‘What does that mean?’

She turned so that she was skipping backwards and facing me. ‘Backwards in time, Lord. We unspool the years. Yesterday’s years are flying past us, but so fast you cannot see their nights or their days. You are not born yet, your parents are not born, and back we go, ever back, to the time before there were kings. That, Lord, is where we go. To the time before kings.’

‘Your feet are bleeding,’ I said.

‘They heal,’ and she turned and skipped on. ‘Come!’ she called. ‘Come to the time before kings!’

‘Does Merlin wait for me there?’ I asked.

That name stopped Olwen. She stood, turned back again, and frowned at me. ‘I lay with Merlin once,’ she said after a while. ‘Often!’ she added in a burst of honesty.

That did not surprise me. He was a goat. ‘Is he waiting for us?’ I asked.

‘He is at the heart of the time before kings,’ Olwen said seriously. ‘At its utter heart, Lord. Merlin is the cold in the frost, the water in the rain, the flame in the sun, the breath in the wind. Now come,’ she plucked at my sleeve with a sudden urgency, ‘we cannot talk now.’

‘Is Merlin a prisoner?’ I asked, but Olwen would not answer. She raced ahead of me, and waited impatiently for me to catch up with her, and as soon as I did she ran ahead again. She took those steep paths lightly while I laboured behind, and all the time we were going deeper into the mountains. By now, I reckoned, we had left Siluria behind and had come into Powys, but into a part of that unhappy country where young Perddel’s rule did not reach. This was the land without law, the lair of brigands, but Olwen skipped carelessly through its dangers.

The night fell. Clouds filled from the west so that soon we were in a complete darkness. I looked about me and saw nothing. No lights, not even the glimmer of a distant flame. It was thus, I imagine, that Bel found the isle of Britain when he first came to bring it life and light.

Olwen put her hand into mine. ‘Come, Lord.’

‘You can’t see!’ I protested.

‘I see everything,’ she said, ‘trust me, Lord,’ and with that she led me onwards, sometimes warning me of an obstacle. ‘We must cross a stream here, Lord. Tread gently.’

I knew that our path was climbing steadily, but little else. We crossed a patch of treacherous shale, but Olwen’s hand was firm in mine, and once we seemed to walk along the spine of a high ridge where the wind whistled about my ears and Olwen sang a strange little song about elves. ‘There are still elves in these hills,’ she told me when the song ended. ‘Everywhere else in Britain they were killed, but not here. I’ve seen them. They taught me to dance.’