"Cleo! Wait! Don't run so fast!!"

Charlotte ran after her. The two girls were playing in the palace garden. Cleo wanted to go on a treasure hunt. Charlotte would have preferred to make bracelets, embroidery, or paint colorful pictures with Lea and the other girls, but Cleo found the idea not only boring but also annoying!

Unlike Charlotte. Or the nannies. Why they were called that was a mystery to Cleo. The ladies had not been girls for a long time. Old women with stupid ideas for things to do.

The nannies insisted that the girls make bracelets together. Or embroidered something. Painted pictures. Quiet activities for good girls. The other girls sat quietly talking to each other on a picnic blanket and knotted colorful bracelets as if this were their absolute fulfillment. The old nannies watched over her like old, stern chaperones.

Embroderies and Stuff! An occupation worthy of young girls. Bah!

Fritz, on the other hand, was allowed to do archery with his friends. Cleo would have liked to join them and had watched them hopefully. But the boys protested until the servant who helped them had to send her away. With the help of a nanny. This gray-haired specimen was armed with yarn.

But Cleo didn't want to make any bracelets. She would never do something so boring! Why Charlotte liked the idea was beyond her.

On this day, the children of the most important noble families were gathered in the castle. Playmates, for the Queen's children. The parents chatted over tea and biscuits, Cleo saw her parents flirting bluntly in front of their guests. They had been arguing the night before. Cleo's father didn't like the way the slaves, the bound servants, were treated. That's all Cleo had heard of the quarrel until a nanny found her and took her back to her etiquette class, from which Cleo had successfully escaped. Today, however, classes were canceled. In favor of a garden party to which her parents had invited. Her father loved to celebrate. And he didn't need a reason. The Queen agreed whenever he wanted to invite guests. This happened about once a month. She said that it was necessary to keep the nobility happy so that they remained faithful.

Cleo didn't understand that either. Why shouldn't they be faithful?

The children of the guests, along with Cleo and her siblings, were entertained by nannies and servants. But Cleo had escaped them. She deeply disliked the offered activities for girls. So she searched for a treasure. With Charlotte in tow.

"Cleo! There is certainly no treasure to find here! You have a treasure trove!" Charlotte snorted wearily. "Slow down, please. I can't take it anymore!"

"That's because you're always embroidering and stuff like that!" Cleo kept running, sticking her tongue out. She was now eleven years old. Only a year away from the possible appearance of magic. She couldn't wait. The girl hoped for manipulative magic. The coolest of the types of magic. After all, to her mother's horror, she wanted to become a soldier.

Mom is silly! She was also a soldier herself! And witches learn how to use a sword... At the Academy! After all, she signed the law! Silly! She was a soldier. Cleo couldn't imagine that the Queen was against it for that very reason. She had experienced terrible things. Things she didn't want her daughter to experience. An attitude that would change many years later. But now, in Cleo's childhood, none of this was noticeable. Her mother was a strict Queen who liked to have her daughters engaged in girlish activities. Just like Charlotte, who had been doing such stupid things all the time for a year.

"Mom says it's good if girls can embroider!" protested Charlotte. "And it's fun! Knotting bracelets too! You should give it a try instead of complaining all the time."

"Fun?" Cleo stopped abruptly. "Where has your sense of adventure gone?"

Charlotte rolled her eyes. "Where? I'm eleven now. Just like you." She breathed a sigh of relief now that they were no longer running. "I'd rather do something useful than play silly games, Your Highness! We shouldn't be playing silly games!" Her friend didn't sound too convinced by her own words. "Mom says we're almost grown up, so I need to be well-behaved."

Cleo raised her eyebrows. "What is embroidery useful for?"

"I don't know. But when Mom hears that I've been romping around or if I'm coming out of the bushes full of dirt again, I'll be under house arrest again for weeks! And I will suffer even more etiquette lessons. She doesn't let me enjoy much free time! She says that if I don't get magic, I have to marry a good man from the nobility quickly so that my future is secured. I'm already eleven. And eighteen in seven years. Mom says that's not much time if I don't get any magic. I don't want to end up like my cousin. Forty, unmarried and destitute. Her parents kicked her out when she was twenty. Mom says because of her impossible behavior, no man wanted her. And I can't let that happen to me."

Cleo wrinkled her nose. "Your parents are too strict. And men are no good! Look at Fritz! He and his best friend are constantly burping for competition. How is that going to secure your future? Nonsense. You could also become a soldier. With or without magic. Like me! We don't need stupid burping men!"

Charlotte grinned briefly but then she sighed sadly. "That's right. But we certainly won't find a treasure in the garden. And I like to knot bracelets. I could make two similar ones for us." Now she smiled again. With red cheeks. "Friendship bracelets."

"I don't like jewelry!"

"But you'll like this one because the bracelet would be from me!" Charlotte announced confidently. "Come! We are too old to look for treasures that don't exist! And I don't want to get under house arrest! Do it for me, yes? Because you love me so much!"

"Fine!" Cleo sighed and resigned herself to her fate.

Only the day before, she had found a beautiful earring in the mud. If that's not a true treasure... Of course, Cleo didn't want to wear the earring. She put it in a box with all the things she had found in the garden over the past few years. Pretty bird feathers, a small stone in the shape of a heart, pearls... She called this a treasure hunt. And she was never too old for that.