“How old are you?”

Almost nine.

“Where do you live, Mika?”

There was a long pause. Yew Lane. The house with the green-and-yellow door. I want my mother!

“I’ll try to help you.” But he had no idea how—except one. “My name is Thero, and I live at the Orëska House. I want you to come and see me as soon as you can. Will you do that?”

You’re a wizard? The cloud-image of the face was still there, but some of the fear was gone. The unseeing white eyes were wide.

“I am, Mika. Please come and see me. Do you promise? You may bring your mother, too, if you like.” How best to coax a frightened child? “I have good things to eat.”

I promise! Can I go home now?

“Where are you?”

I don’t know. I’ve never been here before. Who are those people watching us?

“You can see this room, and my friends and me?”

Yes.

“Amazing,” Thero murmured. “Where were you before you were here?”

In my street, with my friends.

“Did someone trade with you? A beggar, perhaps?”

An old woman. She gave me a dragon tooth for one of the marbles my gran gave me.

Thero’s lips pressed in a tight humorless smile. It couldn’t be much clearer than that.

“I’m going to send you home now, Mika. Do you think you can find your way home?”

Where am I now?

“You’re in Blue Fish Street.”

By the Harvest Market?

“Near there, yes. At an inn called the Stag and Otter. Do you know it?”

I think so.

“Good. Remember what we’ve said here, and come and see me.”

I will. I want to go now!

The voice was much fainter and the features were beginning to blur. Thero quickly cut the circle with his knife and the mist disappeared, leaving nothing in its wake, not even a mental sensation.

“What was that all about?” asked Alec.

Thero found the others regarding him as if he’d just done something rather surprising.

“You couldn’t hear the—” Spirit? Ghost? Soul? “There was a child in the mist. He spoke to me.”

“All we heard was you talking to someone named Mika,” Seregil replied. “We couldn’t see you at all. As soon as you opened that bottle you were surrounded by a cloud of thick mist.”

“Mika was the spirit of the child who owned the marble, wasn’t he?” said Alec.

Thero nodded, feeling unaccountably sad.

But Elsbet looked hopeful. “You told him his way home. Do you think he went back to his body?”

“I hope so. But he could just as easily be dead now. Or perhaps he was dead already and that’s why he was in the bottle. I’m sorry, but it could be any of those.”