'What makes you say that?'

'He's askin' us for help, gwas.'

I scrutinised my razor. 'What kind? We're not really in the business of helping people.'

'He don't say.'

'Well, unless he's after a batch of faulty curses, I doubt we can be much use.'

Ang didn't argue immediately, which put me on alert. She looked like she was carefully composing something in her head – and it occurred to me that, despite their apparently friendly correspondence, Ang was brought up by her fellow coblynau to believe that knockers were nasty, dirty, horrid creatures (despite being practically cousins, if not entirely the same species) and so perhaps it was with some reluctance that she was contemplating an offer of assistance.

Eventually, she seemed to settle on a permissible line of reasoning.

'Knockers might have wares to trade, gwas,' she said confidently. 'Our stock be lacking right now. Ye'd like some magic tinware, aye?'

I pretended to give it thought. As if I wasn't already dead set on leveraging Ang's friendship with Goron to fiddle the knockers out of as much enchanted metal as I possibly could. 'It's true, we could use a fresh acquisition to spice up our display, and there's a slight possibility your knocker friend will own some interesting trinkets. Might not be worth the risk, is my concern.'

I held up a hand to halt her reprisal. 'Tell you what, Ang. We've been official business partners for a couple of months now, but it strikes me that you've not yet had a go at actually steering the business, as such. So, this one's yours, eh? Your very first trade operation. Proper contribution to the biz. If you think this is good business, then I'm in.'

She looked stunned for a moment, but recovered immediately with a sour comment. 'Oh? So them bluecaps I first traded you all that time ago don't be worth anythin' now? Not enough of a contribution?'

'We weren't partners back then,' I reminded her. 'And besides, you traded my bluecaps to that bloody knocker!'

'Knew he'd take care of 'em,' she grumbled. 'All right. I sez this be good business, gwas. Let's see what nasty knockers has to offer. And if it be good, then y'are to stop bringin' up the thing about the bluecaps.'

I grinned. 'Deal done.'

'Good.'

I stepped out for some housekeeping. My coat was crumpled and in need of a good shake from where it had acted as my blanket overnight: it was warm and comfortingly heavy with the pockets weighed down by Black Market goods. Although you wouldn't want to roll the wrong way in the night and accidentally get pricked by a spindle of everlasting sleep, or inadvertently crush the vial of hot air (no one wants to be carried off into the sky by their own head . . .) or, god forbid, release the swarm of incandescent screeching beetles from their cocoon.

After giving it a good (and careful) flap outside the car, I climbed into the front next to Ang. 'So. Where are we headed?'

She held up the oily letter. She was already halfway through the pasty, I noted. 'Looks like it sez . . . Menantol. But the 'e' has a little hat o'er it.'

I peered at where her grubby finger pointed to the words written in a surprisingly neat hand. It read: Find us at Mên-an-Tol, that what be the Crick Stone in men's tongue. It be right holey. Ye can't miss it.

'A holy place? Like in a church?' I said, puzzled. Didn't sound quite right, although my knowledge of knockers was admittedly limited. 'Good of him to not give directions or anything. Right. Get the map.'

I made the reasonable assumption that we were looking for a place in Cornwall – the native region of knockers, after all – but it took a long time of squinting at the map grid by grid to eventually locate Mên-an-Tol, written in very tiny text, positioned in what might be an empty field. It was also a full day's drive away.

'I might be losing faith in this venture,' I told Ang.

'It's only a bit o' drivin'. We'll find it.'

'Tell that to the petrol tank,' I muttered, but started the engine anyway. Unlike Ang, I'd had the luck of dealing with knockers a few times in the past. They showed up occasionally at Markets, brandishing shiny and ornate sculptures with magic woven into the very atoms of the metal.

They'd been miners once, just like Ang's people. But when humans closed the mines, the knockers found themselves a new type of work. Upskilled, I suppose. Adapted, like everyone seems to be doing these days.

'I hope it is a church,' Ang said, out of the blue. 'I like them stone ones we see on the road sometimes. The one near our mine in Ironbridge were made o' metal.'

I paused before replying. Sometimes it was worth waiting to see if Ang's more curious reminiscences could be translated into a meaningful image. Like the time she brought up 'them great gushing privies wi' the chains' and I realised she was just talking about flushing toilets. But on this occasion, I drew a blank.

'A metal church?'

'Aye. Made o' corrugated iron. It were a pretty thing, though. I liked the plinky music an' the singin'. Though they could have cheered up a bit, in my opinion.'

I chalked this one up to cultural differences. I hadn't figured out quite how old Ang was – and I got the sense I wasn't allowed to ask – but I was fairly sure it was more than a century or so. I'd once tried to work Queen Victoria into a conversation, only to learn that coblynau didn't give any passing thought to the reigning monarch of the time. If it wasn't underground or covered in pastry, then it didn't hold much interest.

We settled into a patter of conversation as we wound a rural, convoluted B-road route down to the very south east tip of the country, with Ang growing more intent on the map as the hours wore on. I avoid motorways as a matter of course. These days there are cameras everywhere, snapping license plates, checking insurance and overall making my life tricky. So it was approaching dusk when we finally entered the area of the map where we would hopefully find Mên-an-Tol.

If only we knew what, exactly, we were looking for.

'I swear, we've driven up and down this same road five times, Ang. I'm fed up,' I said wearily.

'There's meant t'be a right turn, that's all I'm sayin'.'

'Well, there bloody isn't one!'

'Why don't we ask at that house, gwas?'

'What house?'

'The one we've passed five times.'

'Ugh.'

I was tired, hungry, and my legs were cramping from the long drive. So it was in an incredibly grumpy mood that I swung into the layby opposite the solitary farmhouse on this empty country road, and stomped out of the car.

''Ere, gwas,' said Ang's voice behind me. 'Look at this sign.'

I trudged over to find her reading a very small signpost, tacked onto a metal gate. Footpath to Mên-an-Tol.

I stared in disbelief at the path. 'We have to walk?'

Ang snickered. 'Ye be good at runnin', gwas. A little walk ain't beyond yer measure.'

'No, but I'd rather hoped to have more assets about me when we make our deal.' I retrieved my fold-up table – a nifty thing with folding compartments – and strapped it on my back, and slung a bag of wares at Ang to carry. 'Let's go do business.'

It was a half-mile walk in fading light, with nothing much but fields on the horizon all around us. This did at least mean that Mên-an-Tol was, eventually, easy to spot.

'Oh, I see.' I stared at it. 'He really did mean holey.'

Set in the middle of a meadow, three standing stones – two uprights, and one circular with ahole in the middle – created a peculiar 1 0 1 formation in the landscape. They were too small to be called monoliths, but nevertheless exuded the air of one.

'Granite,' Ang said authoritatively.

'I don't see how that helps us.'

* * *

Author's Note

Hurray! Who's excited to see Goron next week? I definitely am.

I feel there might be a bit too much time spent on Jack and Ang's interactions in this section (although it is nice to slow down and get to know them again). I think it's likely I'll cut the act of them arriving and looking for the stones - it doesn't add much value and we can just as easily jump to the location instead.

As always, gimme your thoughts. Has this opening been too slow, so far?