She involuntarily brushed her wet hair aside and the knight gasped unwittingly. Not just because her ear was normal, human, and in no way elven. Her cheek was disfigured by a large, ugly scar. She had been wounded. But could a fairy be wounded?

She noticed his look, narrowed her eyes and wrinkled her nose.

‘That’s right, it’s a scar!’ she repeated in her extraordinary accent. ‘Why do you look so scared? Is a scar such a strange thing for a knight to see? Is it so ugly?’

He removed his chainmail hood with both hands and brushed aside his hair.

‘Indeed it isn’t,’ he said, not without youthful pride, displaying a barely healed scar of his own, running from temple to jaw. ‘And only blemishes on one’s honour are ugly. I am Galahad, son of Lancelot du Lac and Elaine, daughter of King Pelles, lord of Caer Benic. That wound was dealt me by Breunis the Merciless, a base oppressor of maidens, before I felled him in a fair duel. In sooth, I am worthy of receiving that sword from your hands, O Lady of the Lake.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘The sword. I’m ready to receive it.’

‘It’s my sword. I don’t let anyone touch it.’

‘But…’

‘But what?’

‘The Lady of the Lake always… always emerges from the waters and bestows a sword, doesn’t she?’

She said nothing for some time.

‘I get it,’ she finally said. ‘Well, every country has its own customs. I’m sorry, Galahad, or whatever your name is, but I’m clearly not the Lady I’m meant to be. I’m not giving away anything. And I won’t let anyone take anything from me. Just to make things clear.’

‘But,’ he ventured, ‘you must come from Faërie, don’t you, m’lady?’

‘I come…’ she said a moment later, and her green eyes seemed to be looking into an abyss of space and time. ‘I come from Rivia, from the city of the same name. From Loch Eskalott. I sailed here by boat. It was foggy. I couldn’t see the shore. I only heard the neighing. Of Kelpie… My mare, who followed me.

She spread out her wet blouse on a stone, and the knight gasped again. The blouse had been washed, but perfunctorily. Patches of blood were still visible.

‘The current brought me here,’ the girl began again, either not seeing what he had noticed or pretending not to. ‘The current and the spell of a unicorn… What’s this lake called?’

‘I don’t know,’ he confessed. ‘There are so many lakes in Gwynedd—’

‘In Gwynedd?’

‘Naturally. Those mountains are Y Wyddfa. If you keep them on your left hand and ride through the forests, after two days you’ll reach Dinas Dinlleu, and then on to Caer Dathal. And the river… The nearest river is…’