“That story…” she says. “The one you told me about the king, Metheus…”

I nod.

“You said there were more. More blank stories.” Her expression is at once expectant and nervous.

“Why do you want to know?” It’s not like Mel to ask questions – she always has all the answers. I am angry with her, suddenly. “I thought you knew everything.” She watches me quietly, a small smile on her lips. “Why should I trust you with their stories?” I ask.

“There is much that I do not know, Leora Flint; I admit that.” She looks at me coolly. “The beginning of wisdom is realizing just that – that there is so much more to the world than you can ever know or understand.” She runs her hand through her curls, and her smile becomes mocking. “You, though – you go on one journey and you think you are an expert. You are like a feather – you think you are free but instead you are at the whim of the wind. Do not speak to me about knowledge or fear, truth or faith. Your head is turned by a good story, a warm fire, a smile, a handsome face. You flit from friend to friend and wonder why you have none left.”

In the silence that follows, I see her face soften.

“I like you. I like what I see in you. I still do. You gave me hope. I said you were special and I believed— believe it. But you have to act, now. I have reached the end of my own knowledge. I am a seeker of truth and I need your help.” She leans forward. Her face is flushed. “Share their stories with me,” she says softly. “I think it might be important.”

And so it is in this small room, Mel at her desk and me sat on cushions, that I open the covers of the book that is in my mind and the storyteller becomes the listener.

“In a wood, near a village, there was a woodcutter’s house…”

Chapter Thirteen

I tell Mel the stories she already knows, but from a new vantage point. The story of the sisters, who grew up in the wood, and how one became a princess and the other went into exile. Only this time the twin with the ink was the wicked one. The lovers – all the more shocking a second time in the telling. Nate – a new perspective on Saint, a spy rather than a saviour. The sleeping princess who broke free from her parents’ oppression and broke down the walls that surrounded her. The gift given to brothers who had no idea of the trickster’s heart.

Mel pours tea from a tall pot and lets an amber globule of honey melt into each cup before stirring.

“It’s good for the voice,” she tells me as she hands me a cup.

I’ve been talking a long time, and as I told her those precious stories I felt a warm possessiveness which unfolded into generosity – a desire to protect the tales by telling them well. The way Mel closed her eyes as she listened, smiled and nodded when the story resonated, wiped away tears – she made it holy, accepting the delicate, fragile stories as only a true storyteller could.