Excerpt from BALLERINA WISHES by Carol Barton
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Maddie wouldn’t have thought it possible, but it grew even colder as the sky finally darkened into night. When the moon rose, thousands of stars studded the velvety blackness of the sky.
Maddie was speechless, for there, bathed in moonlight, was the most amazing building she had ever seen. The main part was long, low and white with roofs of onion-shaped domes and tall thin minarets of glistening with gold.
Laslo drove the sled to the rear of the building and into a yard where his precious huskies could spend the night. Laslo’s sister, Olga, came out to meet them and without a word escorted them into the palace. As they followed Olga they passed sumptuous rooms decorated in gold, white and amber and hung with chandeliers.
Then they climbed a wide staircase and were shown two rooms on the second floor, one for Maddie and Natasha and the other for Laslo, Sebastian and Zak.
Maddie wondered where the owners of the Winter Palace were but she was too tired to care; all she knew was that there was a supper of bread, cheese and fruit to eat, soft white nightgowns for herself and Natasha and a comfortable bed of goose down to sleep in.
Within minutes she was asleep.
She wasn’t sure what woke her; she only knew that when she opened her eyes it was still dark and that Natasha was no longer beside her.
Carefully, quietly, she slipped out of bed and tiptoed out of the room. All was silent in the huge palace and lightly, like a little shadow, she ran down the stairs and peeped into several of the large rooms that they had passed earlier. There was no sign of Natasha but then, just when she was on the point of giving up and going back upstairs, she heard a faint noise from a room at the far end of a corridor.
Hardly daring to breathe, she tiptoed down the corridor and pushed open the door.
The sight that met her eyes took her breath away. It was an enormous room, like a long gallery, with its centre empty of any furniture and with marble pillars around the outside. Moonlight shone through the tall rounded windows onto the floor, which was so highly polished it shone like glass, and there in the centre of the room was Natasha, all alone, and dancing in her white nightgown.
From World of Wishes: Ballerina Wishes. Text copyright © 2007 by Carol Barton. Illustrations copyright © 2007 by Carol Barton. All rights reserved.
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