Prologue
The waters of the lake sparkled in the sun, sending glimmering shards of diamond over a wash of deep blue. On the shore, five girls gathered around a rowboat.
“Are you sure Mrs. Bloomfield said it was all right for us to take the boat out alone?” asked one girl, the dark-haired Camellia. The headmistress of their school was a kind but firm woman, who didn’t want any of her charges to get into trouble.
“We’re not alone,” retorted Poppy, who had instigated the whole plan. “We’re together and we know what we’re doing! My goodness, we’re all nearly fourteen!”
And so the little party set out in the boat. Poppy took the stern, mostly so she could pose dramatically. Rose volunteered to row on the left side, while Heather took the right. In the bow, Camellia and Daisy sat on the narrowest bench, Daisy trailing one hand in the placid water.
Rose was blind (due to a fever that had taken her sight a few years prior), but that didn’t stop her from rowing, and she put all of her effort into it, her shoulders, arms, and back working hard. Heather mirrored her in perfect concert, and together they propelled the little boat into the middle of the lake.
“I wish I knew a sea shanty,” Rose said. She loved to sing.
“I don’t think we’re allowed to know those,” Heather grumbled (she did not care for the many restrictions placed on young ladies).
“Aye, they’re too salty!” Poppy retorted, laughing.
“Oh, no, the puns again,” Camellia said, rolling her eyes. “I may have to jump overboard and swim to safety.”
“How’s our rowing, captain?” Rose asked Poppy.
“You’re doing marvelously!” Poppy called back. “We’ve got plenty of time before we’re anywhere near the opposite shore. But wait, do put up the oars for a moment. We’re almost exactly in the middle!”
She looked back over her shoulder, but couldn’t see any hint of the grand structure known as Wildwood Hall. The old, rambly building housed the Bloomfield Academy for Young Ladies of Quality, where all of them were students. Today’s excursion was a special treat, for, in a week, they’d all go home for the summer. Poppy would miss her friends (besides Rose—the two girls lived together and Poppy helped Rose navigate the world).
Ah, navigate the world! Poppy smiled at the unintended joke, thinking that her brain had definitely turned to all things nautical. It must be the influence of the story Mrs. Bloomfield had read to them yesterday, for it was full of ships and pirates and a brave princess who sailed the seas until she found her lost love at last.
Inspired, Poppy shifted in the boat, which wobbled slightly (but was otherwise stable, for five girls and their picnic lunch made excellent ballast). She pulled a crown out of her bag and put it on her head. As far as crowns went, it wasn’t very valuable—being made of an old pasteboard hatbox, then encrusted with stray and mismatched glass beads—but the girls used it in nearly all their make-believe games.
“Listen to me! I am the rebel Princess Judith, and I am searching for my beloved Prince Zev. Do you all remember?”
“Of course we do,” Heather replied cheekily. “Mrs. Bloomfield read it aloud from the book of Jewish folktales she just got. I adore how the lovers were separated for so long and then finally got reunited at the end.”
“That’s how fairytales work,” Camellia noted. “It all ends happily ever after, with no loose ends. Life is not so tidy, or so certain.”
Poppy waved that off. “Well, Judith’s tale had plenty of twists and turns. Here, look at these sticks—they’re your swords for when we come upon pirates and thieves in the forests of the island ahead. And now, Rose and Heather, take your oars. Row hard—we’ll pretend it’s the great storm that Judith sailed through on her way across the ocean.”
“Honestly,” Daisy said. “The whole story would have been very short if the characters just talked to each other! After all, Judith and Zev were actually already betrothed and would have been married anyway…except their fathers didn’t keep their promises very well.”
“It’s more exciting the way it happened.” Poppy brandished her stick in the air. “Remember when Judith’s ship got seized by pirates, and she tricked them into following her plan? She was the cleverest of all.”
“She got them drunk,” Heather said bluntly. “If I learned one thing from that tale, it’s not to drink anything an unknown woman offers you.”
Poppy ignored that. “Onward, my faithful crew! We’ll sail to that dark-forested land beyond, and if there are thieves within, we shall beguile them and steal their treasure.”
“Ahoy!” Daisy called enthusiastically, taking up the cause.
When they landed, the girls played for hours, staging scenes from the story they’d heard, and taking turns being the rebel princess who became a pirate and even a king (she had the foresight to pretend to be man for safety) before finding her true love and revealing her own feminine identity, to the amazement of all.
Poppy jumped and shouted and screeched and wept with the others. When she played, she played with all her heart. And a little part of her knew that these long, lazy summer days could not last forever. Someday, they’d grow up, and move apart, and take on the roles of grown women. They’d all have to find husbands and marry, or work in one of the few acceptable positions for ladies.
What lay in Poppy’s future? She couldn’t imagine, but she doubted it would be as exhilarating as the tale of Princess Judith, who fell in love, and endured hardship, and encountered pirates, and was sought after by kings, and made her own way thanks to her own wisdom, despite everything life threw in her path.
When the afternoon was done, and their bellies began to hunger for supper, Poppy led her merry crew back to their trusty ship. This time, Camellia manned an oar, and Daisy took the other.
Poppy adjusted the paper-and-foil crown on her head and pointed in the direction of Wildwood Hall, across the lake.
She called out in a voice that carried far over the water, “Come, let us go home!”
