After Misha had gone to bed Edith went to her room and closed the door. She sat on the floor and looked again at the circus scenes painted on her hope box and thought about Misha’s question. Her grandmother’s stories had a wildness at their heart, they glimmered with the possibilities of freedom, of another life, a life unlived. Misha was right – they weren’t meant to be written down. Could one snowflake tell the whole story of snow when each was individually made round a grain of dust? The same was true, she thought, of her grandmother’s stories. She’d told them round grains of truth and each became something different. If Edith was to write them down, all the snowflakes would be the same. They would lose their energy, lose the power to free a girl from a cage. Words, like the music of the violin, needed to be heard and she had voice enough for that.

I will be the storyteller and my stories will be the light. They will be told again by others and not even death will blow out the candle or silence the words. She had her grandmother’s coat of fables; she had her fur hat with the antler horns; she was no longer shy, no longer silent. And with that thought, she climbed into bed and drifted off into dreams.

The moon was lost behind a cloud as soft, late snow dusted the houses. The innkeeper collected the last of the glasses, lifted the cabinet maker to his feet and opened the door. For a moment a beer spill of golden light shone onto the cobbles.

Stumbling into the darkness the cabinet maker shouted, ‘Good night.’

He paused for a piss, wetting himself in the process. ‘Never mind,’ he said as the inn’s light went out, and he felt as he always did, abandoned by his one true love, the bottle. Wrapped in melancholy he comforted himself with the thought that he would be back at the inn tomorrow. And for no reason that he could think of, the tale of the heartbeats came to him. The darkness that had been above him now seemed to smother him. It flickered with snowflakes and tiny blue fishes swam before his eyes as he blindly meandered towards his bed. A stray dog passed him in the street.

‘Good night, dear respected creature,’ he said, and as the ground lost its solidity he felt an arm take hold of his. ‘Thank you, demon, my legs aren’t behaving themselves. We won’t tell Edith,’ he whispered.

Misha sat on the bed. He’d put an oil lamp near the open window and carefully pegged his letter to the cord. Now, with a judder, it made its butterfly way towards Lena’s window. To Misha’s relief she opened the shutter and smiled at him. He pointed to the letter. That night for the first time he felt there was hope.