“Yeah, but look here at the end. Read this poem and tell me it isn’t a million times better than that script we’ve been using.”
They huddled together, Eva’s chin on Zale’s shoulder as they read. I watched with satisfaction as their eyes grew wide, and their faces split into smiles. Finally, Zale looked up, looking both thrilled and devastated.
“Wren, this is amazing, but… the pageant is in four days. How is anyone going to learn this that fast?”
“They don’t need to!” I said. “We need a narrator, someone offstage, like a voiceover.”
“Oh, that’s a good idea!” Eva gasped.
“But who would—” Zale began, but Eva immediately cuffed him on the head.
“What do you mean, ‘who’? Isn’t it obvious? It’s you, Zale. It has to be you!” she said.
“Me?”
“Yes!” I agreed eagerly. “Zale, you are the resident storyteller around here! You had everyone captivated at the bonfire when you told the story of Sedgwick Cove. It was spellbinding! Even the story of this pageant sounded cool when you explained it! So instead of assigning lines and hoping people can stumblethrough them, just tell the story yourself and let the others act it out!”
“We could put a cool vocal effect on the microphone,” Eva added. “And maybe these parts,” she pointed, “we could have everyone recite together just before the battle begins, like a chorus in a musical. It’s only a few lines. They can learn that much.”
Each word we spoke seemed to illuminate Zale’s face more and more, until he was positively glowing with excitement. “This was it!” he crowed. “The final piece of the puzzle we were missing! Do you really think I should?—”
“Zale, you are the only person for the job,” Eva said firmly. “Your voice is a spell in itself —that’s what Davina has always said. If you tell the story, it will be sure to enchant the whole audience.”
The last of the doubt vanished from Zale’s face, and he clutched the book to his chest, grinning. “Sounds like I’ve got some rehearsing to do!”
17
As hopeless as we’d all felt watching Sergei and Ethan stumble around on stilts, delivering their lines in monotone mumbles, we were now wild with anticipation for the pageant. Seemingly overnight, our whole production had been transformed, first by the costumes, then by the replacement of the script. No one could help but stop and listen when Zale spoke in his clear, musical voice; there was no choice but to be swept away by the enchanting images he conjured, just on the rise and fall of his intonation. It no longer mattered that our actors were a bunch of apathetic teenagers with no stage experience—with Zale giving them voice, and the puppets giving them form, all they had to do was not fall over. Kaia and Petra came flying into the next evening’s rehearsal to show off the makeup looks they’d created for the frost fairies and the wood nymphs. The final touches on the costumes also added to the magic—and nothing could have made me happier than watching the proud smile on Bea’s face when she saw her masks atop the towering, almost mythical figures of the Holly and Oak Kings.
Despite how excited we were, we kept all of the details of the pageant a secret. Aside from Eva’s mom, whose help we had enlisted with the costumes and whom we had sworn to secrecy,no one else knew what we had in store for Sedgwick Cove on the night of the festival. Zale felt that the element of surprise would be the final flourish to enchanting the crowd—if their expectations were low, they’d be all the more impressed when they saw what we’d created. As for me, it was hard to keep my mouth shut.
“Really? You can’t give us any hints?” my mom asked on the eve of the festival, as we stood on the cliff above the water.
“No. I promised,” I said.
All of the Conclave covens had gathered together to decorate the sun wheel, another traditional element of the festival. Unlike the pageant, the sun wheel was inherently impressive. Enormous and constructed of wood, it was positioned at the top of the sloping path from the cliffs to the beach. When the pageant was over, the crowd would progress in a sort of parade up to the cliff, where the sun wheel would be lit on fire, and then released. Then the crowd would watch as the sun wheel, flaming and smoking, rolled all the way down to the sea, marking the official triumph of the Holly King and the beginning of his reign until Yule, when the Oak King would wrest the power away once more.
“I don’t even want to know,” Rhi said. “The surprise makes it more exciting.”
My mom pouted a little, and then winked at me. “I’m sure it will be wonderful,” she said. She was tucking blossoms into the spokes of the wheel, and securing them with floral wire. Then she laid her hands on each blossom, one by one, so that they brightened and grew more lush beneath her fingers.”
“What spell is that?” I asked her.
“Just a little something to make sure they don’t wilt between now and tomorrow night,” my mom said, smiling at me.
“Can you show me?”
She smiled. “Come here.”
I walked around the wheel to stand beside her. She took my hand in hers and wrapped it gently around a peony she had just finished wiring to the frame. “Take a moment to connect with the blossom,” she said, “Let yourself feel the life still pulsing through it.”
I closed my eyes and concentrated all my energy on the flower, trying to find that ephemeral “life” my mother was talking about. I was mentally prepared to grope and search fruitlessly, which was why I gasped with surprise only a moment later when I felt it: an unmistakable something running under my fingertips. It was warmth, but not warm; light, but not visible. It writhed and expanded, though it did not move. It was more that I could feel the potential of all of it—warmth, light, growth—all contained in a little beat, like a pulse, running from the petals to my fingertips.
“You feel that?” my mom whispered.
“Yes!” I said, still not quite able to believe how easily I’d done it.
“Now imagine pouring from yourself into that blossom, like filling a cup. Give it your energy.”
