“Look,” Melaine called, waving the bunch of meadow flowers she’d just picked. “What’s that thing flying up there? Just above the plum trees. It isn’t a bird, is it?”

A small object was dancing in the dusk-clouded summer sky.

“It’s a heart!” declared Antonia, who always knew everything. “A flying heart. Male, and quite young.”

“It must be the prince’s,” the third girl, Magda, said. She was well-informed about everything the royals did. “He sent his heart on a quest, because he’s looking for a bride. He’ll marry the girl who captures it.”