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The answer comes immediately, and as it does, I ground myself on this bare forest floor, in this moment, feeling somehow heavier, straighter.
Stronger.
There’s one thing I have always been excellent at. I never had to learn. The lessons I took only validated what I knew.
I could tell the rude stranger, but for the first time in days—for the first time in all my life—I know exactly what the right thing to do is.
Tall is the tree,
Gold is the wine,
And the queen of the Hollow,
In her first shine.
My voice isn’t my favorite instrument—I would greatly prefer a violin, a piano, or even a guitar—but it does the trick. There’s nothing but silence.
The melody that never truly left mind, my soul, my very bones, comes naturally to me, and though I only heard them once, so do the lyrics Cissa sang. Yet they’re not quite right. They don’t feel like the truth. My truth. So, my tongue twists to change them.
You tell me she fought,
You tell me she died,
And now I’m stuck in my thoughts,
Which one is a lie?
I’m daughter of no one,
Child of the dead,
And to your cruel land I have come,
Now will you take me instead?
I am nothing but a singer,
Naught but a voice,
But you tell me there’s a crown of elder,
And what is my choice?
I am no queen.
I am no one.
I am a dream.
Tomorrow will come, and I will have your crown.
I don’t control the words. They flow. I want to say I don’t mean them, that I’m only making the song fit, weaving it, as I have so many times before.
But of course, I can’t. Not now. I know I can’t lie.
It’s the truth I hadn’t admitted to myself: I absolutely will take that crown, if it means staying alive.
Even though it doesn’t truly belong to me. It can’t. Monarchs aren’t just born, they’re raised for it, educated, well-bred, taught politics, diplomacy, economics; all of the subjects I scorned when I could. I’m not even fond of history.
