Prologue

 

            Even the dove-shaped black mark on the horizon vanished, leaving no sign of the castle they had left.

            “She’ll write,” Katie told herself.  “Carina will write.  She’ll be back.”

            “You know she’s not coming back,” Jason said softly.  He’d been so silent, standing there on the cart beside Katie and behind Katie’s parents, that she’d forgotten he was there. 

Then again, she’d forgotten the difference between speech and silence.  It wasn’t just one of her dearest friends who’d suddenly left a hole in her heart—the absence was more than that.  It was the ache of a hole where dreams ought to be and weren’t.

“At least not really,” Jason continued.  “She’ll build a life, and we won’t know her.”

Katie wished that she was still in the castle with Carina.  No—she wanted to be moving, but moving inland.  Just to feel the motion of the river.

“You know you can’t stay on the mainland, Katie.”  He would have added, you have to rule the island, it’s your duty—but by now he’d said it so many times that he didn’t have to.

Katie jumped off the cart, landing lightly on the road.  She called, “I can walk faster than the horses are going now.  I’ll catch you up in an hour.”

“Leaving isn’t so bad for you, you know,” Jason said.  “Maybe she’s your best friend, but she’s my twin.”

Katie ignored him.

 

The forest on Legoland Island had always been full of adventure, but only the safe kind of pretend-adventure.  There weren’t really faerie caves or wishing waterfalls…those things didn’t exist in real life.  But there was a waterfall in this new, strange forest.  Katie wandered over and asked aloud, “What if I stayed here?” 

I just want to know, she thought desperately.  If things were different, if I could leave the island at all, who would I be?

There was distant piano music, as inexorable as the waterfall, and just as easy to fall into.  I wish I could know, Katie thought over and over, making her thoughts a plea.  She couldn’t tell if she spoke them aloud.

Would she find an answer in the waterfall?

That was as absurd as simply searching for a wishing well.  Getting wet, in an unknown stream with unknown dangers no less, wouldn’t tell Katie things about her future that no one could know.  But that was one of the qualities about Katie that Jason couldn’t stand.  When she had an absurd idea, she didn’t appear to think, she just acted.  It wasn’t a waterfall but an oracle door, and she would stand under it for a moment.

The water felt good.  The forest wasn’t think; wind slipped through the trees and cooled Katie’s face and hands, contrasting with the ice in the depths.  This alone would have been worth getting all wet.  Later, Katie would never remember whether that moment: having that thought, and then being somewhere else, someone else—was more like falling immediately into a dream, or more like stepping through the door in the cave to the other world, long ago.  Everything shimmered; everything went kind of fuzzy, but Katie wouldn’t remember that.