Vera sighed and headed toward the garden. She pulled the wool from the hedgerow, winding it back into a ball and tucking it into her pinafore pocket. "Lydia? Are you hungry?"

"Hungwy," Lydia's voice echoed, but it sounded far away.

"Where are you, Lydia?" Vera peered around the garden for any sign of her sister. The deepening shadows made it hard to see very far, and looking for something invisible also complicated matters.

Vera's hand brushed across the cool stone surface of a statue of a ballerina, and she froze, recalling another part of The Enchanted Castle. The statues in the garden had come to life for whoever was wearing the ring, in the book. Would the same happen to Lydia?

"Pardon me, miss," a soft voice said somewhere nearby.