Wasn’t she imagining it all? The magnificent carriage was gilded so heavily that it seemed to be made of pure gold, against which the purple curtains of the windows stood out sharply. The roof was surmounted by a peculiar ornament in the form of gold snakes that curled in a crown.
It was as if the carriage was spreading a sleepy spell around it. The city was silent as a tomb. Was everyone asleep? Janet caught sight of a strange, lanky creature in a coachman’s outfit on the bunk of an approaching carriage. It looked like a harpy. The groomsmen at the back of the carriage resembled two toads in coats.
Some couple in love, who had been rushing to knock at the fortune-teller’s house, fell asleep just under the threshold as the carriage approached them. Only Janet, standing on the balcony, felt no sleepy spells. And in the windows of the neighboring houses, people were falling asleep, falling right onto the carpet or floor. What was wrong with this carriage? Why did the coachman and groomsmen look more like fairy tale animals? And why do all the people fall asleep where the gilded carriage rushed past them? Could it all just be a dream?
Janet felt a sudden pain in her hand. She pricked her finger on the iron roses that made up the balustrade. No, not the iron ones anymore! Living stems with thorns twisted along the bars. Red and white roses bloomed right on the balustrade. The roses weren’t alive a minute ago, or she would have noticed. The buds were blooming quickly, as if in a dream. A drop of blood from Janet’s finger fell on the white rose, and the girl heard something like a whisper:
«Release him!»
Was that really what the roses were saying? They had no feminine faces, like the images of the moon in the fortuneteller’s house, but the whispers came from the petals. And there was a deathly coldness about them, as if the roses were covered with snow and ice. Janet hurried away from the balustrade and noticed how quickly the roses wilted and withered and suddenly turned into iron bars on the balustrade.
In the fortuneteller’s house, too, everyone was asleep. Janet tried to rouse Nyssa, who had dropped her head on the armrest of her chair. No one was roused. Even the fortuneteller’s servant had fallen asleep on the threshold of the room where she’d been receiving clients.
The whole town seemed to have fallen asleep. Would they sleep for all eternity now? Janet was frightened that she was the only person in the whole town who hadn’t fallen asleep and was now doomed to spend the rest of her life wandering alone. Soon, however, she noticed someone stunted moving down the hall. At first she mistook him for a child dressed in a groom’s outfit. The bottle-colored coat and triangle almost merged with the greenish skin of his puffy face and extra-large hands. Could it be that his fingers were webbed? Janet could hardly believe what she was seeing when the stunted creature suddenly clung to her. It barely reached her waist and looked like a fat toad in a coat.
«Don’t go, madam,» it warned her in a gruff voice, nodding toward the door behind which the fortuneteller had hidden. «They’ll fill your pretty head with nonsense.»
«I thank you for the advice!» Janet tried to snatch her hand from the toad, but couldn’t. The green creature’s grip was too tenacious. Apparently it was one of the groomsmen from the carriage that had just passed under the windows, dispelling the sleepy spell. But then the carriage itself must have stopped somewhere nearby. She wonder why the groom had gone into this particular house. Was it for fortune-telling?
«I’ll tell you a secret,» he beckoned Janet with a thin green finger so that the girl leaned toward him. «This fortune teller is a real swindler. She lies without blushing! All she wants is your money, and lying through her teeth is her only skill.»
He whispered it in Janet’s ear as she leaned toward him, overcome with disgust. His breath reeked of a swampy stench, as if a toad was really talking to her.
«That liar has lied so much to my lady!»
«And who is your mistress?»
The creature instantly covered the toad’s mouth, as if he’d realized he’d said too much.
«Well, I’ve got to go!» It hissed as it swept away with its thin green toad-legged feet.
Janet stared after it in bewilderment. What did it want with her? A shimmering light poured from behind the fortuneteller’s door, as if the moon had settled there. Janet decided to peek in and see if the landlady herself was asleep. If she was a sorceress, and not a rogue, she must have known how to resist sleep spells.
Janet had to step over the servant to get to the door. Her train slid over the sleeping body, but the servant didn’t wake up, didn’t even flinch in his sleep. Everyone was sleeping, straight asleep. Janet was even frightened that they were already dead and about to start decomposing right before her eyes, but from behind the door a melodious voice suddenly called to her.
«Come in, my dear! You should know your fate!»
The voice was pleasant, but somehow not particularly trusting. Still, Janet stepped into the half-darkened room. At first it seemed to her as large as a vast palace, but in reality it was no more than a small room filled with strange objects. Here was a gilded spinning wheel, the shining thread from which stretched itself, and gold moths flying over a candle, and a cage with a sleeping firebird, and, of course, a crystal ball on the table, covered with a tablecloth, woven with stars.
«Come in! Don’t be frightened!» The woman, whose face was concealed beneath a dark veil, invited her to the table. Her dress, also woven with stars, seemed like a slice of the night sky, and a black cap over the veil, as if to indicate belonging to fairies. Under the thin veil you could see that her hair was white and her features were strikingly beautiful. Only the face itself was somehow inhuman. Her features looked as if they had been painted on top of a shell that remained motionless. No sign of facial expression. The fortuneteller spoke, but her lips never moved.
Her voice was commanding. It was what made Janet obey. She obediently lowered herself into a chair on the other side of the table from the fortuneteller. The girl didn’t even know if she wanted to know her destiny from this striking woman, who herself somehow resembled a black-clad moon. Coming here was Nyssa’s initiative, but she was asleep now. Besides, for her, discovering her fate was just a curious game. And Janet felt that the woman on the other side of the table liked to give only meaningful predictions and only to those who really needed them.
«You must be warned against danger,» she said, with a mere glance into the crystal ball, «but not the kind of danger that awaits you in Rhodolit. A deadly danger awaits you in a faraway land, hidden in forbidden forests. There awaits a cunning woman of great power, and she has long possessed what is really yours alone.
«What do you say?» Janet became involuntarily interested.
«I say about this!» The fortuneteller touched the crystal ball, closed her black-gloved hand into a fist, and when she opened it, there was a living heart in her palm, wrapped in a white rose. Blood dripped, staining the rose petals scarlet. «It is his heart! It is so very different from the heart of your mother, Countess Amaranta. It does not want to be captured by fairies.»
The illusion lasted only a moment. The bloody heart disappeared somewhere, but Janet could still smell the scent of roses. The narrow black-gloved hand slid back onto the crystal ball, and it vibrated beneath it like a living thing.
«I see that, without going on a long journey, you will bypass the dangers and live a long carefree life, but your life will not be happy, because your fate awaits you in the forest.»
«Thank you, I’ll remember,» Janet was no longer sure how to end this unpleasant visit with some plausible excuse. She began to shiver, her skin freezing as if from a severe frost. Her head was spinning. The fortuneteller looked at her through her dark veil with eyes like two green crystals, and smiled as she bared a row of teeth like round pearls. The comparison was not at all poetic. It really felt like her mouth was filled with pearls, not teeth. And the lips themselves were bloodless, like the body of an oyster.
Would it be rude if she got up right