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and digging in the dirt. One woman actually says hi to Imperia, and Imperia gives her a startled hi in return.
    She wants to run now, but she doesn’t. She makes herself walk to the little park that only covers half a block.
    According to the sign, the park was someone’s property, but that person donated it to the neighborhood so long as everyone takes care of it. There’s an iron gate around the lovely trees, and a code on the gate so that only people who live here can get in. Imperia memorized the code the first time they came here, and now she taps it into the gate’s keypad. She hears a click as the gate unlocks.
    She pushes it open and steps in.
    There are so many trees here that the place is actually cooler than the rest of the neighborhood. Flowers bloom everywhere. She has no idea what kind they are. There’s a little shrine over what should’ve been a little pond with a fountain, but another sign says that the pond is empty because of the water shortage.
    She steps behind the shrine to a gigantic palm tree that’s so big it looks fake. She runs her hand on the tree’s spiny bark and suddenly she’s inside the portal.
    She barely fits in it by herself. It smells of tree and a bit like fog. She knows how this works: she’s supposed to think about where she wants to go in the Kingdom, but in case she doesn’t have the think-power yet, she mutters, “Grandmama Lavinia’s, please.”
    Then she worries that the portal won’t know who Grandmama Lavinia is. At that moment, though, she stumbles forward into a familiar part of the Kingdom’s forest, overlooking Grandmama Lavinia’s house. The air is cool and filled with fog, and there’s no sun at all.
    Really, Grandmama Lavinia’s house is a manor, and it originally belonged to Mom’s dad. He inherited it from his dad. Mom’s mom died when she was a little girl, and it took Mom’s dad a long time to remarry. When he did, he remarried Grandmama Lavinia whom, the evil Brothers Grimm say, forced Mom to live like a slave, and sleep near the fireplace. That’s why she was called Cinderella.
    The truth is more complicated than that, and has to do with a big fight that Grandmama Lavinia and Mom had a few weeks before the ball where Mom met Daddy. Mom was living in the kitchen in protest when Mom’s fairy godmother showed up—and that’s where everything gets muddled.
    Imperia doesn’t really understand what happened, and neither does Dad. He just says that sometimes no one’s right, and the entire situation can be hurtful, and he says that’s what happened here.
    But he loves Grandmama Lavinia, and so does Imperia. Imperia trusts Grandmama Lavinia more than she trusts most people. And Grandmama Lavinia won’t report her to Grandfather, so she’s safe for the time being.
    The house is just around the corner, tucked up against the forest, at the end of a long road. Imperia smiles when she sees the square brown form, the stained glass windows on the second story, and the arch-shaped stone door. She loves this place more than any other place in the Kingdom.
    She lets herself through the gate on the matching stone fence and takes a deep breath of the cool damp air. With luck, no one has seen her, and that means no one will report her to her grandfather.
    She goes around the side and lets herself in the kitchen door. Cook is already bustling, making bread and cakes for the morning meal. When Cook sees her, she raises her eyebrows.
    “N’one said you’d be coming here,” Cook says.
    “It’s a surprise.” Imperia knows Cook won’t tell on her because here, Imperia has Authority. “Is Grandmama here?”
    Her stomach clenches as she asks the question because she really didn’t think ahead. What if Grandmama is visiting friends? Or on some prolonged trip?
    “Upstairs,” Cook says. She isn’t showing the right amount of respect, but then she never has. The one thing that Imperia has gleaned from her mother’s childhood stories is that Grandmama