redder than Ogo. Aunt Beck shot me a scathing look and answered in her driest way, “If gifted means secretly adopting a stray cat, then I suppose I am lucky, yes.”
This did not please the Queen at all. Her beautiful eyes narrowed and she said, quite fiercely, “I know this cat. He would only follow someone of great abilities.”
Aunt Beck shrugged. “I’ve no idea what Aileen’s abilities might be.”
“My good woman!” the Queen exclaimed. “Why not?”
If there is one thing my aunt hates, it is being called a good woman. She drew herself in like a poker. “Why?” she said. “What a stupid question. Because Aileen failed her initiation of course.”
I think I went even redder. My face was so hot that when I put up my hands to hide it my fingers were wet with sweat. I know Aunt Beck was in a bad mood, but did she have to tell the Queen that? I could hear Ivar trying not to laugh.
The Queen made me feel no better by saying angrily, “She can have done no such thing! You must be very unobservant. I can see she is as well qualified as you are. And I do not like your manner, woman. I have said I will grant you money and so I will, but I shall do nothing more to further your mission. And you, particularly, may leave my presence unblessed! Go!” She flung out an arm, pointing.
And that is the last I remember of her. Ogo says he thinks he remembers that people took us and hustled us out of the place. But I only remember being outside, among the green mounds, with Moe already harnessed to the cart beside us. My aunt was clutching a chinking leather bag and looking surprised and angry about it.
Finn was crying, with big tears rolling into his strange beard. “Oh, Wisdom!” he sobbed. “How could you so insult the Lady?”
Green Greet added to this by swirling down from somewhere, crying out, “Unwise Wisdom, unwise Wisdom!”
“Huh!” said Aunt Beck and stomped her way up into the driving seat, red heels flashing annoyance at us all.
Strange to say, our journey after that did not go well. For one thing, it rained all the rest of the time we were on Bernica. Ivar did not help matters by saying morosely, several times a day, that my aunt should know better than to go around insulting queens. This kept Aunt Beck’s bad mood simmering, so that Ogo and Finn hardly dared go near her.
I had to be near her though, because we shared a damp bed in every damp inn we came to. That first night, Aunt Beck took me severely to task about my wretched initiation. “You told me nothing happened that night, Aileen. Why did you lie to me?”
“I didn’t lie,” I wailed. “Nothing happened. I just didn’t have any visions, that’s all.”
“Something must have happened,” Aunt Beck insisted. “What are you hiding?”
“Nothing,” I said. “I told you!”
“Nonsense. Tell me about every minute of the time you were in there,” my aunt commanded. “Every tiny thing. Out with it.”
“You mean,” I said, “I have to keep saying I sat there, Aunt Beck, and I shivered, and the floor was cold and hard, Aunt Beck, and it was too dark to see anything, Aunt Beck, over and over for however many hours I was in there? Because that was what it was like.”
“Not all the time,” said my aunt. “You were asleep when I hauled the stone back. Did you not dream?”
“Not that I remember,” I said, hoping she would stop.
Not she. “So there was no time when you were able to see even a flicker of light?” she persisted. “Don’t shake your head, Aileen. Don’t lie.”
She went on like this remorselessly, until at last I said, “Well, if you must know, I did see the moon shining in.”
“That has to be nonsense,” my aunt replied. “The stone was tight to the turf.”
“No it wasn’t,” I said. “There was a gap and so I rolled the stone aside and came out for a bit. There!”
“That stone,” my aunt said, “had not moved since I rolled it there the night before. I know because I put in two tufts of heather, as we always do, and they were still there in the morning, in the very same places. Or did you think you put them back from the inside through two feet of granite somehow?”
“Oh,” I said. “No. I didn’t know they were there. I just rocked the stone and it came out.”
“Did you?” she said. “And what did you think you saw outside?”
“I didn’t think I saw, I saw!” I said. “It was everything, just as usual, except the moon made it look as if there had been a frost. I saw our cabin and the hills and the sea and the full moon—”
“And was there a light in the cabin?” she asked.
I shook my head. “No, it was all dark.”
“There should have been a light,” Aunt Beck said. “I was keeping vigil for you. You silly child! You go and have a vision and then pretend you didn’t!”
“It didn’t feel like a vision,” I mumbled. I felt very foolish. “If it was one, what does it mean?”
“I have no idea,” my aunt said, to my great disappointment. “But no wonder that disagreeable queen thought you were qualified. You clearly are.”
“But I don’t feel any different,” I protested.
“Neither did I,” said Aunt Beck. “The powers have been in you all along, so naturally you feel the same.”
I said, “I thought I would feel a fizz in my fingers – or at least be able to see into minds.”
“Or through walls maybe?” Aunt Beck said. “Lie down now and get some sleep and don’t be so foolish.”
I did lie down, but I don’t think I would have gone to sleep if Plug-Ugly had not arrived, silent and heavy, to lie across my feet, making that chilly inn bed warm as warm.
I was still feeling foolish in the morning, and for several days after that. How was I to know that it had been a vision? I’d never had a vision before. It had all looked so real. And it seemed unfair of Aunt Beck to blame me because she got angry with the Queen.
I gloomed about this as we trudged through rain across soggy green moors for the next few days. Ogo asked me what was wrong. I told him, expecting him to tell me not to be so foolish, like Aunt Beck had. Instead, he said, “Er – Aileen, aren’t you supposed to be secret about your initiation rites?”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “It’s no great thing after all.”
“Oh,” he said. “I remember my uncle saying he was not to say a word about his initiation. He seemed to think it was awfully holy.”
“He must have had different rites,” I said. “And I do think Aunt Beck is being unreasonable, blaming me. After all, she was the one who was rude to the Queen.”
Ogo looked up at Aunt Beck’s proud profile above us in the cart. “She doesn’t like Bernica,” he said. “She’d have blamed you for something.”
This was probably true. It was quite comforting.
The next day, when we stopped for lunch, we were mobbed by donkeys. The inn we stayed at the night before had sold Aunt Beck two loaves and a bag of hard-boiled eggs. My aunt sat on the tailgate of the cart and made sandwiches for us all, with a pot of relish left over from the inn