I loved Yurt, but sometimes, unexpectedly, when sitting down to dinner with the same people I had sat down to dinner with for ten years, or looking out across a snowy landscape, a vision came to me unbidden. Sometimes it was a complicated vision, of exciting experiences and adventures never met at home, but usually it was just a scene: riotous red flowers spreading their blooms beneath an intense sun; a bazaar where bright colors, foreign voices, and complex spicy odors competed for attention; and palm trees swaying by an azure summer sea.

If the king was thinking of going on a quest, then the most horrifying thought was that he might go without me.

King Haimeric spent January as he usually spent January. His eyeglasses perched on his nose, he went through the rose catalogs that were shipped up from the great City, studying all the sketches of newly-developed varieties and the extravagant descriptions of their colors and scent. Haimeric loved his rose garden second only to the queen and their son-and probably the kingdom of Yurt itself-and I suspected his own new varieties were superior to anything the City growers could produce. But that had never kept him from studying the catalogs assiduously all winter or from sending off orders for new rootstocks as soon as the cold weather began to break.

“Now this horse,” said Prince Paul.

I had been thinking about the king and his roses while standing in the stables, but the boy’s voice brought me back quickly from my thoughts.

“All right,” I said. “But remember not to kick or swing your feet. This gelding’s bigger than the mares, and you don’t want to startle it.”