‘Well I’ve done it now, and there’s no going back,’ I say, my fingers finding the golden acorn in my pocket. ‘I’m glad I’m at school, and I’m glad I’ve been into Winterspell.’ I take a deep breath. ‘I think I miss them, Nan.’

‘Who?’

‘My parents! Being in Winterspell. I remember things in flashes . . . I wish I knew more.’

‘Of course you do,’ she says, her eyes glowing. ‘I wish it too. I’ve wished it many times over the years.’

‘But we don’t talk about them much.’

‘I suppose we don’t,’ she acknowledges, twisting her hands together. ‘Well, then. Your mother was a moon sprite, like my own mother. She made the most beautiful dreams – and most of the charms that I brought with me and strung out there on the fence. And your father is known, apart from anything else, as the wood sprite fae king who made the bridge that crosses the River Bat, deep in the forest; who linked up all the charms and invented warning systems, that I have used to keep us safe from him. They were happy, before the Plaga struck. You were happy.’

Fingering the acorn in my pocket, I think of the whisper of the oak tree, that memory of summer days, and how its roots threw me over. ‘Is his tree still alive?’

‘It’s in the forest,’ she says. ‘It’s an oak, still young.’ She sighs, and her sadness looms over us both.

‘I think I saw it,’ I say.

‘Perhaps you did.’ She shakes her head. ‘They can survive without us far better than we can live without them. But for now, have you not had enough adventure?’

‘No! I’ve hardly begun, Nan! We should live in the forest. We should drop all this glamour and go in there and fight with the rest of them. I want to know who I am! I don’t even look fae . . . What about wings – and horns?’

‘Wings and horns!’ she exclaims. ‘As to that, you can thank me. You don’t have to use your own glamour to go into the town, or to school, because I did it for you years ago.’

‘But what am I, underneath all of your glamour? What do I have that you have hidden?’

‘I forget.’

‘NAN! How can you forget?’

‘All of my energy is spent on the here and now, Stella! You will come into your magic, and when you do, the glamour will fall. That is always how I intended it. I . . .’ For a second, she looks utterly lost. ‘There are many choices in raising a child. I can’t say I’ve always made the right one.’

‘It’s terrible in the forest,’ I say after a while, when the fire is low, and Peg is ‘awake’ again. I’ve decided to tell them both a bit about Yanny and his family, and as I do, I feel again the gnawing worry that showed in his parents’ eyes.