The Hidden World (A Princess of Roumania) by Paul Park

Author:Paul Park [Park, Paul]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, mobi
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates
Published: 2009-03-03T07:00:00+00:00

12

Topography

SHE WAS FARTHER from him than he thought. Dawn came in a few hours, a foggy dawn as Miranda and her aunt climbed down the hill. At the crossroads, Aegypta Schenck peered into the dirt. She had changed from her clothes, though Miranda had not seen her change. She had lost her long gloves, fox stole, lace collar, high-heeled shoes, small hat—all of the old lady’s traveling attire that was part of Miranda’s first memory of Roumania, at Mogosoaia station in the snow. Instead she’d put on the hunting clothes from the framed photograph in Mamaia Castle, wool shirt and breeches, dirty boots. She knelt in the dry dirt, examining the little footprints. Her hair was tucked up and fastened under a leather cap.

The cat had come here with wet feet. Miranda could smell something too, a tiny bitter smell. But when she went to pass the cairn, her aunt stood up. “Don’t go that way. You cannot.”

Miranda could see her face now in the soft gray light, her big features, yellow eyes, wrinkled cheeks and neck. She had no eyebrows, but there were a few untrimmed hairs around her mouth. Out of the hat and veil she looked both dignified and fierce. “You cannot go that way. We’ve lost her.”

“Why not?”

She shrugged as if it irritated her even to be questioned. “The dead climb up this hill, up the back side. But they are not the only ones. It is unclaimed ground along the border. Down that valley, those paths to the left—that is their home. The road lies through a gate you cannot pass.”

“And you?”

Miranda’s aunt appeared to smile. “Do not worry about me. I have a home, never fear. A small house just for me, a long way from here. But there’s nothing for you, nothing I can share while you are still a living woman.”

It had not occurred to Miranda until that moment that she might have lost the tourmaline for good. She felt a sudden, stabbing wound of anger and despair. How could she have been so stupid? How could she have been so careless? How could this have happened?

Nothing was alive in that sandy bowl. They gray sky pressed down on them, a foggy ceiling a few feet above their heads. “Do you know what’s happening in Stanesti-Jui?” Miranda cried. “My mother and Andromeda—can you tell me about them? Am I walking around, or talking there, or eating breakfast, or climbing the hill behind the house?”

The rim of the bowl was lost in fog. The crossroads marked the exact center, the pile of rocks. There was no wind, no water, not a blade of grass. No part of what was happening felt real. “What difference does it make?” Miranda said again. “Alive or dead, it’s gone, slipped away. All those people and those things—isn’t that what it feels like to die? That something slipped out of your fingers?”

She felt light-headed, parched. The fog seemed to have no moisture in it, the air no sustenance.

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