“You’re not—”
She held up a hand. “Hush! You see me as a friend, I love you for it and always will. Others don’t and won’t. Yet as queen I’ll have to marry before I grow much older. Ugly or not, there will be many willing to embrace me, at least with the lights out, and there’s no need for kisses to produce an heir. But men who ride the sundial, even a single turn, are sterile. And women are barren. The sundial gives life, but it also takes it away.”
Which explained why there were no little Bowditches, I supposed. “But Petra—”
“Petra!” She laughed scornfully. “All Petra wanted was to be queen of the ruin my brother created. And she was barren, anyway.” She sighed and drank, emptying her glass and pouring another. “She was mad, and she was cruel. If Lilimar and Empis had been given into her grip, she would have ridden the sundial again and again and again. You saw how she was for yourself.”
I had. And felt it. I was still feeling it, although her poison was out of my wound and the pain had been replaced by a deep itch Dora swore would go away in time.
“Elden was the other reason I was so slow in coming to see you, Charlie, although thoughts of you have never left my mind and I suppose they never will.”
I almost asked if she was sure I was too young for her, but didn’t. For one thing, I wasn’t meant to be a queen’s consort, let alone a king. For another, I had a father who would be desperate to know I was still alive. There was a third reason for going back, too. The threat Gogmagog posed to our world might be over （at least for the time being）， but there was also the threat our world would pose to Empis. If, that was, our world found out it was here, with all its untold wealth accessible from a certain shed in Illinois.
“You were there when I killed my brother. I loved him as he once was, I tried to see him as he once was, but you forced me to see the monster he became. Every time I look at you, I remember him, and what I did. I remember what it cost me. Do you understand that?”
“It wasn’t a bad thing, Leah. It was a good thing. You saved the kingdom, and not so you could be queen. You saved it because it needed to be saved.”
“That’s true, and there is no need for false modesty between the two of us who have been through so much, but you still don’t understand. I knew, you see. That the Flight Killer was my brother. Claudia told me years ago and I called her a liar. When I’m with you, I’ll always know I should have done it sooner. What held me back was the selfish need to love his memory. While the kingdom suffered, I fed my geese and tended my garden and felt sorry for myself. You… I’m sorry, Charlie, but when I see you, I see my shame. That I chose to be a mute farmgirl while my land and my people died slowly all around me. And all along I knew.”
She was crying. I reached out to her. She shook her head and turned away, as if she couldn’t stand for me to see her tears.
I said, “Just now when you came, Leah, I was thinking of a bad thing I did. A shameful thing. May I tell you?”
“If you like.” Still not looking at me.
“I had a friend, Bertie Bird. A good friend but not a good friend, if you see what I mean. I went through a hard time after my mother died. My father did, too, but I didn’t think very much about his hard time, because I was just a kid. All I knew was I needed him and he wasn’t there. I think you must understand that.”
“You know I do,” Leah said, and drank more tea. She had almost emptied the pitcher, and it was a big one.
“We did some bad things, Bertie and I. But the one I was thinking of… there was a park we used to cut through on our way home from school. Cavanaugh Park. And one day we saw a crippled man there, feeding the pigeons. He was wearing shorts and had big braces on his legs. Bertie and I thought he looked stupid. Robo-Dude, Bertie called him.”
“I don’t know what that m—”
“Never mind. It doesn’t matter. He was a crippled man on a bench, enjoying the sun, and Bertie and I looked at each other, and Bertie said, ‘Let’s swipe his crutches.’ I guess it was that strain you talked about. The evil. We swooped down and took them and he yelled at us to bring them back, but we didn’t. We took them to the edge of the park and threw them in the duck pond. Bertie threw one and I threw the other. Laughing the whole time. We threw the crippled man’s crutches in the water and how he ever got home I don’t know. They splashed, and we laughed.”
I poured the rest of the tea. It only filled half the glass, which was good because my hand was shaking and my eyes were streaming. I hadn’t cried since I cried for my father in Deep Maleen.