once a king or queen

They carry their pillows over their heads because it rained the night before. Blankets are wrapped around pajama-clad kings and queens of the forest, so they stay dry in the damp underbrush.

Four in a row, in order of age, they carry flashlights up the hill to the woods. In this realm, they are not Kaya, Charlotte, Dahlia, and Little Genie (who hates being called Little Genie, but his sisters do not care.)

Here, they are the kings and queens of old, born to the rule the forest realms.

They cross the threshold to another world, where blankets become cloaks and an old hymnal becomes a book of spells, carried swiftly into the forest under the protection of the night.

They pass a small tower of smooth pebbles, with a stick placed in the moss on either side. They pause at the symbols by the trail.

Kaya looks up at the trees, as though waiting for them to speak.

They are silent, so she decides, “This is the way.”

These are the feral days of childhood — of running half-clothed through the canyon, beating each other with scotchbroom branches and screaming “for Narnia” until their throats are raw.

Days of jumping out of trees into the juniper shrubs, and peeling the bark from fir branches to turn them into bows and arrows. Days of battling orcs in the driveway and shooting at imagined stormtroopers from the back porch.

Days of screaming ferociously at battalions of coniferous soldiers, summoning the spirits to wake from their roots and defend their tiny, glorious kingdom. The days they build a fort in the trees because they are finally allowed to use a handsaw.

They make haste down the passage to the platforms they have built in the hemlocks, and Gene goes up first because he is the most afraid of bears.

Charlotte hands her blankets and pillow to Dahlia and goes next. The ladder is a set of boards nailed into a tree, and they shift precariously underfoot.

Then, Kaya and Dahlia start handing up blankets and pillows, water bottles and a bag of snacks, and the secret book of spells.

They lay out their quilts and sleeping bags on the plywood platform, reminding Gene not to step on the soft spot near the corner.

Kaya stands by the railing and flashes her light twice at the cell tower on the other side of the canyon. The light blinks.

But it is not a cell tower — it is a beacon from neighboring lands. The Flame of the Wild Realms. A signal from the inhabitants that they remain peaceful.

“What have they said to you, Your Majesty?” Charlotte says in a regal English voice. (She is the best at English accents.)

“Our borders are safe,” says Kaya, the oldest, and self-appointed queen of the Forest Kingdom. “The Wildlings remain peaceful as long as we keep our distance.”

They watch the sky and eat marshmallows and chocolate chips and pretzels, tracking points for who saw each falling star first. Charlotte always wins.

They play twenty questions and take turns coming up with movie quotes for the others to guess what it’s from.

Little Genie stumps them all with, “It’s an occupational hazard.”

They tell each other scary stories, and when barn owl cries to the moon, they whisper:

“What was that?”

“Don’t worry, he’s protecting us. He watches the stars and tells the trees what they say.”

“And keeps a lookout for pirates.”

“There aren’t any pirates in the forest.”

“There are if their ships fly.”

“And they’re crewed by the damned.”

“You’re not allowed to say damned.”

“Did you see that one!” Charlotte points to the sky where she saw the star fall.

“I wish magic was real,” says Gene. “I drank all my water and I wish it could fill itself back up.”

“You can have some of mine,” says Dahlia.

Dahlia is first to fall asleep because Kaya’s tales of being High Queen are mostly boring to her, and she would rather tell her own. But she is the third-born and has not yet found her voice. (She will, though.)

Gene follows into sleep shortly after.

But Charlotte listens.

“Do you think you’ll still care about all this when you’re older?”

Charlotte is always worried that Kaya will outgrow fairytales and magic and imaginary worlds before the rest of them are ready. Because then who would tell the stories?

“What do you mean?”

“Do you think you’ll still like telling stories and reading books and making up adventures? What if you go to high school and don’t think about the Wild Lands anymore?”

“I don’t think I would,” says Kaya confidently. “The stories happen by themselves. I don’t think they’ll outgrow me.”

And they keep whispering in the dark until they’re falling asleep between drawled words.

Before dawn, salt from the sound drifts in with the fog through the pines, whispering to the sleeping gulls, come back to the trees.

Gene wakes up with the sun and goes back to the house and back to sleep in his own bed.

Charlotte wakes next and wanders back for breakfast.

Kaya is awake next, but she doesn’t want to wake up Dahlia or leave without her, so she goes back to sleep until she wakes up alone. She leaves the book of spells under a loose corner of plywood for safekeeping.

She feeds the dog on the way inside.

The world they had fallen asleep in, and the dreams that met them between, are gone. Now it is just the backyard with trees at the edge of the property.

But the trees are good listeners, and they keep the stories safe and sacred until the next visit to the Forest Kingdom.

And when the High Queen returns, the trees tell her stories back to her.