“Me too, Papa,” said Lovisa, wondering how much sneaking she could do tonight without encountering any guards, or Ferla’s mangy fox. She needed to get to Viri. She could talk to him through the door, tell him his favorite fairy tales. Viri always laughed at Lovisa’s versions of the Keeper stories, for hers were particularly irreverent. The underwater creature, who was supposedly the protector of the planet according to the silbercows, was as big as a mountain. She protected the silbercows, and in return, the silbercows took care of the sea and recruited their friends the humans to take care of the earth. So everyone was taking care of everyone, which was good, because if they didn’t, the Keeper would rise up, kill all the animals and humans, and flatten everything.

That was the part of the fairy tales that made Lovisa want to be irreverent, that lingering hint that if this hero wasn’t placated, she would destroy the world. Everyone idly mentioned that part, then moved on to the fun parts, like the Keeper tickling the undersides of human ships, or singing mesmerizing songs that soothed the enemies of the earth and sea. But the Keeper wasn’t powerful because she was just. Her power came from being big. Anyone that big could gather worshipers and call herself a hero. It made Lovisa wonder if a hero was ever anything more than a bully.

So, in Lovisa’s stories, she made the Keeper a clumsy bully who was prevented from destroying the world by tripping over her own feet, and so on. And her brothers protested, laughed, and squealed.

Lovisa’s bedroom was on the second floor, not far from her parents’. She took the back, less-guarded stairs up to the nursery wing on the third floor to do some reconnaissance. Past the schoolroom, she cracked Vikti’s bedroom door open. Vikti, who was nine, was snoring loudly in his bed, like a boy with a very congested nose. A small worry Lovisa had been carrying melted away at the sight of what looked to be a garden-variety cold.

She opened Viri’s bedroom door next. Viri was the one who got sick all the time, probably because he was always putting his books and his game pieces—and his clothes, and his fingers—in his mouth, as if he was hungry, or needed the comfort of chewing on something. He was ashamed of it, because he got yelled at for it, but he did it anyway.

He wasn’t in his bed, which confirmed what Lovisa already knew.

Slipping out, she paused in the corridor when she thought she heard a scampering noise. She turned in circles, looked under a nearby table, but no fox was in sight.