“No.”

“But you’re not sure.”

“I’m sure.”

“I’m not,” Mr. Hyatt said slowly. “I’ll never be sure. It is a terrifying thing to doubt one’s own mind. But from now on I always will.”

“Doubts are a part of living.”

“Not ones like this. She accused me—”

“Don’t dwell on it, Mr. Hyatt. It was the talk of a troubled child.” He helped the old man to his feet. “Come on, we’d better search the palace.”

“We won’t find her.”

“We have to try. I need you to open the door for me.”

When they rounded the last bend in the path they could both see that the door was already open. Without a word the old man turned and began walking back toward the koi pond.

The first time Michael had seen the palace it had an abandoned look, with leaves and dust scattered over the floor and furniture, the cushions in disarray on the davenport, a teacup in the sink, the closet filled with toys and old clothes and the fateful pair of sandals. The sandals were gone now and so were the clothes. The closet contained only a neat row of Annamay’s dolls and stuffed toys. The leaves and dirt had been swept away, the cushions rearranged on the davenport, the teacup washed and put in the cupboard. Instead of looking abandoned the room appeared ready to receive a new royal princess or perhaps a visitor like the short fat woman who sat at the dining table. She wore an apron and a tea towel wrapped around her head to protect her hair from dust. She stared at Michael, unsmiling.

“Miss Kay and I were cleaning,” she said, as though an explanation had been demanded from her. “She took a box of clothes over to the house and I haven’t seen her since. I went ahead with the cleaning, thinking she’d be coming back any minute.”

“She and Howard went to search for Dru,” Michael said. “Dru didn’t arrive home from school. Has she been here?”

“Not for a long time. She doesn’t stop in for cookies anymore.”

“I think you should go back to the house now, Chizzy.”

Chizzy spread her plump little hands on the table in front of her as if she were counting her fingers to make sure they were all there. “Something’s happened.”

“I don’t know.”

“Something’s happened,” she repeated, and it was not a question but a simple statement of fact. She had ten fingers, something had happened.

Michael walked quickly through the avocado grove down to the creek. Here, civilization seemed miles away. Yet its sounds reverberated up and down the canyon, the insistent whine and roar of a power saw, the rhythmic tap of a hammer, a plane heading for the airport, the shouts of children playing in the distance.

Children, Michael thought. Firenze hated children. They were out to get her. They blew down at her from trees, they floated through the air like kites.

He began picking his way upstream as fast as he could, crossing and recrossing the creek to avoid barbed shrubs and poison oak. The wind, which had been brisk in the morning, then died down during the day, was coming up again as the afternoon wore on. The eucalyptus trees shook their tousled heads in frenzy and pelted the intruder with pods as hard as rocks. Jays swooped in front of him, squawking, and when he called Dru’s name the acorn woodpeckers answered, correcting him.

“Dru! Dru!”

“Jacob, Jacob, Jacob.”

“Dru.”

“Jacob.”

The sycamore trees were the commonest along the creek, their leaves the gaudiest and noisiest, their mottled gray bark the most compelling to the eye. But the live oak trees were the most ancient and durable natives. Their massive trunks were studded with acorns fitted into holes pecked out by the woodpeckers. During fall and winter a few leaves dropped to the ground but most of them remained on the tree to shelter hundreds of small birds at night and during storms.

It was under one of the largest of these oaks that Annamay had been found in a patch of poison oak covered with debris. The area was easy to find now because it had been cleared, the poison oak sprayed with herbicide and hauled away along with all the other dead and dying vegetation.

He stood in the clearing and looked up into the oak tree and saw what he had hoped and prayed he would not see. About thirty-five or forty feet above the ground Dru was clinging facedown to one of the limbs. She was as motionless as if she had grown out of the bark like a new kind of fungus.

He called to her. “Dru, don’t look down. It’s a friend of yours, Michael. I’ve come to help you. Do you hear me?”

She did not respond and he realized she was frozen with fear and that even if he succeeded in reaching her he probably couldn’t loosen her grip and bring her down safely. He would need the assistance of experts.

“Listen to me, Dru. I’m going for help. I’ll be back in a few minutes. Don’t panic and don’t look down.”

He kept yelling at her as he scrambled up the hillside to the nearest house.

“I’m bringing help… Don’t look down… I’ll be right back.”

When he reached the house at the top of the hill he pounded on the back door with his fist. The door remained closed but a woman’s voice spoke to him through a partly opened window.

“Go away.”

“I must use your phone to call Emergency.”

“Boss lady say no open door, no talk strangers.”

He couldn’t identify her exact nationality from her voice, but she was of Hispanic origin. He used the only Spanish he knew, the street language he’d picked up at his old parish in East Los Angeles:

“Llame a emergencia, nueve-uno-uno, y digales que una niña está strapada en un árbol al fondo de una zanja. Y deles su dirección. ¿Entendio? Llame al nueve-uno-uno.”

He didn’t wait for her response. He had to assume she would do as she was told because he knew he must hurry back to the child in the oak tree.

Dru had not moved.

“I’m coming up to get you, Dru. Don’t be afraid. The fire department will be here in a few minutes with ladders that will reach all the way up to where you are.” I hope. I don’t know how far their ladders extend.

He began to climb the tree. He had never had time for athletics in his high school years and he couldn’t remember climbing a tree even when he was Dru’s age. But he kept on trying, talking as he moved.

“You know how the fire department rescues kittens when they’re caught up trees or telephone poles? That’s what they’re coming to do for you. All you have to do is stay cool and not look down.”

The bark of the tree was rough and his hands were the soft hands of a man who’d lived by brain not brawn. They were bleeding before he was ten feet off the ground.

“Pretend you are a kitten, Dru. Kittens are curious, they like to explore like little girls, and sometimes they get into trouble and have to be rescued. Pretend you are a kitten, Dru. Do you like kittens?”

He was still too far away to tell for sure whether his words were having any effect or not, but he felt she was listening. She had moved her head slightly in his direction.

“I bet you like kittens Maybe you even have one of your own. Do you?”

She spoke for the first time, a single word that seemed to have no connection with what he’d been saying. He wondered if she had really flipped. The word sounded like marmalade.

If she had flipped she might be incapable of obeying instructions from either him or the firemen. She might lose her grip on the limb involuntarily or make a sudden decision to jump.

He needed something to keep her securely fastened to the limb until she could be reached. He wasn’t wearing a belt which probably wouldn’t have been long enough anyway. But he was wearing the wool sweater Lorna’s aunt had knitted for him one Christmas. Like all her gifts the sweater had a basic flaw originating with the giver. It had apparently been designed for a much taller man (the kind she probably thought Lorna should have married). The sleeves were several inches too long. From the end of one to the end of the other it measured at least six feet, and the woolen fibers were as strong as hemp.