Einstein, Arnold thought. He could see this girl was really smart. “I don’t know what I want to study, either,” he said. “Just not journalism, like Dad did. You can get in too much trouble.”
“Oh, that’s right. You’ve got big blue slugs telling you what you can and can’t write, don’t you?”
Arnold could feel all the blood draining out of his face.
“Hey, don’t get so upset!” Jo said. “I was only joking.”
Teresa turned her head and said, “Alison’s the same way! It’s cool that you have aliens in your version of America, but why do you freak out when anyone asks about them? Do they use mind-control rays on you or something?”
“Of course not,” Arnold said. “It’s just that back home, you can get in big trouble if you say anything bad about them.”
Jo was quiet as they filed in the door of a building with GINGO TEAG TOWN HALL inscribed on its handsome white marble lintel. She waited till Arnold had collected a paper cup of strong, sweet tea and two sugar cookies, then steered him into a corner.
“Really, what’s the deal with your ‘High Ones?’” she asked. “Are they sensitive or something? Why should they be? I make fun of everything, all the time. Especially our silly old King Charles III, and the way he goes on about how every cow shed and chicken coop is ‘an inalienable part of our immortal British heritage.’” She stuck her chin up and said the last part in a half-strangled voice.
“Are you committing leez majesty again, you little brat?” an old guy with a red face said. Or tried to say. He had a mouthful of sugar cookies, and it was kind of hard to tell.
“Sorry, Mr. Greene, I didn’t know you were a courtier,” Jo deadpanned.
“Smart mouth! If you was my daughter, I’d paddle you till your bum was black and blue!”
“If she were your daughter, Dean, you would not dare,” Mrs. Purnell said. “I suggest you mind your own business, you nosey parker. And as for you, missy,” she said to Jo, “you had best not be giving our foreign visitors a wrong idea of the immense respect in which we Britons hold the royal family!”
“Of course not, Mum!” Jo said, waiting until her mother’s back was turned to roll her eyes dramatically.
Arnold was liking this girl more and more. He couldn’t decide what was weirder, to hear the High Ones talked about so casually, or to be called a foreigner.
Dad was having a lot of trouble fending off Mr. Greene, who kept yelling at him about “the nerve you Alaskans have.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, sir.”
“Yes, you bloody well do! You people have some nerve, after everything we’ve done for you, helping you get free of the Bonapartes’ puppet Russia!”
“Umm…”
“I mean, is it really so much to ask that you not recognize those upstart rebels in Angler-tare?”
Leez majesty? Angler-tare? Are these people really speaking English?
Jo promptly jumped up and stuck her nose in the argument. “You’re being darned rude to our guests, Mr. Greene!”
The red-faced man looked at her as if she was a seagull tearing at roadkill. “I don’t want no brat’s opinion!”
“Well, I’m gonna give it to you anyway! Any Englishman worth his salt ought to support the Anglay Republic! They are our brothers, and they fought long and hard against the French! Remember how happy we all were when they threw the Frogs out of London?”
“Then why don’t they accept the authority of their rightful king?”
“Cause they got too much sense, is what I say!”
There were gasps around the room. “Jacobin!” someone muttered. “Paine-ist! Why donchya go to Australia, ya lousy republican?”
A white-faced Mrs. Purnell swooped in, grabbed Jo by the arm and hauled her protesting from the room. Mr. Purnell hurried after them. Tom looked at the floor, and Teresa whispered something in his ear.
“I think we had best be going, too,” Dad said. “Nice, er, nice meeting everyone. Including you, Mr. Greene! Let’s not talk politics in the future, all right?” Without waiting for an answer Dad hurried Arnold and Alison outside and back to the bookstore.
“What was that all about, Dad?” Arnold asked as they walked along the dingy underground passageway they had taken from the library. Alison looked all around, up and down and behind her, and brought her right hand up to her mouth.
“Allie, stop chewing your nails,” Dad said. “And Arnold, I’m damned if I know. Politics is a dirty business, no matter what world you’re in. We’re lucky the High Ones saved us from our own stupidity.”
Arnold felt disappointed in Dad for saying that. It sounded like something a teacher would say, when Dad was always telling them to think for themselves and not just accept what they learned in school. Is he actually scared of seeing what the world is like when human beings get to run it? That’s pathetic!
But there was no more time to think about it because they had already arrived back at the bare wood-walled version of the library, and Tiferet was twining between their legs mewing, and this time Arnold kept his eyes shut during the transition because he had almost thrown up last time, but it didn’t seem to help because somehow he could still see everything anyway, and then Gloria was standing there with her arms around him and Dad and Alison, and he hurriedly broke away because it was just too icky.
“Well, my dears,” Gloria said, “did you enjoy the air show?”
Arnold wanted to shout that it was the most amazing thing ever, but that wouldn’t be cool, would it? Cool was answering casually, “It was pretty good, I guess.”
Alison didn’t say anything, but her eyes were glowing. Dad said, “It was the most incredible thing I’ve ever seen, Gloria. Thank you.”
“It is a pity the dracos all died out in the yellow-wood at your world’s K-T Boundary,” Gloria said. “They could have provided some needed balance between you humans and the High Ones.”
Arnold had been really into dinosaurs when he was younger, so he knew what she was talking about, though the slight frown on Alison’s face meant she probably didn’t. “Gloria means the time when the asteroid killed all the dinosaurs, 65 million years ago,” he told her. “Which means Jo’s ‘dragon’ is really a highly evolved pterodactyl, isn’t that right, Gloria?”
She smiled at him. “That’s right.”
“What’s a ‘yellow-wood,’ though?”
“A yellow-wood is the turning point where two worlds’ histories diverge,” Gloria said. “You know, from the poem—”
“—by Robert Frost, yeah, I get it,” Alison said. “We had to read it in English class last May. ‘Two roads split in a yellow wood, and I took the less crowded one,’ or something.”
“So Jo’s world isn’t magical, then,” Arnold said.
Gloria’s expression turned very serious. “Magic is where you find it, Arnold. Never forget that. It’s a truth that holds in all the worlds.” She paused. “Well, I shouldn’t keep you waiting here. You’ll be wanting your dinner. I’ll see you both tomorrow in school.”
“Not me, you won’t,” Arnold said. “I’m suspended, remember?”
“I know. But I’ll stop by your house and bring you some books so you won’t fall behind in your classes.”
“That’s the reason Arnold and I came here after meeting with the principal,” Dad explained to Alison. “To get some books so he wouldn’t fall behind. We got more than we bargained for.”
“How