But the village looked like something pulled straight from a storybook or one of those Christmas movies they kept advertising at the top of our show viewings.
Every shop along the main road had a wreath on its door and windows sparkling with lights. The thatched roofs were no longer just dusted but covered in a thick layer of snow that looked so real. Even though it was warm enough for me tobe comfortable in nothing but my strawberry-patterned dress, I couldn’t help but wonder if it would be cold to the touch.
Either way, the fake snow, combined with the garlands of holly wrapped around every pole and the twinkling lights, gave the town such a festive glow that it seemed nothing short of absolutely magic?—
“Oi! Is that The Potential?” a gruff voice called to the left of us. “Isn’t she supposed to be locked away in the palace?”
“She’s fine, Bat,” Brigid called to a huge male in a tweed cap and jacket lumbering out of the butcher shop. He looked to be of Asian descent and had to stand nearly seven feet tall. “I’ve just kidnapped her from her captors for the day, is all.”
Brigid was asked pretty much the same set of questions by every customer and shopkeeper we encountered—and then even more when she confirmed my identity.
“Is it true they kidnapped you all the way from Scotland, then?” the butcher asked when Brigid stopped in to order a Christmas ham.
The butcher seemed pleasantly unconcerned with the kidnapping part of his inquiry.
“Is it true she told the High King he had 'til the New Year or he could go stuff himself?” a female couple who were both well over 6'4" stopped to ask Brigid on the street.
“Is it true she used to be part of a cult that brainwashed her into thinking she was a wolf?” asked the shopkeeper who ran the only decent—“not just for old lady bearies,” Brigid told me—dress shop in town.
I might have felt offended if everyone weren’t so large and didn’t seem to mind me staring at them right back.
Also, the dress sizes at the store started at an XL. Not only were they not plain blue, but everything was designed to fit me.
I teared up as I pulled a Christmas-green wrap dress off the rack that would look perfect on me.
“Have the townspeople upset you, then? Oh babes, I swear they don’t mean anything by it. They’re curious about you, is all.”
Brigid had a peculiar way of being both devil-may-care and empathetic to my every change of expression. It made me wonder, not for the first time, how she and Tadhg had grown up. Even with all the weeks we’d spent together and a co-teacher who didn’t talk, the subject of his mother and father hadn’t come up again since that day he’d walked me home.
“No, it’s not that,” I answered with a watery laugh. “It’s just—I like it here so much. I was kind of hoping maybe I’d hate the town, and that would make it easier to leave if the High King says no.”
“Oh.” Brigid gave me a wholly sympathetic look. Then she asked, “So then, yes or no to a spot of tea at the café down the road? Though I should warn ye, if ye’re crying over this dress shop, that place is going to gut you. Charming as feck, it is.”
So no, I didn’t always understand Brigid, but she made me laugh as we ordered cups of Christmas blend tea at a café just down the road from the dress shop.
She was right, I was a bit gutted by the place. The shop oozed cozy charm, with mismatched furniture, twinkling lights, and shelves brimming with handmade goods, like candles, thickknitted sweaters, and soaps. A roaring fire in the hearth filled the air with the smell of woodsmoke but emitted no actual heat—more sci-fi god tech I suspected.
But Brigid loudly bragged about how the huge, shiny industrial coffee machine sitting behind the counter was 100% real human tech—no sci-fi. Apparently, the café owner had brought both it and a Portuguese outsider bear back to the Secret Kingdom after her time working in The Above as a barista.
“I mean, it breaks down all the time with no one here to service it, and we end up having to use the sci-fi more often than not to get our caffeine fix. Really, it’s become a bit of decoration and nothing more. But it’s the sentiment of it all, isn’t it?” Brigid told me in a much quieter voice as we went to find a table with our steaming mugs of tea.
Somehow, that only made the café even more charming. It was the kind of place I could see myself walking to with a book from the palace library tucked under my arm.
Brigid kicked two teenage boys out of a two-top beside the window—literally, she kicked at them with the bottom of her Adidas sneaker as she said, “That’s what you rotten teenyagers get for not offering a pregnant lady and her friend yer seats when she walked past ye!”
Brigid was nothing like Tadhg. I knew this because she announced, “I’m nothing like Tadhg” after I told her what shows I’d been watching. She then proceeded to make me a written list of shows “my feckhead brother should have led with.”
She shook her head as she wrote in my little notebook. “How have ye seenIndustry, but notBuffy the Vampire Slayer? I swear, you’ve been kidnapped by devils!”
Brigid’s animated words turned into an unintentional shout when all the sound dropped out of the room and everyone, including us, turned their heads to the new arrivals at the café’s door.
It was Tadhg and the Shadow King—looking wholly out of place in the café, even though they were technically the rulers of this kingdom.
There came a stark several beats of silence.
Then everyone but Brigid and me either dropped to one knee or sank into a deep curtsy.
“Your majesties… your majesties… your majesties…” dropped down like the rain Cian always scheduled for three to four p.m. as they made their way over to us.
