The Crow gave a little explosion of relief and a few moth-eaten feathers burst upwards.

The Midnight Swan nodded its head. ‘I see. Well, as you have asked for that, you’ll have it. It was a generous act, because I can read in your heart that you have sorrows of your own. So, to show I can be generous too, I’ll give you something for yourself. You will know how to use it when the time comes.’

‘For me?’ Seren whispered.

‘Yes. Take this.’

The Swan lowered its neck so far that the collar of diamonds slipped off and fell on the grass.

‘Oh!’ Seren said.

She stared at the jewels, hardly daring to touch them.

‘They’ll solve one of your problems, I think,’ the Swan said carelessly. ‘But the human things I can do nothing about. Those are for you to solve.’

Seren knelt in the dark grass and picked up the collar with both hands. It lay heavy on her palms, the diamonds glittering with cold brilliance, as if she held a constellation of stars. She was scared of how beautiful it was.

‘Thank you,’ she breathed.

‘Er … ahem.’ The Crow murmured hopefully.

The Swan turned its dark head. ‘I haven’t forgotten you. The child has asked for you to be unspelled, and I will tell you the way it must be done. But I warn you, it won’t be easy.’

‘You can’t do it straight away?’ Enoch asked, knitting his hands together. ‘We’ve waited so long…’

‘No. It is a fierce spell, spun in anger. A mighty enchantment. Such things cannot be undone with just a flick of a wing. There is a way but it will take courage. Especially,’ she turned to the Crow, ‘from you.’

The Crow looked anxious. ‘I’ll do anything.’

‘Anything?’

‘Anything.’ But he sounded terrified.

‘Then this is what has to be done.’ The Swan fixed Seren with its dark gaze. ‘You must take the Clockwork Crow apart, piece by piece. Every wheel, every cog, every feather. Beak and wings and claws. Then the pieces must be placed in a heap together under the full moon. And they must be burned to ashes.’

Enoch gasped.

Tomos said, ‘Golly!’

Seren’s eyes went wide. ‘I can’t!’

‘You must. Because that is the only way the spell can be broken.’

The Crow looked dazed. ‘I feel a little faint.’

‘You must show your courage now.’ The Swan rose gracefully and stretched its wings out, then it turned and slipped into the water with hardly a ripple, the cygnet snug in the downy feathers of its back, the tiny head gazing sleepily at Seren.

‘But,’ Seren hurried to the water’s edge, ‘what if we do all that and then … it doesn’t work?’