about the most boring things on earth. Meeting new grown-ups was the worst, because they always wanted to ask her the same dumb questions, like what subject do you like best at school, or how did you get so tall?
But this new grown-up was different. She’d been looking for someone to be King Willowsong for nearly a year now. She’d almost given up. But it was as if the maze had led her to him, as if she had banged into him for a reason. When she had looked up into his awesome green eyes, and seen his hair shining all silvery in the sun, her first thought had been that maybe, finally, she had found a King for Planet Cuspian.
But it would take more than silvery hair and green eyes if he was really going to be King. The true test was much harder. If he was truly the King, he had to be able to recognize that her mother was the Queen.
So she had to hurry. She’d noticed a funny look in his eyes when he had said hello to her mother. It might have been the right look, the look a king should give a queen. But her mother had sent her away before she could be sure.
She was almost at the entrance to the maze when she heard people coming up the walk behind her.
“Hello?”
For a minute Liza wished she could just pretend she hadn’t heard the lady calling out. But that wasn’t nice. The Princess of Cuspian didn’t do things like that. At least not very often.
She turned and saw a woman about her mother’s age, but sexier, like someone on TV, and not quite as soft, with her tight shiny black belt and tight blue pants. Still, somehow Liza knew that the lady wasn’t a Mudbluff. She might smell like too much hair spray, and her lipstick might be the color of a really bad bruise, but she wasn’t a Mudbluff.
Her mom thought it was weird, but Liza always tagged everyone right away using the different species from her imaginary planet. Everyone was either a Willowsong or a Mudbluff. A good guy or a bad guy.
It wasn’t that she didn’t understand the difference between made-up and real. It was just that tags made life simpler. Mostly, she had discovered, people were Willowsongs, which was kind of a relief, kind of comforting, when you thought about it.
Most of the Mudbluffs she’d seen were in the movies. Well, there was Mrs. Geiger who taught piano and hurt your fingers trying to make them reach the keys—she was a Mudbluff. And once Liza had watched a woman at the grocery store squeezing her kid’s arm until he cried. Definitely a Mudbluff.
But mostly Liza’s world was made up of Willowsongs.
As Liza slowed down to see what the lady wanted, she noticed that a little boy slouched along behind the woman, scuffing his sneakers across the brick walk. Liza looked closely at his blond hair. She knew him. She had seen him at the Radway School when she’d gone to visit a couple of weeks ago.
Tommy, maybe? Yes, she was pretty sure he was Tommy.
Tommy was hard to forget. He’d spent the whole day in trouble with the teacher. At first, Liza had thought Tommy was a Mudbluff for certain. But then she had looked into his eyes, cool eyes the color of rye grass, and she hadn’t been so sure. Those were the tricky ones, the people who did Mudbluffy things, but their eyes were sad, or tired, or scared, and you suddenly could tell they had reasons, big reasons, for the bad things they did.
“Hi,” the woman said as she drew closer. “I’m Annie Cheatwood.” Her blue eyes swept Liza’s face, smiling and frowning at the same time. “I guess you’re Molly’s little girl, aren’t you? Good grief, look at you! Is this déjà vu or what?”
Liza nodded. She knew what the lady meant—her grandmother said that all the time. And she’d seen pictures of her mom as a little girl, so she knew they looked alike. Especially the ones where her mom was smiling. There weren’t very many of those, as if her mother had always been hiding a missing tooth or something.
“Yes,” she said, curious to think that her mother had ever known this lady, who, now that she was up close, smelled of hair spray, Juicy Fruit gum, and, most surprisingly, wood chips.
It was actually kind of a nice smell. Nothing like her mom, but still. Definitely not a Mudbluff. “I’m Liza,” she added politely.
“Well, it’s great to meet you, Liza,” Mrs. Cheatwood said, sounding as if she meant it. “It’s really kind of a kick. This is my son Tommy. I guess you two are probably about the same age.”
Liza looked over at Tommy, who had his hands behind his head, stretching his head back to stare at the sky, thought there wasn’t anything happening up there, not even an airplane. There didn’t seem to be any point in saying “hi.”
“Actually, we’re looking for Jackson,” Mrs. Cheatwood said. “Jackson Forrest. He lives here, but nobody answered the door up at the house. Is he around?”
“Maybe,” Liza said. “My mom just met a man in the maze, but she didn’t say his name.”
“Hot damn, he cornered her in the maze, did he?” Mrs. Cheatwood shook her head, as if she couldn’t believe how funny that was. Then she wrinkled her nose. “Sorry, didn’t mean to say ‘damn.’ That’s what comes from selling lug nuts to guys in dirty shirts all day. Anyhow, was it a tall, gorgeous guy? Blond? Green eyes to die for?”
Tommy groaned. “For crying out loud, Mom.”
Liza flicked a look at him. He’d begun tearing the leaves from a low-hanging oak branch, and he still didn’t acknowledge her presence.
“I guess so,” she said to Mrs. Cheatwood. “He had green eyes. I think they’re still in there.”
“Great. I hate to bust up a party, but I need to see Jackson ASAP. He’s going to help me get this little devil of mine under control.”
“Damn it,” Tommy muttered with feeling. He swatted violently at the denuded branch. “Goddamn it.”
“And maybe he’ll wash that filthy mouth out with soap while he’s at it,” Mrs. Cheatwood said. She stalked toward the maze, assuming without even looking back that her son would follow her.
Which, after a long, tense second in which his hard green gaze locked defiantly with Liza’s, he did.
Liza hung back a moment, but her curiosity overcame her hesitation, and she decided to tag along.
Green eyes, she mused as she followed the woman’s pointy heel marks that dug a string of small circles in the earth, like a connect-the-dots game. That’s what King Willowsong should have.
Green eyes to die for.
AS NOISES CARRIED toward them through the maze, and the irregular pattern of thudding footsteps grew loud enough to announce the imminent arrival of at least three people, Molly breathed a sigh of relief. She didn’t even ask herself who it might be. She just closed her eyes and thought that she’d never been so glad to hear anything in her life.
Hurry, she implored mentally. Someone, anyone, to break up this awkward moment.
She still hadn’t answered Jackson’s unspoken question.
But she wasn’t sure why she hadn’t. She had a lie ready. A good lie. Carefully thought out, embroidered with so many little homespun details that sometimes she half believed them herself. A lie good enough to fool the entire population
