Palace of Mirrors Read Online Free PDF Page A

sharply. “Princess Cecilia, you will open your book and begin reviewing your letters. Now.”
    But I’d been infected with some of Nanny’s fury. I didn’t understand everything they were saying—I’m not even sure I remember it all correctly now, or if I’ve melded this argument in my mind with other opinions they’ve expressed, other times. But I understood enough. I knew what Sir Stephen wanted to take away from me.
    I pushed back the book he handed me, and it skidded across the table, coming to rest against the flour sack, getting showered with its own dusting of white.
    “If I don’t go to the village, I can’t see Harper!” I said stoutly. “And he’s my friend! You can’t stop me from being friends with Harper!”
    Back then our friendship consisted of dropping pebblesin puddles together, scratching out pictures in the frost on the village store window, making faces at each other while Harper’s mam and Nanny shopped. But I already knew Harper was worth fighting for.
    Nanny and Sir Stephen laughed off my defiance.
    “Aye, she’s a true princess, all right,” Nanny said, her own anger gone. “Already trying to boss us around!”
    Now, as I bite down on an unyielding sliver of fish—oops, left some scales on that one—I turn over a new question in my mind. If I was willing to defy Sir Stephen when I was five, just for the chance to drop pebbles into puddles with Harper, what am I willing to do to save our friendship now?
    Am I willing to tell him the truth?
    I carefully remove the fish scales from my mouth and glance across the table to see if Nanny has somehow noticed that I’m contemplating the ultimate disobedience. But Nanny isn’t watching me. She’s watching the door, then the window, then the door again, her eyes darting back and forth. There’s a faint rustle outside—a squirrel stepping on a twig, maybe, or the wind blowing branches against the thatch of the roof—and she leans forward, her eyes narrowed, her hand cupped against her ear. She sees me watching her, and puts her hand down. She attempts a laugh.
    “I’m an easily spooked old woman tonight,” she says. “I’m sure that was just Dancer brushing up against the wall.”
    Dancer’s “barn” is just a little shed attached to our cottage, so that’s certainly another explanation.
    “Why?” I ask. “Why are you easily spooked tonight?”
    For a moment I think she’s going to tell me. Her eyes meet mine, and they’re so deep and wise and kind that I can tell she regrets keeping secrets from me. But she shakes her head.
    “You’ll understand when you’re my age,” she says. “Old women like me—we’ve seen too much. We worry too much.”
    “But what if I want to understand now?” I ask. “What if I
need
to understand now, for my own safety?”
    I am proud that I’ve managed to keep my voice level. I may not sound imperial and queenly, but I think maybe I sound like an adult, calm and rational.
    Nanny rewards me with a half smile.
    “If you needed to know, I’d tell you,” she says. “But you don’t, so . . .” She reaches across the table, clasps my hands between her own. “Stay a child. Enjoy your daydreams and wishes, your fun and games . . . Sir Stephen and I can do the worrying about your safety.”
    Nanny’s hands are soft and warm and comforting. I can remember a thousand times she’s soothed away my fevers with those hands, wiped away my tears, held me and hugged me and calmed me. But right now her hands feel like a cage, overly confining. I jerk mine back, and I’m ready to scream out angrily,
But I’m not a childanymore! Stop treating me like a little girl!
    Just then something else happens. The door bursts open, shoved so hard that it slams back against the wall. Both Nanny and I jump up. I’m casting about for a suitable weapon to use to defend myself—the fish knife’s too far away; would the stew pot do in a pinch, slammed down over somebody’s head? Then I hear Nanny say, in a