They sounded thin but eager to be recognised. Of course, they were drops of water falling from a tree. All the foliage over the road looked wetter than the arid August day ought to have allowed. I supposed it had rained here recently, though I’d seen no previous evidence. This would explain the glint of water on the road ahead, unless that was another summer mirage. When it refused to disappear I saw it was an actual trickle, the tip of a stream that meandered along the middle of the tarmac, following every turn of the lane. Condensation started to obscure the view, and as I set the wipers working I said mostly to myself “That’s real.”

“It all is, Patrick.”

Water hissed beneath the wheels on my side of the car, and more drops struck the roof, sounding impatient with my speed. I wasn’t about to increase it while the wipers were hauling condensation aside on the windscreen. A large drop like an omen of a storm shattered on the glass, making me glance at the strip of cloudless sky between the treetops. As the road hissed louder I saw our destination, a bright gleam between the trees to the right of the lane – a nearly vertical gleam. Water was streaming down a rift in a slope of mossy rock, and the edges of the cleft looked illuminated by the stream, which was borrowing its light from shafts between the branches overhead. “Is that it?” Roy said.

Given the signpost at the far end of the lane, I would have expected the spring to be marked for visitors, but there wasn’t even a parking area. I might have concluded that someone thought the place was best forgotten. Nevertheless I said “It must be.”

“It is,” Bella said. “I remember.”

“From the map, she means,” Roy said.

I parked on a bank at the opposite side of the road. The wheels slithered over wet dead leaves until I dragged the handbrake on. As I climbed out I felt moisture settle on my skin. The stream that had followed all the convolutions of the lane led through the trees to the mossy ridge. Trees grew close together around the ridge, and I was looking for a route to use when Bella said “Let me go first, Patrick.”

She hadn’t found a direct path. As she dodged between the trees I kept losing sight of her, and following her gave me only intermittent views of our goal. I couldn’t walk too fast on the sodden leaves that made up the squelchy track, especially when I kept needing to confirm Roy was behind me. Though I’d thought the spring was no more than a couple of hundred yards from the road, it took minutes to reach. Bella had her left hand in the downpour, which made her fingers glitter like a crystalline explosion of power. “It’s here,” she said.