The Wide-Awake Princess Read Free Page A

the strange cart she’d seen arrive was trundling back to the forest, moving faster now that it was free of its load. Reaching the edge of the woods, the driver jumped down and another man emerged from among the trees to take his place. Annie thought this was very odd, and even odder still when three men climbed down from the trees and clapped him on the back as if he’d done something special.
    When the men melted into the forest, Annie headed for the stairs. There was something not quite right about what she’d just seen, so she wanted to talk to the captain of the guards. He looked up at her approach.
    “Thank you for your help this morning, Your Highness,” said the captain. “If you hadn’t been there, the witch would have turned my men into beetles. I know my men. They would have made lousy beetles.”
    “You’re quite welcome, Captain. I’m glad I was able to help. But there’s something that you might want to look into now. I saw a man who delivered a trunk here take his cart into the forest. Another man changed places with him and he went into the woods on foot.”
    “It’s odd, but nothing criminal,” said the captain. “Perhaps someone else was going to take the cart back so the man you saw could visit friends in Shelterhome. Did you hear anything unusual when you saw him?”
    “No, there was nothing.”
    “Then it must be all right,” the captain said, his expression lightening. “Magic would have been the biggest threat. And no one tried to slip any spinning wheels past us in the gifts today. I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about.”
    “Thank you, Captain,” Annie replied. “I’m probably worrying more than I should.”
    “It was your worrying that saved us this morning,” said the captain. “And everyone’s grateful for that.”



CHAPTER 2
    ANNIE NODDED TO THE MESSENGER and hurried up the stairs to the queen’s chamber. Ordinarily she would have been surprised and delighted to be summoned to her mother’s rooms, but this time she knew why her mother wanted her, and it wasn’t to thank Annie for finding the witch.
    Annie almost never entered her mother’s rooms. It wasn’t by choice, however. In accepting the fairy Moon-beam’s gift, the king and queen had unwittingly accepted a second “gift” on Annie’s behalf. The same spell that prevented magic from touching her worked as a damper on other people’s magic. Should anyone be close to Annie for any length of time, whatever magic gifts they had been given began to fade, whether it was beauty, charm, or something as simple as the ability to unravel even the most difficult knots. Gwendolyn hadn’t been the onlymember of the family to be given magical gifts at a christening. Both the king and queen had as many magical attributes as their elder daughter. On the rare occasion that Annie entered the chamber of one of her family members, she was expected to sit in the back as far from them as she could without climbing out the window. The same was true of the Great Hall when everyone assembled for meals; Annie had to sit in the opposite end of the room with the daughters of lesser nobles, none of whom had much magic.
    More than anything, Annie wanted to feel as if she belonged. But instead she felt as if she were a remote and not-too-fondly regarded cousin who was allowed to live in the castle. Although she’d tried very hard to please her parents, nothing their ordinary daughter could do had ever been enough to earn her the same affection that they showered on Gwendolyn.
    Annie sighed, and knocked on the door. When one of her mother’s ladies-in-waiting let her in, Annie found her mother waiting for her in a chair by the fireplace. Although she was over forty years old, the queen looked as young as her daughters. The only time she showed her age was when Annie came near, which the queen was careful to avoid.
    “I want you to go straight to your sister’s chamber,” said Queen Karolina. “I’ve heard that you spent