Her heart thumped in her chest. It was understandable that her mum hadn’t told the man; it had only been a year since Francis’s illness. She sighed. Convincing her parents would be impossible – what was she thinking? And anyway, he’d been looking for Francis, not her. She threw the card and note into the weeds and stomped back towards the farm.

But after a furrow, she found herself running back, picking them up and stuffing them into the front of her patched dungarees.

Chapter 2: Mechanicart

MECHANICART

At teatime, the card weighed heavily in Prue’s pocket. “Did I see someone in the lane earlier?”

“Just a traveller,” said Mrs Haywood, placing a jug on the table. She didn’t make eye contact.

“They looked like they were dressed in city clothes.”

Prue caught her dad throwing a quizzical glance at her mum before he sat down.

“Just someone from out of town passing through,” she said.

Prue poured a glass of milk.

“How’s that old mechanimal horse doing?” Mr Haywood asked.

Prue had forgotten all about it and had left it half-finished in the top field. If it rained that night, it would seize. “The moto-heart’s broken. I’ve taken one from the scarebot that rusted up last year and just need to finish connecting it. I’ll go up before it gets dark.”

“Good thinking.” Mr Haywood grinned. “That sort of creative recycling will keep the farm on track. Didn’t I always tell you she would be smart! Now invent me a machine that makes the sun shine brighter than all the worldly jewels and grow me some sweet island plums, and I really will be in heaven.”

Mum always said he had a smile and a twinkle in his big browns that could light up the darkest room, but Prue couldn’t help but see the shadow of sadness in the edges that hadn’t left this past year.

“One day,” Prue said, but her mind wasn’t on the farm, it was imagining what the Imperial Personifate Guild of Medlock was like; perhaps a great building similar to the mills of Batterthwaite, but grander, with important-looking inventors, modern whirring machinery, churning smoke, and mysterious sparks lighting up the sky at night.

Mrs Haywood took a pin and secured one of Prue’s wayward springs of hair, then sat down opposite. “I said tuck in, Dolly Daydream – you look like you were a thousand furrows away then.” Mum’s honey hair was always pinned so neatly, her blouses without a crease, even after a day working the field.