Free Dandelion Fire by N. D. Wilson Page B

horribly dank, moist, and mildewy.
    The boys had left the cupboard door open, which only made sense. You wouldn't really want to shut it after yourself.
    Henrietta tucked the key into her pocket and closed Grandfather's door behind her. Then she steppedtoward the cupboard door, and the carpet squelched beneath her. Water was oozing up around her shoe, but her own crazy escape already felt like ancient history
    Rising up to her toes, she moved through the carpet swamp, squatted in front of the door, and slid herself in.
    The music began just as it had the last time she'd crawled into FitzFaeren. Surrounded by the blackness of the cupboard, she listened to the strings and the rhythms of the dance they moved and guided.
    When her face found the back of the door, she pushed it open without hesitation. And there, in front of her, was the scene that she had been itching to see again. The enormous beamed hall sparkled with the light from hundreds of candles around the frescoed walls and columns and hanging on the enormous chandeliers. The towering windows were black with night, but they reflected the swirl of dancers moving across the floor.
    Henrietta knew that she couldn't simply wait and watch. If she was going to burst Henry's bubble, she should find him soon. Waiting too long would mean she would be in as much trouble as Richard and Henry. More. Her father would be harder on her.
    So she watched the small women spin in dresses brighter and smoother than any flower, and she watched the men with their boxy, short-sleeved coats. She hunted the room for the face that she knew had belonged to Eli, and then, before she found it, she forced herself to grab the edge of the cupboard and pull herself through.
    The music died. The candles were gone. And the people and the windows and the night and most of the roof and chunks of the floor. It was like standing inside the bones of a huge whale. The ribbed beams still spanned the hall in many places, four or five stories above her. Most of the columns still stood, but the majestic windows had become nothing but oversize holes. Light filtered through clouds and into the desolate place, and all of the wood it found, once bright with stain and inlay, once rich, stood out dull, rotten, bleached, and weathered gray.
    High above her, Henrietta could hear the traffic of pigeons. The sound was common in a Kansas barn, and she liked it there. It made her feel like the barn was still alive, still used. Here, it was an insult, a final desecration.
    Grandfather had written that he'd destroyed this place. Henrietta wondered what he had meant. She hoped he'd been wrong.
    Henry and Richard were nowhere in sight. But she really didn't think they could have gone far, even if they'd come through hours ago. Henry was blind, after all, and he knew that the floor was as solid as a spider-web. He wouldn't want Richard to go quickly.
    At first Henrietta stood and listened, hoping that she would hear some pop or crash just to give her an initial direction. A breeze stirred the pigeons, but otherwise, the rotting hall was perfectly still.
    Carefully probing the floor in front of her, she made her way farther out into the room. Some of the woodplanks crumbled, some sighed or popped, but when the wall was well behind her, she stopped and listened again, turning carefully in place.
    There were three large doorways yawning into the hall. A dozen smaller ones were spaced between them. As Henrietta turned, she began to give up. The place was big enough that she could head off in one direction while Henry and Richard returned from another. They wouldn't know that she'd followed them, and nothing would keep them from resetting the compass locks.
    Even though the hutch that she'd crawled through wasn't more than forty feet away, she felt a twinge of fear. For a moment, she thought she should go back, kick off her shoes, and crawl into her bed. Henry and Richard could fend for themselves. But then, through one of the large