Except the Queen by Jane Yolen, Midori Snyder Read Free Book Online Page A

taste of berries, mushrooms—they are simply there. Wish and get. And in the hospital, regularly at times even I could recognize, I had been brought platters of things to eat. Of course in the hospital, it was not food I liked. Still, it was edible, and some of it had an almost pleasing sweetness, like the brown drink they called hot chocolate, though why it was called “hot” I do not know. It was tepid at best.
    Nevertheless
, here in my new place, my body kept protesting. I placed my hand atop my belly—a belly so pouchy and distended that I did not want to look at it without clothes on. Still, as I felt the sound under my hand, I suddenly knew it for what it was. I had heard animals and humans make that sound. No—not the angry sound, but that other one. A growl. It made me laugh.
    Then another growl.
    I must go out
before the sun sets,
I thought.
I must chance the steps, go down the noisy street, and find some human market. Use my money quickly before it disappears.
    I counted what I had. There were five pieces of the paper. The numbers on them were 20, 20, 20, 5, 5.
    Glancing through the window, I saw that the leaves of the trees were barely trembling. The sky shone a brilliantblue. If there ever was a day that signaled success, this was it.
    Wrapping the keys in some bone-white paper I found hanging in the smallest room—for I understood that without them I could not get back into my place again—I stuck the small packet of keys and the money papers into my pocket, nestled against my patch of silk. Then I kirtled my skirt above my knees, and went down the stairs.
    The door snicked shut behind me. I turned to memorize it, a solid oak door painted green with a carving of vines. It had no name, but a number. Thirteen. Yes, full of magic. I would know it again.
    Turning, I walked first to the tree. There was another dove sitting on a low branch: a male, quite fit. He cooed when he saw me.
    “Keep watch, my man,” I cooed back, “and there will be something for you.”
    He fluttered his wings, then stretched his neck, and turned his beady little black eyes toward the steps of my place.
    “Fly well,” he said.
    I nodded, then walked down the street, turned a corner, and ran right into chaos.

10

Juan Flores Observes
    T he first time I see her, she comes down the street just as the police car blocks the avenue and the fire trucks drag out hoses like great gray anacondas. I note she is frightened.
    She has a lovely face, like a Madonna, with sharp black eyes, though who has dressed her in those awful clothes I cannot guess. Perhaps she is one of the
locas
who stroll around here mumbling and stealing my apples.
    This one, though, she walks as if she remembers being young and beautiful and cannot quite understand how she has gotten to the age she is, shoulders back but with her hands tight at her sides. However, there is wisdom in her eyes and I smile at her. Wisdom is so seldom found here in Nueva York, we must prize it when we can.
    “
Buenos dias
,” I say to her, because it truly is a good day, if one discounts the swirling light of the police car, and the shouts of the firemen as they set their ladders against the wall of the tenement across the street. With the sun out and shining down in the canyons of this great city one can believe, if only for a moment, that things are clean and bright here, which is a kind of
magico
.
    She leans down and smells the
fruta
displayed on the front shelves. Not touching, not like the others, the
locas
, who just look around quickly to be sure no one is watching before grabbing. Or the bad boys who do it openlyand lift the finger to me. But I watch her and think:
maravilloso!
How else to tell the age and the ripeness if one does not smell the
fruta
. Also I think, for a moment, that she must be from the old country, so I address her in Spanish. I say,
“Claro, Dona,
ustedes conocer las frutas.
” The minute she looks up, those blackberry eyes not quite in focus, I see she is