Page 25 of Princess Takes Academy
“Sure.” Though in my head, I whispered,“Do I have a choice?”
Of course I had a choice. I could stay here forever and hope that Keras might eventually be allowed to return. Or I could face our queen, ask for her forgiveness, and beg, if needed, to be allowed to go wherever she’d sent Keras in the first place.
I’d never been a sit-and-wait-around kind of person.
Mama paused a moment in front of the heart tree. The kapok tree had grown even larger over the years, though the dark crack in its buttress roots never seemed to weaken it. I’d loved this tree. I’d whispered my silly dreams to it with childish innocence, hoping the goddesses would hear them. I’d given it my blood every Fire Ceremony in memory of the night that Queen Shara had first grown it.
In exchange, the tree had been my secret portal to anyplace in the world. It had taken me to find my best friend, Keras, or to visit Queen Shara whenever I’d wanted to go see her. As I’d grown older, Keras and I had used the tree to explore the world—safely. As long as I never stepped out of the tree into a new place, I’d reasoned that I wasn’t breaking the rules. It had given me windows into all the most wonderful places that I could imagine.
Until I lost Keras.
When Queen Shara locked the tree so it wouldn’t take me anyplace without her permission, I’d lost my secret portal. My secret glimpses into all the beautiful places in the world I couldn’t wait to visit. But most of all, I’d lost the way I’d found Keras—and would someday find him again. The heart tree had become just another tree to me.
I’d quit sacrificing my blood to it. I’d refused to sit under its branches and stare up at the sky through its leaves while I giggled and told it stories. It had failed me.
No.Ihad failed the heart tree and all it stood for. I’d betrayed it by losing my temper and risking my life in a foolish effort to show Keras I wasn’t a spoiled brat. When that was exactly what I was.
Already standing inside the hole, Mama tugged lightly on my hand to get me moving again.
Solemnly, I pressed a fingertip to one of the spiny knobs on the trunk and punctured my skin. “Thank you, mighty sentinel, for keeping watch over us all these years.”
Then I followed her into darkness.
3
Xochitl
Inside the heart tree, time ceased to matter. As a child, I’d traversed the magical ways through this alternative world with ease. With a thought, I’d gone exactly where I needed to go in a matter of a few steps.
Until the day I’d stood inside the tree begging it to take me to Keras. Tears pouring down my cheeks. Blood dripping down my wrists. And nothing had happened.
I tried to feel for Keras’ location while we walked, fully prepared to drag Mama straight toward him. I was taller than her now, and certainly younger, though she was an Aima queen in her prime. She had power through our goddess, and I’d lost mine. Though I knew Mama wouldn’t use her power against me, even to defend herself. She loved me too much.
I couldn’t feel Keras anyway. My bond had been destroyed, and even inside the heart tree, he was still lost to me. I needed Queen Shara to help me find him, as much as I dreaded seeing her again.
For once, I yearned for the journey through the tree to take an hour. Or longer. A full day would be awesome. Maybe by then I’d gain my confidence to stand before our queen. But as always, the heart tree took us to our destination in a handful of steps. We walked out into House Isador’s nest in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, hundreds of miles away from Zaniyah.
The same summer heat from home mixed with sultry humidity made sweat bead on my forehead. Queen Shara’s heart tree wasn’t as tall as ours, but the scent of roses was heavy on the air and the ground was covered in soft, fragrant petals, turning the path to her house into a red carpet. Birds sat in the branches and flew overhead, mostly large black crows, but I also saw a few familiar quetzals from home.
Wings blurring into a thunderous drone, a hummingbird swept down to hover before my face. It was a beautiful sapphire color with splashes of gold along its belly.
“Huitzilopochtli?” Mama whispered reverently.
Before Queen Shara conquered the god of light, no one had dared whisper the great Aztec god’s name out loud. Even Mama, his secret child. The patron god of Tenochtitlan, he was also called Hummingbird on the Left. As the sun, he battled the moon every day, with all the great warriors who’d fallen in battle at his side until noon. Then they turned into hummingbirds.
A nice story. We certainly had many hummingbirds around the nest, and I liked to think of the great warriors still protecting us. But I’d never seen one such a vivid shade of blue and gold before.
The hummingbird darted up into the sky, quickly disappearing in the brightness of sunlight. So maybe there was something to the stories after all.
“Oh no,” Mama exclaimed. “Your dress.”
I glanced down where she looked. I’d snagged the skirt on something and a long thread hung out, bunching up the material. Sighing, I tried to flatten it back out.
“Don’t pull on it, or it’ll get worse.” Mama pushed my hands away and carefully pulled the thread back beneath the skirt so it wasn’t so visible. “We barely took five steps and you’ve torn your dress.”
Usually my unfortunate clumsiness was a hazard, but maybe this wasn’t all bad. “Let me run back and change into something else.”
“No, it’s not that bad. Come along.”
