by Paul Park
“And I am the Queen of Roumania,” she said—“I don’t think so. That was always meant to be untrue. That was the point.”
And she was fumbling with her bracelet as if she meant to pull it off. “Yes,” he said, keeping her calm. No reason to disagree. She was in shock, he thought, that was all. Exhausted and in shock.
“It is true what they told you,” Miranda said. “It will be true. I know it will be true.” Then she closed her eyes—
* * *
—AND OPENED THEM.
She lay on a dark hillside. She propped herself up on her elbows. There was grass in her hair. She was sore and tired. Her hands and feet were all banged up.
Something given, something stripped away. She sat up slowly, hugged her knees. But it was late, too late to stay out on that hill in the moonlight and starlight—what time was it? She turned her head, her neck, her shoulders. There was the path up through the woods. She had to get home. Among the evergreens, birch saplings held out white, entreating arms. The last pale leaves of the year.
She got up, wiped off her knees, and climbed up through the woods to the ridge of the hill. At the place where the paths divided, there was the stone ruin, the empty tower among the trees, the door battered and intact—it would not be disturbed, at least not by her. She found the stone bench, then the path that branched off to the side, and it was only a matter of minutes before the land opened up, and she was in the high cow pasture.
What had her aunt told her? “You might search for it and find it in the land of the dead.” Down below, the town was dark except for the streetlights. But there was the white block of the art museum, the parking lot; she paused. She could see the old stone wall, the barbed-wire fence at the bottom of the hill. Doubtless there would be some piece of brass down there, a coin or a slug someone had dropped, just to make a little, narrow gate for her to slip through into tara mortilor. Andromeda would be waiting for her there at the gap in the trees. Pale and ghostlike, she’d be sitting on a boulder in her gray T-shirt, rubbing her long bare legs.
Miranda would be glad to see her. Rachel and Stanley would be waiting with the fire laid. But Peter would not be anywhere, not in his little house on White Oak Road or anyplace in that dark town. And even though there was a force that was leading her downhill, a force that was suggesting she’d be comfortable there forever in her parents’ house beside the green, still she had the strength to resist, to turn uphill again.
She touched the golden bracelet around her wrist. She climbed up through the hummocks of grass, the earth churned from the cows’ hooves. At the top of the pasture where the woods began, where she and Peter had seen the little monkey that first time, Miranda went down on her hands and knees and then collapsed.
The pain in her side had gotten worse, and she closed her eyes and opened them, and there was Peter kneeling above her, pressing a wad of cloth into her side.
There she was on the embankment under the morning sky. There she was, sprawled out on the cinder rail bed outside the village of Chiselet. “Life is a marvelous cycle of song,” she said. And then later: “Come on, help me. Help me up. Let’s go get help.”
Acknowledgments
Most of all, I’d like to thank my editor, David Hartwell, whose precision and irreducible patience have brought these books to life.
ALSO BY PAUL PARK
A Princess of Roumania*
The Tourmaline*
The White Tyger*
Soldiers of Paradise
Sugar Rain
The Cult of Loving Kindness
Celestis*
The Gospel of Corax
Three Marys
If Lions Could Speak and Other Stories
No Traveller Returns
*Denotes a Tor Book
Praise for The Hidden World
“Paul Park concludes his tale of Miranda Popescu and an alternate Romania amid war in the physical world and treachery in the hidden world of sorcery.… It pays to read all four books—starting with A Princess of Roumania—in this magnificent, sophisticated fantasy series.”
—The Denver Post
“A Princess of Roumania and its sequels are destined to be touchstones of fantasy literature. One lingers over Park’s sentences, reluctant to put the book down, and his world is populated by vivid, exquisitely three-dimensional people, among them the Baroness Ceausescu, one of my very favorite literary characters. Hard to compare these novels to any other series, but the former bookseller in me feels compelled to try—so, if you like the work of Philip Pullman, Gene Wolfe, or Ursula Le Guin, you ought to be reading Paul Park, too.”
—Kelly Link
“This exciting and satisfying fourth and final volume of Park’s much-praised series … [is] beautifully written.… Provides a fitting and triumphant conclusion to the series.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Satisfying … Miranda is one of the most interesting heroines in contemporary fantasy.”
—Booklist
“Complex and brilliantly realized … Subverts a good deal of what we might expect from a more conventional fantasy … [A] surprising yet satisfactory conclusion to a most unusual epic.”
—Gary K. Wolfe, Locus
Praise for The White Tyger
“Our three protagonists—Pieter the warrior, Sasha the fox, and Miranda the frowning princess—make a powerful center in the storm, always in motion, always in danger, always surprising (radioactive materials shipped from Africa, a flying gypsy ghost, a confession made in song onstage). Glorious stuff!”
—Suzy McKee Charnes
“Deft, inventive, and intelligent, The White Tyger opens a window onto a world where imagination rules. This is as deeply pleasurable to read as Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time or Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy.”
—Andrea Barrett
“These books are dangerous and as glittering as amber and bloodstone and, yes, tourmaline. An embarrassment of riches—the Baroness is one of the great characters of fiction. Like Miyazaki or Pullman, Park is not afraid to write real risk and beauty.”
—Maureen McHugh
“Readers can revel in every twist of the Baroness’s descent into madness.… This is another interesting addition to the series.”
—Starlog
“This volume offers a lot of intriguing, exciting matter for our appreciation.… The villain has grown so monstrously alluring that the temptation to let him or her take over is enormous and hard to resist. But what a detailed, microscopic, insightful, unforgettable portrait Park presents!”
—SCI FI Weekly
Praise for The Tourmaline
A Finalist for the 2007 Sidewise Awards
“In this second book of his open-ended fantasy series, Paul Park succeeds in the impossible: He truly gets us to believe that our Earth is a crude fiction in comparison to his invention.… All this impact thanks to Park’s fecund imagination and elegant prose (both qualities reminiscent of Gene Wolfe’s oeuvre.”
—SCI FI Weekly
“Captivating … Few readers will find fault with his enchanting characters and compelling story line.”
—Booklist
“The striking world first revealed in A Princess of Roumania here becomes both more fantastic and more real at once. It’s a magical alternative Europe that exists simply as itself, as in the very best novels—vivid, intense, exuberant, gritty, full of life.”
—Kim Stanley Robinson
Praise for A Princess of Roumania
A Finalist for the 2005 Sidewise Award
A World Fantasy Award Nominee
“Park’s achievement lies in the clarity of his prose and in his careful, precise rendition of character.… This book will be compared to Pullman’s His Dark Materials and to the works of Jonathan Carroll and Gene Wolfe.… A Princess of Roumania is like nothing except itself: bittersweet, clear and cold, and complex.”
—Vector
“In less capable hands, the plot of the missing prince
ss would seem trite, but Paul Park makes A Princess of Roumania unique.… The result is a powerful novel that should appeal to adult and sophisticated young-adult audiences.… The stage is set for a terrific series. I can’t wait for the next installment.”
—Rocky Mountain News
“A smart political drama—one laced with paranoia-inducing saboteurs and riddling apparitions—that jumps between a handful of intertwining stories to gripping … effect.”
—Entertainment Weekly
This is a work of fiction. All the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
THE HIDDEN WORLD
Copyright © 2008 by Paul Park
All rights reserved.
A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
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New York, NY 10010
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Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.
ISBN-13: 978-0-7653-5587-4
ISBN-10: 0-7653-5587-6
First Edition: April 2008
First Mass Market Edition: March 2009
eISBN 9781466838918
First eBook edition: January 2013