Down in the streets there were all different kinds of people: old, young, fat, thin, male, female and everything in between. Most of them were a sort of light-brown color, but some were very pale white, and others almost completely black. A few—Effie had to look twice to check she wasn’t seeing things—had extremely well-groomed fur. On closer inspection, Effie realized that several of them also had elegant-looking tails. And quite a few had small pointed cats’ ears, rabbits’ ears or whiskers. One man seemed to have a variety of small flowering shrubs growing out of one of his arms. It was like a complicated tattoo, but real. Everyone, without exception, was extremely beautiful.

Effie saw some girls about her own age standing in a group by a fountain at the end of the road. They all had animal ears of one sort or another, almost as if it were the height of fashion. Maybe it was. They were wearing capes a bit like hers, but theirs were white, and tied with ribbons of different colors. Effie suddenly felt as if she might stand out in her gold cape, with her decidedly human ears.

Clothilde landed the carpet expertly on a sort of landing pad in the courtyard of Anastasia’s Café. No one seemed at all surprised to see a magic carpet landing. The people sitting at the courtyard tables were drinking cups of thick dark coffee or hot chocolate, or sipping pink, white or mint-green drinks through paper straws. Every table had a bunch of flowers in its center. There were flowers everywhere, scrambling over the walls wherever Effie looked. She watched one of the large, plump insects go right inside one bell-shaped flower and then have to wriggle out backward. Everything smelled heavenly.

“So,” said Clothilde smiling, “do you want a fourflower tea or a nut-cream frappé before we—as I think you might put it in your world—hit the shops?”

“What’s a nut-cream frappé?”

“It’s sort of cold chocolate milk with edible flowers. They make the milk from nuts and then put whipped nut cream on the top.”

“I’d love one of those,” said Effie.

She sat down at a table with Clothilde, who ordered two large frappés and some macarons.

“The macarons here are probably the best in the whole world,” said Clothilde when they arrived. “They’re made from a very ancient blend of aquafaba and magic.”