Rhianon – Princess of Fire. Natalie Yacobson

made welcome at all the banquets, the other peasant boy would rejoice to tears that he was out of the mud for his talent almost made a prince, but he just stood in the corner with glowing eyes, drank a lot, did not want to look at women, and once confessed that there is someone who is always watching him from the void and even more owns him. His personal demon was the companion of all the brilliant and illustrious. After such a confession, he was found dead the next morning. It happened long ago, when Rhianon’s father, King of Loretta, was still alive, and she remembered to this day. And even his father’s death did not make such a terrible impression on her as that untimely death. After that, something dark and creepy seemed to take up residence in the castle and remained there until the corpse was burned in the main castle square. Rhianon shuddered in fear and disgust, so as not to betray all her feelings, she could only pretend that she knew nothing of it.

      «What is the meaning of this?» She asked as if she hadn’t already done so.

      «Haven’t you ever heard of a personal demon, Princess?» It was as if he knew already, and he laughed at her incredulity. It was as if he was looking at her from inside herself, but it couldn’t be. She has no talent for which such an attack as a black companion can be unleashed upon her. The flame within that made the princess dangerous.

      «Don’t call me that,» she looked around the mirrors, as if not inserted but grown between the cavernous partitions, searching in vain for his reflection.

      «No one can hear us here,» tried to calm her the voice, but Rhianon somehow still thought that these mirrors, as if grown from crumbling walls, can serve as a window to the outside world.

      She noticed tiny, strange-looking insects crawling over the scraps of gilded frame visible from the sandstone and stone. How strange, thought Rhianon, the pieces of mirror growing directly from the cave stone, as if inseparable from it, and on the other side of them might well be the fun of the magical folk imprisoned there. Or not imprisoned at all, but just like her, peering through a window into an alien world. She thought she heard laughter and clinking glasses and music. On the other side of one of the mirrors it was as if the merriment of the feast had reached her.

      «They, too, were singing and cheering and challenging each other, just like humans, but they weren’t humans at all.»

      «Would it be possible to have a look at them sometime?» She knew the risk. But the world, not even open yet, only reflected behind one of the mirrors, drew her irresistibly toward it. After all, nothing bad could happen if she just looked at them once. It is the dream of all men that touching the forbidden will leave them without consequence. There haven’t been any such people who have succeeded, if the rumors are to be believed, yet, but who knows, maybe she’s the lucky one. Gee, how the bottom of a moment of fairy intimacy can cloud a mortal’s mind. She immediately forgot almost everything, the past full of troubles, the danger that still threatened her, and even the silvery haze that had already enveloped her shoulders.

      «I’ll take you through all the worlds and show you anything you want to see, but first give me a name,» the voice asked softly, and the shimmering smoke, already shaped like a young man’s head, was bent right up to her ear. «Call me whatever you like, whatever comes to your mind.»

      «Orpheus,» she said almost automatically, in memory of the harp, whose enchanting sounds she heard beneath her tower in the evening, and of course in memory of the harpist himself. The sound of her new acquaintance’s voice was just like that harp, just as piercing, invading her brain and completely enchanting. – Is that all right with you?

      «Of course,» he pulled back from her shoulders so quickly it would have seemed like an acrobat’s trick, no longer a shapeless smoke but the man she’d met in the tavern. He looked a little different now, as if he had been transformed from a pale buffoon to an almost handsome man. His eyes, at any rate, shone like jewels and his smile became charming. He sat up high on something resembling a long golden pole, stretched flat between the mirrors. Well, with his dexterity and seemingly weightless body he belonged there. It seemed that Orpheus was so dexterous, that he could make his roost from dust particles flying in air. Orpheus. She thought that’s what she called him.

      «May I have it back, unless you wish to try it on, ma’am?» He pointed to the cap in her hands.

      «Oh, of course,» she stood on tiptoe and held it out to him, watching with interest as the thin, spidery fingers curled in a tenacious grip on the soft velvet. As she passed back to her master, the bells began to jingle merrily again. Admittedly, Rhianon couldn’t figure out why he’d left his cap on the stairs if he valued it so much. And where the thin golden perch had come from, she never understood. Yet it was all so curious to watch.

      «Where are my own clothes?» She had only now thought to ask; of course, the dress suited her very well and caressed her skin nicely, but she could not go far in the woods and muddy country roads in such an outfit. In addition, the whole conspiracy came to naught, since she was again dressed as a princess and could, walking around alone, cause a lot of speculation and suspicion. It is better to return the breeches and the pageboy’s coat. They may not be so luxurious, but they are quite comfortable for the journey she has embarked on.

      Orpheus shrugged his shoulders expressively.

      «Somewhere where it will lead the pursuers astray,» he said nonchalantly.

      «You mean the sentinels?» Rhianon was surprised.

      «Well, they have hounds.»

      «And wizards, of course,» she realized.

      «Oh, don’t worry, child,» he scrambled from his golden perch at a pace that would have startled a trickster. «After all, they’re only human, and the very concept of magic came to them from us. And if we give something to someone temporarily, we can take it back at any time. All you had to do was to come to us, or rather to our border, and now you’re more important to us than anyone who imitates us on earth.»

      «Yes, let’s say they took magic from you, but now they have their own rules.»

      «And you think they know what they do and how they do it, if they don’t even suspect that we give it to them. We make fun of them because of a mirror,» he pointed to the nearest wall, «because of one of those mirrors, and there are windows like that scattered all over the universe. I can, of course, admit that there is one force we fear, but it doesn’t come from the human world.»

      «What does it mean?»

      «From where we all come from,» he answered cryptically. «You know, my dear, we’re just a splinter, too. And what we’re chipped from, oh, it is better that no one knows.»

      He took something that looked like a blowpipe from the folds of his robes and quickly played it, covering one hole and another with his thin, nimble fingers. It should have sounded disgusting, but strangely enough it sounded good. Like the notes to a long-forgotten song or a nursery rhyme, but how could you play it all at such a pace.

      «Well, I promised to show you what’s on the other side of the mirror,» Orpheus stopped playing, but the music remained as if hanging in the air. «Choose any mirror?»

      She looked around. The room now seemed to her no longer an oval, but a complex polygon, like a multi-faceted gem imprisoned in the womb of a cave and who knows where the light pouring in refracted in each facet, creating different scenes. Behind each mirror a new picture awaited. Rhianon saw sunflower fields yellowing with sunflowers, where, like motley butterflies, the most unimaginable creatures with and without wings were flying in a wild dance; there were also mountain ranges, canyons, fortresses on the rock, meadows, river lagoons, uncultivated croplands or closed deep clefts, and everywhere they were – not people. Even at the bottom of the ravines their voices echoed, and sparks of color flew from the charms they conjured.

      Rhianon turned away from the scene of the macabre carnival, where the creatures dressed in red were dancing wildly, quite attractive though dangerous. After thinking for a while, she stopped at the very first mirror she saw. From behind it she could