Acceptance

Jena desperately wants to be accepted into her cousins' games and she prepares for that possibility by creating a crown. That crown is what she trades for her title, "Queen of the Fairies," and it's that trade - along with Costi's and Cezar's - that sets the events of the story in motion. Though Jena is afraid, she gamely follows the game and then accepts Cezar's version of events as fact, never questioning or revealing what really happened at the lake on the day Costi apparently drowned. Everyone has accepted Cezar's version of events and believes that Costi drowned.

When the girls discover the passageway into the Other Kingdom, they accept their right to be there though Jena remains wary and worries that something might happen to them while they are there. Another form of this theme is seen in the girls' acceptance of the creatures that populate...