wal s for days, they had simply walked straight into.
"It's the Gatehouse of the Seven Treasures, isn't it, Bonnie?
Isn't it? Look!"Elena shouted.
Bonnie was already looking, both hands pressed against her heart, and for once without a word to say. As Elena watched, the diminutive girl fel to her knees in the light, powdery snow.
But Stefan answered. He picked up Bonnie and Elena at the same time and whirled them both. "It is!"he said, just as Elena was saying "It is!" and Bonnie, the expert, gasping,
"Oh, it real y, really is!"with tears freezing on her cheeks.
Stefan put his lips to Elena's ear. "And you know what that means, don't you? If that is the Gatehouse of the Seven Treasures, you know where we are standing now?"
Elena tried to ignore the warm, tingling sensation that shot up from the soles of her feet at the feeling of Stefan's breath on her ear. She tried to focus on his question.
"Look up,"Stefan suggested.
Elena did - and gasped.
Above them, instead of a fog bank or incessant crimson light from a sun that never stopped setting, were three moons.
One was enormous, covering perhaps a sixth of the sky, shining in swirls of white and blue, hazy at the edges. Just in front of it was a beautiful silvery moon at least three quarters as big as it was.
Last, there was a tiny moon in high orbit, white as a diamond, that seemed to be deliberately keeping its distance from the other two. Al of them were half ful and shone down with gentle, soothing light on the unbroken snow around Elena.
"We're in the Nether World,"Elena said, shaken.
"Oh...it's just like in the story,"Bonnie gasped. "Exactly like.
Even the writing! Even the amount of snow!"
"Exactly like the story?"Stefan asked. "Even to the phase of the moons? How ful they are?"
"Just exactly the same."
Stefan nodded. "I thought they would be. That story was a precognition, given to you with the purpose of helping us find the largest star bal ever made."
"Well, let's go inside!"cried Bonnie. "We're wasting time!"
"Okay - but everyone on your guard. We don't want anything to go wrong now,"Stefan said.
They went into the Gatehouse of the Seven Treasures in this order: Bonnie, who found that the great black doors swung open at a touch, but that she could see nothing, coming in from bright sunlight; Stefan and Elena, hand in hand; and Damon, who waited outside for a long time in the hopes, Elena thought, of being deemed "a different party."
Meanwhile the others were having the most pleasant shock since they'd taken the Master Keys from the kitsune.
"Sage - Sage!"Bonnie shril ed as soon as her eyes adjusted. "Oh, look, Elena, it's Sage! Sage, how are you?
What're you doing here? Oh, it's just so good to see you!"
Elena blinked twice, and the dim interior of the octagonal room came into focus. She went around the only piece of furniture in the room, the large desk in the middle. "Sage, do you know how long it seems? Did you know that Bonnie almost got sold for a slave at a public auction? Did you know about her dream?"
Sage looked as he always had to Elena's eyes. The bronzed, terminal y fit body, like a model of a Titan, the bare chest and bare feet, the black Levi's, the long spiraling tangles of bronze hair, and the strange bronze eyes that could cut steel, or be as gentle as a pet lamb.
"Mes deux petits chatons," Sage was saying. "My two little kittens, you have astounded me. I have been fol owing your adventures. The Gatekeeper is not provided with much entertainment and is not al owed to leave this fortress, but you were most brave and amusing. Je vous felicite."He kissed first Elena's hand and then Bonnie's, then embraced Stefan with the Latin two-cheeked kiss. Then he resumed his seat.
Bonnie was climbing Sage as if she were a real kitten. "Did you take Misao's star bal ful of Power?"she demanded, kneeling on his thigh. "Did you take half of it, I mean? To get back here?"
"Mais oui, I did. But I also left Madame Flowers a little - "
"Do you know that Damon used the other half to open the Gate again? And that I fel in too, even though he didn't want me? And that because of that I almost got sold as a slave?
And that Stefan and Elena had to come after me, to make sure I was okay? And that on the way here Elena almost