shape of some fantastic flower. Janet collected more than a dozen of them. Who could have scattered them in the spring?
«Now I have a handful of keys that don’t unlock anything, apparently…» Janet stared at the findings. Indeed, where would there be such unusual doors to which all these wonderful-looking keys would fit.
As she collected them, she moved along the stream, and lo and behold, the woods were quite close. The clearing was black nearby, and danger was coming from there.
«Go into the woods!» Suddenly a rainbow bird sang. «There is someone waiting for you in the forest!»
Janet looked at it in amazement. Now the bird’s trill sounded so much like a human voice, as if it were a girl singing, not a bird.
«Go into the woods!» The bird flew down from the willow tree and soared over Janet’s head, covering the sun with its wings. «In the forest kingdom there will be doors to which all the keys will fit.»
But it’s the woods where you can’t go! It’s dangerous there! Everyone knows that! Janet had so often been frightened by stories of wild beasts bullying to death people who wandered into the thicket.
«Follow me!» The bird sang, circling over Janet. «Follow me! Come right after me! You won’t regret it!»
Janet clutched handfuls of keys in her palms and did not know what to do. The bird, seeing her indecision, descended quite low, catching the lush tail on the girl’s cheek. Before Janet could dodge, the bird nimbly pulled the satin ribbon from her hair with its claws. Even magpies aren’t that adept at stealing.
The bird must have assumed that Janet would surely follow her to retrieve what she had stolen. What an intelligent creature it is, however. Nightingales, white peacocks, and even the talking parrots in her father’s castle were not so intelligent.
Janet wanted to go into the woods, but she didn’t. It wasn’t wise. Besides, the guests would be arriving by noon. She wanted to talk to them, to ask them how life was going from here to there. As she left, she had the feeling that someone was waiting for her in the woods. It was not a bird at all. Some creature in a mask of leaves was peeking out of the thicket, or so she thought when she turned around.
A shadow lay across the meadow, as if some chariot was racing straight across the sky on winged horses. The shadow certainly looked like a chariot, but why would there be one in the sky? It was all just a dream. Janet knotted her golden-red braids, intertwined with pearl threads. They were heavy and long, and the ends were wet in the stream. Her hair grew faster than all the other women’s. Her braids almost reached to the hem of her dress, and if she braided them, they would be even longer. Her maid tired of inventing elaborate hairstyles for her to style the unruly mass of strands. It was said that Janet’s unusual hair color was a sign that she had been chosen by the fairies. Her father would fall into a rage upon hearing this phrase. Once he even pounded his fist on the table and shouted back loudly that Janet was his daughter, not someone else’s.
As if a fairy’s daughter could take root in the castle! Janet remembered that as a child her hair had been of the usual brown color, and only began to redden as she grew older. Now it looked like the color of the sun.
Involuntarily Janet wondered; what color was the hair under the helmet of that knight who had appeared to her in her dreams. The dragon-headed helmet he had never removed. Maybe the helmet was his head. After all, it was only a dream. And dreams can involve many reckless things.
Tonight she dreamt of the knight again. He was all fire and called her with him, into the flames! And then she was awakened by a bird. A moment before she almost stepped over the mirror frame into the fire.
The dream of the knight had been repeated ten times. And each time it featured all the same things: the frame of the mirror, the flames, the rattle of metal weapons, and the excited voices of the magical creatures. This time they seemed to say:
«She’s coming! She will destroy us all!»
Their frantic screams lingered in her ears even after she awoke.
There used to be a woman in the village who knew how to interpret dreams and prepare potions of herbs for any ailment. If she is still alive, Janet must go to her. The last time Janet had seen her was when she was a child herself. Janet’s mother had gone to her for some herbal potion, which the herbalist gave reluctantly and demanded a huge fee for it. Even then the old woman was ancient, gray and frail as a dry twig, but, how much anger was in her gaze. She was not ashamed to speak rudely even to noble lords, and no one punished her for it. Apparently, her skills really were irreplaceable.
When Janet returned to the castle, everyone was still asleep. Even the sentries were dozing at the gate. How strange! It is nearing noon, and the inner chambers resemble a sleepy realm. And this before the arrival of the long-awaited guests! Usually at this hour, the castle was buzzing with the work of the servants like a beehive.
Janet noticed that the wattles of roses on the castle wall had grown unusually large. Scarlet and white! It seems they had only been white before. Their mother had planted them back in the day. They symbolized something, but Janet couldn’t remember what. After last winter they had withered away, and now suddenly they were blooming again. The withered stems were full of life again. There seemed to be a quiet rustling coming from the flowers, like a whisper.
«Don’t go there!»
Where? Janet was used to the fact that birds could talk, so could flowers. Barely had she gone up to her chambers when the people in the castle began to gradually wake up. Apparently, they were quite surprised themselves that they had slept through the afternoon.
Nyssa was the first to arrive. On a whim, she liked to help Janet arrange the heavy braids into her hair and hold them in place with turtle combs. She was even better at it than the maid.
«There you go! You must go into the town looking like that,» she suggested. «When the guests are gone, we’ll take one of the carriages and go to Rhodolit. It’s the nearest town.
«It’s dangerous to leave a guarded castle for no better reason than to go there,» said Janet shyly.
«Come, we don’t have to go through the woods. The knights in our guard know a much shorter way to Rhodolit.»
«Is it true that the town has long been impoverished, and that the jewelers who once made fine jewelry there have left?» Janet wondered.
«No, they haven’t! The city is thriving. It lives up to its name, which it got from the semi-precious stones they use to make intricate jewelry. But, apart from jewelers, there are many other entertainments there now. For example, not long ago, the greatest fortune teller sailed to Rhodolit from across the sea.»
«Is she the greatest?» Janet grudgingly grimaced. It sounded like an exaggeration.
«Well, that’s what they say. Everything she’s ever told her visitors has come true, and they spread rumors about her. Would you like to visit her, too?»
Janet thought about it. It would be tempting, if her reputation as a soothsayer were true. After all, it might turn out to be nothing but empty bluster.
«Is the old Belladonna from the village still alive? They used to call her Mother Belladonna. She had a black cat named Thistle.»
Nyssa frowned for
