something that looked like a third eye or a jewel! Janet didn’t get a chance to look at it, as she was required to pick up the ball and continue the game. She had to defer to her friends. The girl stubbornly refused to call them maids of honor. She was not, after all, a queen. Even if illiterate peasants did not know the rules of the royal court, but she had read a lot and learned everything.
«Don’t get your train caught on the edge of the magic realm!» a bird cawed angrily as Janet’s train got stuck in the roots of a stump that didn’t seem to be there a second ago. The girl barely managed to free the brocade cloth, but a flap was left on the roots. The bird cawed defiantly, and either the eye or the stone in its forehead glowed red.
It was all sunset games! Janet raised her ball, and almost jerked her hands away. It seemed to her that from the ball the face of the pedlar who had once brought the game to the castle was smiling at her amiably. The illusion lasted only a moment.
Janet went to her girlfriends, but the sensation of holding someone else’s head in her hands only intensified. Nyssa made her play with everyone. Janet was quickly out of breath and tired. What kind of game is it to flip the ball from hand to hand? But the girls laughed merrily, catching it. They enjoyed the game as much as boys enjoy spears and swords.
Janet remembered the mirrored shields of the imps that she had seen in her dream fighting earthly knights. What a dream that had been! She was still terrified to remember. She must have dreamed it all because of Nyssa’s chatter, and also because of the stories of two travelers who had spent the night in the castle not so long ago. Over dinner, they told many tales of the strange creatures of the forest they had encountered along the way. They could, after all, make up stories to amuse their guests and thus work off their overnight stay. But how dark her father became when he listened to their stories! It was as if he knew something he had never spoken of.
Elves in the woods! Roundabouts in the hills! Janet looked away, to where the edge of the forest was black on the horizon. It was forbidden for anyone who lived in the castle to go there. Allegedly, there were a lot of wild animals there. But then why didn’t people go there to hunt anymore? Janet remembered that in her childhood, when her mother was still alive, they often went hunting in the woods and came back with game.
Only once, instead of the usual carcasses of fallow- deer and deer, the old knight brought an unusual creature to the house. It spoke even after it had been gutted. It complimented her mother and even sang. Not long after that, her mother disappeared. All Janet was left with was a locket of her portrait, which she wore around her neck. That was all!
It was sad that other girls of her age had living and caring mothers and she no longer did. Her father, too, seemed only half alive. He had become moody and taciturn and withdrawn ever since his wife had disappeared.
«If I could only find their kingdom, I would blow them all away!» said he to someone on the night of his mother’s disappearance. Janet got out of bed then and eavesdropped under the opened door. Her father had a visitor who had a bad reputation in the nearest town. He was even nicknamed the foul trapper or inquisitor, but he returned all the gold he had paid to his father because he could not help him. He was stern, but honest. Because he returned from the woods without the countess, the purse of coins was also returned. The gold jingled on the table. A circle of tiny figures danced in the fireplace.
«Come to us!» They called to Janet. She stared only at them, hardly listening to what her father was saying to the trapper. Only one phrase stuck in her memory.
«I would destroy them all, if only I could find their kingdom among the forests. But no one can find them!» Some scrap of paper in a woman’s delicate handwriting fell from his fingers. The earl made a fist of his strong arm, which was gleaming with precious rings like armor. Since then, his hand had grown flabby and wrinkled like a dead man’s. The only thing that reminded him of his former strength were his rings. They bore the insignia and seal of his noble house. Her father never took them off. It was as if those rings were the only talisman against those voices that supposedly called to him from his window at night.
The grass lapped beneath Janet’s train. A black bird was flying behind her now in the height of the sunset sky. The other girls had spotted it, too.
«It was following us like a pesky cavalier,» one of the girls joked, and everyone else laughed in unison. Janet didn’t laugh.
«It followed me, not you,» the earl’s daughter wanted to say, but said nothing. Why spoil the mood for those who were having so much fun. She herself suddenly felt cold and was frightened. And it’s May, after all. Now was not the time to be shivering from the frost.
The cold spread from her fingertips to her whole body. Janet walked through the blooming meadow and froze. And a bird cawed overhead, as if laughing.
«Catch!» The ball would have hit her chest if she hadn’t put her arms forward. Janet caught it deftly, and again she thought the ball was the head with the smiling face of a redheaded boy she hadn’t seen in years.
The girls looked at her in amazement.
«Why don’t you throw the ball?» Nyssa asked.
It seemed strange to them. Janet had been looking at the patterns on the ball for a minute. The girls only noticed the golden patterns. She, on the other hand, saw a smirk and boyish features in them.
Twenty incomprehensible pairs of eyes were fixed on her, and Janet didn’t know what to say.
«Aren’t you sick?» Nyssa moved cautiously toward her to feel her forehead, but suddenly everyone was distracted by a sudden apparition. A scrawny young man with a box behind his back was striding down the path, flaming in the sunset rays.
«Quentin!» the girls exclaimed cheerfully, and rushed toward him. It seemed as if they were about to kiss him, but they only began pushing to look at his luggage.
«How do they know him?» Janet wondered.
«He’s a successful trader in town. You don’t go there,» Nyssa scolded her, «otherwise you’d meet a lot of interesting young men.»
Janet caught sight of the pedlar and was taken aback. This was the same redheaded boy who used to sell ribbons and fabrics. He’d grown surprisingly fit, but the pointy tips of his ears still stuck out ugly from under his red hat. Apparently he had already sold his green velvet beret to someone. So his name was Quentin! She couldn’t remember his name, though. But she well remembered his impertinent, mocking look.
When the other girls had sorted out the goods they needed, the guy beckoned Janet to him. She approached only to look at him, not to shop. She had enough of the dressy belts, signet rings, and ribbons in the castle. She didn’t need any more. And you can’t carry that around in a lifetime, even if that lifetime stretched for centuries.
«There are girdles, buckles, belts, buttons, beads!» Quentin offered his wares to the others, but he would not describe them to Janet. He merely took her hand and put it to his lips, as only a nobleman should do. It was fortunate that the others did not notice. They were too engrossed in picking out things. Quentin even had mirrors and boxes in his box. Nyssa bought a mirror with the gilded face of some goddess on the back. It was just gorgeous.
«Did you steal it?» Janet whispered softly. She watched Quentin’s face curiously. He was very nice, handsome even.
«I don’t steal anything. But sometimes they give me something. Not people! There were other, not greedy gentlemen!»
What nonsense he was talking! Janet would have walked away from him immediately if she hadn’t enjoyed looking at him. He had unusual clothes, and the freckles on his cheeks were folded into a whimsical pattern, as if they were gilding rather than freckles.
«This is for you!» He pulled a fancy bracelet out of his pocket, not from the box, and held it out to Janet.
«But I wasn’t going to buy anything,» she protested.
«And