Some of her contraptions were useful, too. When Queen Amelia complained that the writing on many of the palace documents was too small to read, Marigold built her a magnifying frame out of old window glass and wire. And when Collin mentioned that it was hard to hear Cook’s instructions over the din in the kitchens, Marigold used some pulley wheels and a long rope to build a messaging system the kitchen staff could use to send notes across the room. She still couldn’t carry a tune well enough to soothe a dragon’s temper, and not even weeds grew beneath her feet no matter how many times she ran barefoot across the lawn, but at least she could be some help around the palace. She wasn’t perfectly good, but she hoped she was good enough.

When Marigold was eleven, she started working on a particularly tricky contraption, one she hadn’t yet dared to show her parents. “It’s a biplane,” she told Collin one evening, holding it out for him to see. It wasn’t much larger than Marigold’s hands, but she’d already spent weeks on it, fashioning its two broad wings and a bent-wire propeller that spun when Collin nudged it with a finger.

His eyes went as wide as Marigold had hoped they would. “Have you tried it yet?” he asked. “Does it really fly?”

Marigold grinned. “Let’s find out.”

Together they ran through the back passageways and up the long-forgotten staircases. “You be the lookout,” Marigold told Collin as she pushed open the window that led out to the roof of the east tower.

Collin groaned. “The lookout? Again?”

“I’m sorry,” said Marigold. She knew he wanted to climb out the window right along with her, but she refused to let him do anything that would get him in trouble with Cook, and he was sure to be noticed on the palace roof. He was six impossible inches taller than Marigold — despite being a full year younger — with a puff of light-colored hair that made him look, Marigold thought privately, like a towering dandelion. “I promise I’ll fly the plane where you can see it.”

“All right,” said Collin reluctantly.

With the biplane in one hand, Marigold crouched down on the roof tiles and edged toward the top of the tower. The evening light was golden, and the breeze seemed perfect for flying. Marigold hoped the contraption would sail at least to the edge of the palace grounds, even though she hadn’t entirely fixed the propeller, which had a tendency to stick. She stood up as straight as she dared, wobbled a little, reached back with one arm, and aimed the biplane toward the wildwood.

Down in the courtyard, there was a terrible shriek.

Marigold lost her balance. Her feet flew out from under her, the biplane flew out of her hand, and she slid a good ten feet downward. The plane plummeted toward the ground, and Marigold might have, too, if she hadn’t managed to stop herself by grabbing onto the edge of the roof and sticking her feet into the gutter below. She sat there for a moment, trembling.

“Marigold!” That was Collin, leaning out the palace window. “Are you hurt?”

Marigold looked down at her arms, which were badly scraped, and her legs, which were even worse. The leafy glop in the gutter was seeping into her shoes. She wiggled her toes experimentally; they squelched. “I’m all right,” she called back to Collin, “but I don’t think the plane is. Did you hear somebody shriek?”

As Collin nodded, there was another shriek from the courtyard below. This time, Marigold recognized the voice. “Mama!” she cried. She scrambled up the roof tiles, climbed through the tower window, and broke into a run, never mind the squelching.

Collin hurried close behind her. “Could you see anything from up there?” he asked as they sped down four flights of stairs. “Are you sure that was the queen?”

“I’m sure,” Marigold said. She couldn’t imagine what in all ten kingdoms might have caused her mother to break her usual decorum. An assassin’s arrow? A curse from a wizard who’d managed to slip through the palace’s protective spells? “Mama!” she called again as she and Collin raced out into the courtyard. “What’s happened?”

They weren’t the only ones who’d come running. It seemed as if half the palace staff was gathered there, murmuring to one another and craning their necks for a better view. Marigold ignored them all and pushed her way through the crowd.

There was her mother, and her father, too, with their arms wrapped around each other — and around a third person whom Marigold had never seen before in her life. Her parents were crying and laughing at once. So was the third person. That person was as tall as Marigold’s father and as dignified as Marigold’s mother, although the stranger’s gown was damp and extremely muddy. When she smiled at the king and queen, all the birds around the courtyard began to sing, and a nearby rosebush burst into bloom.

“Who is that?” Collin whispered.

Something in Marigold’s stomach began to twist. She knew exactly who it must be.

“Marigold!” Queen Amelia had finally looked up for long enough to notice her. “Come here, my darling, and meet your sister!”

Princess Rosalind had a lot of hair. It was even more golden than Marigold had heard, it flowed all the way down to her ankles, and when Rosalind wrapped Marigold in an embrace, it hung around them both in a heavy curtain. “My sister!” said Rosalind. “How wonderful! I’ve always dreamed of having a sister.”

Marigold took a step back, away from all the hair, where it was easier to breathe. She tried to remember one of the seventeen polite ways to greet a stranger but couldn’t come up with any of them. “Hello,” she said at last, because at least that was more polite than saying nothing at all.

“Rosalind escaped from Wizard Torville,” Queen Amelia said, beaming at them both. “Can you believe it? I’m afraid I shrieked loudly enough to rouse the whole palace when she came through the gate.”

“I thought you were hurt, Mama,” Marigold admitted. She remembered her own injuries then and hid her scraped-up arms behind her back.

But no one was paying attention to Marigold. King Godfrey put a hand on his elder daughter’s shoulder. “Are you willing, my dear,” he said, “to tell us how you made your escape?”

Rosalind nodded. “Of course,” she said. She sat down on the low courtyard wall, the crowd pressed closer, and Rosalind told them about Wizard Torville and the dank and dismal fortress where he lived at the far edge of the wildwood. She told them how, after fifteen years of making the wizard’s morning porridge and mending his tattered old robes, she’d opened her bedroom window one day to find a curious rope dangling all the way to the ground below. And she explained how, once the wizard had gone to sleep that night, she’d climbed down the rope and slipped into the trees, scrambling through the wildwood with the help of kindhearted squirrels who showed her the route back to Imbervale and fireflies who lit her way home.

Marigold had heard so many tales about Rosalind over the years that it was as if one of the characters from her storybooks had sprung off the page and come to life in front of her, sitting where Marigold often sat, with her arms around Marigold’s parents. And it seemed the tales had been true, even the most impossible ones: at this very moment, Marigold could see a pale-blue flower sprouting under Rosalind’s left heel. There were dozens of things she longed to ask Rosalind — what the wildwood had been like, and what sorts of spells she’d seen Torville cast, and who in all the kingdoms might have dared to tie a rope to the side of an evil wizard’s fortress, for a start — but whenever Marigold tried to speak up, the royal magician would ask a question instead, or the second undercook would push in front of her for a better view, or the steward would step on her toes. After a while, she gave up trying. She excused herself, although her parents were still so busy with Rosalind that she wasn’t sure they noticed, and went to look for her biplane.

It had crashed nose down beneath the east tower. Its wings were torn, its propeller was badly bent, and it looked more like the pile of scraps it had once been than a magnificent flying contraption. Marigold groaned and started collecting all the bits and pieces she could find, which wasn’t an easy task in the twilight. She could still hear laughter and cheers coming from the courtyard. Everyone sounded so happy — and why shouldn’t they be, when the kingdom’s long-lost princess had finally come home? Marigold was glad that Rosalind was back, too.

At least, she was pretty sure she was supposed to be.

A royal holiday was declared to celebrate Rosalind’s return, and Marigold was surprised to learn that the festivities would last not just for one day but for an entire month. She was even more surprised when Rosalind insisted that townsfolk and royalty from across all the Cacophonous Kingdoms should be invited to join the celebration. Marigold couldn’t imagine her parents agreeing to this — the other nine kingdoms were full of exactly the sorts of people who weren’t allowed in Imbervale — and she nearly choked on her breakfast when King Godfrey said he supposed it would be all right, if it was what Rosalind really wanted. “But they’ve got to behave themselves,” Queen Amelia added over her teacup. “No floating shoes or headache spells. I won’t tolerate any wickedness.”

So the palace gates were opened. Visitors traveled across the mountains from Blumontaine and over the gorges from Foggy Gorge, all on their best behavior. The court jester juggled, the trumpeter blew fanfares, the royal magician cast firework enchantments, the king and queen hosted picnics and parades, and dozens of noble young people came to stay at the palace, each hoping to win Princess Rosalind’s heart.

Marigold enjoyed the first few days of the celebration well enough. The longer it stretched on, though, the less enjoyable it became. The boom and blast of fireworks kept Marigold up late each night, and the chattering of noble young people in the hallways woke Marigold up early each morning. The court trumpeter, who was not very good at trumpeting, made Marigold’s ears ring. Her tutors canceled her algebra and history lessons, which she had been enjoying, and the palace was so full of visitors that she couldn’t sneak anywhere without being noticed.

Worst of all, she couldn’t seem to fix her wrecked biplane. She’d repaired its wings, and she’d fiddled and fussed until the whole contraption looked as good as new, but no matter what Marigold tried, the propeller wouldn’t spin smoothly. When she asked her father to help her, he scratched his beard just below the left ear and said that he wished he could, but he’d already promised Rosalind that he’d spend the morning teaching her about her courtly duties. When she asked her mother, she said she had to spend the afternoon consulting with Rosalind about new anti-wizard spells for the palace. The royal carpenter was busy building parade floats, and Collin was busy preparing platters of food for all the parties in Rosalind’s honor. Marigold hadn’t seen him in days. She finally tracked him down on the palace lawn one evening, but he didn’t have much time to talk about contraptions.

“Do you think you’ll have more time tomorrow?” Marigold asked as she helped Collin set out trays of delicate cakes and pitchers of lemonade. “We could work on the biplane then.”

Collin shook his head. “There’s a luncheon for Rosalind tomorrow, and a ball for Rosalind on Saturday, and a feast for Rosalind on Sunday. Cook says we won’t get any more evenings off until the holiday’s over.”

“It’s not fair!” Marigold set two pitchers down with a thump. “Everything was all right until Rosalind turned up, and now nothing’s all right at all.”

Collin shot her a smile over a tray of cakes. “It’s only for the rest of the month.”

The trouble with Collin, Marigold thought, was that he was relentlessly cheerful. Every day in the kitchens, he cheerfully stirred soup, mopped the floors, and ran errands for Cook, and he had once cheerfully helped Marigold get unstuck from the dumbwaiter after she’d crawled inside it to see how it worked. But his constant good cheer could be frustrating when all Marigold wanted was for someone to join her in a panic.

“Even when the celebrations are over,” she pointed out, “Rosalind will still be here, joking with Papa and confiding in Mama and taking up everyone’s attention. Sometimes . . .” Marigold looked around to make sure none of the other servants could hear. “Sometimes I wish Wizard Torville would come and steal her back.”

“What?” The stack of cakes on Collin’s tray wobbled. “You don’t really mean that.”

“I do!”

“But she’s your sister!” Collin set down his tray. “I bet the two of you have lots in common. Do you think she likes contraptions?”

Marigold helped herself to a cake. “I have no idea.”

“You should ask her, then,” said Collin. “Maybe she can help you fix your biplane!”

“Fine,” said Marigold, chewing. “I’ll talk to her.”

At sunset, the groundskeepers lit long strings of hanging lanterns, and guests in suits and gowns flocked to the lawn for the evening’s celebration. Marigold stood with the rest of her family as visitors from as far away as Carroway and Puddlewater clutched Queen Amelia’s hands, kissed King Godfrey’s cheeks, and embraced Princess Rosalind as if she were their own long-lost daughter. It was unseasonably cold, and none of the guests seemed interested in talking to Marigold, but she tried to smile and curtsy in just the way a princess of Imbervale should.

“Rosalind,” she whispered once the stream of guests had slowed. “Can I ask you something?”