Kingdom of Secrets

The Stranger and the Scarf 

Abigail Smeade arrived like a black eye: sudden, fierce, and blossoming under my skin. When I met her, I was sitting in the shade of an old oak tree, minding my own business. I d just removed a burlap sack from a hollow in the tree s trunk and poured its contents out in the grass--scraps of metal, twisted brackets, and a few strips of a stretchy material called rubber. Most people would ve described those things as junk fit for the bin, but I knew better. Pieced together just right, that junk would become more than the sum of its parts. And figuring out which way was just right happened to be one of my favorite pastimes. 

But Father didn t like me tinkering with the odds and ends I gathered (and sometimes even pinched from his workshop). It wasn t proper, he said, and making something nobody had ever seen before might get a person looked at twice, which was the last thing we wanted. That s why I kept my collection stashed inside an oak tree in the middle of Fletcher s field. Nobody but Mr. Fletcher and me ever wandered into that field anymore, if you didn t count the sheep. 

At the bottom of the bundle, rolled up tight, was a scarf, a single piece of fabric more precious than all the rest of it put together. I unfurled it across my knees, and the silk shone and rippled like running water. It was cool to the touch, but the pattern--in shades of blue and yellow and purple--made me think of places drenched in sun. The kind of faraway places Mother liked to visit when she was flying hot-air balloons. In fact, the scarf had been a souvenir from one of her trips. She d had a weakness for beautiful, unnecessary things. She d filled the house with them once. 

Peanut brittle?  

Startled, I crumpled the scarf and crammed it back into the sack. Then I whipped my head left and right, hunting for the owner of that voice. It wasn t until I looked up that I spotted her, sitting on a

When she's not writing for kids, Christyne Morrell is busy raising one. She is a corporate attorney, and in her spare time enjoys reading, baking, and watching House Hunters marathons. She lives with her family in Decatur, Georgia. Kingdom of Secrets is her debut novel. Visit her online at christynewrites.com and follow her on Twitter and Instagram @christynewrites.