Anyway, I told her, “My keen mind isn't why any of these Scottish dudes want to date me.”
“Dudes!” Sadie raised a hand to her mouth to smother a little giggle. “I’ve never heard this word before, but it somehow sounds like the perfect way to describe them. Oh, Naomi, where do you come up with these turns of phrases?”
Speaking of people, I couldn’t tell the full truth about my intentions. Sadie had no idea that I’d been secretly using forbidden technology to plot my escape from St. Ailbe for years now — or that I’d be leaving her here in Scotland before the new year.
Avoiding her admiring gaze, I made another noncommittal sound as we joined the group of Wölfennites waiting in the wide hallway outside the throne room.
The piercing rhythm of yet another bagpipe song spilled from the open doors, along with the sounds of feet stomping and hands clapping in unison. I tapped my booted foot a little but resisted the urge to bop along since I was still pretending to be a halfwaydecent Wölfennite and worldly activities like dancing were against St. Ailbe's Ordnung.
“What’s going on? Why aren’t we going inside?” Sadie asked Orpah, a hopeful Wölfennite Bride with an upturned nose and mousy brown hair.
Sadie towered over her, too, and I tried not to be jealous.
Sometimes, it felt like we'd been born into the wrong bodies for our personalities.
People always expected me to be way more demure than I was because of my slender frame and the way my dark father’s and light mother’s features had combined in almost perfectly balanced symmetry to create delicate features that did not at all match my straightforward personality.
Oh, how I would have loved to occupy Sadie’s big, bodacious body with her radiant dark skin. I could only imagine how much less nonsense I’d have to put up with if I took up more space and stood taller than most other people I met. And, unlike those two fools from earlier, I adored the way she smelled. Like a fresh winter breeze flowing through a space of same old-same old.
Not that Sadie ever appreciated her good fortune. She kept her huge afro hidden in thin cornrowed braids underneath her bonnet, and even though she was nothing but lovely and gentle, she walked through the world like a female-shaped apology.
Even now, she hunched her shoulders down, making herself as small as possible as she waited for Orpah’s answer.
“Tara and Magnus are performing some kind of wedding entrance dance called the Grand March,” Orpah answered. “And Amanda says we must wait here until the Scottish Wolves finish theirworldly activity.”
“Because Amanda’s the boss of all of us now that Leader Daniel isn’t here to tell us what to do,” I muttered.
Sadie threw me a warning look, and Orpah wrinkled her brow to ask, “What?”
“Nothing!” It wasn't Orpah’s fault that Amanda had lodged herself into the power vacuum created when we left our faith-based and completely male-led community of St. Ailbe behind.
“Do you see Iain and Milly anywhere?” I asked Sadie. I hopped up on my tiptoes, wishing I, too, could see over most of the heads in the throne room’s hallway. “They said they’d meet me out here with the baby so I wouldn’t have to go to this stupid thing.”
“You’re not going to your own sister’s wedding reception!”
I turned to find Amanda Smucker, the self-appointed spiritual guide for the Bridal Exchange program, staring down at me, like a yellow-haired, blue-eyed, modestly dressed Judgement Day angel.
Her voice vibrated with outrage as she asked, “Naomi Hamilton, did you truly come all this way without any intention of finding a suitable husband among the Scottish Wolves?”
Naomi
First,the MacDoofus Twins. Now Amanda Smucker. For the second time that day, I felt completely caught out. “Um…”
“C’mon, Duncan, you know the rules!” A nearby voice thundered before I could think up a good lie.
Phew, saved by the commotion! I turned along with Amanda, Sadie, and all the other Wölfennites toward the throne room doors, where a castle guard holding a clipboard appeared to be arguing with an older male.
“If you want into the great hall this eve, you’ll have to hand over your dagger!”
“I already gave you all my chibbery!” The man the guard had called Duncan angrily stroked his beard, which was snow white with flecks of red. “C’mon, the Grand March is near over. You’re going to make me miss it with this foolishness.”
That insisted, Duncan started to charge into the festivities — onlyto be shoved back by the guard who used his clipboard to keep the old male from gaining entry.
"Alright, let's do this the hard way, then."
The guard whipped out a metal detector wand — the same kind airport security used to scan us back in Canada when Amanda insisted that we use our exemption to avoid going through the Ontario airport's X-ray machine.
The castle guard ran the device down the front of the old male’s body — then pursed his lips when the wand beeped loudly over Duncan’s calf-high black socks.
