than that. By the time it was over even Giselle felt sated with all the sights and sounds.
At the end of the show, the announcer told the crowd that those with the same sort of ticket that she held were invited to leave through the entrance on the side of the tent where she was sitting—a much, much smaller entrance. There, he proclaimed, they would be allowed to see the stagecoach, the covered wagon, the bison, and the longhorn cattle all up close, and speak with the performers and tour the Cowboy Camp, the Army Camp, the Settler Camp and the Indian Village.
Well, how could she possibly resist that?
She left her seat and joined the other audience members who had the special tickets and were passing through the designated entrance. Only as she filed out with the rest did a second ticket-taker examine and take her ticket.
“He dropped one and didn’t notice. That was the one I stole!” said a silvery, laughing voice. Giselle looked up—trying not to look as if she was looking up—and saw the white-winged sylph hovering overhead.
Thank you, she thought, hard, knowing the sylph would hear and understand her, then she followed the crowd down a passage left for them to walk through.
By this time, the white-winged one had been joined by two more, all three of them chattering among themselves and looking back from time to time to make sure she was following.
“Ladies and gentlemen!” called the man who had been doing all the announcing. “I am conducting a tour of the camp! If you will please gather around me, yes, like that, the first object here for your pleasure and examination is the Wells Fargo Stagecoach!”
Well, the stagecoach did not hold a great deal of interest for Giselle, and anyway, the white-winged sylph was beckoning her onward, with her two companions fluttering on ahead. So she edged past the crowd and followed, and soon found herself wandering past wagons and tents that looked quite ordinary, like the farm-cart that Mother had used, except bigger, and people—mostly men—who were going to and fro and evidently had specific things they needed to do in a hurry. They ignored her quite as if they didn’t see her—which was a good thing, as she was trying very hard not to be seen. There was a smell of cooking food: stew, she thought, but some other things she didn’t quite recognize. And the bruised smell of trampled grass, a distant hint of a large animal that was not horse. The bison?
She came around a corner of a tent and found herself, suddenly, at the edge of the Indian Camp. You could tell it was the Indian Camp, since it was a circle of cone-shaped tents of painted canvas that must be teepees, arranged around a central fire. And standing not twenty feet away, just behind one of these tents, were Captain Cody himself, one of the Indians, and a fellow in a suit. They seemed to be discussing things, not urgently, but she could tell from their manner that whatever they were talking about was certainly important. She wished she could understand them. But at least she could try and remain unnoticed and get a much closer look at two of the show’s stars.
This close, Captain Cody actually looked a little bit handsomer, and he was shorter than she had thought. The Indian, by contrast, was quite tall. He didn’t speak much, only a word or two now and again, but whatever he said was listened to with great attention. Something about the way he held himself made her think he might be quite important—perhaps he was the chief? And there was something more about him that she couldn’t quite put her finger on—
Just as she thought that, he happened to glance in her direction. And suddenly, his gaze sharpened and he stared hard at her. She shrank back a little—and then, as she watched his eyes flicker from her to what should have been empty air for him—she realized that he could see her sylphs!
Before she could move, or say anything, all three sylphs zoomed over to him, and as he turned, she could see that there was a bird, a small owl, perched on his shoulder. . . .
Except that it wasn’t a bird. Or rather, it wasn’t an ordinary bird. It shimmered with the same inherent power that her sylphs did, and she realized with a sense of shock that it was some sort of Air