Once Upon a Marigold by Jean Ferris

She always says she wants to be the mother of at least three queens. By that, I guess, she means she isn't convinced I'll make the grade."
    Christian sat back on his heels to listen to her. He couldn't tell her that he had watched her sisters' wedding festivities from across the river, that he knew how she chafed in her finery and had been ignored and avoided by the wedding guests.
    He also couldn't tell her that one reason Queen Olympia wasn't convinced Marigold would be a queen was that she might be the one to prevent it.
    "If you were queen, how would you rule?" he asked, trying to imagine her in Queen Olympia's place.
    "You know," she said, settling down cross-legged on the flagstones, her skirts poufed out around her so that, to Christian, she looked like a flower growing in a fancy pot, "I've thought about that a lot—because ruling means having power, and when you have it, you have to use it wisely. You can't ignore it, the way I'm afraid my dear papa has done, or abuse it the way—well, the way some royals do—and you can't take it for granted, either."
    When she talked about abuse, Christian knew she was thinking of her mother, and when she talked about taking it for granted, he was thinking about Queen Mab.
    "First of all," she went on, "I'd make sure everybody had a place to live and enough to eat. You can't do anything else well if you're worried every day about that. Then I'd make sure everybody could read. That way they could learn how to do anything they wanted to do, and they could entertain themselves, too. And I'd make sure everybody had good manners so my kingdom would run smoothly. And that everybody had the right amount of work to do. Too much idleness makes you boring and useless, and too much work makes you bitter and tired."
    These were wonderful ideas, Christian thought. He would definitely want to be a subject in any kingdom she ruled.
    "What about disciplining people who did bad things?" he asked her. "There are always some."
    "That would be the hardest part. I'd hate that. What would you do?"
    He was flattered to be asked. And even though he'd never thought about it before, an answer came directly to him, as if it had been sitting in his brain just waiting for him to use it. "I think I'd have a list of punishments for specific crimes, so everybody would know what the consequences would be before they did something bad. And then I'd give the punishments even if I didn't want to, even if the criminal was somebody I knew and liked a lot. That way everybody would know I meant business, and they'd think about it before they did bad things."
    Marigold looked admiringly at him. "Well, of course. That's exactly the right thing to do. Papa just exiles everybody who commits crimes, because he can't bear to think about doing anything worse. And Mother would probably execute them all if she had her way, but she doesn't, so she just yells a lot and then tells Papa to exile them. Even for little things."
    "Could I make one suggestion about your rule?" Christian asked, wondering how he had such nerve. But in his pocket was the diamond earring she had given him, still wrapped in her monogrammed handkerchief, so in some basic way, she was just his best friend, not somebody who might one day rule the kingdom in which he was a subject.
    "What?" She leaned forward to listen.
    "Rewards for good deeds as well as punishments for bad ones. Nobody ever gets enough appreciation when they're behaving themselves, but there's no end to hearing about it when they're not." He wasn't sure how he knew this, since it wasn't something Ed had ever done, but he was sure it was true.
    "Absolutely right," she said, nodding. "Oh, figuring out the rewards would be the fun part. There could be chocolate sculptures or golden trophies or talking birds or ... I'm sorry," she said suddenly, her smile fading. "I shouldn't be going on like this. But somehow I feel like I've known you for a long time. Aside from my dogs, you're the