Featuring:
?? Tulip Walks
?? Bunny Photo Booth
?? Face Painting
?? The Great Golden Egg Hunt
I study the image of the egg at the center of the advertisement. It’s taller than I remember.
The seams more pronounced.
To most people, they would look like subtle cracks, simple decoration, but I know better. When I first saw it, there were no more than two thin lines, delicate as hairline fractures in granite. Now they’ve spread. A lacy branchwork pattern crawls across the surface, splitting and resplitting, as if something beneath the gilded shell has been testing its strength. Perhaps all the magic from the items within looking for weak points.
“It has aged,” I murmur.
Nora’s brows shoot up. “Excuse me?”
“The egg,” I clarify. “It was not so large the last time I saw it.”
She stares at me. “Can you time travel?”
“No.”
“Because that feels like something you should have mentioned earlier.”
“I travel through portals,” I tell her. “Not time.”
“Then how did you…” She stops. “Wait. How old are you?”
I hesitate.
“Older than you,” I admit.
“That’s not helpful.”
“It is accurate.”
She makes a small, frustrated sound, muttering something under her breath that includes the wordsgiantandmenaceas she pulls the phone back and looks down at it. “They don’t open the park up until tomorrow. Easter Sunday. It’s a couple hours drive from here.” She peers up at me, then holds out the phone again. “You sure this is the place?”
I remember it. Walking with my father while children dashed past us in their Sunday best—pinafores, straw hats, suspenders.Wicker baskets dangled from their hands, bright paper grass spilling over the sides. A brass band played somewhere beyond the hedges, the scratch of a gramophone warbling faintly beneath the laughter.
Father had gestured to the egg, taller than both of us.
“It’s enchanted,”he’d told me. “Only one party, bonded to each other, is allowed to enter at a time.”
I remember frowning up at him.“To what end?”
His mouth had curved. Not kindly.“To be judged.”
A chill moves through me now at the memory.
“Once they go in, the egg locks,”he continued.“Impenetrable to anyone else. It will not open again until the armory decides they are worthy of what they seek. Be careful, my son. If you ever decide to breach its entrance, choose wisely. The weapons and who you bring with you.”
At the time, I had assumed he meant allies. Fellow soldiers. Those I trusted to stand at my side in battle.
Now I understand.
