She thought of the clockwork fairy orchestra she had laboured over back at Raven Hall, and all her pride turned to dust. So many hundreds of hours wasted. It could not begin to compare with what she had just experienced. But it did not matter. Extraordinary as all these flowers and animals were, surely none of them could compare with her carousel and what it could do.

She continued along the path towards a fountain – a beautiful structure made from multiple tiers of shining white marble. She quickly spotted bright flashes of gold within the frothing water. There were orange-and-white fish in the bottom, darting to and fro among the bubbles. And a little basket hung from the edge of the ledge. It contained pennies, along with a written invitation to make a wish and throw one in.

Rosa thumbed through the printed guide until she found the relevant page, which explained that these were wish-fish, discovered high in the Himalayas. As the fish were only tiny, their magic was also small, and the wishes they were able to grant could only be of the most trivial kind. The guide suggested wishing for a hair comb, as this was something the fish were apparently particularly good at.

Rosa took a coin and tossed it into the fountain. Despite what it had said in the book, she couldn’t resist wishing for the thing she really wanted – for Esme to be returned to her – but when the nearest fish swallowed up her coin, it promptly spat it back with such force that it came right out of the water and landed on the edge of the fountain. Sighing, Rosa picked it up and wished for a hair comb before tossing it back. This time a fish gobbled the coin down eagerly and, for a moment, it glowed bolder and brighter than all the rest, so that its light seemed to reach right up out of the fountain and created a golden pool on the marble ledge.

The next moment an exquisite hair comb appeared beside Rosa’s hand. Made from mother-of-pearl, it featured gold-and-white wish-fish swimming amongst a bed of pearls and silver coins. She slipped the comb into her purse, and as she moved through the garden, she noticed that many of the women wandering through had the same comb clutched in their gloved hands or tucked into the ribbons of their velvet bonnets.

The time passed quickly and, in what remained, Rosa took in a pond, populated with fat golden toads that created a peculiar, croaking music as they slid about on the frozen surface. Then onto a little grotto, the ceiling alight with dozens of glimmering glow-worms. She knew there were birds in the garden too, because she sensed the fluttering of their wings overhead, but they always moved too quickly for her to see them properly.