Ugly Girl Read online

  Bastien’s tone was devoid of anything pleasant or good. I could tell he was speaking from a place of deep hurt, so I listened silently to respect their pain. “We fought with Roland’s army, stayed with him in his palace, but the Cheval Mallet found Roland in the dead of night. I chased that cursed thing, but eventually he outran me.”

  Reyn kept my hand sandwiched in between his, like we were old friends who did that sort of thing when needed. I drove with one hand and my knee, but it was worth it to show him a little sympathy. Reyn glanced over his shoulder to his friend. “You couldn’t have caught the Cheval Mallet, Bastien. It’s not possible. You should stop blaming yourself.”

  When several seconds passed with no one filling in the blanks, I asked quietly, “I’m sorry. I really am, but I don’t know what that means. We don’t have that here. Who or what is the Cheval Mallet?” All their special words sounded French, so I tried my best not to butcher the pronunciation.

  “It’s a pure black horse,” Reyn explained when it seemed Bastien could not. “It’s got a white lightning bolt branded down its flank, and you only see him if you’re desperate enough to leave your life. Then the Cheval Mallet comes to you. If you get on it, he rides you away to the Forgotten Forest, and you’re never seen or heard from again. Some call it the Horse to Nowhere.”

  I was quiet. I mean, really, what was there that I could say? I wanted to say the right thing or reach out to Bastien in some way, but I didn’t want him turning surly again. If my read on him was right, he got bratty when he felt things that made him uncomfortable. When I finally opened my mouth, there was very little volume to my voice. “How long has Roland been missing?”

  “Just over a year. We searched everywhere, but like everyone before us, you can’t follow the Cheval Mallet. The horse finds you, not the other way around.” There was a long pause in which we let the moment of silence hang in the air on Roland’s behalf. Then Reyn cleared his throat. “There was rumored to be a blessing put on the only child of Morgan le Fae.” He squeezed my hand. “When you were born, there was a kingdom-wide celebration. I was only a boy at the time, but I remember the music and the dancing that lasted for days.”

  I sat up straighter, confused. “Wait, are you talking about me? I’m supposed to be this daughter? There was a party when I was born?”

  Reyn rubbed his thumb over my knuckles. Now he was the one soothing me. He could sense my heartbreak over hearing about a life I couldn’t remember. “The whole kingdom was waiting for you. You were the daughter of Morgan le Fae and King Urien. Everyone loved Morgan back then, and many still follow her without question. Your birth was a big deal. It ensured Morgan’s reign would live on through her heir. Women sit on the throne in Avalon, with men at their sides. To give birth to a girl meant our kingdom was secure.”

  “Okay, I feel like you’re making stuff up now just to see how far you can take this. A queen? A princess? A king? Seriously?”

  “Very serious.”

  I motioned to my outfit with my other hand, driving with my knee. “Hello, look at me. I think I would know if I had royalty swimming around in my veins.”

  Reyn stiffened and dropped my hand. “Okay, I don’t know much about your cars here, but I do know you have to use that circle to steer them with.” When I grinned and held my hands up, steering with my knee, he began to fret. “Put your hands back on the wheel!”

  I broke into a light laugh, still navigating the car with my knee while my hands did a crazy dance just to tease him. “It’s alright. I’ve been driving for years.” I placed my hands back on the wheel just so he’d calm back down and tell me more about kings and princesses and the fairytales that I knew couldn’t possibly be real. But, man if they were… I cleared my throat and sat up straighter. “Back to the story. So I got blessed as a baby? Is that like someone says nice things and people write happy thoughts in a baby book or something?”

  Reyn quirked his eyebrow at me, as if silently questioning my mental state. “No, nothing like that. Blessings have magic in them, just like curses. You were given the ability to find things. In case the kingdom’s moral compass got lost, Master Kerdik blessed you with the ability to find anything. So along with ‘Daughter of Avalon’, people started calling you ‘The Compass’.”

  My nose scrunched. “So knowing how to get places is a gift? Huh. I mean, I’ve never been lost on the road.” Even though I couldn’t rely on reading road signs, I still had never been lost. I’d never thought much about it, but maybe there was something to that.

  “Your other blessing was that he gave you a hidden language. It’s one only you can speak. Can you think of what that might be?”

  I racked my brain. “Um, I took two years of Spanish, but I didn’t do all that great in it. You got me. What’s the language?”

  “You can talk to animals. We saw you doing it at the park. It’s how we were certain it was really you.”

  I fidgeted in my chair. “I mean, I don’t know if that’s totally true. They don’t talk talk to me. I more just kind of understand what they’re thinking.” I swallowed hard, keeping my eyes on the road. “Only Lane and Judah know about that. And that’s only because Lane raised me, and Judah caught me doing it too many times for me to explain it away.” I started to feel too under the microscope and shifted uncomfortably in my seat, wishing to disappear. Judah was still unconscious in the backseat, and I was scared he’d been out too long for your average commercial drug-induced sleep. “Could we keep that little detail quiet?”

  Bastien spoke up, coming out of his funk. “Everyone in our kingdom knows it already. We wanted to find you because yeah, Morgan’s evil. She needs you and sent her people looking for you, so clearly she can’t have you. But we also need your help finding Roland.”

  Revelation dawned on me. “Ah. Right. Because I can talk to horses, and can apparently find anything. So I can reason with your Horse to Nowhere, and I can find Roland wherever the Cheval Mallet took him in the Forgotten Forest.” I cast a look over my shoulder to Bastien, whose face was set in a hard frown. He needed my help, but didn’t want it so clearly spelled out for my scrutiny. “I mean, if I can help, I’ll give it a shot, but it sounds like I’m supposed to know how to tap into these abilities, and it doesn’t work like that. If an animal wants to tell me something, I listen. If I need to get somewhere, I just go. There’s not a science to it, so I’m not sure how well it’ll work if I try to use it on purpose. But I’ll help you find Roland if I can. Poor guy.” I pursed my lips. “For the record, explaining this to me? Totally different than abducting me. In the future, best opt for conversation rather than full-on Patty Hursting me from my life.”

  “Noted. There’s actually something in it for you if you help us,” Reyn said, reaching for me. He drew my hand to his thigh, holding my fingers like we were good friends. It was nice. I liked how casual he was and how easily he took to me. It calmed my nerves through a pretty confusing situation. There was nothing romantic to his touch, only kindness, which I desperately needed a dose of after all the fighting. “Roland is the son of the late Duchess Heloise and Duke Isengrim. Heloise was Morgan le Fae’s sister. So Roland is actually your cousin. Morgan le Fae and King Urien ruled Province 1, and Roland took over for his parents when they passed, ruling Province 4.” He let out a heavy sigh. “But now there is no Province 4, since Morgan took it over and sent Roland to the Forgotten Forest.”

  I chewed on my lower lip, unsure how to process the blow that I had not only a mother, but a father, too, plus a cousin. My voice was small when it came out. “Could you tell me about my dad?” It was too much to hope my dad really was the Superman he’d been in my dreams, but as I held my breath in anticipation of Reyn’s response, I realized that’s exactly what I wanted to be true.

  “King Urien rules alongside Morgan le Fae in theory, but not really,” Bastien added. “Your dad’s been too sick to assist in Morgan’s rule for at least two decades. About a year after you were born, actually. You went missing right after y
ou turned one, and he got a lot worse. Morgan’s been ruling by herself ever since. It was all so innocent in the beginning, but I’m sure you can guess my theory on that. She’s a power-mad lunatic.”

  I followed his logic to the evil queen conclusion Disney had well-trained me to expect. “You think my mom poisoned my dad or hurt him somehow so she could rule the kingdom without his input?”

  Reyn nodded. “That’s exactly right. He was usually the vote against warring between the provinces. Morgan was always trying to shut him up. I haven’t talked to Elaine of Avalon, but something tells me that when we do, she’ll tell us she took you to keep you from the same fate that found your father.”

  “Tell her about Master Kerdik,” Bastien suggested. “She needs to know the truth so she doesn’t get her pretty little head turned around once we get to Faîte.”

  I don’t know why his jabs had the edge of a compliment buried in them, and why the compliment sounded insulting. “Kerdik’s the dude who created Avalon, right?”

  Reyn settled in, as if telling a campfire story. “Master Kerdik’s a very old immortal. Some say Rétifs were created by him.”

  “Like you?”

  Reyn gave me the stink eye. “I’m thirty. That hardly qualifies as very old.”

  “I meant the Rétif part. Sorry, Grandpa. Go on.” I smirked at him when he shook his head.

  “Anyway, Master Kerdik is a very powerful man. He’s the immortal who gave you your birth blessing.”

  “I’ll be sure to send him a thank you card.”

  “The magic he could wield? No one in our generation has ever seen his equal in Avalon. His main focus was vitality. So he had a fair say in crops growing, people procreating, things like that. Legend says that he grew so powerful that he began to fear himself. So he put a portion of his magic into nine jewels, capturing his ability to make the land and the people fertile in each stone. Then he divvied up the gems between Queen Diana and King Lucien’s nine daughters. Each daughter was given a stone, called the Jewels of Good Fortune. They spread out all throughout Avalon (one of only two continents in Faîte), so the whole nation would be blessed.”

  “I’m sensing a ‘but’ here.”

  “Very intuitive.”

  I shrugged as I switched lanes. “Not really. I just watch a lot of fantasy fiction. Judah’s a huge fan of anything with superpowers. Evil queen, magical stones – you’re doing well on your fantasy checklist. Go on.”

  “Morgan le Fae is the oldest of the nine sisters. She wanted what all people want for their land and their people. She wanted them to prosper. When the first sister died, no one thought much about it, other than the grief, of course. It wasn’t until the Duchess was buried that anyone noticed her jewel was missing. Her province started growing less bountiful, the women had a more difficult time getting pregnant, and it soon became apparent the jewel had been stolen. It wasn’t a big secret who took it, because Morgan le Fae’s province began to flourish.”

  “Yikes. Hard to hide that kind of thing, I guess.”

  “Indeed. One after the other, Morgan took jewels from her sisters, killing them or simply taking it and leaving her sisters with nothing. Province 1 thrived, so the barren regions started to fight back. They’ve waged wars, kidnapped, raided, you name it. The blessing Morgan le Fae was supposed to be bringing to her province has turned out to be the biggest curse she could’ve brought down on her people. War is a manmade curse she wasn’t counting on.”

  I put the pieces together in what I hoped was the right order. “So I’m supposed to be some super amazing compass, right? I’m guessing one of the reasons you found me was so I could find where Morgan stashed the jewels. You want me to steal them back, don’t you.”

  Reyn was quiet, but I could tell I hit the nail on the head. Bastien finally spoke. “We were hoping Duchess Elaine of Avalon still had her jewel, and could bring a little life back to some of the struggling provinces.”

  I mentally face-palmed myself when the skip over the obvious hit me. “Right. Because she’s Morgan’s sister. Lane has a jewel? What does it look like? Lane doesn’t wear jewelry.”

  “They’re all different. Duchess Elaine’s stone was an emerald.” Reyn held up four fingers in a large circle to indicate the circumference of a ping-pong ball. “About yea big.”

  My mouth dropped open. “Um, no. She doesn’t have anything like that. I think I would’ve known if we had a gem that size lying around.”

  Reyn’s face fell as Bastien swore. Reyn recovered first. “That’s alright. We can ask her when we meet up to see whatever came of it. With a few of the gems unaccounted for, the fertility of the land started to go awry. Hence the two-to-one ratio of females to males. It didn’t used to be so unbalanced. Having Duchess Lane’s emerald back in Avalon might help even out the population a bit. Some of the men are growing a bit… restless.”

  My voice was quiet when it broke the stillness inside the car. “It sounds like my mom wanted to do the right thing by her people. She just took it a little too far.”

  Bastien scoffed. “A loyalist already. Great. No, oh wise Princess of Avalon, Morgan brought down a world of suffering on her people when she made them the target for the other provinces. And the rulers are supposed to care about all of Avalon, not just the ones who bow to them.”

  “Jeez! Take a pill already. I’m allowed to have opinions, jackweed.”

  “It’s a nice idea, her using more power over nature and magic to help Avalon. I can see why you’d wish for utopia.” Reyn patted my hand. “I think Kerdik hoped the daughters would do exactly that with the gifts he gave them. I don’t think he anticipated the damage Morgan could do, or the sad state the world would fall into when he gave them prosperity. Good plans tinged with greed always lead to ruin,” Reyn said sagely.

  I went quiet, as was my usual pattern when something too giant threatened to crush me. I wasn’t sure what to make of my family being the villains Bastien was painting them. I wasn’t sure about anything anymore. Reyn was compassionate, rubbing my hand as I drove through the night and on until morning.

  11

  Vegetarian, Kosher, and Poisonous Hot Dogs

  I stopped to refuel at a gas station, tired and wired from driving all night and being stuck in rush hour for way too long. The traffic had been bumper to bumper, so I ditched at the nearest exit, claiming defeat until everything cleared up in an hour or so. I went into the convenience store to look for anything edible, but knew I wouldn’t find anything but junk inside. Bastien was my constant shadow. He didn’t have the same note of aggression in him, now that he knew I wasn’t going to bolt, but he watched me everywhere I went.

  “Are we really in that much danger of being found that I can’t shop without you hovering?” I made sure not to let my tone sound bratty, so we didn’t get into it again. I don’t know why he was so easy to fight with, but I was too exhausted for another round. Stores were a medium amount of stressful even on a good day, because every single item for sale had about a billion words printed all over it. The bags of chips seemed to mock me, sending me to the back of the class for being an idiot who couldn’t read words like “potato” without getting it wrong three times first.

  “We’re probably not in as much danger anymore,” Bastien admitted, examining the candy wrappers with curiosity. “They’re all still looking for you. No one knows we actually found you, and they’ll most likely be searching around where you lived. But still, you’ve been missing for two decades. I’m not about to let you out of my sight now.”

  “I can understand that. I’ve found a flaw in your master plan, though, chief. You may not sleep, but I do. I’m guessing when we get over to your side, it’ll be more running and hiding, right?”

  “Yup. We have to find your aunt, locate the Cheval Mallet, and go get Roland as soon as we can. Then we hide out where Morgan can’t find us until we come up with a plan for what you want to do from there. Maybe we’ll do us a little Jewels of Good Fortune stealing.” He waggled his ey
ebrows, like he was up for a good bout of evil masterminding. Every now and then his non-acerbic personality highlights seeped out, lifting the corner of my mouth whenever the boyishness painted the man. “Since you’re The Compass and can find anything, we might actually have a shot at cutting Morgan off at the source of her magic.”

  “I’m guessing there won’t be much time for sleeping until then?”

  Bastien scratched his five o’clock shadow that was slightly thicker than when I’d first met him. His red flannel shirt was rumpled and his hair was sticking up in the back. “Probably not. How long do you have to sleep every day?”

  I shrugged. “Humans are supposed to get in eight hours a night. I’m a little overdue. I can drive a bit longer, but I’m warning you, a crash is coming soon. Either me, or the car, or both at the same time. Not good.”

  “But you’re not human. You’re Fae.”

  I scrunched my nose, considering this obvious fact for the first time. “I guess you’re right, but I still need to sleep like a human. Not sure why, but it’s not something I can just power through.”

  Bastien ran his hand over his face, factoring in the new information. “Man, we didn’t work that into the plan. Do you have to sleep right now?”

  The allure of sleep seduced me like a gorgeous tempter in a tight t-shirt and butt-hugging jeans. “If it’s possible, then yeah. If not, then I can truck along for another hour or two.”

  He cast around, a hopeless grasping at straws look on his face. “Can you show me how to work the car?”

  I shuddered as I pictured the damage he could do behind the wheel. “Um, no. You have to take classes and get a license. It’s a whole big thing. Not something you can learn on the fly.” I stretched my arms over my head and twisted at the waist. “It’s fine. I can drive a little longer.”