WOW! Reviews! I was so happy when I opened my e-mail box and there were the messages about the reviews! Thanks to Word-Wizard and AngelBaby908. Word-Wizard, I thought your suggestion so cool that I decided to use it! I hope this chapter is good. If it isn't, please tell me! If it is, review anyway, please. Just a note: in this chapter, there are some words in Spanish(after all, Anita comes from Spain!). I'll put the translation in the end of the chapter. Thanks for reading!


The bells of Notre Dame rang. Anita slowly opened her eyes and yawned. Although she had slept on the floor, without any kind of veiling upon her head or walls around her, she didn't feel tired at all. The fire she had made last night had disappeared, only the wood left. The sun was very hot. Her clothes were already dry, so she put them in her bag, and thought about what she was going to do now.

"Well, I have to think carefully. I already made enough silliness yesterday. If I had forgotten my shyness and went to speak to those gypsies, I would be safe by now."

After one minute, she took off her bag a purple scarf and tied it around her waist – after all, she wanted to look presentable. She combed and tied up her hair, got her bag and started to walk on the streets again – this time, paying a lot of attention, for she didn't want to get in trouble with the guards again.

But, after some minutes of walking, she realized how hungry she was. She remembered the last time she had eaten had been yesterday morning, while she was on her way to Paris – some grapes she had brought in her bag. But now she didn't have any food, and she knew that she couldn't stand much longer without feeding. She looked in her bag and, surprisingly, she found a few coins.

She went to fruit store, and bought an apple, her favorite fruit. She could have bought even more, but she thought it was better to save the money. While she ate, she wondered what time it was, and, trying to start forgetting her shyness and acting like a grown up, she walked towards a man and asked for the time.

"Two o'clock in the afternoon, young one" he answered.

Her chin almost dropped at that. No wonder the sun was so hot, it was past midday! She walked to a wall, and suddenly started laughing. She couldn't tell why, but sometimes she thought everything was funny and laughed because of stupid things. She put a hand on her mouth, and remained this way until she stopped laughing, trying not to call much attention to herself. When she felt normal again, she started to think.

"If it's already two o'clock, I don't have much time to find the gypsies. So, it's better to start right now. Goodness, I was really tired yesterday night, to have slept all this time!"

She made her way through the streets of Paris, looking all around her, smiling at all the new things she saw, watching and listening carefully at everything, but never forgetting to pay attention to the guards. Whenever she saw one, she walked to another street, hiding herself among the crowd.

But this time, she didn't find any gypsies. "Perhaps", she thought, "they usually go more to that side of the city I went yesterday, and today I went to the other side".

It was already five o'clock (she asked the time to an old woman who was serving drinks in a tavern). Anita felt hungry, tired, and miserable. She sat on the floor, and started to cry. How much she missed her father! He would know exactly what to do. He would tell her that everything was alright, and that crying would not solve the problem. The memory of her father, who was now Goodness knows where, only made her cry more, her head resting on her knees.

Suddenly, she looked up; if she knew what her father would tell her, why was she crying? All she had to do was use her imagination – and she knew she was good at that – and imagine her father was right beside her, talking to her. That gave her courage, and she stood up, wiped her tears, and looked around. It was time to stop crying, and acting. She saw that the place where she stood was perfect to what she wanted to do. She took off her bag two little things that looked like shells made of wood – her castanets. When she looked at her beloved instrument, she remembered her mother, who had taught her how to dance with the castanets.

"Remember, Anita, you must put a lot of emotion on your dance. A dance without emotion is like a morning without sun – meaningless."

How distant her mother seemed to be now… Much more distant than her father, because Anita knew she would never see her mother again, or hear her voice. Now, her mother's body rested lifeless seven feet under the ground, in Seville. Some tears threatened to fall, but she held them and continued to look in her bag. She got a green hat, that once had belonged to her father, when he was a child, and put it on the floor, in front of her. She put her bag next to her, adjusted the castanets to her hands, and started dancing.

The people who walked by started to stop and watch her; her dance was something new for them, something they had never seen before. Her castanets made a beautiful sound, while Anita moved her hands around her head and body. She stepped hard on the floor, and her low heel shoes made another sound, combining perfectly with the sound of the castanets.

People started to gather around her and throw coins, and when she finished her dance, with her hands together upon her head, there was a considerable crowd watching her, the hat was full of money and everyone started to clap. She made a bow and, as the crowd dispersed, she counted the money.

"Great!" she said to herself. "There is enough to eat a decent meal!"

Anita was happy she had been stronger than her sadness, and her shyness. She was usually shy when she started to dance, but after a few instants she forgot all about it and just left things happen.

She walked to a tavern, and ate her first hot meal in two days – she had only eaten fruits all that time. She ate some meat and bread, and drank water – she never drank wine. She had never tasted it, but she had heard that men got drunk for drinking too much of it, and she decided she would never drink anything alcoholic in her life.

When she finished, it was already getting dark, and she was again lost and alone on the street. "Great, I'm really useless. Is it so difficult to find gypsies and ask for their help?" she thought. She started to walk, though she did not know where she was going, until she saw something that caught her eye.

It was a picture of a cross, painted on the wall of an alley. She took a hand to her neck, where the woven band still was. She compared the symbol in the band with the cross in the wall.

"It's the same…" she said, quietly. "What does it mean?" she wondered, while walking back, to have a better view of the wall. "Can it be – " she stopped suddenly, because she wasn't feeling the floor under her feet anymore! For an instant, she felt that she was falling, but she soon hit the steps of a stone stair.

She looked up. She couldn't see the alley anymore – better said, she couldn't see anything, because everything was dark around her. With her hands, she reached a stone ceiling upon her head.

"Well, this is a stair. If I can't go up, I'll go down." she thought, and started to go down the stairs. After some minutes, the stair was over, and she found herself in a long corridor, with some torches lightning the way. She started to walk, looking around in fear, when she thought she heard a noise behind her.

"¿Quien está ahí?" she said, in Spanish. Although she spoke French and some other languages very well, when she got nervous she spoke in her native language, unconsciously. No answer came. She started to think it was just her imagination, when she saw a shadow moving on the wall – a shadow that didn't belong to her. She gasped, but before she could say or do anything, someone came behind her and held her wrists. She screamed, feeling very afraid, and suddenly there were a lot of men around her, who came out of nowhere.

"¡Suéltame! Let me go!", she said, getting desperate.

"Well, well, well… What have we here?" said one of them, who was right in front of her. He wore a purple outfit and a purple hat with a yellow feather.

"I think she's a spy!" said another.

"Don't be silly, look at her! She's a gypsy girl!"

"How do you know she's a gypsy girl, you moron? She could be disguised!"

At that point, all the men were screaming one with the other, and the corridor was a total mess. Then, the man with the purple outfit said, loudly:

"Stop, all of you! This discussion won't take us anywhere."

Everyone silenced. It seems this man has some authority between these people, Anita thought. The man looked at her, and asked:

"So, what are you doing here, young one?"

She couldn't speak for a moment, but after some seconds, she said, quietly:

"I… I was… lost and… looked for… and… help… and fell here…" she just couldn't form phrases; she was too nervous and scared.

"Hmmm… It seems you are a little confused, aren't you?" said the man in the purple outfit.

"I say she is a spy!" cried another man.

"Nobody's asked you, moron!" cried another one, and Anita realized they were the same men who started arguing before.

"Silence! Let's take her to the Court of the Miracles, and we'll decide what to do with her."

The Court of the Miracles! Anita had been looking for it for two days and, suddenly, she just ended there by accident.

The men took her through many passages, and they arrived to a big place, full of colorful tents. So this was the Court of the Miracles… Her father had told her about that place, for he had stayed there once, when he traveled to Paris, before she was born. But, for a place underground, she thought it had a… happy aura. There were a lot of torches everywhere, so the whole place had light, and there were people chatting and children playing. For a moment, Anita even forgot that she was somehow a prisoner of the gypsies.

Some of the people in the Court noticed them entering, and started to speak quietly about it, wondering who that girl was.

Then, Anita heard a female voice crying: "Clopin, what are you doing?" Anita was surprised to see the same gypsy woman she had seen dancing yesterday with the goat.

The man in the purple outfit said: "Hello, Esmeralda. This girl entered the Court and I…"

"I hope you weren't thinking about hanging her." Now Anita couldn't stop herself:

"Hang me? No, no lo hagan, please, don't do this to me!"

"Calm down, dear. Nobody's going to hurt you.", the gypsy woman, Esmeralda, said.

"Do you know her?" asked the man who Esmeralda had called Clopin.

"She's the girl I told you about. The one I saw running from the guards yesterday!"

"Really?" Clopin said, surprised.

"Really! Release her!" she demanded, and the man holding Anita's wrists released them. Then, Esmeralda said:

"I'm sorry, young one. It was all a misunderstanding. I am Esmeralda, and this is Clopin. You see, he is the king of the gypsies, and he sometimes exaggerates, but it's all to protect us from any intruders."

"Yes. I'm really sorry, young one, I didn't mean to scare you." said Clopin, seeming a little embarrassed. "What's your name?"

"Yo…" she hesitated for a moment. "My name is Ana. Ana Rivera. But people usually call me Anita."


Translation of the words in Spanish:

¿Quien está ahí? : Who's there?

¡Suéltame! : Release me!

No lo hagan : Don't do this

Yo : I