“She allowed me to make it last Winter’s Moon.” Elinore almost reached out and touched the sphinx, then dropped her hand. “You must not tell Mother, for Cook would get in trouble for risking such expensive ingredients with me, but Cook says I have a good hand and eye for the kitchen.”

“Indeed,” said the sphinx. She looked Elinore up and down, and then said, “Let me see your shoes.”

Elinore did as she was asked, because she was certain that now there would be some question of history or mathematics that would be too hard to answer, though she could not fathom what her slippers had to do with mathematics.

She raised her party dress and showed her dancing slippers with their jeweled embroidery. “Did you think dancing slippers were the thing to wear to fight monsters?” the sphinx asked.

Elinore hesitated, and then said, “No, ma’am, I did not.”

“Then why did you wear them?”

Elinore almost pointed out that wasn’t that a fourth question, but it seemed impolite to say that to someone who could gut you and eat you alive.

“I had to leave as soon as I announced I would rescue Prince True. If I had waited, even to change my slippers, my father would have found a way to detain me. Also, in truth, I wanted to be pretty when I died, so they would sing of it.”

“Is it better to be pretty or brave, Elinore the Younger?”

A fifth question. Should she point it out, that she’d answered four already? “It is better to be brave, but since I am not, I thought I would be pretty for the bards and musicians, and jeweled slippers are prettier than muck boots.”