The girls stayed back as Azalea descended to the doorway. Hands quavering, she leaned against the edge and looked.
She stepped back, dumbfounded.
The scene washed over Azalea like a crystal symphony. A forest.
But nothing like the wood behind the palace! Every bough, branch, leaf, and ivied tendril looked as though it had been frosted in silver. It shimmered in the soft, misty light.
Azalea inhaled, catching the muted scent of a morning fog, with a touch of pine, and stepped through the doorway into the bright forest. Everything sparkled in bits, catching highlights in glisters as she moved. Even the path beneath her feet. She turned to a glass-spun tree on her left. Silver ornaments glowed among the delicate silver leaves—glimmering glass plums. Azalea touched one. Its edging glittered as it swayed. Next to the ornament, strings of pearls swathed each branch in swooping arcs.
“It’s so beautiful,” whispered Flora. The girls had followed Azalea through the doorway, their voices hushed.
“Like winter, when the snow’s just fallen,” Goldenrod whispered.
“Or…the Yuletide trees,” said Clover.
Azalea thought it looked a mix of all of them—the gardens, the palace, and the Yuletide—all mixed into one and dipped in silver.
“Az, what is this place?” Bramble looked up, gaping. The tallest of the silver trees disappeared into a mist.
“I think it’s the palace,” Azalea managed to say.
Bramble arched a thin red eyebrow, grinning. “Not our boot-blackened palace! No wonder we were never told about this passage—we’d never come back up!”
Bramble was right. Azalea touched a swath of ribbon and pearls, feeling the knobbly string between her fingers. She hadn’t expected to find so much magic, and all beneath their room!
The girls slowly walked down the path; everything was quiet, muffled, as though in a snowfall. Every so often, Azalea reached out to touch a silver-white branch or a teardrop ornament, just to remind herself she wasn’t dreaming.
Ahead, the silver branches of a large willow tree curtained the end of the path. Nearing it, they heard the tinkling of a music box playing faintly in the air. Quiet as it was, all the girls looked about them, eyebrows raised. When they drew closer, the timbre of the music changed. It became fuller, fleshing to a soft three-quarter-time orchestral melody. Azalea’s feet itched to twirl.
“It’s coming from beyond the willow,” Delphinium whispered.
Azalea stepped to the glistening silver leaves. She slipped her hand between the branches and parted them.
The girls gasped.
The path did not end. It rose into a dainty arched bridge, leading to the center of a silver-lilac pond. The water cast dancing white reflections all about the bridge.
And, at the end of the bridge, silver vines curling over white latticework and reaching to the top of its domed roof, stood a pavilion. Filled with dancers!
Ladies, dressed in bright silks and chiffons billowing with each step. They spun and twirled, their colorfully dressed partners taking their hands and sweeping them into the dance.
Azalea pulled away from the willow branches, and they fell back into place. Suddenly she was frightened. This was too much magic, magic Mother surely hadn’t known about.
“Let’s get out of here,” said Azalea. “We shouldn’t be here.”
“What?” cried the girls.
“I beg your pardon,” said Bramble. “We shouldn’t be here? What about them? Cutting about in our palace? Why weren’t we jolly well invited?”
“Who are they?” Clover stammered.
“I don’t know,” said Azalea. “But it doesn’t feel right.” She suddenly wished they hadn’t come.
“I want to get a closer look!” said Delphinium, and she pushed past Azalea, through the willow leaves before Azalea could even start to grab her back.
“Me, too!” cried Hollyhock.
Azalea grasped her arm, but Hollyhock writhed free and ran after Delphinium. In a rush, all the girls ran past Azalea, disappearing through the willow leaves. Panicked, Azalea dove through the silver after them, over the arched bridge.
To her relief, however, the girls didn’t leap up the pure white stairs to the dance floor, but instead scampered into the bushes about the outside, making them rustle with a faint clinking sound. Azalea only had a moment of shock before Bramble burst from the silver leaves, grabbed Azalea about the waist, and yanked her in. In a whirl of silver Azalea found herself on her back in a patch of silver-spun rose bushes. A branch dug into her spine. The girls grinned down at her.
“Just like old times,” said Bramble, grinning and pulling Azalea partly up. “We’ll call this one the Great Leftover D’Eathe Magic Scandal.”
“How about the Great We’re Going To Get Caught Scandal?” Azalea whispered crossly.