«Who forged it?»
«It isn’t important! Take it!» Quentin insisted. «Wear it all the time.»
Where do they make such things? From what distant kingdom did Quentin bring it? Janet didn’t dare ask that, because the redheaded young man was already flirting with the other girls. It makes sense, after all, they are customers who pay coins for the goods, and the earl’s daughter was only bribed with a gift so that she would not interfere with others’ choice of goods.
The bracelet wrapped around Janet’s wrist like a fiery ring of whimsical, tiny figurines. Though it seemed fiery, it didn’t burn her skin. Even touching the burns and scratches left by the strange dream, the orange metal didn’t hurt. Janet contemplated the metal figures. They were dancing in different poses. Some were winged, some were horned, other had tails, other were reptilian-like. But as a whole they all formed a fairy-tale circle. And that circle was now wrapped around her hand. Quentin was to be thanked.
But he was long gone. Janet looked up from her bracelet and saw that the young boy was gone. He was gone when the last light of sunset faded, as if he’d vanished into thin air.
The magic bird
This bird had no black feathers, no jewel in its forehead, but it sang so sweetly that Janet did not hesitate to follow it to the creek in the morning, while everyone in the castle was still asleep. Dawn played in the bird’s feathers with iridescent reflections. Janet didn’t know what to call the bird either. It looked like a peacock, but peacocks don’t have seven-colored iridescent feathers and such a fluffy tuft on their heads. Janet had never seen such a bird before.
A bird flew onto her balcony in the dawn light and called after her.
«Call her Rainbow,» someone whispered in Janet’s ear. But who was it? Was it a mischievous page boy? Janet turned around and saw no one behind her. It was strange, because the voice sounded so close. She couldn’t have imagined it.
Just as it didn’t seem to her that the bird’s singing was sometimes human. The latter hardly surprised Janet. There were talking parrots in the castle’s birdhouse. True, their voices were hoarse and speech was poorly understood. But, perhaps, there is a breed of bird that can produce melodious phrases in the human language, only barely alternating with a chirp.
Janet listened as she followed the bird, and before she knew it, she had stepped her feet into the flowing water. It was a spring. It was almost at the border of the forest. All she had to do was cross the meadow to get to the edge.
There was no further to go. Janet remembered the horror stories about the forest. People disappeared there. Not just frail women, but well-armed knights would simply disappear on a hunting trip.
The bird sat on a branch of a willow tree and began to peer at Janet with her unusual orange, sparkling eyes. The girl looked closely and noticed that the bird’s eyes also changed color, as if repeating the color of her seven-colored feathers. There were as many tones in the rainbow as there were in her plumage.
Janet got as close to the willow tree as she could and reached up, but the bird was sitting too high. She barely managed to touch the tip of its fluffy tail.
«So who are you closer to, the peacocks or the birds of paradise?» Janet joked.
«It is closer to the rainbow ones!» A voice behind her answered. «There are a lot of rainbow birds in the forest kingdom of Medea Shai, but there are blackbirds in it too.
Who said that? Janet turned nervously over her shoulder. There was no one. She looked around. Meadows and fields and sparse trees with trunks so thin a child couldn’t hide behind them. The voice seemed to be that of a child. The children in the castle had long ago been taught not to be naughty. None of them would dare follow their mistress and tease her. Could there be another bird circling nearby that could talk coherently?
Janet looked up into the sky. No birds in sight either. The bright dawn rays hurt her eyes. But in the waters of the spring, they highlighted every pebble in the bottom. It seemed to Janet that the stones in the water had taken on a rainbow of colors, too, and were now a blaze of seven: blue, green, yellow, orange, red, pink, blue. She wish she could collect them all. Good if they don’t lose their bright coloring when she pulls them out of the water. After all, it might just be a game of light. Janet soaked her feet and the hem of her dress. And it was, after all, her best outfit – emerald green, woven with gold flowers and pearls. She wore it only because today important guests were to come to the castle. For the first time in years! The lace in the front helped her put it on without the help of the maids, who were still asleep. Usually they woke up before the sun had risen, but today seemed to be a special day.
Perhaps an unusual bird had been sent here from a delegation of guests, like a carrier pigeon. That would explain why Janet had never seen such a bird before. If it is not from these parts, there are no such birds here. True, there was no message attached to the bird’s leg, but at least the thought has common sense. It was better to think so than to think the bird was complete magic.
She sat over the spring like a living rainbow, watching Janet’s every move. The girl bent down to fetch the stones from the water, but she could do nothing. The stones slid in her fingers like water. They could not be pulled to the surface. It was like catching the water itself. Only once did Janet manage to catch a sharp pebble with her fingers and pull it out of the water. Examining it, she wondered. It was not a pebble, but a key. It was very unusual. Its head was in the shape of a sun and its teeth were curved underneath, imitating tongues of flame. What a find! Surely this key can’t unlock anything. It looks purely decorative. Was it made by nature, like a nugget or a lump of gold? Or has some fairy lost it? Then one can explain why it is so unusual.
Clutching it in her hand, Janet looked into the water and noticed that there were many more such keys in the spring. Unlike the pebbles, they were easily fished out. They were all as unusual as the first, but slightly different. One had a crown-shaped head, another in the shape of a sickle of the month, a third in the shape of an apple, a fourth in the shape of a doe’s head, and a fifth in the 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