‘Oh – it’s you. You can come in. I thought it was some interfering Guildhall clerk come poking his nose into my affairs.’ Jolaine closed the door firmly behind her and locked it again. ‘They want me to open the Museum to visitors by next month! I’ve told them it’s impossible.’

Dustsheets lay over the cabinets; obviously nothing had been made ready for the summer season. The Antiquarian had been neglecting her duties.

‘And they had the effrontery to suggest I should make some display of the new artefacts!’ Muttering in an aggrieved tone, Jolaine set off towards her office. ‘As if I had the time –’ Orial tapped her on the shoulder.

‘We’ve found some new inscriptions. In the Hall of Whispering Reeds.’

‘New inscriptions, eh?’ She had caught Jolaine’s attention now. ‘I’d better take a look. Come into the office – I need to get my notebook and pencils.’

Orial followed her into the dusty office and waited whilst she gathered her notebooks into an artist’s bag with pockets for pencils, humming jauntily to herself.

‘What’s this, Jolaine?’ Orial picked up a volume she had left open and looked at the title on the worn leather spine. ‘Faerie Tales and Legends? Has the strain of translation become too great, Dame Antiquarian, that you’ve turned to reading children’s stories?’

‘There’s a lot more sense in children’s stories than most adults would care to admit.’

Orial had already begun to read:

THE FAERIE BRIDE

No one knew where she came from but all in the village acknowledged her to be a rare beauty. The young shepherd had been slaking his thirst at the waterfall, when he had heard a girl singing. Creeping closer, he had seen her sitting beside the water, combing her golden hair and singing so bewitchingly that it made his heart yearn with longing. From that hour he vowed not to eat or sleep until he had made her his bride.

At length she took pity on him and gave him her hand – but on one condition: once every year at midsummer she must leave him for a few days to return to her own folk far beyond the mountains. He must let her go – and he must give her his solemn promise not to follow, for if he tried to come after her, she would be lost to him forever. And so he gave her his promise and they lived in perfect happiness for a while… until she began to pine, growing pale and silent.

‘What ails you, dear heart?’ her husband asked her.

‘The time has come when I must leave you,’ she replied. ‘But never fear, I will return – so long as you keep your promise.’

‘Then give me something as a keepsake, a token that you will keep faith with me.’

So she cut off a lock of her golden hair and gave it to him as a keepsake.