“I understand exactly,” Emily said, taking Branwell’s hand and climbing to her feet. “What a fine fellow,” she said enthusiastically to the visionary’s dog. “I was always rather put off the idea of being a witch by the thought that their familiars were felines, birds or toads and the like. If anyone had told me dogs were allowed, I should have taken a different path, for certain.”

“I’m not a witch,” the young woman said. “I am Elizabeth Goode, visionary, so if you’ve come all this way for a love potion in the hopes that you may avoid the lives of old maids and ne’er-do-wells, then you’ve come in vain.” She gave all three of them a swift appraisal. “You shall all die unmarried. Good day to you.”

“That is not why we have come, Miss Goode,” Anne said crossly, her cheeks flushing. “And though you may be a wild woman of the moors, there is no excuse for rudeness, madam. We have been sent to you by your friend Tabby Aykroyd, and we have said the secret words, or whatever they are, and as it happens we are here on a very serious matter. One might expect that, as a visionary, you would already have perceived that.”

The young woman pursed her lips and shrugged, standing aside to let the three siblings in. “Very well, come in if you must, and please, if you are to address me, call me Lizzy. Miss Goode makes me sound as old as the hills.”

“We were rather led to believe that you were as old as the hills,” Anne said as they stepped inside the dwelling. Once the door was shut, the only light came from the central hearth and a tiny beam of daylight that shone in through the opening in the ceiling. The hut was warm, though, and smelt pleasantly of herbs, smoke and dog. There was a warm bed covered in furs in one half, and everything else a lone person and their dog required to survive in comfort stored in and around the little home, including a decent collection of books and a variety of meats and fish drying and curing on hooks over the fire. “For our Tabby is so old, and she said she had last come to you when we were but small children.”

“I must own the fact that I do not know your Tabby Aykroyd, though she surely knows me,” Lizzy said.

“But how can that be?” Anne asked her.