Khyber was already hurrying after them. Pen stood rooted in place, still hesitating.

“There is something wrong here,” Tagwen said uneasily, standing beside him. “These gardens are beautiful, but there is something wrong about them.”

Pen felt it, too, although he couldn’t explain it. “We’dbetter go.”

They followed the others, Pen casting wary glances left and right, still searching for the voice, for the presence, for anything that would explain what they were seeing. But nothing appeared, and the gardens stretched on in a profusion of brilliant colors and sweet smells. Even in the enfolding twilight, they shimmered with a vibrancy that seemed so foreign to everything that had gone before that it was as if the travelers had entered a dream world.

Pen stared about in wonder. How could it be possible?

They caught up to the rest of the company, which was still following Cinnaminson. The Rover girl was walking as if she knew exactly where she was going, her head lifted into the breeze, her path steady and undeviating. It seemed to Pen as if she were listening to something. He wondered suddenly if the spirits of the air had returned, if she was responding to their voices.

Was that who he had sensed, as well?

The group reached a set of broad stone stairs that led upward until they disappeared into the twilight haze. Cinnaminson never paused. She began to climb the steps as soon as she reached them, and the rest of them had no choice but to follow if they were to see where she was going. Pen and Tagwen still trailed the larger group. The boy was beginning to sense something again, a stirring or a whisper, it was hard to tell. He put out feelers, reaching for what was clearly there, but although he could sense it easily, he could not identify it. There was something confusing about what he was finding; it was almost as if he lacked a frame of reference with which to understand it.

At the top of the stairs, the little company came to a halt behind Cinnaminson, who had stopped finally and was pointing ahead. The Rover girl’s face was intense and she was breathing hard. Kermadec was trying to talk to her, but she wasn’t responding. Pen, seeing what was happening, abandoned Tagwen and hurried forward.

“Cinnaminson,” he said, taking her by the shoulders and turning her to face him.

Her young face was flushed with excitement. “We have to go there. We have to follow them,” she said.