My father taught me letters before I knew how to walk. My mother died in the same accident that left both my legs in casts for three whole seasons. Confined to my bed, my father helped me learn the sounds of letters, his soft fingers rustling parchment pages while my toddler mouth mumbled around the rocks and grasses of words. In my confinement, I escaped into the scents of worn paper and ink, simple tales of children in kayaks caught up in currents, lessons about short-cuts and honesty and mending your mistakes.

I spent over a year after my bones healed tutored by the palace guides, strengthening my legs, working my useless knees and ankles into something strong. At first I could barely crawl from my bedside to the window. Someone had to help me back onto the mattress, where my father taught me words like "persevere" and "progress."

Then I progressed to toddling with large hands to guide me, dizzying steps across my room and into the palace halls. I read about adventures and unexplored tundras, dangerous pits full of sharp ice to catch unwary travelers. Before bed one night, I explored my own tundra, stone cold on toes, using the walls to hold me. I found my own dangerous pit of sharpness at the stumbling stairs to the lower floor. At the bottom, I cried. In the night, nobody heard me. I glared at the stairs and climbed up them, knees and palms, and I returned to bed, terrified of ever leaving again. So my father found for me stories of children conquering the sea monsters under their bed, taking candles of courage and scorching away those oceans.

When I was four, I skipped through the even streets of my city for the first time, climbed down the muddy hills, tripped over rocks and ran laughing at the skidding pain against my shins; for rocks against my shins were little hindrance to the freedom of streets and hills of a whole empty city, an expanse when compared to my bedroom tucked in a corner of the palace.

I know all this, from fragments of my young memory combined with the stories my father told me as I grew. He often told the story of how when I was four, Kanaq--my father's palace guide--found me grinning with blood stains covering my knees, dirt stains around the holes of my parka. At age six I asked what happened to my mother, and my father first told me of what happened after: the miraculous recovery of my legs. His toddler pleading to be entertained, only to be taught how to read. He told me of his sorrow, forever marred into wrinkles above his wide eyebrows. He told me of the burial ceremony, how he hesitated in calling the city after his name, Iqavu.

(Yet, he never did tell me her family name. I found it from the history books. Lataliit. Though I suppose it wouldn't have mattered if he did. I doubt I would have chosen for myself the name of my mother I never met.)

Then, he told me of my mother's death: the accident happened one time when my mother scaled the outside of the palace. She was curious like that, he told me. Born a climber, unwary of heights. My mother supposedly told my father and Kanaq it gave her a sense of freedom. All that air, wind whipping her face.

That day, my mother strapped me to her chest and climbed the peaked tower. When they found her, later, she lay dead, crumpled in the street. They didn't know how close to the top she'd been when she lost her grip, how far she slid. But someone looked at the sloping roof, where it jutted out over the doors, inspected the distance from there to where my mother's crumpled body lay. Me, strapped to her chest, ceaselessly wailing.

How did she end up this far into the street, the history records asked. Even if she slid from the very top of the palace, she wouldn't go flying far from the roof's edge.

Then they found the claw marks.

Tearing the back of her shirt to ribbons. The back of her arms.

The last royal avian disappeared over a quarter of a century ago. That one couldn't even fly. And the servants found no large predators around the city, in the event she hadn't died atop the roof at all.

The records labeled it a freak accident. Possible assassin. A mob of furious animals. Maybe the stones of the rooftop scraped her up that bad, and she rolled after she landed.

Whatever the cause, my mother protected me from what killed her, minus damaged legs for three seasons. And I have no recollection, no flash of color or screeching sound, to mark that day for what it was.

My father always said she loved me. I suppose dying is the only evidence I have of her saying so.

***

Aqtilik. I nearly weep writing the word. Once is enough, is it not?

She was a servant. The guides returned with her from their excursions throughout the tundra, and my father took her into the palace. Orphaned, the palace guides said, to the summer mumps. She had nowhere else to go, they said, we thought she would be a good fit for the palace. The kitchens, maybe, or the glimmer insect tunnels, maybe a future palace guide.

But, she hated small spaces, and wasn't accustomed to blue, glowing insects. Would nary eat anything but unseasoned meat and simple bread and cheese, so the kitchens didn't want her. And she got lost in the simplest layouts of the palace. Frustrated Kanaq to no end.

I, seven years old, knew none of this. I, seven years old, was desperate for another child to play with. I had a whole city to myself. Ripe for stories of mountains, sea monsters, magical candles. Yet, the kitchen children bowed to me. The glimmer insect children were always busy, or secretly hated me. What fun is there in being a sea monster with no magic candles to run screaming from?

But her...I suppose she was desperate for a friend too. Alone in this foreign palace where she seemed bad at everything they taught her to do.

Seven years old, we knew nothing of love. Only the running through perfect streets, the rolling down the hills, the stems we used to make flaky crowns, the invisible candles and tentacled monsters, the reading lessons where she furrowed her brow over simple letters and I sighed over musty histories.

She told me love is selflessly caring for another person. Giving of you, to fill the ocean of someone else. Which is why I told my father she was important to me, and therefore important to the palace, impetuous ten year old I was. I told him that she could be my guard, the way Kanaq was for him and my mother. My father blatantly refuted that. Kanaq was a palace guide, not a guard. I scoffed. Told him that even if it'd never been done before, she could be my guard. I could be her guard.

That seed of an idea began there. A flicker of a thought, the heat of an argument, what if... Those giddy words, what if... We were the same age, roughly. Had similar builds, at twelve and thirteen and fourteen. What if...Iqavu trained two queens, two guards, to take up interchangeable roles. The places the real queen could sneak into, if she had to. The risks she wouldn't have to take, seated before an audience of foreigners. My father and Kanaq were the only others who knew. Let the people of the palace forget which one was which. Let them never know which queen stood before them. Let them never even know there could be more than one queen standing before them.

In the beginning, we both knew the risks we took. Hers greater than mine. One real queen, one decoy. For me, it'd be as shameful as being found out. The queen fancying to disguise herself as one of her servants. For her...she would take a knife for me. We both knew the risks we took.

I promised, at fifteen, if I were the one who died, she would be the real queen. I promised I would take a knife for her. Until she pointed out that made the whole thing circular, we couldn't both be the one protecting the other from mobs of knives, and we both laughed about it, but I meant it.

In the end, we both knew the risks we took. But this isn't the end yet.

My father died, peacefully, in his dreams, and the city stayed Iqavu. We both cried at his funeral. The queen and her servant. The servant and her queen. We picked ourselves back up, seventeen, and ruled over our queendom. Gave orders on reports from the palace guides' excursions through the tundra. Met foreign rulers by walking to the sea, listened to dreadful things about a war and an Empress; no, many lost battles and a conqueror.

A year after my father died, Panuk arrived. He was one of the outpost keepers. There is no such official position, but he owned the house our servants stayed in to watch the shores where foreign boats might appear. Panuk became friends with several of the guides. In an earthquake, the house was damaged, and the servants offered a place to Panuk in the palace.

A complicated origin for a simple story. Panuk arrived, I was a new queen, I fell in love and she told him our secret, had to drag his unconscious form out of the wide streets after a romantic walk between Panuk and queen turned out to be not that.

She approved of the two of us after Panuk woke up and asked how okay she was losing her double. She told him nothing of the sort was going on, if anything, he was forced into being a triple.

But not quite like that, she explained. The only person she'd ever truly fallen in love with was me, the queen, but we discovered she had no interest in anything deeper than what she deemed hugging friends.

I always imagine Panuk was bright red with shame by then, or maybe he fell unconscious again from the shock of the whole evening. I only imagine that bit happening, because she didn't mention anything like it. Perhaps because it didn't happen. Perhaps because it did, and she thought to spare him from the embarrassment of me knowing.

Sometimes I think she deserved better than me. She deserved better than the shadows behind me and Panuk. In the shadows, we were all equals, laughing about Panuk's lack of acting skills, muttering about the kinds of things the palace guides wrote in their reports--we don't care about the color of the moss, how are the people?--quietly afraid of rumors of a conquering warlord.

In the end, we both knew the risks we took. We had a nice go of it, a decade of queendom. But she deserves better than the mirage of old history records. This is my friend, readers. Remember her.