It was at that moment that the Queen paraded in. She had to be the Queen. She couldn’t be anyone else with a three-tiered crown on her head. She was a vision. Her dress was black with green fringes running down the side and across the bodice. She looked like the Queen of Hearts. No, she looked more like the Queen of Shamrocks, since she was wearing green.

“What are you doing?” she hissed at me. “Didn’t I tell you Prince Murmur is attending tonight? You’re supposed to be downstairs. Tripsy, get out. I’ll finish getting the Princess ready myself.”

Tripsy ran for her life and shut the door behind her.

“You can’t wear that!” The monarch scoffed at the yellow dress I had been so hesitant to take off.

“Why not?” I asked, as I suddenly felt that was a brilliant defense. Then I wouldn’t have to change into anything.

She scowled at me. “I’m not in the mood for jokes,” she pronounced noisily. “Choose a gown at once.”

I grabbed a white one.

“No,” the Queen said, and snatched it out of my hand. “That’s for your wedding.”

“All right,” I said and reached for a pink one. 

“No. Not that one either. Really, darling, where did your sense go? This one,” she said, as she pulled one from the bottom of the pile.

The dress had a tight white bodice and a spring green skirt that flared out to infinity. The bodice had a pattern of beautifully arranged beads. Stepping into it, I wondered if princesses felt like they were going to die of embarrassment when they changed outfits. I thought I could feel the eyes of thirty invisible teenage boys staring at me in the library. If only I could wake up.

“Of course you couldn’t wear pink,” the Queen huffed. “This is a national celebration.”

“What are we celebrating?” I asked. She tightened the corset strings. I yelped.

She didn’t skip a beat. “Your letter from Tremor, of course. Finally, after all these years of waiting, he’s agreed to marry you. Just thinking about it fills me with triumph. Mind you don’t flirt with Murmur tonight, dear. If you do, he won’t like to see you as his sister-in-law and the future queen of Bellique. He’ll be miserable.”

“I’m going to marry Prince Tremor, then?” I asked uneasily as I remembered the opening paragraphs of Evander’s book.

“Of course.”

“Is Tremor downstairs, too?”

“Of course not! He’s with the soldiers in Sealoch. Why would he be here? You’ll go to him tomorrow. I can just imagine you, standing on the balcony of the castle at Sealoch.” She shoved me into a chair and started pinning my hair into an elaborate up-do. “You’ll wear red then, the color of Bellique, and all the soldiers will salute you and think of your beauty as they throw their bodies into the fray for your sake.”

“My sake!” I gasped.

“For the sake of us all,” she corrected. “And after the battles, you’ll go down to the encampment with a flock of servants and see to the medical needs of the brave men that fight for our freedom. It will be glorious and you, my love, will be the most famous beauty in history.”

I thought about that. “Lowly teenager from a one-bedroom apartment becomes The Most Famous Beauty in History.” I’d never imagined being like Cleopatra or Pocahontas. It didn’t seem possible. I’d only wanted to stop being so wretchedly inferior to Evander. The most I’d ever wished was for him to like me.

Then something occurred to me. “Does Prince Tremor love me?”

“Love you? He’s never even met you, but that doesn’t matter. The fame of your beauty has reached his ears,” she said as she corrected the direction I was looking with both her hands on either side of my head. “He must be very interested in you to declare that he wants to marry you. Don’t worry about his stipulations and go right ahead.”

“Stipulations? What stipulations?”

“Oh, nothing,” she said, sticking a final sparkling adornment in my hair. “Nothing. He just wants you to take a boat down the river to Sealoch. It’ll be easy, just a little ferry ride. My brave princess can easily manage it.”

“Right,” I said as the Queen pronounced me ready and elegantly hauled me down the curving stairway.

We descended the tower stairs and down a long hallway onto a balcony that overlooked the ballroom. It was a lovely room with tall, graceful, archways, and six crystal chandeliers hanging from the ceiling. There were beautiful wooden beams put together in a jigsaw pattern on the ceiling with the centers of each pattern like a rose painted green. There were cream and emerald tiles on the floor. At one end, harpists were playing. At the other end, people danced.

Everyone stopped what they were doing when the Queen and I came in and immediately a man dressed in a strange green and yellow coat stepped into place next to me. From there he announced, “Queen Rosary the Fourth and Princess Sarafina.”

I felt kind of important despite my awkwardness as everyone else in the room bowed. Then the Queen led me down another staircase and onto the ballroom floor. Upon my arrival, at least a dozen people moved to speak to me, either to offer their congratulations or to tell me how much they would miss me after I went to Sealoch. Then suddenly, the crowd parted and made way for one man. 

At first, I didn’t know who he was. He was older, had a thick beard, and wore a gold ring around his head. Then it became clear to me. It was the King—Sarafina’s father.

He took my hand in a firm grip and kissed both my cheeks. Unfortunately, I took a step backward. I had played along with my incredibly vivid daydream, but I couldn’t act normal in that situation. He had a beard. I’d never been kissed by a man or a boy and starting me off with kissing an older man with hair on his face was a little much for me. Luckily, he didn’t seem put off by it. Actually, he seemed amused and grabbed my elbow to help me steady myself.

“I knew my darling girl would secure our country’s future,” he said joyfully. His eyes were wet and droplets of water settled in his eyelashes.

I was horrified. “Why are you crying?”

He wiped his face with the heel of his hand and said, “Sealoch is a faraway land and Tremor has been very specific that we are never to travel to the battlefield. If you marry him, you’ll have to stay there with him unless he permits you to go to the capital. I don’t know when we will meet again.”

I stared. That was another stipulation, I supposed. I was about to pipe up with, “Then why send me?” when I remembered what I read in the book. It said they were hoping to lower the tribute Lilikeen had to pay to Bellique to keep their army in place on the seaside. Well, if you compared the two, keeping your daughter at home with you instead of lowering every citizen’s taxes did seem incredibly selfish for a monarch. I smiled at him. I couldn’t believe I was watching someone other than my mother get worked up over the thought of never seeing me again.

The next thing I knew, another man was approaching me. He looked closer to my age. His hair was dark and straight. It fell over his forehead and into his brown eyes. For a second I thought he looked a little like Evander, but the feeling departed when he started talking. He was nothing like Evander.

“Do you remember me?” he asked angrily, as he ground his lower lip into his teeth with his hand.

I didn’t know what to say. How was I supposed to know who he was? But then I remembered the Queen said Prince Murmur was waiting downstairs—my future brother-in-law. I took a stab in the dark and tried to sound like the Queen. “Of course I remember you, Murmur. How long has it been?”

“About three years,” he said crossly.

I remembered reading that he wanted to marry Sarafina. He looked fit to be tied, or rather; he ought to have been tied. He was going to start a fight, and I shouldn’t have thought it was incredibly amusing, but I did. The idea of any guy eating his heart out over me was totally enjoyable. I had to give it to Evander. He really knew how to write a book.

“I remember,” I said in my prettiest voice, enjoying the situation. Maybe he would relax if I paid some attention to him. Except, the Queen told me not to flirt.

“Do you know what a capricorn is?” he asked, his words coming out quickly.

“No,” I answered hurriedly in an effort to keep up with him. “Isn’t it a sign of the zodiac? But I wouldn’t know. My sign is—”

“They’re monsters of the sea,” he interrupted in a louder voice. “Lilikeen is landlocked. It’s no wonder you haven’t heard of them.” 

I cleared my throat and asked. “Are there many of them in the water around Sealoch?”

“Thousands of them!” he exclaimed, breathing a little boozy breath on me. “Some of them grow to be five times as tall as a man and they have eyes as big as serving plates. Yellow.”

“What’s yellow?”

“Their eyes. Monsters, I tell you—monsters. And they’re all up the river.”

“What?”

“The river Tremor is having you travel by tomorrow; they have nests all the way up.” The way he said it had a distinctly nasty edge. “Mostly just the little ones still live in the river, but sometimes you meet a mother. She might think you’re invading her territory just by being there.” Then he grabbed me by the shoulders and forced me to look him in the eye. “You shouldn’t go. You should refuse him.” He paused for effect. “And marry me instead. I’ll make sure you get the tax reduction your people need. Trust me.”

With one glance at Murmur, I could tell he wasn’t the hero of the story. Sarafina wasn’t supposed to marry him and move to the capital of Bellique where she could see her parents more often. She was supposed to meet Tremor. He was the hero.

I shook him off, flipped open my fan, and quipped. “Someday I may be a widow.”

After Murmur had processed that, I heard someone shouting, “Sarah Reagan! Sarah Reagan!”

Thank goodness! I turned my head and before I realized what was going on, I was sitting back in the school library. One of the librarians was standing over me saying, “Are you supposed to sleep through the last two periods of school? If you’re going to do that, then you might as well go home.”

I gazed up at her like she was an angel of mercy. “Thank you so much for waking me up!” Then I whispered, “Did I do anything funny while I was asleep?”

She narrowed her eyes quizzically. “Like what?”

“Talking? Walking? Make a ruckus?”

“No,” she said matter-of-factually. Then she did a double-take. “There’s drool on your chin.”

I wiped it away with ease. It could have been so much worse. Thank heaven I didn’t take my clothes off in public! But if I didn't, then that must mean that his book was a story where I could play one of the characters instead of just read. It was a lot to absorb, but I was the sort of person who never forgot where she was supposed to be.

The clock on the wall said school only had ten minutes left. I followed the librarian to the checkout desk. “Why didn’t you wake me up sooner?”

“Do I look like an alarm clock to you? Don’t you sleep at night?”

“I do. This was the first time I have ever fallen asleep at school.”

“It’s too late to bother about excuses now. Which class were you supposed to be in? I’ll call your teacher and tell them you were here.”

“Thanks,” I said to the librarian as I flipped open Evander's book to see how far I had gotten. 

I had finished chapter one. The last thing written on the page was:

Sarafina opened her white lace fan with a snap. Looking Murmur in the eye she said evenly, “Someday I may be a widow.”

I didn’t understand, but at least I didn’t do anything embarrassing in the library. 

I glanced at chapter two and saw a mass of text. There was still a lot more to read and from the width of the spine, I hadn’t gotten very far in at all. I put a bookmark between the pages and closed the book. What just happened was probably a one-time deal. I probably fell asleep after finishing the chapter and made up all that extra nonsense. All the same, Evander's book was going to be more interesting than anything I’d ever experienced.