She didn’t know what that meant, but it was strangely comforting. She was scared to ask any more, and turned and hurried after Tomos and the Crow. All the way down the dark slope the grass was soft and springy under her feet, and tiny pale flowers studded the hillside, and at the bottom, just as the hare had said, was the well.

Seren and Tomos approached it cautiously.

It stood alone in the empty grass, an ancient, mossy circular wall, with a few moths and damselflies flitting above it.

They leaned over and looked down.

It was utterly black, and there was an eerie drip, drip, drip from far down in the depths.

‘We have to go down there?’ Tomos wondered. ‘Yuk.’

The well took his words and whispered them back at him, round and round and down and down, yuk yuk yuk yuk yuk, until it seemed that there were a hundred voices clustered at the bottom, all murmuring back.

Seren shrugged. She didn’t like the look of it either. But she climbed up on the wall and swung her legs over.

‘Be careful, girl!’ the Crow snapped.

‘There’s a ladder down the inside.’

Her feet found the top rung and then the next, and she put her weight on them slowly. They looked like rusty old iron but they seemed strong enough. Seren twisted round and started to climb down.

After a few rungs she said, ‘It’s wet and horrible. And dark.’

Her own voice sounded strange and hollow.

‘Wait for me.’ The Crow fluttered down and onto her shoulder.

Seren rubbed her forehead with the back of her hand.

This looked scary.

As she climbed down everything got darker. The circle of sky above shrank and then, when Tomos swung himself over and started to climb down too, dust and dirt showered all over her. Her hands slipped on the wet powdery rust; her fingers were red with it.

She was out of breath.

‘Interesting mosses,’ the Crow remarked. ‘Homalothecium Camptothecium sericeum if I’m not mistaken.’

Seren gritted her teeth. His talons were gripping her shoulder so tight it hurt.

Down and down. The circular walls closed in. Drips soaked her face and clothes. The stink of stagnant water made her feel sick.

She was so tired she wanted to stop, but there was nowhere to stop so she just had to keep going. Just when she felt her arms were so stiff she couldn’t hold on any more she noticed something.

It was getting lighter.

‘Of course,’ the Crow said in its lecturing voice, ‘countries at the bottom of a well are not that unusual. In the Celtic and Germanic mythologies they happen all the time. They…’

‘Be quiet,’ Seren whispered. Because suddenly she was not climbing down, but up!

How had this happened?

She was still going the same way, but now that way was definitely up, and the light was above her, and the dark well below, and it was harder to drag her weight up and her arms ached.