Chert couldn’t see Flint’s face, of course—the angle of the mirror didn’t permit it—but he could see the boy’s posture beginning to ease. The bony shoulders, which had been hunched as though against a cold wind, now drooped, and the head tilted forward toward the mirror-candle that Flint could see but Chert could not.

Chaven continued to talk in this soft, serious way, speaking of the candle and the darkness around it until Chert felt that he was falling into some kind of spell himself, until the pool of light on the tabletop, the candle and Flint and the mirror, all seemed to float in a shadowy void. The physician let his voice trail off into silence.

“Now,” Chaven said after a pause, “we are going to take a journey together, you and I. Fear nothing that you see because I will be with you. Nothing that you see can see you, or harm you in any way. Do not be afraid.”

Opal squeezed Chert’s hand so hard he had to wriggle his fingers free. He put his own hand on her arm to let her know he was still there, and also to try to stave off any sudden urges on her part to crush his fingers again.

“You are a boy again, just a very small boy—a baby, perhaps still in swaddling, and you can barely walk,” Chaven said. “Where are you? What do you see?”

A long pause was followed by a strange sound—Flint’s voice, but a new one Chert hadn’t yet heard, not the preternatural maturity of the nearly wild boy they had brought home, or the anxious sullenness that had come on him since his journey through the mysteries. This Flint sounded almost exactly like what Chaven had described—a very small child, only just up on his legs.

“See trees. See my mam.”

Opal got hold of his hand despite Chert’s best efforts and this time he didn’t have the heart to pull away, despite her desperate grip.

“And your father? Is he there?”

“Han’t got un.”

“Ah. And what is your name?”

He waited another long moment before answering. “Boy. Mam calls me boy.”

“And do you know her name?”

“Mam. Ma-ma.”

There was another spell of silence while Chaven considered. “Very well. You are a little older now. Where do you live?”

“In my house. Near the wood.”

“Do you know its name, this wood?”

“No. Only know I mustn’t go there.”

“And when other people speak to your mother, what do they call her?”

“Don’t. Don’t none come. Except the city-man. He comes with the money. Four silver seashells each time. She likes it when he comes.”

Chaven turned and gave Chert and Opal a look that Chert could not identify. “And what does he call her?”

“Mistress, or goodwife. Once he called her Dame Nursewife.”

Chaven sighed. “Enough, then. You are now…”

“She’s not well,” Flint said abruptly, his voice tremulous. “She said, don’t go out, and I don’t. But she’s sleeping and the clouds are coming along the ground.”