A memory flashed through my mind of Granni’s daughter, a bear shifter who’d been captured by the Scottish Wolves and held for interrogation, strapped to my bed, when I was twelve.
She and Granni had raged at each other before Sadie was rescued by a small army of Irish Bears, and Granni never heard from her again. Was Sadie meeting me exactly once as an innocent little girl the reason she’d said it had to be me?
Also…
“Sadie sent this letter—not your sister?” I asked Aunt Tara out loud. I was no longer being paid a pitiful wage to dig up stories about the powers that be, but my holoscribe instincts came back online in an instant.
Tara’s beautiful face darkened, and she slipped back into her frank Canadian accent to say, “Listen, here are the questions Magnus and I want you to ask my sister, along with terms we’d be willing to accept for an official peace decree between our two kingdoms.”
Okay, I guessed this Ireland trip wasn’t so much an invitation as an order.
One I supposed I could have turned down, but I sensed something behind the request that made it impossible for an unemployed holoscribe like me to do so.
A story.
Instead of telling them, “Hell, no—I’m way too busy festering in my depression bed to go on weird side quests,” I pulled out the NanoTab I always stowed in the pocket of my cargo pants before leaving the house and started scribbling notes with the stylus.
That was my first mistake.
[Secure Kingdoms Network - Encrypted Message Thread]
Sadie: Naomi, hi-hi! The courier we sent just came back with word from your sister.
Naomi: Don’t call her my sister. She’s dead to me.
Sadie: Okay, well, the dead Scottish Queen got back to me.
Naomi: What did she say?
Sadie: I thought you weren’t interested.
Naomi: Sadie.
Sadie: She said YES! Dorcas will be coming here in just a couple of weeks!!!
Naomi: Good. The Final Prophecy can finally be fulfilled.
Sadie: Yes. Thank the three gods.
Sadie: Naomi?
Naomi: What?
Sadie: Are you ever afraid that we’re not doing the right thing?
Naomi: I don’t waste time on feelings anymore, only action. But if I did allow myself to feel, I’d be more afraid that we’ll have gone through all this trouble and it won’t change anything.
Sadie: Do you believe the three serpent gods are false prophets?
Naomi: I don’t believe in anything anymore. You know that. But if there’s a chance this will work—that Sea’s and Wild’s deaths will actually mean something if we do this—then we have to try.
Sadie: I’m not so sure.
Naomi: Feel uncertain as much as you want. But make sure Dorie Scotswolf’s at the Three God’s Lake on the designated date.
Secret Kingdom
As curious asI was about the story I might find in Ireland, that first question continued to bother me.
