Twice Upon a Marigold Read Free Page A

Appenzeller. And thinking that a queen had spent a year sleeping in the tiny room that had once
been the potato and turnip storage space made him feel a bit light-headed.
    "A carriage! Now!" Olympia commanded. "Where are my clothes?"
    Obediently Wivinia lifted the lid on a chest in the corner, and pulled out the single silver shoe and the white-and-gold dress Olympia had been wearing when they'd first seen her. "We did our best," she said, "but we couldn't get all the stains out." She gestured to several garments hanging from a peg on the wall. "Those are what you've been wearing."
    Olympia gave her a horrified look. "You can't be serious."
    Wivinia shrugged and nodded.
    "Very well," Olympia said in resignation. "I'll just have to wear my old dress. Where's that other shoe?"
    "In the river, I suppose," Wivinia said. To tell the truth, she was feeling pretty offended by this highhandedness from someone she'd sheltered for a whole year. She could see that her friend Angie was truly gone, and she didn't care at all for the new person who'd arrived in her place, queen or not. Wivinia was sure that if
she'd
been a queen, she'd have been a lot nicer to her subjects. This Queen Olympia was an example of why peasants staged revolts.
    "Well, what am I supposed to wear home?"
    Wivinia opened the chest again, displaying the collection of shoes from Granolah's shoemaker. None of them were as fancy as the silver one. There was no need for such shoes in Granolah, but they were certainly well made and plenty stylish enough for village life.
    "I'm glad to see I didn't forget
all
my preferences," Olympia said, inspecting the shoes. "I'll take ... these." She pulled out a pair of red sphinx-1eather pumps with high stacked heels. She turned to Ubaldo. "You! What are you waiting for? I need that carriage!"
    "Uh, we don't have any carriages in Granolah. We never go anywhere."
    "Then you figure out a way to get me back to Beaurivage while I get dressed. And remember, I can sentence you to death. Or worse."
    Or worse?
Ubaldo thought.
What was worse?
Since he didn't really want to know, he turned around and went out the door, still in his nightshirt, to find some help getting this harridan out of Granolah forever.
    It took him a while, since he had to explain what was going on to the first few people he encountered, including the worse-than-death threats. After that, they spread the word around the village as fast as they could. It was even juicier news than Angie's arrival. And he had to wake up Lazy Susan, to see if Angie's
best friend could get her to calm down and quit making unreasonable demands and threats. Truthfully, he just wanted somebody else to deal with her since he was having such little success at it.
    By the time Olympia was dressed, which fortunately took a long time, considering all the repairs she needed to make after a year of cosmetic neglect, the mayor had rounded up a couple of mules, a wheelbarrow, and Lazy Susan, also still in her nightie.
    The look on Olympia's face when she came out of the cottage and saw what Ubaldo had concocted for her was something Wivinia would call to mind for years afterward whenever she needed a good laugh.
    "Hi, Angie," Lazy Susan said. "What's going on? I haven't been up this early in ... well, never."
    "Who are you?" Olympia asked imperiously.
    Lazy Susan gave Ubaldo a look that indicated she hadn't believed him at first, but now she did. "I'm—I'm Lazy Susan. I've been your best friend for the whole last year."
    "I find that very hard to believe," Olympia said. Lazy Susan looked as if she were about to cry. Then, turning to Ubaldo, Olympia said, "You expect me to arrive in Beaurivage in this
contraption
? Pulled by
mules
?"
    "It's ... it's the best we have to offer," the mayor
stammered. "Some of our Granolahans made great sacrifices to give you these things—
their
things. And they aren't too happy about it. They really should be compensated." He trailed off, sure he was wasting his