Clementine

“Where’ve you been?” Citrine pounces on me the moment I step through the door. Literally. She’s on All-Fours.

“Sightseeing,” I say, winking, and she gives me a small smirk. I open my mahogany faux leather satchel, take out a book titled ‘1,000 Jokes to Tell that will Make or Break a Friendship,’ and hold it out for her. “I picked up your library book for you.”

My sister stands Up and takes it from me. “Thanks!” Her loose, wavy, ocean blue hair hangs halfway down her back, and her narrow copper-colored eyes flit across the cover as her hands turn it over, feeling it and examining the book with interest.

“Although, upon further inspection I hardly think that was a good idea,” I speak with a stuffy accent and turn my nose up playfully. We laugh together as I walk away, looking for the pitcher of water so I can refill my flask.

I don’t realize how gross my mouth feels until the crystal clear water cleans it out, its empty smoothness washing my tongue and clearing my throat. I gasp after drinking a sufficient amount. My headache recedes, and my nausea will clear up soon, I hope.

When I find her again, Citrine is still standing in the entryway. She’s opened the book, is already multiple pages in, and giggling mischievously. “Okay okay, listen: Did you hear about the mathematician who’s afraid of negative numbers? He’ll stop at nothing to avoid them.”

I blink at her. “I think we’re breaking our friendship, Citrine.”

“Oh, boy, this thing is great! Do you think I could memorize every single joke in this book before it’s due?” Citrine wonders, her eyes moving across the page at the speed of light.

“Nope. Oh, but you know what? I’ll buy it for you if you promise not to joke me to death.”

“That would be a grave mistake,” she says solemnly, and I groan. I walked right into that one.

I plod over to the couch and sigh, noticing the mountain of newspapers that still occupy half of it. They don’t leave much room for us people, but I know better than to touch Dad’s papers. He says that they’re ‘historical articles’—or at least they will be in a couple hundred years—and therefore are extremely valuable. I sit carefully beside the news and curl my legs close to me so Citrine can sit down as well.

“You know, I don’t like many math jokes,” Citrine starts. “Only sum.”

I snort. As much as I want to be able to roll my eyes at the jokes my sister likes to tell, sometimes I physically can’t.

“Hey, Citrine?”

“Yeah?”

“I have a secret,” I whisper.

Citrine looks up from her book. “What?”

I motion for her to lean closer to me so I can whisper in her ear. “I met someone—”

Citrine leans back and looks at me with raised eyebrows. “What’s his name?”

“What? No—that’s not what I—” I wave away the question and motion for her to get closer again. “No, I meant that I went into the Black Forest and met a girl our age named Flynne.” I’m deadly specific this time—for obvious reasons.

“So what’s she like? Is she nice?”

“Yeah, she’s pretty nice. She’s funny—not like ‘tells jokes funny’, but real fun—” Citrine cuts me off with a withering look. “Uh, just a type of funny. She actually saved my life, which was a little embarrassing, I have to admit, but at least I’m alive.”

I proceed to tell Citrine everything—which turns out to be a lot less than it felt like. Citrine holds her breath when I mention the whole aftershock of the antidote, but is also eager to hear more about Flynne the next time we meet.

“What are you girls whispering about?” Mom comes down the stairs and into the living room.

“Hey Mama.” I stand to give her a hug. “There’s a new book coming out soon in The Isles of Forgotten Secrets.” I never lie to my parents. There will be a new book in the series. That just isn’t what we’d been talking about, is all.

She opens her mouth to say something, but the mountain behind me catches her gaze and she lets out an exasperated sigh. “That’s it—I’m moving your father’s newspapers to the attic with the rest of those confounded articles.”

“I’m still reading them!” Dad practically materializes in the room, and reaches to grab the papers away from Mom.

She lets him take them, but she’s shaking her head. “Aster, find a better place to put them or so help me Goddess I’ll—”

“But I can’t put this one away,” he argues, leafing through the stack and somehow coming up with the paper he’s looking for. “It has our picture!” He holds it up to his face so we can see the front page.

It’s a photo that was taken at Willow’s sixteenth birthday gala a few months ago—more on her later—and we’re all dressed up and smiling at the camera.

Mom softens and smiles at Dad. She kisses him on the cheek and says sweetly, “Clean it up.” But she takes the newspaper he was holding and disappears into the kitchen to make dinner.

─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───

“So, Dad, what do you think it would mean if foxes all of a sudden started coming to Moonflower Valley?” I ask as casually as I can. We’re at our dining room table, eating pepper and tomato soup with warm, crusty bread. (Courtesy of my mother and I.) A small, covered basket of bread sits beside our heart-shaped centerpiece that Citrine fashioned for us out of pine needles. The fire blazes in the hearth, spreading a woodsy scent throughout the first floor.

My dad furrows his brow, pondering my question. “Well, it could mean that they’re trying to make peace with Oleander, they’re scoping out for an attack, or… Hey, why the sudden interest?” he asks, flipping the spotlight to me.

“Just wondering,” I shrug, but inside I worry. What if Flynne was planning an attack?

No, Clementine. Really? That’s stupid. She’s thirteen, and she didn’t let you freak out too long about your hand. If she hadbeen up to something, she probably would’ve shoved some berries up your mouth, or just never spoken to you in the first place.

“Dad, do you think foxes would come near the border like, I dunno, just because?”

“I doubt it, love,” he says, blowing gently on a spoonful of soup. “That wouldn’t be smart, since Oleander accused them of murdering the king.”

I nod. Thanks to Dad, I have every historical moment at my fingertips, and I’ve read a lot about King Emerald’s death.

Thirteen years ago, a little while before I was born, Queen Sapphire fell sick with the moonberry plague. She was quarantined immediately, and events at the palace ceased. King Emerald hailed the best doctors from every kingdom he could think of, but it was no use. She passed away a month after I was born, causing much grief throughout the kingdom. She was a kind and just ruler, and her people were sad to see her go.

Samara, the eldest of two daughters, began traveling to distant and nearby kingdoms a few years after her mother passed. My mother has told me what she was like, because she was the head chef back when King Emerald ruled. Samara was the kind of girl that could never sit still during lessons, the kind that always came into the servants quarters to ask how everyone was doing. She was the kind of girl that wanted to do things for herself, and so my mom taught her to cook and bake, and the two, along with Willow, the younger princess, bonded a lot after Queen Sapphire died.

You see, Samara lived for adventure. She would write letters to the kingdom that were put into the newspapers, telling her people of her travels. For a while, King Emerald was mourning his wife, but he was also cherishing the time he had with his youngest daughter. There were no wars, and few parties at the palace, because the king was taking a rest.

But that all changed when Samara died five years later.

She had been visiting the Eastern pack, teaching them how to make carriages like we had in Moonflower Valley, and how to make this fried dough with sweet chocolate in the middle, which had been a Valley secret for hundreds of years. She was reinstating our decades old peace treaty, ensuring no wars for the next century. At least, that was the plan…

Her birthday was also coming up, and she had planned a big party in Moonflower Valley, one that she would invite the entirety of the fox Pack to. But when the party was only weeks away, the Moonberry Plague swept through the East Pack, and the King received a letter from Samara saying that she had left the East Pack and would return home just in time for the party. Apparently, she was taking a detour to further explore the Eastern mountains, but nobody is completely sure what happened to her after that, because she never wrote another letter.

She never attended her birthday gala.

Samara never even got to turn twenty years old, because when King Emerald sent search parties to look for the princess, they found her dead near the Eastern Pack.

Samara’s funeral was held a week later, and again, the kingdom mourned. But after grieving, King Emerald was bent on revenge. How could the foxes kill his daughter? How could they cause him and Willow so much pain? He declared war on the East Pack and many small battles were fought in the surrounding forest. The East wrote for help, but I guess nobody was willing to fight in a losing battle.

They were on their own. Still, the East put up a fight. They had to use the element of surprise since their forces were so much smaller than ours. But even that wasn’t enough.

General Hawksley, now deceased, led the winning battle. Him and his battalions stormed the East under the cover of darkness, killed the East Pack’s leader, and drove out the rest. Finally, the war was over, and the foxes were dead. The same foxes that had once been only a long carriage ride away, a small kingdom bursting with different cultures and ways of life. The foxes… were gone.

King Emerald went into the Forest to scout out his new territory with an entourage of twenty-five men and women. That evening, only three returned. They were bloodied and bruised, and they’d brought back the body of King Emerald. They had been ambushed by foxes, they said, and they’d killed the king and the rest of the entourage. Moonflower Valley mourned again.

Oleander, the late king’s most trusted advisor, was appointed regent until Willow was old enough to rule alone. He threw himself a big party and sent Willow to live with some servants in the Summer Palace. My mother was one of them. Us Hazelwoods all moved down to the fringes of the Valley, along with eleven hundred other men and women. My mom cared for Willow along with the other servants, and eventually, once Willow was older, she started caring for us. Since Oleander started his reign, things have been a lot different in my home kingdom. I’m just still trying to decide if the changes are for the better, or worse.

I finish my soup and don’t bring up the foxes—or politics—again.