In this section, Lia is telling the story of her grief-stricken father, Gossling’s King, who while mourning the death of this wife, traveled from country to country. It was in the country of Laomongole that he met Dixon and fell in love with her. She would soon become his wife, and Lia and her sisters knew that their stepmother was one of the ancient Dark Ones, part of an ancient, evil coven of witches, capable of shape-shifting and great power.

As he had been in every country, father was welcomed by the king and queen of Laomongole. He had arrived in time for the Midsummer festival, which was to be held on the night of the lunar eclipse in the kingdom’s Mountain Palace. The lunar eclipse was to be particularly spectacular that year, as the moon was a full one, and the court astronomers predicted a clear night for the eclipse. Meaning that with the naked eye, one could earth’s shadow slide over the sun, the way a child might pull a shade to hide from the light of the morning. The celebration was to be held in a Mountain Palace, renowned for its observatory, but far from the main kingdom. The trip to the Mountain Palace took three days, and the last leg of the journey could only be made on foot.

Leaving their carriages and horses behind, sherpas and servants carried trunk after trunk up into the mountains. The entire court had made the journey—women were carried up the rough terrain on satin cushions, and pages in beautiful silk costumes scampered like mountain goats up the rocks and sliding soil, excitement crackled through the air, and the party was one of good spirits, excited about the party the following night. They had traveled for nearly five hours when Father could suddenly see in the distance, the tips and spires of the palace, gold mushrooms rising from the woods and ragged cliffs. A glad shout went up from the men: the palace wasn’t more than two hours from where they stood.

The party continued on towards the palace, traveling along the edge of the Black Forest, when suddenly their path was blocked by a panther the size of a bear. The animal was ferocious, its cruel teeth sharp and glistening as if it meant to eat them all. The men had been un-armed and now they rushed to arm themselves, readying to kill the beast in front of them. But just as suddenly as it had appeared, the animal was gone, disappeared into the shadows of the dark wood.

The king ordered the guides to follow the animal and kill it, but they refused, their eyes wide with fright, “Beraluna,” they whispered to each other. The kings’ hunting dogs, strapping, brave animals growled at the forest, the hair stiff and raised on their necks, but like the guides, they too would not cross into the black trees of the wood. This superstition embarrassed the country’s king and he urged his own servants on to the castle. By nightfall, the entire court had reached the palace, and the unease of earlier was forgotten, something to laugh about over dinner.

Father was brought to his bedroom, a huge stately room, by a small page girl of only seven or eight. Perhaps because she was a child, he asked her, what he had been unable to ask when he had first seen the panther and heard its whispered name, “What does Beraluna mean?”

At the name, the girl turned in a tight circle two times, and Father stared at her in surprise. “So she cannot get me,” the child said simply.

Father smiled at her superstitions, “I won’t say her name again, but what does it mean?”

“Death,” the child stared at Father with huge amber eyes. “She is the panther demon of death.”

This time Father did not smile, and in the quiet night he could hear somewhere beyond the castle, the faint howl of hunting wolves and somewhere the lone answering cry.

The night of the lunar eclipse was clear and mild, just as the astronomers had predicted. Preparations for the party had begun early in the day and the garden was festive with brightly colored paper lanterns and silk streamers. An ice sculpture of the planets was in the center of the courtyard, and platters of food were ferried out of the kitchens and placed on long banquet tables. Muscians tuned their instruments, and maids brushed the marble courtyards clear. At nightfall the party began. The conductor rapped sharply on his stand, and the orchestra began to play. Costumed women in elegant gowns and feathered masks paraded through the night gardens on the arms of masked men, and Father was washed in loneliness.

The beginning of the lunar eclipse was heralded with a thundering trumpet, and all the guests in the garden lifted their masked faces to the pregnant moon, watching as a small shadow crept like a timid mouse across her wide face. There was a burst of applause, though the full eclipse would take close to three hours. The party continued as it had, though each passing minute brought the smallest of changes to the large gardens, darkening them so subtly. Servants brought long candles to the gardens and set them up among the roses to light the festivities. Father could hear the party’s music bouncing and echoing in the mountains around them, and instead of sounding gay and happy, it sounded eerie somehow and he shivered.

A court dance began, and Laomongole’s queen led Father to the dance floor. The dance was an intricate one, and one that Father was not familiar with, he found himself weaving in and out, and in and out, a dizzyingly motion. He fought to free himself from the dance, eager for rest and perhaps more punch, but he could not, caught as he was in the branches of hands and spinning gowns. Resigned to the dance floor he once again felt a tickle of unease. The eclipse was almost complete now; the moon almost in complete shadow, only the light of the candles lit the dance floor.

Father’s final partner was delicate and fine-boned, and smelled like gardenias. She wore a simple black dress, and a small black mask. Disguised, Father knew she was beautiful, and wondered who she was—a princess perhaps, or a countess. The music was loud, and he thought that at the close of the dance he would ask her name. The music leapt on and on, and the dance changed to a different one, though Father did not notice—too distracted by his long-limbed dance partner, the feathers of that black mask making her green eyes lovely, and all the brighter by the darkness surrounding them. Father was charmed by her, lifted his hand to the moon, and realized that it was gone—in complete shadow now.

At that moment there was a terrible sound, a dreadful cracking, as part of the mountain above them crumbled. The landslide was instantaneous, had it not been for the quick action of the masked woman, Father would have been killed. As it was, the garden was filled with rocks and soil and screams of terror and pain. The moon was covered now, and no light lit the night. The candles had mostly blown out with the force of rock and soil and wind, and the moon was gone.

A dreadful time followed, and yet something good too. In the midst of chaos, darkness all around him, Father remembered the king he had once been. Awakened by his escape from death, Father gave orders to clear the debris, he ordered stretchers be made from hammocks and mattresses and even table tops, the ice sculpture was hacked for ice, and the injured were moved inside. Long ago before he had been king, Father had studied to be a surgeon, and now all that training returned to him, as he taught those not injured to tend to those who were. The halls of the palace looked like a hospital zone, but the slowly the chaos and panic was replaced by a sort of order.

Hours passed, and the earth’s shadow gradually moved from the moon, slid off her pale welcome face and into the velvet darkness beyond her. The garden became almost bright as day, but there was no one there to toast the moon’s return, no one to gaze at her lovely face and think in poetry.

The sun was beginning to light the sky and Father was exhausted. With the court’s doctor, Father had tended to over two hundred people. Confident that everyone was stabilized, Father retired to his room. A page boy, his own arm bandaged by Father, a long scratch along one cheek, brought Father water to wash his own bloodied and cut hands. Without undressing, Father fell into bed, and for the first time since Mother’s death, he slept and long dreamless sleep.

When he awoke, the court was making plans to return to the main palace. The frightened king and queen were anxious to leave the castle, terrified that the mountain would once again become angry, would once again rain rocks and earth onto the palace. In the haste of preparations, the castle was left untouched—dishes were left on the tables, cups of wine half-drunk and half-eaten food abandoned. In haste, even the Queen’s own crown was left behind. A slender disk of gold.

Father was among the last to leave the palace that day, awkwardly helping two men carry a third man down the mountain path on a stretcher. From the crest of the hill, Father looked back at the palace, her golden domes shining in the sun, the day mild around them, and thought that the night might have been a dream, except for the man he helped carry. He wondered aloud about the woman who had saved him, but the other men looked at him blankly. One of the men went to answer, but he never did, for suddenly in the far distance was a terrible noise as the mountain again fell, this time the rocks burying the palace, so that Father could not even see its tallest spire.

The trip back to Laomongole’s main palace was difficult. With so many injured, the journey was slow. On the second night of camping, Father woke up suddenly. The sky above him was black, and Father sat up confused, for the moon should have been almost full, the night bathed with light. Instead there was no moon, and Father could barely see his hand in front of him. Somewhere beyond him, Father heard a crunch of breaking branches, the sound muffled almost as if the breaker wished to be silent. There was a shrill cry from a nearby tree, a cry of outrage, as if a sleeping bird had been woken from sleep too. Father waited, but heard nothing more. He fell into an uneasy sleep, and dreamed a dream that he could make no sense of: in the dream he saw our mother weeping, her face covered with her hands, her gown the long white dress of a bride. When he went to comfort her, she would not look at him, would not show him her face. Instead, the face she turned to him was covered, just as those had been at the costume ball. But her mask was elaborate and elegant and frightening—she wore the mask of a black bird. Still masked, she ran from him. In his dream, Father followed her cries into a garden he did not recognize. In the garden he could not find Mother, had lost her somehow among a swirling pool of women in black dresses, dressed as if for mourning.

He woke up tired and distracted, the morning bright around him, and the smell of gardenias in the air. As he began to pack up the camp he saw on its edges, the huge panther with green eyes and terrible fangs. Father lifted his bow to kill the beast, remembering the fear of the sherpas, the terror in the child eyes when he had said the animal’s name, “Beraluna.” He hesitated to shoot though, for the panther did not seem like a threat to him, and something in its green eyes reminded him of the woman who had saved him, and this stopped him from pulling the bow and killing the animal. As she had before, the animal disappeared. Yet, for the duration of the trip to the palace, Father could feel the animal’s presence, though he could not see it.

Father described the woman he had met at the ball to the king and queen of Laomongole, but they were baffled, could think of no woman in the royal court who had the green eyes father described. At the end of July, Father left Laomongole by carriage, intending to make it to the border of the country Drahcir where he had a dear friend. A rainstorm stopped him—it was a terrible storm, fierce and unyielding. With his horses battered by the wind, and his servants weary and frightened, Father knew that they could not continue. As if by province, he saw the lights of a distant palace, and ordered his drivers to ride towards it. “We will take shelter there,” he decided.

The horses pushed on, and looking through the carriage window into the darkness of the night, the windows slick as if with tears, Father saw the panther again, watching him. A moment later, the animal was gone. Inside the small palace on the edge of the Black Forest, was a woman in an emerald dress, a bright dress which made her green eyes greener. She wore a slim gold crown on her head, to let the visiting king know that she too was of royal birth.

Father held her slight hand in his own, and asked her name.

“Dixon,” the woman replied, and Father thought her voice was lovely.

In a month’s time our father was back in Gossling with his new wife, our step-mother Dixon, and her strange, angry son Raven.

Dori