Burke eyed George. “You sure you didn’t copy it down wrong?”
She glared daggers at him down the length of the table. “I’m not an idiot. I copied it verbatim, and it was clearly an ‘a.’”
His hands went up in surrender, accidentally smacking the underside of the table and rattling the dishware.
“You thinkanimod usad potentiadmeans power of the mind, then?” Wynnie inquired, ignoring the ruckus as she studied the original note. “Could it not be soul? Don’t ask mehowI remember that.”
“It could be soul,” Ean conceded, considering the line. “The foreign queen used the power of her soul to weave for all thecitizens, and from nothing, she created a protection for the few citizens at risk from the west...”
George sat with the translation for a few minutes as she mulled it over in her mind. They all seemed to be doing the same thing, thinking and eating. The dining room descended into silence.
It was Isahn who spoke first, “I’ve mentioned this, but in Selwas we haveazhelekezhi,chaosweavers. Is it possible that this foreign queen, who wove from ‘nothing,’ was doing chaos magic?”
“Oh my gods, that’s it. Am I crazy?” George looked around the table.
“Possibly?” Burke offered with a lift of his brows.
Ignoring his snark, she continued, “Could the foreign queen beourqueen? The one who saved the fae and hid Hepikoru? Maybe she also wove a tapestry that tells the secrets of how she protected the city?”
“Maybe there is no tapestry. Ean’s translation sounds like it’s about the veil itself,” Wynnie offered a fair point.
“But the king told my uncle the tapestry is the final piece of prophecy.”
“So you think thereisa tapestry with the words from the note on it?” Wynnie checked.
“Yes,” George and Isahn answered simultaneously before he continued voicing his thoughts, asking, “What would the point of a prophecy be? I’m not familiar with any.”
“The point is to share knowledge,” Eanraig chimed in, his voice cracking with excitement. “I ken many. Some are very old and probably mean nothing. The elves and pixies love to talk and embellish.” He shrugged unapologetically from his seat on a lidded pitcher of water. “The old ones who were fated to the fates shared these stories with my ancestors. Some have come to pass, some will happen in the future, and some might be happening now. There’s the one about the Isle of Creation, the two moons,the lost flame, the one about the six, the one about the gold and silver twins.” He ticked off stories in his tiny fingers. “There’s the Guild Queen, the one about the frozen well, Barton’s story—but I dinnae ken if that’s a prophecy—the—”
“All right. That’s enough.” George held up her hand.
“What’s the gilded one? Sounds most relevant.” Burke asked through a bite of stuffed grape leaf.
“Not gilded like covered in metal. Guild, like a group of like-minded individuals. Ye ken?” Ean checked.
“Oh. Well, tell us that one.” Burke tilted back in his chair, lifting his glass of wine in the air.
Eanraig put on his best storyteller’s voice and began, “This is a tale passed down from a pixie who was fated to fate. The lassie lived her time on Duhra long before the countries had their names. It’s hard to say if what she saw has come to pass or is yet to be.” He cleared his throat and came back with a deeper timbre. “The Queen from Eventual Beneath climbs up to the ground of Heym, called forth by life. There, she gathers all of her wee ’uns who were drowning in the harvest. She protects them ’neath her skirts. But those skirts grow thin and strewn with holes from hungry moths, so the queen forms a guild of the finest mischief makers. Together they dig a fathomless well, and she dives in, splashin’ out a powerful wave of bright water so thick and magical it coats the land, protecting all of her wee bairns forevermore. She is no longer who they believed her to be. She is reborn as somethin’ new and strange, but revered rather than misunderstood. And while they trade one sort of queen for another, the wee ’uns ramble on.”
Isahn glanced askance at George, who shrugged.
Hildy pushed out her lips.
It was Burke who spoke as his chair’s front legs met the floor, “That doesn’t help much.”
Everyone chuckled, Ean included.
“Maybe it does, actually,” Isahn thought aloud. “You said this story is very old, before the countries were formed?”
The elf nodded, shaggy black curls swinging.
“Couldn’t ‘Eventual Beneath’ be Selwas? The last country to form? And ‘Heym’ sure sounds a lot like ‘Home’. Doesn’t Domos mean ‘home’?”
George produced a thoughtful sound from the back of her throat. This is what her father had figured out. They were one step closer to snubbing his plans before they could unfold.
“Is it possible?” Hildy glanced at Ean. “If the ancient queen came from Selwas, herwee ’uns”—she put on an accent in a poor approximation of Ean’s elven brogue—“drowning in the harvest could be the fae, under attack by Gramenia, the land of grass, wheat, what have you.”
“Sounds about right, no embellishments there. Then she leapt into a well and veiled Hepikoru to protect the fae. That makessomuch sense.” Wynnie punctuated her sarcastic remarks with a roll of her eyes.
