“I didn’t say it was you I doubted.” She turned another twenty degrees. Looked up. Narrowed her eyes. “What do you think, Ollie? Should we align it this way? It’s one of the only things in sight that could be our ‘north.’” She pointed through an opening that was squared off, through which the tower of Cromwell’s castle came and went through the mist.

Sheridan had a second shovel in his hands and looked as though he’d be happy to start digging absolutely anywhere. “Lovely view. But does it work? I mean, if we make it north? Do any of the walls line up with the lines?”

Libby almost wished Tas-gwyn had recommended they try Cromwell’s castle first. It looked more properly castle-like, positioned on the water’s edge as it was, its main tower bringing stories of princesses and dragons to mind.

She drew her lip between her teeth and reached into her pocket, where she’d stashed the piece of paper she’d read over and again that morning. Beth’s unfinished fairy tale had been niggling at the back of her mind all week. She’d meant to ask her for an explanation first thing, but worry for Mabena had taken over the conversation.

She pulled out her copy now though and glanced at it again.

Once upon a time, there was a princess. She lived on an island of rocks and bones, with no one to keep her company aside from the fairies. All her life she’d danced with them to the tunes they played on their magical pipes, the tunes echoed by deep voices from the rock itself. One day, however, the music stopped.

The princess, concerned for her fay friends, set out to find them, only to discover that every fairy on the island had vanished. Far and wide she searched, high and low. In the treetops she found no friends . . . but there was a house in the boughs she’d never seen before, one made of wood creaking and ancient, bearing the name of the fairy king over its lintel. In the pools she found no friends . . . but there was glinting metal winking up at her from the depths, the very shade of the fairies’ eyes. Not to be tempted, the princess pushed onward. In the forest glens she found a wonder that dazzled her eyes. Trees with fragrant bark peeling in fairy-wing curls. Crocuses with petals like fairy gowns. Purple-spiked flowers like fairy crowns. But none of her friends were there.

She kept on, toward the far-looming mountain from whence it was said that all fairies came. But the closer she drew to the rugged rocks, the heavier her feet grew. And the louder came the voices that used to sing along with the fairies’ pipes. The very bones were singing, inviting her to sing with them. She knew, though, that to give in—to sing that song—would mean becoming naught but bone herself.