Free The Thirteenth Princess by Diane Zahler

by that? What do you think will happen?”
    Babette sipped her tea, then picked up her needlework and began to embroider a pillow cover. “Oh, I don’t really know, child,” she said. “When I saw you coming that day, I just had a feeling…. Most likely, I was all wrong. It’s been a long time since I looked into a divining bowl, and I had a terrible time reading it.”
    â€œA divining bowl?” It sounded fascinating, and a little frightening.
    â€œIt’s just water in a bowl, no more. The words you say over it are what gives it power.”
    â€œOh, please, show me!” I pleaded. It sounded very exciting.
    Babette frowned, an expression that looked very uncomfortable on her face. It pulled her wrinkles in the wrong directions, used as they were to smiling. “I don’t know, Zita,” she said slowly. “I don’t think…”
    â€œPlease!” I begged. I knew well how to wheedle, having practiced for years on Cook. And Cook was a far harder nut to crack than Babette, who seemed inclined to please me.
    â€œI suppose it can’t hurt,” she acceded. “Just for a minute, though!”
    â€œYes, just for a minute!” I agreed, delighted. I scrambled around, collecting the items she bade me: a copper bowl, a pitcher of well water, a midnight blue cloth embroidered with silver stars, a tiny silver pot of what looked like dust, tucked away deep in a cupboard. Babette laid the cloth on the table, placed the bowl atop it, and poured water in to fill it halfway. She spoke words I could not quite hear, moving her hands gracefully over the bowl. As she finished, she picked up a pinch of the dust and scattered it over the water. Then she bowed her head, looking into the bowl, and I looked with her, my heart beating wildly.
    We saw nothing at first, and I was preparing to voice my disappointment. Then, suddenly, the surface of the water shuddered. Slowly, as I watched in amazement, I saw a tiny facsimile of the palace build itself over the water, as if the bowl held our lake. It rose up, three-dimensional, with all the familiar curlicues and crenellations, until it towered high above the bowl. The vision shimmered in the air for a moment, and then collapsed back into the water soundlessly.
    â€œOh!” I gasped. Babette chuckled.
    â€œThat, my dear, was only illusion,” she said. “That was for fun. Now we’ll look inside your home. What would you like to see?”
    â€œLet me see my sisters’ room,” I suggested. Again we bent over the water and Babette spoke; again she sprinkled the dust across the water. A shape began to shine in the water, and then it faded. Babette spoke once more, sprinkled more dust. Again a shape formed—was it a room? Did I see windows? Before I could tell for sure, it was gone.
    â€œHow very strange,” Babette murmured. “I’m usually quite good at this. Of course, I’ve done it very seldom in these two score years, but still…one doesn’t forget.” She tried over and over, with the same result.
    â€œThere must be a guard against it,” she said, sounding bewildered.
    â€œA guard?” I asked. “You mean someone to prevent you?”
    â€œNot someone—something. A magic that is keeping me from looking.”
    I was shocked. “There’s no magic in the palace! It’s the law—there can’t be.”
    â€œAnd yet,” Babette mused, “there is.”
    Speechless, I stared at her. The idea that there could be magic all around me, and I had never noticed—it just didn’t seem possible. Whose magic? What was it there for? Was it good magic or bad?
    â€œI don’t know, child,” Babette said, answering my unspoken thoughts in her uncanny way. “I will have to look into it.”
    â€œWill you go there?” I asked. I didn’t think she should; what if my father saw her? Surely he would know at a glance