Page 13 of The Abandoned Princess

I leaned as far out the tower window as I could without plummeting to my death. It was a fine line, but I had honed the skill over five long years.

“Charli!” I shouted, gesturing wildly for the petite girl to approach closer.

She looked up at my cry, her expression remaining calm despite my exuberance. But the slightly taller girl next to her didn’t respond at all.

Instead Jayda gaped around the clearing, her eyes sweeping the space without latching onto anything. My stone tower was far too tall and prominent not to draw the eye, but she gave no appearance of seeing it at all. Her response was expected, but it still made my insides twist.

I looked down at the boy sitting at the base of the tower, consuming the last of an apple core.

“Was Jayda’s birthday today, Barnaby?”

“Yesterday.” He paused to spit out a seed. “But she was busy with her parents all morning, and then there was that spring storm in the afternoon. She couldn’t get away until now.”

I slumped against the stone, looking back at the two girls. “So it’s still the same.”

It had been two years since the next oldest of the local children had turned thirteen, and I hadn’t been able to help the creeping hope that the enchantment might have faded in that time.

Charli took Jayda’s arm and pulled her closer to the tower before gazing up at me, her face twisted into a sympathetic expression that made my gut churn.

“Sorry, Daisy,” she called. “We were hoping, but…”

“Can you really still see her?” Jayda asked with wide eyes. “I know the others said they couldn’t anymore after their birthday, but I wondered…”

She didn’t finish the thought, but I knew what she was thinking. The younger children openly suspected their old playmates of only pretending to no longer see me or my tower once they turned thirteen. They thought the youths wanted to mark themselves as too grownup for the childish games they had previously indulged in with the younger children.

As a result, the youngsters branded the youths heartless, but I’d never been convinced. I recognized their expressions well enough to know they truly didn’t see me, and I suspected the enchantment had a hand in making them brush off their old reality so easily.

“You’ll have to apologize to your brother for doubting him,” I called down, but of course she didn’t react.

Charli gave a small grin. “She says you’ll need to apologize to Simon.”

Jayda stared upward, missing my location and glaring angrily at empty air to my left. “You might be invisible now, but I can see you haven’t lost your sense of humor!”

She faltered, looking at Charli. “She really is still there?”

Charli nodded, and Jayda looked upward again. I hoped she wouldn’t promise to still come and see me anyway. Charli was good-natured enough to agree to act as interpreter, but I could already see the discomfort on Jayda’s face. And I knew from experience that the discomfort would only grow. At best she would come a few times, with longer and longer breaks between them until eventually she disappeared altogether. It was better if she made a clean break now.

“I can’t believe the whole tower is just…gone!” Jayda waved her hands in front of her, as if she expected them to hit the stone.

I wished they would. It would have been much easier for the children to convince their parents of my existence if the adults could have felt the invisible tower. But just as with everyone else over thirteen, Jayda’s hands didn’t quite make it to the tower wall. Instead they swerved, waving back and forth just in front of the stone instead of pressing forward, although she didn’t seem to notice the awkward movement. I had no idea how the enchantment managed to redirect her movements without her noticing, but it had never yet failed.

I looked from Jayda to Charli. “How long is it until your birthday again?” I tried to keep the panic from my voice.

She hesitated before replying more quietly, “Three weeks.”

I groaned as Barnaby tossed the stem of the apple and stood up.

“No need to worry about losing Charli. You’ll still have me.” He grinned up at me, displaying two missing teeth.

Charli echoed my groan. “Are you trying to make her more depressed? What good are you?”

“Hey!” He turned wounded eyes on her. “I’m extremely useful!”

“Are you?” She pinned him with a look. “What’s the last useful thing you did?”

“Well…I…” He spluttered, clearly unable to think of anything. “That’s not fair!” he cried at last. “I just can’t think of anything on the spot. Tell her, Daisy!”

He looked up at me, and I smiled sweetly down at him. “There was that time you taught Otis how to use a slingshot to shoot stones through my window. One of them even hit me on the head.”

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