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 even think anything of it. Everyone would think you’d have withered away from your illness. But your friend from the forest won’t let me. It’s good to have a lover who cares about you and can do anything. Well, almost anything. If he was king of the elves and fairies, Amaranta’s story would be the same as yours. He would have come after you to the earl’s castle with his army of evil spirits.»
«Who is Aspasia?» Janet was more alarmed by the name than by the old hag’s chatter.
«She is my sister. She’s in Rodolit now.
«She is a fortune teller,» Janet guessed. But how could that be? Belladonna was an ancient, gray-haired old woman, and suddenly she had a young, attractive sister. Yes, she’s old enough to be her granddaughter.
«Don’t think I’m lying,» Belladonna warned her, sensing her doubts. «You see, one abuses magic and feeds on other people’s powers more often than the other. But I can do something, too.»
She turned for a moment toward the hearth, where orange sparks flickered. Her body trembled, and she turned back to Janet, already young and enchanted. Even the fortuneteller in Rodolit was not so pretty.
«Have you seen enough?» Belladonna was a moment later a hunchbacked old woman with long gray hair. «I don’t like to deceive people for a long time.»
«Does Aspasia like it?» Janet inquired.
«She’s an aristocrat,» said Belladonna. «She appreciates fancy things. She wants revenge on the Queen of the Fairies for petty quarrels that aren’t worth a damn.»
«How do you feel about the fairies’ queen?» For some reason Janet became curious.
«I’d rather know how you feel about her. After all, she does whatever she wants with your lover. She owns him like he owns you. And she can destroy you both unless your father comes to the rescue.»
«And what can a mortal earl do against a fairies’ queen?»
«Am I talking about an earl?» Belladonna was greatly surprised. «I am talking about the king of the elves.»
Janet almost laughed.
«Don’t you know your mother is with him now?»
«You’re confused about something.»
«Girl, I never confuse anything. Not the past, not the future. I know everything,» with these words the old fortune-teller took out a roll of some kind and put it in front of Janet. The roll was moving. Claws were coming out of it.
«Take this! It’s your mother’s bastard and King Dagda’s bastard! They both don’t want it. You can take him with you.»
«You don’t like it, you’ll have to take care of others. Medea Shai has bastards, too.»
With what a sneer she said it, as if she hoped to hurt the girl’s feelings.
«You should
