Chapter One – The Riddle
“Faeries, come take me out of this dull world, For I would ride with you upon the wind.” – Yeats
“Who’s there?”
The grey fog swallowed the words. Wispy tendrils of mist swirled around the horses and riders, muffling the clink of chain mail and the thud of hooves against soft soil. The fog pressed up against faces and necks, cold and clammy, like fingers ready to strangle.
The broad-shouldered officer at the front of the group removed his helmet. His ebony brow wrinkled as he surveyed the misty shadows. “Is anyone here?” he asked again.
No sound.
“It’s just buildings.” He turned his nickering horse to face the small group of mounted soldiers. “No sign of life—the village is abandoned.”
“No, Captain Okoro,” came a girl’s voice behind them. She stepped out in front of the party, the mist curling around her long white gown and straight red-brown hair. A pendant with an enormous purple jewel hung from her neck, and a silver circlet rested on her forehead. The girl closed her eyes for a moment, listening. She turned to the men on the war horses. “She’s out there.”
“Are you sure, Guardian Selena?” asked the broad-shouldered Captain Okoro. “The report wasn’t clear if—”
“Did that building just move?” a soldier interrupted.
The party turned toward a great shadowy structure. Something wasn’t quite right about its shape.
“I think it’s just—” Okoro began.
At once the structure sprouted wings. With a shriek, it leapt into the air.
“The sphinx!” the girl cried.
Okoro yanked the reins of his horse. “Get out of here!”
Horses reared and bolted in every direction as four enormous paws— each the size of an ox—hit the ground, cruel claws like scimitar blades digging into the earth. The muscles of the sphinx’s lion-like body tensed and her paw shot out, sending a horse and rider flying.
Selena sprinted to keep up with the fleeing horses, her white gown nearly tangling her feet. The sphinx beat her feathered wings and sprang into the air again, and the earth trembled as the monster landed right in front of the girl. Selena looked up into the terrible face—an uncanny
mixture of cat and human features with cruel yellow eyes. The sphinx curled her lips into a smile and raised her terrible claws to strike.
A scarlet-feathered arrow sliced through the air and pierced the pad of the paw. The sphinx hissed in pain.
“Nikterra!” Selena called.
Nikterra, the centaur—half dark-haired woman and half coal-black horse—galloped toward Selena and snatched her up out of the sphinx’s striking distance. The girl swung onto the glossy back as Nikterra fit another arrow to her bow.
Now a volley of the soldiers’ arrows flew toward the monster. The sphinx swatted them away like gnats. Cursing, she leapt into the air, reached out her claws and ripped a thatched roof right off one of the village homes. She turned and hurtled the roof in the direction of the soldiers.
Over the sound of wooden beams smashing on the ground was a more terrible sound—dozens of voices inside the roofless building crying out in fear. The sphinx, hovering over the village, cocked her head at the sound. A cruel smile spread across her face.
“Nikterra, turn around,” Selena cried. “The villagers—they’re hiding inside the buildings!”
Nikterra galloped in the direction of the sphinx. The monster dove toward the earth and ripped a house right off the ground. Screams of terror rang out from inside. The sphinx raised the building above her head, preparing to throw it down at the rest of the village.
“Stop.” Selena slid off Nikterra’s back and landed squarely on the ground.
“Why?” the sphinx spat. “Why should I listen to you?”
“Riddles,” Selena said, looking the sphinx right in her terrible eyes. “I challenge you to a riddle contest.”
“Selena, no!” Captain Okoro cried.
The sphinx landed, setting the building back down on the ground crookedly. She padded over to Selena and stood towering above her, smiling.
“What is your wager?” she said, her voice low. “Selena, don’t do it,” Nikterra pleaded. “You can’t win against her.”
“My life,” Selena answered evenly.
The sphinx lowered herself to the ground, stretching her forelegs out in front of her and flicking her tail eagerly. “I’ve always got time for a riddle,” she purred. “I go first:
You cannot live without my mother; I am her crueler daughter.
I make the mighty fall; I break the hardest rock.
Clutch me in your hand and destroy me;
but let me close myself around you and you are destroyed.
Speak my name.”
The girl paused for a tense moment. The sphinx grinned, flexing her claws and starting to rise.
“Ice,” Selena said abruptly. “Ice comes from water; it cracks boulders; you can melt it in your hand, but too much can freeze you to death. The answer is ice.”
The sphinx growled and lowered herself down again.
“My turn,” the girl said.
“It moves the stars and worlds unknown,
Soft as rain and firm as stone.
The color of the white lamb’s blood,
It stays the raging of the flood;
It sends cool wind in summer’s heat;
It gives the hated raven meat;
It guides this weary wanderer’s feet.
Speak its name.”
Silence for one minute. Two minutes. The sphinx opened her mouth once, only to close it again. Beads of sweat glistened on her forehead. She tilted her head back, her yellow eyes darting back and forth as though she were searching for the answer in the grey morning sky.
At last she turned to the girl. “I have no knowledge of this thing.”
With a crackling sound, the cruel face froze and turned sand-brown, followed by the paws, the legs, the great muscular flanks, and the flinching tail. The feathers on the tips of the wings twitched slightly as they thickened and turned to stone, and all that remained of the sphinx was a great brown statue in the center of the village square.
The morning sun broke through the mist. Villagers climbed out of the wooden buildings.
“She’s done it,” an old woman cried. “Selena’s saved us.”
And at once soldiers and villagers surrounded the girl, all cheering and chattering. Nikterra slapped her on the back. “Well done, Selena.”
The girl reached down, plucked a scarlet-feathered arrow from the ground, and held it out to her. “Thanks, Nikterra.”
Nikterra grinned. “What is taking you so long?”
But the voice wasn’t that of Nikterra at all. It was strained, calling from a distance.
“Megan Selena Bradshaw, it’s time to go,” it called again. “Now.”
Nikterra’s dark figure morphed, broadening and straightening until the girl was looking at the ebony china cabinet in the living room.
Of course. This was how it always ended.
The girl’s gown and pendant were gone, replaced by a purple t-shirt and faded jeans. Instead of an arrow, she held the plastic handle of a feather duster. She tried to hold on to the images of the village for one moment more.
“Megan, now.” Mom seemed to have run out of patience earlier than usual.
The girl gave a final swipe to a shelf of the cabinet, then rushed down the hallway. “I’m coming!”
Her mother stood by the front door, her hands on her hips. “Megan, you have to stop with the constant daydreaming. How long does it take to dust a few shelves? Get in the car.”
Megan climbed into the backseat of the blue Toyota, where her little brother sat engrossed in his crayons and sketchbook.
“I can’t be late today.” Mom backed the car out of the driveway, brushing a lock of wavy red hair from her stern, freckled face.
Except for the reddish tint to their dark hair, Megan and Arden hardly resembled their mother.
Arden looked up from his sketchpad. “Is someone going to buy the house today?”
“Oh, I hope so, honey. If we could be out of here by the middle of June, that would make life a lot easier.”
The middle of June—that was only a few weeks away. Megan’s stomach churned.
“In the best-case scenario, we get settled into the campus house before the start-of-school meetings all begin,” Mom continued.
Megan had seen pictures of the historic home the academy principal was supposed to live in. It was a cold box of a house with white wooden slats and stern-looking windows.
She turned to Arden, who still worked his blue crayon back and forth across his sketchbook. He was a pretty good artist for a little kid. “What are you drawing?”
“That’s me,” he said, pointing. “And that’s the snow. It’s so deep I need a snorkel. It snows a lot in Connecticut, right Mom?”
“A lot more than in Georgia, that’s for sure. I think the school even has a ski team. Speaking of teams, Megan, you need to try out for something in August. I don’t care which sport, as long as you’re involved.”
Sports. The thought just made everything about the new school seem that much worse.
“It will be good for you to get away from the books once in a while,” Mom continued. “To get out and meet some people.”
Oh right, said a little voice inside Megan’s head. Like being the worst player on the team is really going to help in the making-friends department.
She took a deep breath, trying to fight back a wave of panic.
Several silent minutes elapsed. Megan stared out the car window where the familiar roads of her Georgia hometown passed by. In her mind, the buildings disappeared, replaced by the blue skies and whispering grasslands of Vindor. The car melted away from around her and she became Selena once again, bold and confident, riding on Nikterra’s back.
The centaur galloped through the meadow toward the white castle of Alavar on the horizon. Megan could see the castle’s twelve towers, the tallest one reaching like a spire into the sky, and—
“Megan.” Mom’s voice had an edge to it. “Stop daydreaming and get your stuff ready.”
“Sorry,” Megan mumbled. She grabbed her backpack and unbuckled her seatbelt as Mom pulled into her school parking lot.
Her moments in Vindor could never last long enough.
Chapter Two – Crossing Worlds
Around eleven o’clock, Megan navigated through the crowded lunchroom to the table in the far corner as she always did. But as she passed the drinking fountains, her skin prickled as though she were being watched. Not just watched, but seriously stared at.
She turned around and found herself looking right at the table where Shari Wilson and most of the other girls from her homeroom sat. Shari stopped mid-whisper to Christy and glared at Megan.
“You have a problem, Bradshaw?”
Megan felt herself turning red. “N-no.” She made a swift about-face and hurried toward her table.
Shari and the rest of the popular girls had let Megan sit with them at the beginning of the school year. But once they got to know her, it became clear she was no longer welcome at their lunch table.
Megan couldn’t blame them. Why would they want to hang out with mousy, quiet Megan? Shari was thin and gorgeous, while Megan wore loose shirts to hide her flat chest and chubby middle. Shari’s posse flounced into school each morning like they’d stepped out of an issue of Seventeen, while Megan still couldn’t manage her impossibly thick red-brown hair, which usually hung loose with little bits flipping out in random directions.
And even if she did get her act together, Megan would always look so different, thanks to her Scottish mother’s reddish hair and freckles combined with her Japanese father’s tan skin and dark eyes—the only lasting traces he’d left in her life.
Megan set down her tray at her usual table and sat quietly, resigning herself to a rectangular slice of sausage pizza. The prickling feeling returned. The skin on the back of her neck almost stung now, but this time Megan resisted the urge to turn around.
“Ice,” said a voice behind her.
Megan nearly jumped out of the plastic seat.
Her friend Audrey Lloyd clunked down her Return of the Jedi lunch box with a triumphant flourish. “The answer to your riddle. It’s ice.”
“Oh, yeah.” Megan tried to sound calm and normal, but the prickling feeling remained. “You guessed it.”
“Are you two still going on with that riddle contest?” Megan’s next-door neighbor Kiara sat across the table as usual.
“Yep, and I’m on a roll.” Audrey grinned as she unwrapped her bologna sandwich. “How about the one I gave you?”
Megan reached into her pocket and pulled out the folded piece of paper. She opened it and glanced at the first two lines written in Audrey’s favorite sparkly blue ink:
“It moves the stars and worlds unknown,
Soft as rain and firm as stone. …”
“I have no idea what this means,” Megan said. “And I’ve thought about it a lot—I’m pretty sure I’ve memorized it.”
She didn’t mention the fact that it had inspired that morning’s adventure in Vindor—the world which, of course, Megan’s friends knew nothing about. Megan was pretty sure even Audrey would find the fact that Megan had invented her own fantasy world complete with geography, cultures, and politics to be a bit too weird. She didn’t want to scare away the few friends she had.
“Cool.” Audrey reached for her Capri Sun. “I win.”
“So, what’s the answer?” Megan asked.
“Not telling,” Audrey replied. “It’s no fun if somebody spoils it. You have to figure it out on your own.”
“Pretty sure that’s not a rule.”
“Sure it is. Kiara agrees with me.”
Kiara rolled her eyes.
Audrey slurped her juice pack. “So, any news on your mom’s interview?”
Megan’s wave of nausea returned. “She, uh, she got the job. Found out last weekend.”
“Really?” Audrey slapped Megan on the back. “At that fancy prep school in Connecticut? The Edgar Allen Poe something-or-other school?”
“Edith Wharton Academy.” Megan studied the green bean speared at the end of her fork, her appetite gone. “It’s a pretty serious school—it’s got uniforms and everything.”
“And your mom’s going to run the whole thing,” Audrey said. “Your mom rocks.”
“You’re going to be a student there, right?” Kiara asked.
“Starting in September.”
“Wow.” Kiara looked thoughtful. “With a school like that, you could end up on the track to Yale.”
If anyone deserved to be on the track to Yale it was Kiara, not Megan. Megan did okay in her classes—except when there were speeches—but she wasn’t exactly prep school material. And the thought of being the new girl in a school that was probably full of richer, snobbier Shari Wilsons, who would all be cutthroat about grades, plus all the extra expectations she’d have being the principal’s daughter …
“So, are you going to play field hockey and lacrosse and squash and everything?” Audrey leaned forward.
“Uh … maybe.” Megan didn’t even know what those sports were. “Mom said I have to join some sort of team.”
“Lucky. All we have for girls this time of year is softball, which is so lame. I would love to do something actually challenging.”
I’m doomed, Megan thought.
“So …” Kiara hesitated. “When do you move?”
“Um, it depends on when we sell the house, but Mom wants to move by the middle of June.”
“But that’s like less than a month away!” Audrey’s shocked tone didn’t help Megan feel any better.
“Hey.” Kiara smiled gently. “If you want someone to talk to after you move up there, you have my number. Call. I know the new school and moving has got to be hard for you, but you’re going to do fine.”
Easy for the straight-A student to say, Megan thought.
“Remember God’s always going to be there for you,” Kiara said. “He loves you.”
Kiara could say something like that without coming off as fake or pious. Because of Kiara, Megan’s trust in God had gotten real and personal. Megan knew God was her Father and everything, only—
Kiara seemed to sense Megan’s hesitation. “Something wrong?”
There was. Megan knew that God technically loved her. But this little voice kept telling her that He probably didn’t actually like her all that much. But that sounded loserly to say, so instead Megan faked a smile.
“Nothing. Thanks, Kiara.”
*****
The rest of the afternoon went okay until English class, where Megan completely bombed her oral book report. She knew the subject well—she’d read To Kill a Mockingbird at least twice—but when she got up to the front of the room, with twenty-five pairs of eyes fixed on her, she panicked and fell apart. She mumbled and rushed through the summary and lost points because she kept saying the book took place in South America instead of the American South. When it was finally over, she hastily asked for a pass and spent the next twenty minutes in the girls’ bathroom, fighting the urge to be sick.
Now Megan leaned against a grey pole in the schoolyard, waiting for the buses to arrive and feeling ill again.
She closed her eyes and became Selena, Guardian of Vindor, once more. She wore an elegant white dress with the purple jewel on a chain around her neck. No one was disappointed in Selena—she’d just saved Vindor for the umpteenth time and everyone loved her.
With a high-pitched squeal of its brakes, Bus 47 rattled to a stop. Megan picked up her backpack as students pushed past to board.
Someone jostled her, hard. “Hey there, beauty queen.” Shari Wilson sneered at Megan before climbing the bus steps.
Megan stayed rooted to her spot as everyone else boarded.
“Megan, aren’t you coming?” asked Kiara.
Megan looked up at the bus and saw Shari’s face through the window. She and Christy snickered in her direction.
Megan swallowed. “Um … actually I’m gonna walk home.”
“But it’s like a thirty-minute walk to our street,” Kiara protested. “And it looks like it’s going to rain.”
She was right. Megan looked up to see a solid wall of blue-black clouds moving toward them, a sure sign of a Georgia thunderstorm on its way.
“It’ll probably blow over,” she said. “I’ll be fine.”
“But—”
“You’d better get on the bus.” Megan readjusted her backpack and turned. “See you tomorrow.”
She traced her way along the school ground sidewalks and onto Somerset Road. Just that part had taken forever, and the clouds were growing darker all the time. Megan regretted her decision to walk. But she couldn’t sit on that bus, not with Shari and Christy whispering about
her the whole time.
Why did Megan have to panic whenever the popular girls looked her direction? Why couldn’t she stand in front of twenty people and give a simple speech? Why was she so … so mousy and weak?
You’re never going to make it at Edith Wharton. Megan envisioned herself in a plaid uniform, trudging through the Connecticut snow toward the bleak principal’s house. She held a stick or net or whatever you used to play lacrosse as an endless number of Shari Wilsons passed
her on the way, not even trying to hide their contempt. And when Megan got to the house, as austere and bare inside as outside, the phone stayed silent. None of her old friends would ever call, they would have all moved on and …
“Stop it,” Megan whispered. But she couldn’t shake the images now, couldn’t fight off the panic threatening to overwhelm her.
Maybe she should pray. No, said the voice in her head. Even God expects you to be strong and brave. Who are you to whine at Him?
A tear burned down Megan’s cheek.
What was she going to do? She would never be popular enough or smart enough or sportsy enough to fit in. And Mom would pressure her to do more, be more, when in reality she would always be just Megan—small, disappointing, unimportant Megan.
The first drops of rain splashed on her face and arms. Megan looked up from the cracked sidewalk and saw she’d reached the abandoned lot at the end of her street—an overgrown field with a crumbling shed in the back. The wind sent ripples through the tawny grass and made the
treetops above her hiss.
Megan took several deep breaths, trying to slow her rapid heartbeat.
She leaned against a fat oak, the bark biting into her skin. She dug her nails into it as though clinging to a tree could somehow stop her life from spiraling out of control.
“I don’t want to move,” she whispered. “I can’t do this.”
The only place where Megan didn’t feel like a nobody was Vindor.
The sky rumbled, and rain poured down in sheets around her. She pressed herself harder against the tree.
“I wish I really were in Vindor.”
The words sounded strange in her mouth, but she knew they were true. With all her heart, she wished she could escape to Vindor and never come back. In Vindor she was confident and brave and in control, and everyone admired her. And she never had to worry about school or moving or anything.
She wanted it so badly now her chest ached.
The prickling feeling on the back of her neck returned, stronger than before. Megan turned toward the empty field and gasped.
It took a second to process what she saw. Dark rain poured down around her—but not in the middle of the field. There, golden light shone from an unseen sun, and the raindrops sparkled with it.
There was a smell, too—something that made Megan think of summertime and vacation. The sea.
And there, motionless in the middle of the field, stood a girl in white.
Her long dress and red-brown hair were unaffected by the powerful gusts of wind that whipped through the grass around her. She stared right at Megan.
Megan pushed through the long grass toward the center of the field. The sunlight grew warmer and the wind died away. The girl copied Megan’s every stride but moved nowhere, as though she were only a reflection. When Megan came within a few feet of the girl, she froze in
her tracks. The girl stopped moving at the same moment, gazing back at Megan with solemn and eerily familiar eyes.
It’s me.
But it wasn’t. Not quite.
The girl wore a white medieval-style gown, a silver circlet around her forehead, and a pendant around her neck—a smooth, violet jewel the size of a walnut.
Megan drew back, her heart pounding. Impossible.
She glanced again at the girl’s face. It was like looking in a mirror, but one that made Megan look taller and braver and stronger.
Megan reached forward with a trembling hand, and the other girl mimicked the movement. The two hands, Megan’s and—could this be possible?—Guardian Selena’s, slowly drew closer. The fingers stretched skyward. Palm touched ghostly palm. It felt like nothing.
All at once the girl disappeared in a wisp of vapor.
Megan stumbled back. But the heel of her shoe wasn’t where she expected it to be, and she fell, her hands and backside landing in the long grass.
The grass was dry. So was her hair.
The cloudless blue sky held no hint of rain, not even the smell of it.
She scrambled to her feet and turned back to the road.
Only the road wasn’t there. The tawny grasses of the field continued to a line of trees in the distance.
“What in the …?” Megan stepped forward and nearly tripped on the hem of a long dress. Instead of her tee and jeans, she wore a white gown—a real one made of real fabric. Around her neck dangled Selena’s violet pendant.
She touched the smooth jewel, cool and heavy beneath her fingers.
Megan lifted her head. There, less than quarter of a mile away from her, stood a great white castle with twelve towers gleaming in the afternoon sun. One long, white spire reached up into the sky, exactly as she’d always pictured it.
Vindor.
It was real.
