Jack bent forwards over a crucible, throwing in some powders he collected from jars, muttering all the while under his breath in a language that didn’t sound English. He stood, lifted the ring of keys from his belt, selected a small one, opened a drawer in his desk. Tom shifted uncomfortably, interested all the same. The tick of the clock on the mantelpiece seemed slower than usual, the space between each beat expanding. With great care, Jack placed something onto the table between them.

It was a small jewelled wooden box. It seemed to fold space around itself, to be more fully here than the other things in the room. It made Jack appear younger, stronger. Tom felt dizzy looking at it.

When Jack placed two fingers on the box’s lid, he sighed with pleasure, as if he had just taken a long refreshing drink.

‘Now. You touch my hand. Don’t touch the box.’

Tom did so and felt something like a low electric shock.

‘Keep hold.’

There was a lurch, which Tom felt as a wrench in the deepest part of his being. There was a sensation of falling and something like a great wind.

When it passed, he looked around, expecting he did not know what.

They were in Jack’s rooms. Everything was different. The light coming in through the windows was cleaner. There was no litter of objects, no sinister glass structure hanging from the ceiling. The furniture had all gone, the books, the desk. Instead there were two or three wooden presses set against the walls, and the tapestries hanging down were new and bright, and rushes covered the floor.

When Jack looked up Tom could not suppress a gasp. He was young. He looked very much like Tom.

It was as if he were looking in a mirror that was slightly askew. Tom shuddered.

There was now a lightness about Jack’s movements, and he leapt upwards, smiling, and paced to the window and looked out, beckoning to Tom to follow.

Down below, in front of the house, with a bundle of wood in his arms, dressed in a loose white tunic and britches, with leather boots on, was a boy, his black hair closely cut.

‘He cannot see us,’ said Jack. ‘I am here, somewhere. My younger self.’

‘Who is it?’ Tom peered down. ‘That’s not you, is it?’ He felt a little dazzled by the implications.

The boy below, as if sensing something, glanced up at the window, and for a moment Tom was pierced with shock.

It was Kit. Kit as he had been before his hair grew long and silver.

The boy had not seen them; he was looking at a swallow swooping in front of the window; he shouldered his burden and went onwards.