to meet you too!» Janet wanted to ask the little girl a lot of things, but she hesitated.
«Are you in love with Tamlane?» The fairy shamelessly inquired.
Janet nodded.
«It’s dangerous!»
«So what is of it?» Janet was getting tired of everyone warning her about the danger coming from him or anyone else holding him captive.
But the fairy, as it turned out, had something else entirely in mind.
«Your father would not approve of this choice. He himself once stole a mortal from her husband and now, as a sign of remorse, tries to dissuade others from repeating his daring deed. Ridiculous! He did it himself, and he tells others that mortals and immortals must no longer make love.»
«You’re confused,» Janet interrupted her. «My father is a mere mortal and so is my mother. None of them are fairies or elves. We are human. It’s Tamlane who looks like an elf. Well, at least in part.»
«I’m not confused,» the fairy frowned. «I’ve been around a lot longer than you, and I know a lot more. But you only know what you’ve been told. That’s all you know. How could you know who your parents were? You weren’t smart when you were born, but I’ve seen it all and understood it all. And I’ve seen your parents on secret dates, too.»
«That’s enough,» Janet didn’t like hearing lies. Even if a fairy liked to make up all sorts of stories, she shouldn’t pass them off as truth. It wouldn’t make the conversation any more interesting.
«By the way, your friends are coming to get you. A knight named Ambrose has persuaded them to take you to the village to see an old hag who is an illegal witch, and often gets in our way. He thinks it is time to rid you of the child you conceived by an elf, who may well be born a monster, or at any rate a creature with unusual and dangerous powers for mankind. I myself have seen such children from the union of humans and elves, they are capable of destroying entire cities with their spells, and they do not understand why they do it themselves. They are driven by instinct, which is why they are called monsters in both our worlds and yours. But sometimes they can be very beautiful.»
Janet’s ears perked up from her babble. Soon Nyssa and Latonia actually came after her and began to persuade her to go to the village with them. It was as if they had unexpectedly gone there themselves to see some kind of celebration. They did not mention that Ambrose had sent them. Janet thought it was nice to have a fairy friend who could fly over and spy on everything and report back to her. So getting to know the tiny creature seemed useful.
All the way to the village, Latonia tried to hide her face, which was swollen and puffy, as if its features were being washed away by water. She hid all her other previously naked body parts: arms, shoulders, even her fingers, under her long, wide-sleeved outfit, buttoned up to her ears. She would also do well to put a veil over her face, so that no one would notice that her skin had turned a watery color, and her ears and eyebrows resembled the curves of seashells. Had the water elves bewitched her? Janet looked at her with apprehension and sympathy.
Nyssa, on the other hand, had been looking in the mirror she’d once bought from Quentin the whole way. Was that unusual, too? She’d never been so narcissistic that she couldn’t tear herself away from her own reflection for even a moment. She even seemed to talk to it. Her whisper, addressed to the mirror, could be heard all the way. How could you talk to your own reflection? It certainly wouldn’t have occurred to Janet. Talking to Tamlane or the fairy Kanna was much more pleasant. Nyssa didn’t think so. Her whispers reeked of passion, and in response, from the mirror, it was as if someone was whispering something. The voice was different from Nyssa’s. Janet noticed that the golden face of the supernatural being in relief on the back of the mirror sometimes seemed alive and moving. It even winked at her. Janet immediately looked away. Magic objects can be dangerous. And this mirror definitely contained some kind of magic. No wonder it did. After all, Quentin had sold it to her, and he had something to do with the magic world himself. Maybe she should have warned Nyssa that the thing in her hands wasn’t easy. But Nyssa was so engrossed in her dialogue with the mirror that she paid no attention to anything else.
On the way, Latonya began to feel sick. They had to stop the carriage for her to go out to the stream and get drunk. The girl complained that she couldn’t stand being away from water for long periods of time.
«It gets too stuffy, as if I’m going to melt,» she excused herself for her behavior as they drove on. Her behavior was strange, indeed. No well-mannered lady would stoop to the stream and drink directly from it like a doe at a watering hole. Latonya didn’t even ask to have the goblet, so she hurried to the water.
The old fortune-teller in the village received Latonia first and spent very little time alone with her. Judging by the look on the girl’s face as she left her, it was clear that she could not be helped. Nyssa did not go to the fortune teller. She stood by the roadside and talked to the mirror. Her curiosity about fortune-telling ended the moment she found herself holding a magical object. And she had once warned Janet to beware of magic and not to be friends with elves. What a hypocrite. Kanna flew beside her and laughed at the affected creature. The fairy was so tiny that no one paid any attention to her. As the earl’s daughter’s new friend, she followed her everywhere, while remaining, herself, unnoticed by anyone.
For some reason Janet was afraid to go to the fortune-teller. The last time she had been here was when she was a child, with her mother. She remembered the shabby little house, standing in the middle of nowhere, just over the cliff. It was dangerous to live here. If you stepped any farther away from the house, you’d fall straight down into a crevasse. But the old witch, as the locals had dubbed her, was obviously happy with the location.
Nothing had changed inside the house. It was dark even in the daytime, the hearth was burning, a cauldron of some kind of brew was hanging on chains from the ceiling, and the skins of slaughtered animals were everywhere.
«You came at last,» Belladonna seemed to be waiting for her. She approached Janet, shaking her gray hair, and suddenly placed a wrinkled hand on the girl’s waist.
«I knew it! Just like your mother. Do you really want to get rid of him?»
Janet jerked away, and backed away a little. She stumbled back toward the cauldron and stopped. The smell from the cauldron was not appetizing; it wasn’t cooking food, but something that smelled disgusting and irritated her nostrils. It even seemed to Janet that something shapeless but alive was reaching for her from the cauldron.
«I only wanted to see you.»
The old woman gave a distrustful snort.
«No one around here wants to see the witch again,» the old woman grinned incredulously.
«Are you a witch?»
The old woman was even embarrassed by Janet’s direct gaze.
«Oh, your lover is strong. Even now, in your presence, I can feel his green claws strangling me,» she complained. «I wish you hadn’t come.»
«I didn’t want to,» Janet admitted honestly. «I only wanted to reassure the people in the castle. They would have thought I was cured after they’d come to see you.»
«Is it from your love of elves, from your friendship with water and fire, from the handsome man in the thicket, or from your magical bloodline. What exactly would they want to heal you from? Almost none of these things are curable. Even the temptation you succumbed to in the thicket cannot be cured. You can only banish its fetus,» she ran her stubby finger along Janet’s waist again.
«I don’t think I want to cure anything. Love is not a disease.»
«But you’d better think of it,» said Belladonna, «for Aspasia spoke of you as a young, naive creature who thinks of nothing but amusement. And thus you lose a great deal. You’re naive! For example, I could drink all your youth and strength out of you right now, and you wouldn’t