I tuck the acorn into the earth by the side of the path with a little wish, touching my own silver acorn and hearing Nan’s voice, years ago, on one of the days I yearned for more. ‘It is here,’ she’d said, reaching out and touching it with pale fingers. ‘It is not whole, and it is not the shape we may have hoped for, but there is family here, and if you hold it tight, Stella, you cannot lose it. It will grow . . .’

‘I said no!’ Nan howls when I finally gather up the courage to walk through the back door. She’s writhing around the kitchen table, clasping her mist-thin hands together.

I dump my bag and lean up against the table.

‘How could you, Stella? After all these years of you and me, all the trust, all the lessons . . . How could you just abandon it all?’

‘I haven’t! I can still do lessons here. You can’t just keep me locked up forever. What happens when I’m older? Did you even think of what would happen when I grew up? Am I supposed to live my whole life here alone?’

‘Of course not,’ she snaps, coalescing into her true shape. Nan shape. She reaches out to me, and I feel the chill of her touch, see the regret on her face when it makes me flinch. ‘I wanted to keep you . . . keep you safe for a while longer. That’s all.’

‘I am safe,’ I tell her. ‘There are hundreds of kids there. It’s a normal school!’ I push away the thoughts of magic and secret lessons. ‘I did maths, and English, and PE, and I shared my lunch with some of my classmates. How can that be wrong?’

‘It is wrong if you go against the wishes of your family. I am not holding you to others’ standards – I am holding you to ours! We are the keepers of this house, the only ones who stand between the shadow forest and the human world. The time will come when that will mean everything. Isn’t that enough excitement for you?’

‘It isn’t exciting! It’s silver wire and books and rules and old, musty things that aren’t even alive any more!’

‘Well, I hope that’s not me you’re referring to,’ she mutters after a shocked silence.

Peg is being a small golden lizard. He stares down at us from the wooden beam where copper spoons hang, catching the firelight, and I feel horrible. Like I turned myself inside out, and they can both see all the messy bits that are normally hidden within.

‘What do you mean by the time will come, anyway?’ I ask after a while.

‘The forest grows, and so does your father’s darkness,’ she says. ‘His shadows seek to swallow the world whole. One day, you will be the one who stands in his way.’

‘Me?’

‘Of course you!’

‘We can’t even get into the forest, Nan. We have no idea where his palace is any more, or even if he’s still there!’