Juniper Harvey and the Vanishing Kingdom


 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
 Copyright © 2023 by Nina Varela
 Cover art copyright © 2023 by Maike Plenzke. Cover design by Jenny Kimura.
 Cover copyright © 2023 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.
 Sword vector © MIKHAIL BALASHOV/Shutterstock.com;
 sky background © Bur_malin/Shutterstock.com;
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 cream swirl © Reamolko/Shutterstock.com
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 First Edition: February 2023
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 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
 Names: Varela, Nina, author.
 Title: Juniper Harvey and the vanishing kingdom / Nina Varela.
 Description: First edition. | New York : Little, Brown and Company, 2023. | Audience: Ages 8–12. | Summary: Eleven-year-old Juniper Harvey is having trouble coping in her new Florida town, but when the girl from her recurring fantasy dream appears in her room they have to figure out how to save Galatea’s world from a war of rival gods—and deal with their mutual attraction.
 Identifiers: LCCN 2022039612 | ISBN 9780316706780 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780316706797 (ebook)
 Subjects: LCSH: Dreams—Juvenile fiction. | Magic—Juvenile fiction. | Gods—Juvenile fiction. | Imaginary places—Juvenile fiction. | Lesbians—Juvenile fiction. | CYAC: Fantasy. | Dreams—Fiction. | Magic—Fiction. | Gods—Fiction. | Imaginary places—Fiction. | Lesbians—Fiction. | LCGFT: Fantasy fiction. | Novels.
 Classification: LCC PZ7.1.V3963 Ju 2023 | DDC 813.6 [Fic]—dc23/eng/20220906
 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022039612
 ISBNs: 978-0-316-70678-0 (hardcover), 978-0-316-70679-7 (ebook)
 E3-20230104-JV-NF-ORI
 
 
 
 Contents
 
 Cover
 Title Page
 Copyright
 Dedication
 Prologue
 1
 2
 3
 4
 5
 6
 7
 8
 9
 10
 11
 12
 13
 14
 15
 16
 17
 18
 19
 20
 21
 22
 23
 24
 25
 26
 27
 28
 Epilogue
 Author’s Note
 Acknowledgments
 
 
 
 
 Begin Reading
 Table of Contents
 
 
 
 
 For the queer kids;
 for lesbians young and old,
 past, present, and future.
 We have always existed
 (we will always exist)
 in full color.
 
 
 
 
 
 PROLOGUE
 My nightmare is always the same.
 Every night for the past month, I’ve fallen asleep to glow-in-the-dark stars and the lazy spin of the ceiling fan, the sounds of summer rain and peeping frogs, only to wake on a burning mountain under a sky the color of bone.
 (I used to have normal nightmares. Ones where I’d do something horrifically embarrassing in front of the whole school, or I was being chased by a snake monster that also looked like my math teacher, or all my teeth fell out. You know, the classics. This new recurring one? Not so much.)
 I’m on a mountain that is actively ablaze, the slopes peppered with small, smoldering fires and charred areas still giving off smoke. The grass under my feet is dead and yellow, rattling in the wind. The sun is a bloodshot white eye. The heat is unbearable. I grew up in Texas, and I’ve never felt a heat like this, the air scorching my lungs. It feels so real. Somehow, I know this land used to be green and beautiful, but now it’s dying.
 A woman appears from below me on a winding dirt path. She’s young and round faced, with a straw hat shading her eyes. Wildflowers are springing up in the places her bare feet touch the earth, blooming, wilting, and crumbling to ash in a matter of moments. She’s leading an odd procession of animals: cows, sheep, and goats mingling with bears and wolves, wild rabbits hopping alongside deer and foxes. There’s a stag with a bunch of birds perched on his antlers and a doe carrying an owl on her back. Most of the animals look sick and starved. Their coats are patchy, their ribs showing like roots in soft dirt.
 I follow them to the mountaintop, where there’s a little stone house with a garden.
 The dream changes.
 The house transforms into a huge, beautiful temple in the ancient Greek style, with pale smoke drifting out from between its columns like the exhale of a gap-toothed mouth. Then I’m inside the temple. The floor is patterned with black-and-white mosaics. There’s an altar at one end, a raised platform with steps leading up to the statue of a god: a towering ivory woman wearing gold robes and a crown fashioned from twisting animal horns. That pale, sweet-smelling smoke wafts from a bronze brazier at the base of the altar. The woman with the magic feet is stoking the flames.
 That’s when the dream becomes a nightmare.
 A cloaked figure enters the temple, their face hidden by a hood. They approach the altar, footsteps echoing on the shining floor. The woman turns, and now her back is to me; I can’t see her face. It looks like maybe she says a greeting. As if in response, the figure reaches into their cloak and pulls out a sword—the biggest sword I’ve ever seen, not that I’ve seen many. And they drive the sword into the woman’s heart. The blade punches through her as if she were made of paper, coming out the other side between her shoulder blades. The blood slicking the metal is pure