked at herself in the reflection of one of the rose tins and sighed. “I wish the crown were actually made of flowers. It’d be a lot less gaudy.”
“But flowers don’t have magic.”
“I have enough,” she said, and with a wave of her hand, flames burst to life on the tips of her fingers. “And magic isn’t what makes a good ruler, anyway.” She snuffed out the flame, leaving the air smelling slightly of smoke and burning pine.
“No, but I’m pretty sure a lot of people wish they could do what you do.”
“It’s in my blood; I can’t help it. Like you. Well, sort of, I guess.”
I waved my hand. “It’s not the same. You can control yours, for starters. I accidentally slit a vein and, whoops, there’s a forest.”
She laughed and picked up a tin of roses to carry them out to the wagon. Out in the square, colorful ribbons were being hung, held up by large maypoles, and lanterns strung up across rooftops. The sweet aromas of sticky cinnamon buns and vegetable skewers from the food stalls mixed with the heavy smell of apple mead from the tavern had even reached the insides of the flower shop. Tonight, there would be song and dance, great ballads of the late King Merrick and his and Wen’s ancestor, King Sunder, who razed a path through the wood and returned with the crown.
Wen pushed the tin of roses into the back of the wagon and wiped her hands on her trousers as I struggled over with two more tins and heaved them in beside hers. She didn’t move for a long moment, surveying the line of trees where the Wildwood began.
“The wood is too quiet,” she said softly. “It must know my father’s dead. I should’ve been crowned the moment he died.”
I put a hand on her shoulder. “You need to mourn, Wen.”
“I don’t have the luxury to mourn,” she replied. There was a steely look in her eyes—a glimmer of the soon-to-be-crowned Queen Anwen, strategic and perceptive, the hardened shell of the girl who’d come out of the wood eight years ago. “The curse would never give me that. He’s dead, and someone needs to bear the crown. And soon. The wood is coming for us; I just know it. Aren’t you frightened? After what happened . . . ?”
“All the time,” I said, and squeezed her shoulder tightly. “But everything’ll be fine. The wood hasn’t stirred since then. Maybe it’s taken enough for a while.”
“Maybe.” But it was clear she didn’t believe me, and I didn’t believe myself, either. But then she let out a breath and pushed the wagon bed’s door up, locking it in place so the tins wouldn’t come out. “I’ll see you later today?”
“I can’t wait.”
We hugged, and then she scratched the fox behind the ears, lingering at the edge of the gardens as if she would never see them again, and started up the King’s Road to the Sundermount.