Mistress of the Solstice by Anna Kashina Page A

glimmer of the web stretched across the path. But it was only his
imagination. The web couldn’t possibly be visible from
this distance.
    “It looks like I can go no
further,” Wolf said. “Only one can
pass. You’re on your own, boy.”
    Ivan nodded. He couldn’t fail. Not after everything
they’d gone through.
    “Remember everything the old bird told you,
boy,” Wolf said. Then he padded back into the
shelter of the trees.
    Ivan carefully approached the large oak. When he was twenty paces away, he crouched and crept forward until he could see the
shimmering silver of the water droplets hanging across the path. They
were so thin that if Ivan hadn’t known to look for
them, he would have walked right into them without noticing.
    It all seemed so easy when Raven had told him. He
could still hear the bird’s voice in his head—at
least he did until Wolf shouted at him afterwards for releasing their
prisoner. But Ivan knew he could never focus on his task if he had left
Raven trapped and helpless back on that log. Despite how thin and airy
it was, the Net had rendered him nearly immobile. Powerful magical
objects could be truly frightening.
    But now, standing in front of the first trap, he bitterly wished Raven
was here. Or at least that he could go back to ask again.
    A magical mist that must be unraveled, if one wished to follow the path
to the castle. It could be unraveled, Raven said, if you found the
right droplet. But touch the wrong one—and the mist would trap you,
rob you of your mind and send you into the swamp.
    Ivan swallowed, looking at the dark, glistening water at the side of the
path. It glimmered like a giant eye, winking at him invitingly. Was
this entire kingdom built on swamps?
    He strained his eyes to make out the delicate meshwork of silvery beads.
“Imagine a net that holds them in
place,” Raven had said. “An
invisible net, much like the one that traps me now. It goes in a
spiral, from the center outward. You must find the outmost droplet and
follow them in, one at a time.”
    Easier said than done.
    Ivan lowered his head, trying to find a position from which the glimmer
of the water droplets caught the moonlight. They glistened like
precious jewels, their radiating beauty, magnified by the magic that
powered it.
    There. Did he see a dark line, cutting through the magical glimmer?
    “It’s imaginary,”
Raven had said. “But you must see it as if it is
real. Once you touch the first droplet, you must not
stop.”
    Ivan carefully reached forward toward the lone droplet on the outer rim
of the water circle.
    He imagined more than heard a barely perceptible popping sound, and a
sudden chill in his fingertip, like a prickle of a cold needle.
He kept his hand steady as he moved it along the
droplet path, straining to maintain the image of the invisible spiral
in his mind. There. The last droplet.
    A sigh rustled through the grass under his feet and rippled the swamp
water at the side of the path. Ivan straightened and exhaled a breath
he was holding. He hadn’t realized how numb his arm
became from the strain of keeping it steady.
    He shakily got up to his feet, watching the last bits of the mist
disappear into the swamp. So much for the first trap. That
wasn’t so hard, was it?
    At least, he was still alive.
    He steadied himself. His hand felt numb, his tingling
fingers slowly coming back to life. Taking a deep breath, he followed the
path further to the castle wall.
    Heat hit his face without warning, the path in front of him erupting
into fire. Ivan froze in his tracks. He almost let his relief carry him
straight into the next trap. Not that he could do anything to stop it.
    Raven did not warn him it would come so soon.
    The narrow path in front of him was an inferno, the fire consuming it
left and right, straight to the edges of the swamp water now spreading on
both sides. Ivan could feel the heat biting into his skin, dissolving
the last bits of the numbness caused by the magical