Free Until Again by Lou Aronica Page B

was standing in front of the gathering. There were more people in the hall than Miea had ever seen at a Kingdom Congress before. Many – nearly all – were crying, and Miea wondered if they’d been doing so since yesterday’s funeral. If so, that was one more thing she had in common with the rest of Tamarisk.
    She stood before them, and the room quieted instantly. It was customary to begin each Kingdom Congress with a traditional greeting, welcoming the assemblage and inviting them to speak their minds with words first spoken by her great-great-great-grandmother. Somehow, that felt wrong. This occasion required something else, though Miea wasn’t entirely sure what, even if it was essential that she put it into action.
    Just remind them that you are wise, her father had told her. She bowed her head and thought of his voice and of her mother’s unerring strength. She stayed in this pose for a timeless moment. Then she raised her eyes to the gathering.
    “We have been torn from the bosom of our nurturers,” she said in a tone that grew steadier with each word. “I have yet to begin to fathom why this is so, but I have at last begun to grasp that we have a future to live. It is incumbent upon us to live it as richly as we were designed to live it. It is my role to lead you, and I will do everything I can to lead you well. However, I invite each of you to help me lead. Tamarisk is our kingdom, and it is our kingdom to share.”
    Several people were still crying, but many others had stopped and were now regarding her warmly. She was now ready to speak the words of her forebears.
    “The palace calls to order this congress of the wondrously conceived people of Tamarisk. Let all be heard.”

    Becky turned the pages of the journal she’d been writing in since she was eight. Before then, she hadn’t thought of the idea of putting down everything she knew about Tamarisk, but it was great to have all of it on paper. It helped when she needed to remember the name of an amphibian from the bloat marshes or to remind her father about the rules to a game that they’d invented – especially when he was trying to change the rules to fit a story. When she finally came up with the naming system for everything in Tamarisk, she wrote it here. When she told a story about a letter that Miea sent from college or an important palace decree, she would write the complete text here the next afternoon. Only when she decided that Miea should have a secret diary did she write the entries elsewhere. It was especially fun to do so after Becky had come up with the idea of giving Miea a boyfriend in college.
    The last few days had been weird. Going to school on Monday and telling people that her parents had split up was the most awkward thing she ever remembered doing. Of course it helped that her best friend Lonnie – who Becky had called Sunday night – had started telling people before Becky got to them. Sometimes Lonnie's big mouth made Becky angry. In this case it actually made things easier because it meant she didn’t have to have the same terrible conversation so many different times.
    Today had been basically normal. People weren’t asking her about Mom and Dad getting a divorce anymore, and that was totally fine with Becky.
    The weirdest thing had been the nightly calls from her father. She was still incredibly angry with him, and he was still trying to talk to her like everything was okay. She attempted to get it into his head that everything wasn’t okay, but that didn’t seem to be working. She would just have to keep making her point. At least Mom was treating her like a real person.
    She turned a page in the journal to find a lengthy description of the properties of okanogan, the crystal you could mold. Dad had come up with that one when Becky was having trouble thinking of a special way to decorate the walls of the great hall, and she remembered thinking that it was one of the coolest ideas he’d ever had. She kind of