‘I think I’ve got this,’ she said, and tentatively pointed. ‘The river’s over there. The geomancer lives beyond the gorge, which is there.’ She turned. ‘The sun rises over those mountains, and between there and here are hills, which means your castle is at the edge of those in …’

She turned again, and decided that if she was going to be wrong, she was going to be definitely wrong. She jabbed her finger.

‘That direction. On the tallest ridge.’

Crows bowed low, his scarecrow body bent double. ‘You were paying attention after all. Could you draw a map?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Mary. ‘I was never any good at drawing anything. I could give it a go, if that’s what you wanted.’

‘Here in Down, maps are power. They mark out the portals and the spaces in between. You can trade maps, barter them for whatever you want. Just make sure you hold them in your head, so that no one can take them from you. So, with that lesson over, are you ready for another?’

She nodded and he held up his hand to her.

‘What do you see?’

‘Your hand,’ she said.

‘Yes. What else?’

His palm was a little pinker than the jet black of his knuckles. The creases on his skin at the joints and across the width of his span were like hers and yet unique to him.

‘Am I supposed to be doing some sort of fortune telling?’

‘No,’ said Crows. ‘Look carefully.’

She did. She looked for patterns in the lines, scars or calluses. He had those, but they didn’t mean anything except a past and a present of hard work.

‘Have you looked?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know what I’m looking for.’

He turned his hand around to show her the back of it. ‘You are looking for the same thing as you were before.’

Crows had no hair there. His nails were pale and chipped, ridged like the land where he lived. His fingers were almost impossibly long, and she wondered how hard it had been for him to heave shovel after shovel of coal into the furnace, in the heat and the smoke of the engine room.

He turned his hand again, palm forward. ‘Do not look at the hand. Look at what the hand becomes.’

She wasn’t seeing it. A hand was a hand was a hand, however it was held. She held up her own, but she was facing into the sun, so she moved it to block it out. The light peeked through the spaces between her shorter, fatter fingers.

‘Shadow,’ she said. ‘I can see a shadow.’

‘Good. Now, this is the trick. When you move your hand, the shadow it casts follows it. Always. Unless you can persuade it not to.’

He stood next to her, held out his hand again, and wiped a line of darkness across the clear lake air.