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Luxa eyed the ball closely as one player, Vincent, threw it to his sister, Esme. They were playing a classic game of keep-away, in which one team had members toss the ball to each other and the other team members tried to intercept them. She and Henry were on the opposite team, riding Aurora and Ares, respectively. They glanced at each other momentarily, giving each other a wink, and Aurora dashed toward Vincent to hinder his vision. Vincent’s bat, Apollo, tried to fly upward to assist his rider, but it was no use. Vincent clumsily threw the ball. Meanwhile, Henry and Ares dashed in front of Esme and her flier in order to intercept Vincent’s throw, but Ares had overshot by at least a foot, and the ball plummeted downward.
“Aurora!” laughed Luxa. “We must go downward.”
When Luxa looked down, what she saw surprised her. At one of the arena’s entrances lay a large group of crawlers, and she saw two humans among them. As Aurora dived for the ball, Luxa was able to get a closer look. One human girl, who appeared to be no older than three at most, toddled toward the ball they had been playing with. The other, much older and much taller, made his way through the crawlers toward the excited baby. Luxa heard the older boy shout something at the baby when Aurora hovered just over her. Luxa got a glimpse of the baby up close and noticed something very strange about her appearance.
Just when Aurora flew past the baby, Luxa whispered in her ear. “Let me drop and see them.”
Aurora purred in reply before flipping upside down. “You may drop.”
Whoever these guests were, she wanted to impress them, and she did so by performing not one, but two flips backward. When she realized she would land facing the wrong way, she turned around last minute, careful to land slightly so as not to injure herself.
Luxa didn’t have to glance upward to realize that the ball was falling in her direction, so she held her hand out and waited for the ball to land in it. It landed squarely in her hand. She felt it smack, but she didn’t want these guests to think it hurt her, so she simply smiled at them. Before her, the strange-looking boy stood and glared at her, and it finally struck her what was wrong with him.
She had heard rumors of Overlanders before, and back when her parents were alive, they had met one. From what she and Henry knew, the man was well-versed in the sciences, and he knew how to manipulate strange forces in simple ways. Once, Henry had urged her to spy on her parents and the Overland man, but she refused, as she had been playing with her dolls. Henry had spied for her. When he came back, he told her how the Overland man talked about how to manipulate “electricity.” When she asked what he looked like, he described him at length.
“He was a tall man with dark skin, dark eyes, and dark hair,” Henry went on. “Vikus has said that many Overlanders appear that way due to the sun.”
“The sun?” she had asked, fascinated.
“Yes, the sun. I hear it both nourishes and burns.”
Luxa peered at the Overland child and assumed he must have been about her age. The way he stared at her first made her feel nervous, then completely disrespected. Just then, Luxa felt the baby smack into her leg, and she stumbled backward.
Luxa looked down at the baby, who must have been an Overlander as well.
“Ball?” the baby asked, hands outstretched.
Luxa huffed, as she had wanted that ball for a game she played. A little amused by the situation, she knelt down and held the ball, keeping a tight grip on it. She smiled at the Overland baby and decided to challenge her.
“It is yours if you can take it,” she said.
The curly-haired baby tried to pull the ball away, and when she couldn’t, she tried to pry Luxa’s fingers off. “Ball?”
“You will have to be stronger or smarter than I am.”
She had not meant to be cruel toward the Overland baby. She had remembered playing with Henry and Nerissa once, with the very same ball, and when Henry had caught it, she had tried to get it from him. He had said these exact words, and she had accepted the challenge. When she had thought of a way to trick Henry into giving her the ball, she had flashed a huge grin and punched him right where his two legs met. He had dropped the ball and gripped the area where she had punch him, and she had chased after the ball, refusing to give it back. When Henry found her again, he didn’t greet her with anger. Instead, he had deemed her worthy, and they had become good playmates ever since.
The Overland baby stared at her with those strange, mythical brown eyes. Then, the baby smiled, poked Luxa’s eye, and shouted, “Pu-ple!”
Luxa jerked back and dropped the ball, allowing the baby to chase after it. A little amused by the baby’s antics, Luxa stood up and watched her catch it.
She would have almost forgotten about the older boy’s presence had he not made a foolish comment just then.
“I guess she’s smarter,” he scoffed.
Luxa adjusted the gold band on her head, just to draw attention to it. “But not you, or you would not say such things to a queen.”
She looked at his face and hoped for any sort of apologetic expression, but the boy just shrugged.
“No, if I’d known you were a queen, I’d probably have said something a lot cooler.”
“Cool-er?” Luxa asked. With his strange speech and his raspy accent, he was a little difficult to understand.
“Better,” he replied.
Luxa tried to understand what he meant. Did he mean “better” as in more polite? More upfront? More direct? More appropriate? After thinking about a few possibilities, Luxa decided it had meant “more polite and respectful,” and she chose to give him the benefit of the doubt. From what she had heard of Overlanders, they had various systems of government. This boy must not have had a queen where he came from, otherwise he would have recognized her as one on the spot.
“I will forgive it as you are not knowing. What are you called, Overlander?” she asked him.
The Overlander both introduced himself and the baby, who had caught the ball by now. “My name’s Gregor. And that’s Boots. Well, her name’s not really Boots, it’s Margaret, but we call her Boots because in the winter she steals everybody’s boots and runs around in them and because of this musician my dad likes. What’s your name?“
The Overland boy had mentioned his dad, and he had explained the funny nickname, and Luxa assumed that the baby was his younger sister. They did look alike, after all.
“I am Queen Luxa.”
Gregor tried to pronounce her name and got it a little wrong, but she ignored the error.
“What means this, what the baby says? Pu-ple?” Luxa asked. She hadn’t been able to tell if it was a unique Overland word or garble on the baby’s part.
“Purple. It’s her favorite color. And your eyes, she’s never seen purple eyes before.”
That was why “Boots” had poked her eye. It was not to trick her; it was just childlike fascination. Luxa admitted that she shared the same thoughts about their appearances.
The little Overland girl returned, held up her hands, and repeated her version of the word.
“I have never seen brown before, not on a human,” she remarked on Boots’ eyes before she grabbed the baby’s wrist. “Or this. It must need much light.”
Luxa ran her fingers over the baby’s soft, brown skin, and she thought of Henry’s reports on the Overland man. Though she had never seen him for herself, she believed Henry’s description. Now, seeing two Overland children for herself, she thought that they must have looked much like the Overland man. When she remembered him, she frowned. The last time her parents had seen him was before they died, and since then, he had tried to escape their palace only to be captured by gnawers. They had assumed him dead. Some time after, Regalian spies reported that King Gorger had kept the man alive in a prison pit, and Luxa had been deeply puzzled. Why would the gnawer king want to keep an Overlander alive? It was not a question she had an answer to. After the conclusion of the last prophecy, it had only brought her more questions, and the arrival of the Overland boy and his baby sister only reminded her of the next prophecy to come.