The Prince of the Spring Court was terrible at Seasons. As the Spring sprites looked on in horror, a basket of rich, black earth plopped onto the playing field right where it was guaranteed to get captured. And, lo and behold, while the Winter Court sprites rolled around on the icy air laughing, a snowball the size of a snowman’s belly smacked down next to the basket of earth, cutting off all but one path of escape.

  “His Highness the Prince of Spring wants to know why no one is spreading his earth!” bellowed the herald.

  Sprout glanced across the field and inadvertently met the Prince’s eyes. He scowled back. Sprout bowed low and waved at the other sprites. “You heard him. Off we go.”

  “There’s no point,” grumbled the oldest sprite, Blossom. “The Winter Queen will capture it with her next move.”

  “Still.”

  The Spring sprites elbowed their way past the Winter sprites and began to shovel the earth onto the ground around the basket.

  “Sure you wanna do that?” jeered a Winter sprite.

  “Only reason Her Majesty hasn’t taken it yet is that she knows she can any time,” laughed another.

  “Oh hush, you,” fake-scolded a third. “Let them do their jobs. It’s good to see that someone in the Spring Court knows how.”

  Shoot, one of the more hotheaded Spring sprites, flung down his shovel. Before he could launch himself at the Winter sprites, his twin, Bud, grabbed the back of his tunic. “Ignore them and shovel, brother!”

  Shoot clenched his fists. “It’s not fair! They should have waited until our Queen returned to hold the Tournament of the Seasons!”

  Under normal circumstances, they would have waited. Unfortunately, the Prince’s ineptitude at the board games was matched only by his hubris, and he’d declared that he would play for Spring this year.

  “Less talking, more shoveling,” Sprout ordered. “He’s going to play the next basket any second now.”

  The other sprites groaned, but they bent over to toss dirt across the dead leaves left over from the Autumn-Winter tournament. Tiny, tender green shoots peeked out of the black earth. “Don’t bother growing,” Sprout wanted to tell them. “You’re going to die anyway.”

  They’d just barely emptied the basket when another one landed, all the way across the field. Sprout and the others flew over as fast as they could. When they saw where the Prince had played this basket, Leaf literally fell out of the air.

  “Why?” moaned Bud. “Lady of the Spring Breeze, why?”

  Shoot slammed his shovel into the ground. “What’s the point of spreading this?”

  “Well, she might not take it immediately…,” Bud suggested, but Sprout noted that she didn’t make any motions with her shovel.

  A glance at the two players showed the Prince glaring at them, while the Winter Queen studied the board with a faint smile playing over her ice-blue lips.

  “We’re just going to get yelled at if we don’t do it,” Sprout told the others. “Come on!”

  No sooner had the tip of her shovel touched the black earth than a snowball landed on the field behind her. It shattered into a winter storm, and when its winds touched its neighbor, it, too, burst apart. One after another the snowballs exploded, until the Spring sprites were surrounded by a wall of flying snow.

  From the hard blue sky overhead descended a flock of Winter sprites. “We’ll just be taking that!” chirped their leader.

  Suppressing a sigh, Sprout handed up the basket of earth. The Winter sprites fluttered off with it, giggling.

  “If he knew anything about the game, he’d forfeit now and save us the hassle,” muttered Blossom. The old sprite’s teeth chattered in the gale.

  “If he knew anything about the game, we wouldn’t be in this blizzard, would we?” Leaf asked tartly.

  “He can’t forfeit. If he loses, we’re guaranteed another month of Winter,” Bud murmured.

  “You mean when he loses, we’re guaranteed another month of Winter,” Shoot snapped.

  “Sprites of the Spring Court!” The herald’s bellow rang out over the roar of the wind. “Please spread your earth!”

  Sprout sighed again. Her breath froze immediately. “Let’s go. This can’t possibly last much longer.”

  Except it did.

  It must have been a slow day at the Winter Court, because their Queen seemed to be in no rush to finish off the Spring Prince. Rather, she toyed with him, setting traps for him all over the field, allowing him to believe that he had secured his territory, only to swoop in and take it. As the game dragged on, the cold that drifted off the field began to affect the spectators, and even the Prince started to look anxious. He might not have been able to read the board before him, but a glance at the field told him that snow covered most of it.

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  “We have to do something!” said Sprout. “We can’t let him lose like this!”

  “What can we do?” Bud asked. “We’re not allowed to play for him.”

  “Any one of us is better at Seasons than he is,” Leaf observed, “but I don’t know if any of us can beat the Winter Queen.”

  All heads turned towards Blossom. The old sprite harrumphed. “Beating her isn’t the problem. Getting him to take our advice is.”

  Sprout studied the Prince’s slumped shoulders. He was turning a black basket over and over in his hands as he stared down at the board. He obviously had no idea where to play it. “I think he might, at this point. We just can’t be too obvious about it. Blossom, where should he play next?”

  The old sprite sniffed. “Let me see.”

  They all rose up and hovered over the field, pretending that they were preparing for the next basket.

  “There.” Blossom pointed at a patch of black earth that had survived long enough for winter aconite to blossom. The bright yellow cups opened wide to greet the wind from the snowstorm next door. “If he plays there, he can save that area.”

  “All right. Let me get his attention.”

  The Prince was arching his back, as if it ached when he hadn’t been the one shoveling dirt all day. The next time he licked his lips and glanced at the whitened field, Sprout flitted to the side. The motion caught his eye, and she blinked three times. He cocked his head. She blinked three more times. His brow furrowed.

  “I don’t think he gets it,” muttered Shoot.

  “He will. Come on.”

  Sprout flitted about, pretending to move aimlessly until she “just happened” to be hovering over the patch that Blossom had pointed out. Then she slung her shovel across her shoulder and gave the Prince a meaningful stare.

  His jaw dropped.

  The Winter Queen began to follow his gaze. “What did you see—”

  He slammed his miniature basket down on the board. An instant later, a full-sized basket came hurtling out of the sky, nearly crushing Sprout.

  Leaf whooped. “It worked! Er, I mean—he made a good move!”

  “Foul!” shouted a Winter sprite. “She cheated! She signaled the move to him!”

  “There’s nothing in the rules that forbids communication between the player and the sprites on the field,” Blossom informed him. “In fact, it would be impossible to play out the Tournament of Seasons if there were no communication between the player and sprites.”

  “Yes, but—”

  Scowling ferociously, the Winter sprites rotated midair and looked to their Queen for guidance. She had leaned back in her chair and was examining the Spring sprites one after another, tapping her blue-white fingertips against her lips. Then she selected a snowball from her bowl and snapped it down on the board.

  A giant snowball materialized out of thin air and thumped down next to the basket.

  Sprout shook herself out of her reverie. “Come on! Shovel!”

  As the Winter sprites flitted around the snowball and transformed it into a blizzard, Bud, Leaf, and Shoot flung shovelfuls of earth right up to the edge of the storm.

  Sprout floated high in the air next to Blossom, waiting. The old sprite surveyed the field and nodded. “There.” She pointed.

  This time, Sprout didn’t have to catch the Prince’s eye. He was already tracking her every movement, like a baby robin watching its mother’s beak. She met his gaze, tipped her head, and took off for the next spot.

  Another basket of earth followed.

  Point, fly, shovel. Point, fly, shovel. Little by little, the field turned the pale green of young shoots, the fluttery white of snowdrops, the sunshine yellow of winter aconite.

  “Are we winning?” Sprout dared whisper while Blossom contemplated her next move.

  The old sprite scowled. “Hardly. She’s not taking us seriously.”

  “But if she doesn’t take us seriously all the way to the end, maybe we can win.”

  “Maybe.”

  Spring continued to expand across the field. Patches of purple crocuses met and merged into bright red tulips. Daffodils bobbed their defiance at the snow.

  “We’re winning!” Shoot cheered.

  “Hush!” snapped Blossom.

  “But just look at how much territory we control—”

  A basket of earth whumped down next to him. All the Spring sprites froze.

  “That—that—” whispered Bud.

  “That’s the wrong spot!” yelled Shoot, waving his arms. “It’s one over!”

  “Can we move it?” Leaf asked. “Maybe if we move it—”

  “Don’t touch it!” Sprout leaped in front of her. “Baskets can’t be moved once they’re placed.”

  “You forfeit the game instantly if you move a game piece once it has been played,” Blossom lectured. She put her hands on her hips, surveyed the field, and shook her head.

  “How bad is it?” Sprout pressed. “Can you save it?”

  “No. This entire area is dead.”

  “Dead?!”

  Sprout gazed down helplessly at the tulips. Sure enough, within a few moves, they were surrounded by a wall of flying snow. Frost crusted their petals and bleached their colors, and one by one, they wilted and drooped.

  “Nooo!” came a wail from the Prince. “That was a mistake! Let me take it back!”

  “That was no mistake,” said the Winter Queen, unmoved. “That was precisely where you intended to play. It simply wasn’t where your sprites intended you to play.”

  “Can we still win?” Sprout pleaded with Blossom. “It’s only this corner of the field, right? We can still take the rest, right?”

  But Blossom was shaking her head. “No. Winter has already secured too much territory. We can’t catch up. Well. I’m sure our Queen could catch up, but I cannot.” And she bowed across the field at the Winter Queen.

  The Winter Queen scrutinized the old sprite for a long moment, then inclined her head ever so slightly.

  Gasps rose from the spectators. “Did she just—?” “She nodded at her!” “At a sprite!” “From another Court!”

  “It would be customary to resign at this point.” The Winter Queen’s cool voice drifted across the field.

  The Spring Prince was gawking at her with his mouth half-open. “But that—that can’t be – I – it was just—”

  “Your sprite has already acknowledged that she cannot win this game. Do you intend to waste the time of two Courts by playing it all the way to the end?”

  “I—but what if you make a mis—”

  A single, frozen eyebrow lifted. The Prince swallowed the rest of his sentence before he suggested that a Queen might err. He hung his head. “I resign.”

  Without a word to him, the Winter Queen rose from the board. Her attendants instantly surrounded her, straightening the creases in her gown and rearranging her icy tresses. She folded her hands before her and took a step, preparing to sweep off with her retinue. Then she turned back.

  “It was a worthy game. Against a worthy opponent. In light of the pleasure I derived from this match, I will reduce the one additional month of winter to two weeks. I look forward to our next game.”

  The Spring Prince’s head jerked up. It took him so long to collect his thoughts that she was gone by the time he mustered the words to thank her.

  Stunned silence reigned on the field. Then Shoot whooped. “We did it! You did it!” He threw himself at Blossom, nearly knocking her out of the air. She grumbled but, Sprout noted, didn’t push him away.

  “Blossom, Blossom, you were brilliant!” Bud threw her arms around both of them, followed by Leaf, and finally by Sprout too.

  “Tch, youngsters, always making such a fuss!” grumbled Blossom.

  But Sprout caught a tear glinting at the corner of the old sprite’s eye. It shone as brightly as a field of crocuses.