Rhianon – Princess of Fire. Natalie Yacobson

that not long ago it was a hat with bells, not a cap.

      «Well, are you coming or not,» she heard from the depths of the ground, where the crumbling steps led. Rhianon looked back one last time; there the forest was behind her, and in front of her went down an impenetrable darkness, and that was where she had to go. She was afraid to step on the stairs carved in the cave, and when she did step, the darkness became impenetrable. It was as if something had closed in behind her, cutting off the way back.

      «Hey,» she called out to her guide, but her voice was lost in the cave’s ramifications. No one answered her, only an echo, but not the usual kind of echo, a kind of polyphonic and multi-voiced, as if thousands of tiny creatures were laughing back.

      Rhiannon moved forward, hoping to find her guide, but he was long gone. She groped her way forward, hoping to find her guide, but she soon saw him gone, his green cap lined with a single bell on one of the steps. Rhiannon bent down and picked it up, and suddenly the world around her was transformed.

      It was still a cave, but no longer as narrow and cramped. The stairway carved in the stone was far behind her, and ahead of her was no mine, only a vast oval-shaped hall, surrounded on all sides by uneven walls of caves. Rhianon was standing in the very center of it. Strangely, it was no longer dark around her. The girl lifted her head and looked around. The vaults of the ceiling were invisible to her, and up there, there was no source of light at all; the light was coming from everywhere, from the very depths of the earth and at the same time, from nowhere. Rhianon didn’t even try to lift the hat that had come off her head, and her hair fell loosely to her shoulders. Something in her clothing was also subtly changing, instead of the stiff man’s clothes she now felt the touch of brocade against her skin, and a long turquoise train swirled behind her.

      «Look in the mirror, my dear,» came the voice of her recent escort, though he was still out of sight.

      «There isn’t a mirror,» Rhianon said indignantly, but she glanced around for the strange creature who had brought her here. It might be hiding somewhere. But above her head was a wisp of silver smoke. Sometimes she could see the shape of a face through the smoke. Here and there the smoke swirled, causing her to turn back and forth so that she couldn’t let it out of her sight.

      When she turned around for him once more, her gaze stumbled upon the mirror. She froze in amazement. The lady whose reflection she could see full-length in front of her was dressed far more richly and elegantly than the princess she remembered. A turquoise dress with a tight corsage gracefully encircled her figure, flowing from her slim waist in clouds of iridescent brocade and seemed not to end at all, because the train lying on the floor stretched endlessly.

      «Shall I make it a little shorter?» The voice asked sympathetically. And why would anyone care so much about her? Rhianon turned around to examine it more closely, and the train itself seemed to her like a living snake that slid across the floor.

      And then she noticed several more mirrors in the walls and was struck, but not because they perfectly copied and multiplied her reflection. It was something else that caught her attention. The mirrors were magnificent, but not straight, as if granite had grown into the amalgam and frames, the pebbles were unevenly interlocked here and there at the edges, and seemed to be an integral part of these strange shining mirrors. They did not grow out of the walls, did they? But then why were they not even hanging tightly against the walls, but as if they were growing out of them, like fungus or other parasitic growths. And there are more and more of them, whichever way you look. So many recesses with mirrors made the room seem polygonal rather than oval.

      «You look beautiful, your Highness,» the same voice said, and Rhianon noticed that she had a diadem in her loose hair and that the long locks of her hair were being gathered into a beautiful hairdo as if someone were setting them and pins the top of it with tiny diamonds.

      «Splendid,» the voice went on, «I swear you are the loveliest lady that could have been here, and if we hadn’t been there in time you might have had your charming head cut off.»

      «What do you mean?» she said the question with her lips, but the silvery smoke above her rippled, took on a fuzzy shape, coiled itself in a thin ring around her head, and disintegrated back into a myriad of sparkling sprays. And still, even if for a moment it split or disappeared, it looked like one living thing.

      «I recognized you,» she remarked toward the swirling silvery dust that made up the smoke. Though the shape was different now, her recent escort’s voice echoed her remark with a laugh thick as smoke.

      «You’d better watch yourself,» he advised her.

      She did so, noting with pleasure that she liked it better than what she’d worn at Court, and not because it was more beautiful, the brocade gently warming her skin without arousing the firestorm in her veins. On the contrary, it was as if the fabric dulled her inner fire. It felt so good to feel the texture of the precious fabric. And the color was just her favorite blue. Delicate as the morning sky, as water, as ice… perhaps it was this shade that appealed to her because it challenged the element of fire raging in her blood. It was the color of the sea and ice blocks. It went with her eyes. Maybe it wasn’t chosen by accident. In any case, it was the best dress Rhianon had ever felt in her life. She was only surprised by the border of gold lace running cloudy across the hemispheres of her breasts. After all, where there is sun there is fire, even if it is a thin ray.

      «But you’re a royal princess. The color of kings is gold,» the voice reminded her softly, and it was clear from his tone that he was lying, trying to divert her attention from something more important. Something she didn’t know yet.

      «Why can’t I see you?» Rhianon looked around for the nonexistent person she was talking to. «And where does your voice come from when you can’t be seen? Are you behind one of the mirrors?»

      She had seen illusions produced by mirrors at Court before, but this was something else, and she no longer dared to call it a mere trick. She did not feel the presence of a living body nearby, not in the cavernous hall or behind the alcoves of the mirrors. Only the silvery smoke wafted over her head, thinning, gathering back into a cloud, sometimes vibrating, and the voice seemed to emanate from it.

      In answer to her, of course, only a light laugh sounded, like the quiet ringing of a bell on the green cap she still clutched in her hands.

      «I guessed who you were,» Rianon declared, to reassure him a little. She wanted to stop playing hide-and-seek with him, but then suddenly realized that she didn’t even know his name. He never introduced himself, no name, no title, no position in society, had he at least been a court jester or if she could have called him a spirit for sure, but she couldn’t. She just didn’t have time to ask him his name.

      «What is your name?» She looked around quickly, trying in vain to catch sight of the fumes that kept escaping. Now it seemed to envelop her in a shimmering cloud overhead, with a mocking, low jingle.

      «Give me a name!» He either asked or demanded.

      «But…» She clutched the green cap tighter with her hands and turned her head again sharply, trying to focus her gaze on the haze. It was in motion, and her voice sounded like it was coming from all around the room.

      «Courage, princess, call me something,» he began to tease. «I am your own personal demon, after all.»

      «What do you mean?» She was already wrinkling the cap nervously with her cold fingers; she wanted to think he was joking this time, but the intonation didn’t sound like it. Even the bells went silent for a moment. «What did you say?»

      She’d heard of something like this before, seen even more glazed eyes and corpses, blue with blood loss, with veins ripped open, with dead lips still seemingly ready to whisper the forbidden name of the one who had ripped them from their normal human life to give a moment of sparkle and then ruin them.

      «Don’t pretend it’s nothing to you,» he said, as if he had read her mind.

      Rhianon