The Mostly True Story of Jack (29 page)

So, instead, she listened to the gentle rhythm of their footfalls on the mossy undergrowth. She listened to the papery rustle of the leaves and the sigh of the swaying tree trunks. She listened as the sounds vibrated and hummed and organized themselves into words. Wendy closed her eyes.

Don’t worry about me, Wendy
, sighed the trees.

I’ll be back
, whispered the leaves.

I believe you
, Wendy whispered in return. A memory, she knew, is like a soul—slippery, fragile, and easily lost. She felt her heart send out tendrils, grasping onto Jack’s memory, gently winding around it, holding it fast.

I won’t forget you.

She held on tight.

N
O ONE SHOULD HAVE TO WRITE A BOOK ALONE
. T
HE PEOPLE
who guided and supported me on my journey from wobbly beginnings, through shadowed middles, toward a fragile and delicate endpoint—well, they are
many
. Too numerous to count. Those named below are merely a fraction of the multitudes of terribly kind individuals who cleared away the stones, who whispered hints and wisdom in the dark. Thank you to everyone both named and unnamed.

I’d like to thank the Loft and Intermedia Arts for
their tireless support of writers, for their programs of mentorship and guidance that built me into the writer I am today, and for the teachers I had during that period: Lyda Morehouse, Pete Hautman, Shay Youngblood, Mary Rose O’Rielley, Thomas Glave, Arthur Sze, and Jim Moore, and to Jerod Santek, who ran everything. Thanks, too, to the writers who slogged through the trenches with me: Rosanne Bane, April Lott, Britt Aamodt, Rob Tregay, Laura Flynn, Vina Kay, Francine Marie Tolf, Lisa Higgs, Nena Johansen, Michele Heather Pollock, Matt Rasmussen, Swati Avasthi, Heather Bouwman, Heather Goodman, and Scott Wrobel.

I’d like to thank the Jerome Foundation for its generous financial support of my work at a time when such support was critical.

I’d like to thank my two wonderful agents: Lindsay Davis—clear-eyed and thoughtful agent extraordinaire, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, who first said
yes
; and Steven Malk—heroic über-agent (white steed, drawn sword, cape flapping dramatically in the wind), who has rescued me more times than I can count. Thanks to the two of you for your patience, guidance, and care.

I’d like to thank Nancy Conescu, first for believing in my book and second for keeping my feet to the fire, bringing me back to the text again and again to rethink, reimagine, re-create, and make it new again. I’m a better writer now than I was before, and I will appreciate that forever.

I’d like to thank James Regan, who first gave me the notion of slippery invisibility. You were only twelve, and you likely don’t even remember. But I do. So thank you.

I’d like to thank Jennifer Regan, Sheila Regan, and Lucille (Regan) Decoux, for your willingness to look at my earlier drafts and provide kind feedback and support (and never once, though I’m sure it occurred to you, pointing and laughing). I’d like to thank Katie and Rob Cullen and Leah Drury and Dave Dobish, who kept me from going mad when madness seemed imminent. And I’d like to thank my dad, Tim Regan, for forcing me to read “On Fairy-stories” by J. R. R. Tolkien, without which this book would have never existed. Thank you.

And, most important, I’d like to thank Ted, who read more versions of this text than anyone should ever have to, and who is as flinty-eyed and clearheaded a reader as any writer could ever hope for. Since you wouldn’t allow me to dedicate the book to you, I must instead dedicate the following: these hands; this heart; this mind; this life.

I
N MOST FAIRY TALES, PRINCESSES ARE BEAUTIFUL, DRAGONS ARE TERRIFYING, AND STORIES ARE HARMLESS.

T
HIS ISN’T MOST FAIRY TALES.

Turn the page for a sneak peek at the next thrilling tale from Kelly Barnhill.

Available October 2012

wherever books are sold.

The end of my world began with a story. It also began with a birth.

Princess Violet, last of that name—indeed the last princess at all to be born in the Andulan Realms—was not a pretty child. When she was born, her hair grew in tufted clumps around her pink-and-yellow head, and her mouth puckered to the side whenever anyone peeked into her cradle. Her gaze was sharp, intelligent, and intense, leaving the visitor with the uncanny feeling that the royal infant was sizing him up, assessing his worth—and finding him
wanting. She was the type of child whom a person wanted to
impress
.

Interesting
, yes.
Intelligent
, most certainly. But not a pretty child.

When she was five days old, her round face broke out in a rash that lasted for weeks.

When she was twelve weeks old, the last of her feathery black hair drifted away, leaving her skull quite bald, with a lopsided sheen. Her hair grew back much later as a coarse, crinkly, auburn mass, resistant to braids and ribbons and almost impossible to comb.

When she was one year old, it became clear that her left eye was visibly larger than her right. Not only that, it was a different color, too. While the right eye was as blue as the Western Ocean in the earliest morning, the left was gray—like the smoke offered to the dying sky each evening by the magicians of the eastern wall.

Her nose pugged, her forehead was too tall, and even when she was just a baby, her skin was freckled and blotched, and no number of milk baths or lemon rubs could unmark her.

People remarked about her lack of beauty, but it couldn’t be helped. She was a princess all the same.
Our
Princess. And we loved her.

On the morning in which the infant Violet was officially presented to her waiting and hopeful people, it was dark, windy, and bitter cold. Even in the Great Hall, where there were abundant fires and bodies to cheer us, our breath clouded about our mouths and hung like ghosts, before wisping away. The King and Queen entered quietly, without announcement or trumpets or pomp, and stood before us. The shivering crowd grew silent. In the months following Violet’s birth, both mother and child recuperated in seclusion, as the birth itself had been treacherous and terrifying, and we very nearly lost both of them to the careless shrug of Chance.

The Queen wore a red wool gown under a heavy green cloak. She gazed over the Great Hall and smiled. She was, without a doubt, a beautiful queen—black hair, black eyes, skin as luminous as amber, and a narrow gap between her straight, white teeth, which we all knew was a sign of an open and honest heart.

“My beloved,” she said. Her voice was weak from her long months in bed, but we hung on to it desperately, every breathing soul among us.

“The snow has drifted heavily upon the northern wall of the castle, and despite our best efforts, a bitter wind probes
its fingers into the cracks, scratching at the hearts of the best and bravest among us.”

We nodded. It had been a miserable winter, the most miserable in memory. And heartbreakingly long. We were well past the month in which the ice should have begun to recede and the world to thaw. People came in droves to the castle seeking warmth, food, and shelter. As was the custom of our kingdom, none was ever turned away, and as a result, we all contented ourselves with less.

“Rest assured, my beloved people, that though the cold has crusted and iced, though the winds still blow bitterly and without mercy, here, in the darkest winter, a Violet blooms in the snow.”

And with that, she undid the top clasp of her heavy cloak and allowed it to fall to the ground. Underneath, a tiny creature was bound to her body with a measure of silk and a series of skillful knots. We saw the downy tufts of hair on the head of the new Princess and those large, mismatched, intelligent eyes.

Princess Violet.

As I said, not a particularly pretty child.

But a
wonderful
child, who, despite the multitudes present in the room, fixed her eyes on
me
. And on those tiny lips—a flicker of a smile.

Though both King Randall and Queen Rose longed for a large brood of happy children, alas, their hopes had been dashed. Each time the Queen’s womb swelled with joy and expectation, it ended in pain and sorrow. Violet was her only child who lived.

Indeed, Violet’s very existence was something of a miracle.

“A miracle!” shouted the citizens of the Andulan Realms on the yearly holiday commemorating the Princess’s birth.

“A miracle,” glumly proclaimed the advisers and rulers
of the Northern Mountains, the Southern Plains, the Eastern Deserts, and the Island Nations to the west, all of whom had harbored hopes that the King and Queen of the Andulan Realms would fail to produce an heir. They stared at map after map, imagining their borders with our country erased, imagining themselves able to reach into the great resources of our prosperous nation and pick plum after plum for their own.

But with the birth of the Princess, there would be no annexation without the bother of war. And, my dears, war is a terrible bother. So our neighbors seethed in secret. They spoke of miracles as they clenched their teeth and tasted acid on their tongues.

AH
, hissed a voice, far away at the mirrored edge of the world.
AN OPPORTUNITY.
And that slithery, whispery voice slowly formulated a plan. It licked its yellow lips and widened its jaws into a grin.

By the time Violet was four years old, she had learned hundreds and hundreds of different ways to slip out of the reach of the watchful eyes that minded her—three sharp-faced nannies, a gaggle of pompous tutors, a quick-moving mother, and an easily distracted father. Each day she would go sprinting away through the twisting and complicated corridors of the castle until she reached my quarters, for the sole purpose of hearing another story. I was a storyteller—
the
storyteller, practitioner of a revered and respected occupation in my world, with a long and (mostly) glorious history.

Also, I don’t mind saying, I was rather good at it.

While there was, in theory, a requirement that any castle resident or visitor must capture the fugitive Princess and deliver her, posthaste, to one of her nannies for the swift application of disciplinary action, this rule was routinely ignored.