Tamlane – Prisoner of the queen of the fairies. Natalie Yacobson

of the water, when suddenly the lips of the head moved. They were trying to say something.

      «Turn back around!»

      Did the head really say it? Janet recoiled from the well.

      «It is the boundary! You will overstep the boundary if you go any further!» The head’s words became muffled.

      «He’s supposed to warn anyone who came near here, but you didn’t listen. Then we can go on,» the bird exulted. Janet, grudgingly, followed her. It would probably be better to turn back.

      What kind of place was this, where severed heads floated in wells and were able to speak.

      The well was left behind. The girl passed a thicket of centuries-old pines that somehow reminded her of a troop of sleeping giants. Then she passed a thicket of shrubbery. And then a wall of white and scarlet roses rose before her. Right in the woods! What a miracle! The roses somehow surprised her even more than the bloody brook and the head in the well.

      Janet walked over and touched one of them. It looked more like garden roses than wild roses. But who is here to tend them? Was there a castle in the woods that had been destroyed by enemies? The hulk of the wall she noticed to the left of the roses might have been preserved from it. Apparently, it had happened years ago. There had been some kind of war going on here. The kingdom might have been destroyed. All that was left of it were ruins. But the roses had not withered away.

      She plucked one of them and hurt herself, her blood settling on the thorns and as if awakening someone. A dark whirlwind swept nearby. The roses whispered.

      «Go away, or you will be caught like him!» A scarlet rose whispered.

      «The nets are spread,» the white ones echoed.

      Can roses whisper? She’s just imagining it. Janet turned and stumbled right into him. The knight from her dreams was standing in front of her.

      She was dumbfounded. He didn’t move either, making him look like a statue in armor. Janet gazed avidly at the helmet with dragon horns and jaws, the cuirass with inlays of shiny scales, and the hilt of the sword made in the shape of a two-headed dragon. What marvelous craftsmen could make such armor and such a sword?! Janet stared enchanted at the hero of her dreams. Could it be that now she sees him in reality, and not in a dream. And all around are not those harmful creepy creatures that each time accompanied him in his dreams. And there is no wall of fire, either. Even the mirror frame through which they were seen is gone. It is worth reaching out and she will touch him. Nothing separates them.

      But the knight intercepted her hand before she could do anything. Janet even cried out in pain. His hand felt as iron as his armor.

      «You can’t tear those roses!» A whisper from beneath his visor gave off a steely hardness, too, a fiery fury.

      «But I didn’t!» Janet tried to justify herself. «I only touched it.»

      «Didn’t you?» He let go of her arm, but the scales set into his gauntlets marked her skin. The knight walked slowly around the wall of roses. For a moment she lost sight of him, and suddenly a young man without armor, dressed in a smart green camisole, fair-haired and unbelievably handsome, stepped toward her. Janet almost gasped in admiration. His hair! It reminded her of dawn! Only the morning sun shone like that. His eyes were blue. The green velvet of his camisole set off his very pale skin. Were his ears pointed, like Quentin’s? For some reason that was what bothered Janet the most right now.