The Celestial Globe: The Kronos Chronicles: Book II by Marie Rutkoski Page A

that awful bed I was stuck in for days, there’s the chair in which I was interrogated by your interfering father—”
    “And over there’s a mirror”—the freckled girl pointed—“that you might think about using.”
    “Madinia,” her sister murmured.
    “What? Don’t look at me like that, Meggie. The first step to recovering from an abysmal lack of style is to admit that you have a problem. I’m only trying to help.”
    “You Dees have a funny idea of
help
,” Petra snapped.
    “We just wanted to introduce ourselves, Petra,” the quiet sister said. “I’m Margaret.”
    The freckled girl stuck out her hand. “Madinia.” She waited for Petra to shake it. When Petra didn’t, Madinia plopped down into the nearest chair, her silk skirts spilling around her. “Wasn’t that a freakish scene in the forest? Petra, you should have seen it! Too bad you were passed out. But our dad was right in the thick of things, swinging away like a master swordsman. Those gray creatures were as skin-crawlingly creepy as anything I’d ever seen, but I wasn’t afraid at all. Not a jot!”
    “I was,” said Margaret.
    “Poor Meg! I know what you’re thinking, but you shouldn’t blame yourself. Why, anyone could have made the same mistake.
I
wasn’t petrified out of my wits, but
anybody
could have—”
    “Madinia!” Margaret turned a furious gaze on her sister. “You have no wits!”
    “That is
so
unfair! Why’re you—?” Madinia glanced at Petra, then back at Margaret. “Oh.”
    “What mistake?” Petra asked. “What’re you talking about?”
    “Nothing,” said Madinia.
    “Maybe I’ll mention this conversation, then, the next time I speak to your father.”
    “Please don’t do that,” said Margaret. “I made an error, but we fixed it. No harm done.”
    “We think,” said Madinia.
    “You know, if you hadn’t been so excited—”
    “If you hadn’t been as jumpy as a tail-stepped cat—”
    “This room is
my
jail cell,” Petra interrupted. “Give me an answer or get out of it.”
    Margaret took a deep breath. “Madinia’s magic can tear holes in space. Mine can close them.”
    “Old news.”
    Madinia was offended. “They are rare gifts.”
    “And the odds are very, very small that a person who can create a Rift will know someone who can sew it back up,” Margaret added.
    “A Rift?” Petra asked.
    “Oh, that’s just one of the many words people use,” Madinia said. “They’re also called Gates—”
    “Or Lacunae,” her sister supplied.
    “—Loopholes—”
    “—Portals—”
    “—Alleys—”
    “So?” said Petra.
    “So,” Margaret replied, “over the centuries, people with Madinia’s magic have left Rifts all over the world. And they can be dangerous. Imagine what would happen if somebody was riding a horse across the French countryside and galloped right into the Indian Ocean. Or what if the Ottoman army was marching through the desert and then suddenly walked into London’s Smithfield?”
    “They’d be crushed by our forces!” Madinia thumped her fist on the arm of the chair.
    “If the Rifts are such a big problem,” Petra said, “why don’t you just travel the world and close all of them?”
    “I’m not a
maid
,” said Margaret. “I’ve got enough work cleaning up after Madinia. Anyway, Rifts are very hard to find. It’d be like searching for one particular leaf in a forest. Even so, Dad says I must always close up a Rift Madinia makes, just in case. But . . . when we went to rescue you, Madinia and I screwed things up.”
    For a moment, Madinia looked like she might protest her innocence, but then she said, “Dad pinpointed your location, Petra. I was supposed to tear a gateway to it. But I didn’t know that there was already a Rift, an ancient one, close by. Look at the weak clothof your trousers. See that hole? Well, what would happen if you made a new hole right next to it?
Rip
. You’d end up with one roaringly big gap.”
    “Once we stepped