highway man appeared, she curtsied low to him, making the crowd applaud. He wore a white mask and a red beard. When he drew his sword, the princess swooned on her spindly stilts as the people shouted: Ahhh! Be careful!
Behind the curtain, Rosier briskly hooked Camille into a harness and clipped it to a line. “Up!” he commanded. “Do not think twice!”
The rope pulled her and she flew. As an enormous white bird, she snatched the golden crown off the princess’s golden head before soaring away. The crowd roared its approval. The princess fainted into the highwayman’s arms. He bent and kissed her. Behind them grew a forest. From between its black trunks tiptoed a ghostly wolf who disappeared as the lovers stared at one another, deeply in love.
Between the princess and the highwayman unfurled an enormous bouquet of the reddest roses. As if they were spent dandelions, the princess blew on them, and the crimson petals floated out over the crowd in a rain of red paper.
The players took their bows. The crowd applauded: Encore! Encore!
A rain of rose petals, Camille thought from her dizzying perch on a window ledge. Or blood. The window beside her was open; Rosier had promised it would be when, far below, behind the golden carriage, he’d strapped white wings to her back. You’re almost there. Madame who lives upstairs was happy to help make the players’ performance a success, as long as I gave her a front-row seat. They will all be entranced, he’d said when she’d choked out that the Comité was there. Trust me—they will never see you in this feathered dress.
Below her on the cobblestones, the white-costumed players were already stepping into a carriage, waving adieu. She had only a minute to join them. Through the holes in her snow-white bird’s mask, she took in the square, where every red-cloaked man might be a guard of the Comité. Casting one last look over Paris—dirty and crowded, dangerous and beautiful, her beloved city of marvels—she unclipped herself from the line and slipped through the window into a stranger’s apartment. A tea set sprigged with pink roses waited on a polished table, like at the queen’s tea parties at Versailles. A thousand years ago, in another life.
Down the stair’s tight spiral she ran, the tips of her wings trailing behind her. Dashing through a courtyard where a dog frantically barked she was suddenly in the street, where her own carriage, now painted white and gold with a banner spelling out LES MERVEILLEUX, waited. Bowing to the spectators who applauded her, and calling out brightly, as Rosier had suggested, “Next show in half an hour!” she made her way through the throng.
As she approached the carriage, Rosier, the masked highwayman, jumped off the driver’s box and flung open the door with a flourish. “Entrez, Mademoiselle l’Oiseau!”
“I’m coming! Perhaps I should fly instead, if you are so impatient?” she said, flapping her wings in the air. She dared not look past the spectators in the first few rows for fear of seeing black hats. Play the part, she told herself. Disappear into it. Pulling a tiny crown from her hair, she tossed it into the crowd: one final piece of misdirection.
“Mine!” someone shrieked, and soon they were all scrambling for it.
“Get in,” Rosier urged from under his highwayman’s mask. “We’re leaving immediately.” He pulled a cord on her harness that collapsed her wings, and she scrambled inside, pulling the door shut. Through the window she saw him leap onto the box and take the horses’ reins. The whip snapped. She hadn’t time to sit down before the carriage jolted forward and tossed her against the wall in a flurry of feathers.
“Ouch!” cried Sophie from behind her princess mask. “You’re crushing me!”
“Pardon,” Camille said, finding a spot next to the white wolf. The carriage picked up speed. Buildings shuffled past the window, faster and faster. “We did it,” she said, slowly, as if she didn’t yet believe it. Tears pricked behind her mask. “And everyone is here?”
Sophie’s smile wavered. “How beautiful your dress is!”
Taking a steadying breath, Camille took in the carriage with its familiar green upholstery. Had they truly done it? Risked all, and escaped? There was Sophie, untying her princess mask, and there was black Fantôme in his wicker basket, curled like a comma alongside Blaise’s white cat. Beside her sat the wolf, his furred mask a hood that covered his entire head. She reached out and took his white-gloved hand, felt its