to Quentin. Too many young ladies were begging him vigorously for more tricks or to sell them cheaper rarities. This time he was even selling shells. And they were all unusually shaped and rainbow-colored. So she wasn’t imagining it when she saw the motley shells in the spring. Quentin had even managed to get them!
Janet looked at him with envy and delight. He seemed so free and uncontrollable as he demonstrated another trick. And she suddenly felt as if she were in a cage. She couldn’t do anything out of the ordinary, and some kid could do it all.
«Do you think he’s magic?» Janet asked Nyssa quietly.
«He is not a wizard.» Her friend almost laughed. He’s just a juggler.»
«You’ve seen jugglers in Rhodolit before?» Janet wondered, for her friend had been out on the town before, not cooped up in her castle. But she’d never said anything about tricksters in the square who could do such astounding things. Nor did the other girls who visited the city for fun bring such gossip to the county.
«Of course I’ve seen them,» Nyssa confirmed.
«And they could all do all the same things as Quentin did.»
«Well, not all of them.»
«It turns out he’s the only one.»
«He’s just a little more talented,» Nyssa commented after a moment’s thought. «He is a gifted kid and a pretty one. You could persuade your father to invite him to the castle to give us all a performance. I bet he’s the kind of man who’s willing to work for a mere dinner.»
Quentin’s clothes were bright. But was it expensive? Janet didn’t know the price of fabric. Nor did she know prices in general. As the daughter of an earl, she never bought anything herself. Nyssa, on the other hand, was more experienced.
«I think he’s a bit of a wizard,» Janet whispered to her as fireworks exploded in the square they’d just left. A couple of sparks flew right under Janet’s feet. They danced on the cobblestone sidewalk like flaming stars.
«Is it magic?» Nyssa cautiously lifted her hem, stepping over the sparks. «More like scattered beads and some kind of illusion created by a skilled magician. There was nothing magical about it. Yeah, and who needs magic nowadays, unless you’re talking about fortune-telling.»
«I’d like to be a magician,» Janet said out loud, not knowing why. The words rolled off her tongue and echoed through the empty alley. She felt as if someone had heard her words.
Janet turned around and saw someone wearing a mask of gold leaves, hastily hiding around the corner. She had seen such a mask somewhere before, looking like the face of a woodland elf.
On the way, the girl turned back a few more times. The feeling that someone in an elf mask was watching her did not go away, although she did not see anyone else behind her.
The fortuneteller had a lovely house with beautiful oval balconies and pictures of the moon on the curtains and carpets. The moon with a woman’s face was evidently the emblem of the mistress of the house, for its design was repeated everywhere. No wonder! Such a symbol created an atmosphere of mystery and witchcraft.
The queue in the hall for the fortune-telling was bigger than anyone had expected. Even the small bribe Nyssa had given to the fortuneteller’s acolyte did not get her through.
«We’ll have to wait,» Nyssa settled into a vacant chair, which also bore the symbol of a smiling moon. For some reason Janet didn’t want to sit down and went out onto the balcony. The wrought iron balustrade curled in the shape of iron roses. They reminded the girl of the white and scarlet roses in the castle. The moon was just rising in the sky above Rhodolit. It glowed, illuminating the road below. Janet noticed a strange carriage rushing through town. It looked as if it were in a hurry to merge with the path of moonlight on the sidewalk, and it was going incredibly fast. The people it passed suddenly fell asleep and fell right into the road.
Janet even wanted to pinch herself. 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
