<div> Once upon a time, I had known nothing about my family. Gran never, ever spoke about her family, and I never asked. My parents and I knew that Gran had come from Europe, but anyone would have known that from her beautiful, aristrocratic French. But being me, I just couldn't leave it alone. So I went to Europe and found out. And then my life fell apart.<br> <br> Or shoudl I say, my <i>old </i>life fell apart. And my new life...well, it was like something right out of a fairy tale.<br> <br> I had been ta teacher on the college level, and now I was a member of one of the royal families of Dobrenica, an obscure European country with some very unusual attributes.<br> <br> Like magic. Yes, there was magic in Dobrencia. For instance, if certain members of two royal lines married at a specific time, Dobrenia <i>vanished</i>. And ghosts, I could now see ghosts. And vampires....but I still can't quite wrap my brain around that one. Let's just say that Dobrenica was one strange little country.<br> <br> I was truly happy. I was engaged to the heir apparent to the throne of Dobrenica, and we were in love. Wedding preparations were underway and, although the thought of being a princess made me feel weird, being with Alec was like living a dream.<br> <br> So my mood was high as I walked under the triumphal arch in the center of the capital city and ducked thorugh a lichen-dotten medieval archway. Trailing my fingers along the wall, I soon passed the odd little painting of a door that had intrigued me ever since I first came to Dobrenica. It was rendered so realistically that on first glance it seemed three-dimensional, but as I passed my hands over the painted doorknob, my fingres closed on cold metal, and the false door swung inward, revealing a sun-drenched landscape and a teenage girl with honey-colored braids.<br> <br> "I am Xanpia," she said, and somehow I knew she wasn't just another girl named after the patron saint of Dobrenica.<br> <br> "This door," I blurted, "how does it work?"<br> <br> "It is a door between your past and your future," she responded.<br> <br> "Oh, no! No, no, no -- I'm about to married!" I said in desperation, trying to back away.<br> <br> "You are called to guide the child Aurelie," she said. "But that is only half your task: To save Dobrenica, you must bring her here."<br> <br> And with that, she disappeared, leaving me floating like a spirit in a strange world, two hundred years in the past....</div>