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cares for me at all, he’ll come find me,” said the girl with the diamonds, her voice sounding uncertain. She sat down on the edge of the fountain, her back very straight, her body motionless. In less than a minute, Krazo was completely bored. Perhaps he should follow the princess after all.
    And then the girl moved her hand. She touched her necklace again and touched her earrings, one after the other.
    No, he decided. Treasure like this doesn’t come very often.
    Keep your eye on the diamonds, he told himself.

For such a small person, the dairymaid was surprisingly heavy. Adela was panting and sweating by the time she rounded the back of Hortensia’s house. Finding no one in sight, she guessed that the carriages had continued to follow the road she was on. She could see it turning at the end of a high stone wall. As for the other guests, they must have gone into the garden. She could see what must be the entrance, about halfway down the wall. She stumbled toward it, pebbles digging into her bare feet. “I’m going to have to put you down, Bess!” she warned as she entered the garden.
    There was a ripping noise as the dairymaid slipped to the ground. “Oh, no! I’ve torn your dress!” Bess exclaimed.
    But Adela didn’t care. She was in the garden at last. There was a peony bush in front of her. Its blossoms were peach colored and twice as large as any she had ever seen before. In fact, the bush itself was larger than any she had ever seen.
    Bess settled herself on the ground, her injured ankle stretched out in front of her.
    “Did you ever hear of peonies blooming in the fall?” asked Adela.
    “Never!” said Bess. “Nor lilacs. But that one’s lovely, isn’t it?”
    The lilac tree leaning over the peony was also enormous, with creamy white flowers. “Lilacs bloom in the spring,” said Adela.
    “Everything’s always in bloom in Hortensia’s garden,” said Bess. “It’s magic.”
    Adela thought of the wisteria she had seen on the front lawn. Another springtime flower. Now she studied the flowers dotting the beds on either side of the cobbled path that led away from the entrance. Was that a daffodil . . . in October? She walked over to it, marveling at its teacup-shaped blooms, which were so large they were actually teacup-
size.
“And here’s a chrysanthemum! I know they don’t bloom at the same time as daffodils,” she murmured. “I suppose Hortensia must move her flowers out of a greenhouse when they’re ready to bloom. But what a lot of work! And how could she possibly move the lilac and the wisteria?”
    “I think I’ll wait here, if that’s all right,” said Bess. “Maybe you could bring me something to eat.”
    Adela nodded absently and wandered on. She turned a corner and found another path bordered with flowers. She walked along it, wondering at what she saw, until she turned another corner and found more paths to choose from. Before long, she was lost in a maze of winding paths running between walls too high to see over.
    How different Hortensia’s garden was from the gardens at home! The palace gardens had wide-open lawns and terraces — broad bands of colors and texture. But this garden felt closed in and secret, with surprises at every turn. The roses were astonishing. They were all different from one another: damasks, centifolias, china roses, tea roses, musk roses, and ramblers and scramblers that threw themselves up and over the walls. The roses can’t have been moved from a greenhouse, Adela decided. Hortensia must have been cultivating them in the ground for years.
    The other flowers were no less dramatic, in part because they were so large, but also because the rumors about Hortensia’s garden were proved true: spring, summer, and fall flowers were indeed blooming at the same time. Here was a pink-and-white-striped carnation growing next to a sunny-yellow hollyhock. Here was a deep-purple heliotrope standing next to a bright-red poppy. And here was another poppy, this