It was a girl, or at least a creature in the shape of one. No older than Liska herself, with skin of the purest, smoothest white – like porcelain – and wisps of ashen blonde hair floating around her face. Her eyes were ringed with shadows of deep grey and purple, her irises so pale they almost faded into the whites. She drifted, silent, through the undergrowth. Quiet as a breeze, soft as a secret.

She was dressed in layers of faded snowy fabric. Tattered lace and fraying embroidery, bows of dusty ribbon everywhere. Some kind of corset tied with plaits of tattered cord. She looked as though she had just floated from a long-buried tomb or stepped through a tear in the centuries. A being from another time.

Liska peeled Lug away from her. He fumbled with his robes and blushed crimson.

‘Actually,’ Liska said, trying to keep the tremble out of her voice, ‘we’ve come to see you. You are Elowen, aren’t you?’

The girl blinked those milk-white eyes at them in surprise. ‘However did you know that?’

Liska held out a hand. ‘I’m Liska and this is Lug. He’s a vermispex. One of your neighbours. He’s the one who found out all about you.’

Elowen stared at them some more before reaching out to shake Liska’s hand. Not a warrior’s wrist clasp as Liska was used to; just a light brush of her porcelain fingertips. The ghost girl’s skin was icy cold. And smooth like a statue.

‘I’m so sorry,’ Lug stammered. ‘I didn’t mean to . . . I wasn’t being rude . . .’

‘I don’t understand,’ said Elowen. ‘People sometimes come to speak to my parents or my aunts and uncles. But nobody has been for . . . well, such a long time. And they’re nearly always asleep now, you see. I don’t think anyone has ever come here asking for me. However did you discover my name?’

‘Allow me to explain,’ said Liska and, as Lug grimaced and tried to hide his face in his sleeves, she told Elowen all about the worms and how she had been eavesdropped on.

Both Liska and Lug half-expected her to lose her temper when she heard about the spying, or at least complain, but instead she seemed thrilled, even tapping her fingertips together in excitement.

‘I knew I sensed some magic in the walls. I knew it!’ she said, beaming at them both. ‘What was it you heard? Is it why you came here today?’

‘I wasn’t trying to listen, I promise,’ said Lug. ‘I’d spotted you in the woods and wondered where you lived. I was just trying to find your house . . . And then – when I did find it – some words accidentally fell into my ears. I honestly wasn’t trying to spy or anything like that!’

‘I’m sure you weren’t,’ said Elowen, smiling. ‘Tell me, what did you happen to hear?’