She carried on browsing the shelves and found a subsection labelled The Art of Harnessing, which sounded promising, and within that, a book titled Unlocking the Secrets: How Hannah Woolstenbury Broke Through to the Other Side’, which looked like an excellent place to begin. She also grabbed one called Constructing Lifelike Mechanimals: A Study of Basic Framework Principles on her way back down the ladder; she didn’t want her real interests in being at the Guild to become obvious.

Prue paused as her eye was caught by some ancient-looking books. She gently ran her fingertips across their old fabric spines. They were just like her mum’s old fairytale books back at the farmhouse. She and Francis used to take them on free afternoons and he’d read her stories under Haywood’s Oak. The thoughts made her ache for carefree summer days on the farm and what had been. She pulled one out a little way – The Talking Sparrow and Other Tales. It was the exact same book they had at home. Francis had loved the talking sparrow.

“Francis,” someone said in a hushed voice.

Prue looked up suddenly, searching the room for her brother.

“Frances, over here, come and sit with us.” Edwin beckoned.

“Oh, right, sorry,” she mumbled, her heart sinking back down into a black pool. She took her books over to the table where Edwin and Agapantha were sitting.

“It was like you’d forgotten who you were for a moment!” Edwin laughed.

“Ha, I know, sorry,” Prue said, her face filling with warmth.

Edwin was reading something about art and Agapantha had a book called Mathematical Principles of the Wildspark. As Prue read, there was so much she wanted to take notes on, but it would look too obvious perhaps, so she decided to simply mark down the page numbers and come back another time to start a new journal, just for making notes related to her mission to find Francis.

Shortly, Craftsman Primrose joined them, putting a large book on the table called The Variant Power of the Moon Cycles. “Thought I’d brush up on the blood moon,” he smiled. “Ah, I see you’re reading about harnessing, Frances. Straight in at the deep end!”

The sound of books tumbling made them all look up to the other end of the library, where Phineas had knocked a great pile over. “Sorry!” he called, pointing at his rear. “It’s so much smaller in my mind.”

Craftsman Primrose hushed his voice. “You’re probably thinking he’s an odd choice for a librarian. We were hoping for a guard, but Phineas turned out to be quite the peace-loving book fanatic and so took the library under his wing.”

“Couldn’t the craftsmen have just moved him to a new body, maybe something less … bulky?” Prue asked.