They were the colour of tea stains, too. Each only a few inches tall, they were clasping their bald heads in their spindly hands. Their skin crackled like antique paper as they moved, flitting in jarring stop-motion sequence through the air, looking for all the world like a poorly rendered sepia animation on top of the room.

Branok was still dusting himself off, while Merouda swatted at nearby piskies with a frilly pillow.

'Be off, yer nasty bleeders,' she shouted.

One piskey caught her pillow with its clawed foot and swung her across the room. She crashed into the nightstand in a heap.

'Narsty knockers!' the piskey screeched. 'It knocks on rocks and eats dirty fat cocks!'

Branok growled. 'What did you jus' say about my Merouda?'

The piskies shook off their dizziness and began to scream at him.

'Sluts! They dig like

mutts they smell like

rotten nuts!

They fuck like rats and

lie their bastard brats

on shit-smeared mats!'

The school-yard cursing was almost funny. Except with every rhyme a piskey divebombed our necks, looking to sink pincer sharp teeth into the skin.

'Where the hell have all these come from?' I yelled, swatting madly around my face.

A piskey stopped and hovered at eye-level. Milk-white pupils narrowed at me.

It hissed. 'Bitch woman caught us in an iron trap. But we throw friends on ferrous teeth, slap slap crack!'

I followed it's pointing finger to where a large birdcage with spindly iron bars lay battered open on the floor. Bits of bloodied piskey were caught in its door hinges.

I slipped one hand inside my trench coat. 'Okay. So you're free now. Time to leave, right?'

'Oh no,' it rasped. 'Won't leave yet. Not til we've repaid our debt. We'll snag you all in a fucking net.'

The last words came with a rip of fabric and the clatter of rails torn from the walls.

'Argh,' I said, muffled under the heavy frills of Bernice's pink curtains.

The cloth pulled tight against my face, smothering me. I could hear the piskies' shrieking titters and feel their hard tugs on the fabric, and behind that were the sounds of other struggle all around the room. My hand was still lodged inside my coat, clamped on the iron horse shoe which would save our hides if only it weren't for these bloody curtains pinning me like a corpse in a comedically rolled up rug.

I strained to get my mouth moving. I probably had enough breath to shout one last thing.

'The Fairy Queen will be very angry if you hurt us!'

The titters stopped. For a moment just the buzzing of their wings filled my ears.

Then fabric loosened and slipped off my head. I was glad to hear the frantic gasps of my friends also inhaling air.

Pale eyes glared again at mine. 'What do you know of the Fairy Queen? Why should she care if we split you open at the seams?'

Quick. Think of every sinister fairy tale, rhyme, and song that skulks in your childhood hindbrain. Somewhere in there is the Evil Queen, the vestigial remains of our species memory for something everyone once knew to be true. Stray to the land of the fairies, and the Queen will snatch you away. She is a lingering, malicious dream on the edge of the stories we tell to our children.

And beyond that, I knew absolutely nothing about her.

'We're here to do her bidding,' I lied. I still couldn't move, but from the corner of my eye, I saw Ang stealthily untangling herself from the deadly drapes. I quickly jerked my head at Bernice. 'This lady is very important. We need her to . . . to continue spreading the lie of fairies to humans everywhere. She believes they're harmless. She will . . . she will pave a way for you to move through the world more freely! The Queen wants her kept safe, in fact, for your own benefit.'

The piskies erupted into a high-pitched squealing chatter, which could just as easily have been laughter.

'It thinks Queenie cares for piskies!' they shrieked. 'It doesn't know its game is very risky.'

I drew on every ounce of confidence I own – and I don't just mean the bottled stuff in the boot of my car. 'How dare you speak so poorly of Her Majesty! She'll drag you back to fairyland if you continue!'

The piskey in my face spat with laughter. 'Doesn't know, doesn't know,' it cackled. 'The Fairy Queen walks among you. Better watch out or she'll snatch you. Hail Queen Mab! And boy, she's mad!'

The piskies shrieked again and chimed in with their own rhymes.

'Long has she escaped her cell!'

'Betwixt the realms she now doth dwell!'

'She'll take you as her tithe to Hell!'

'An' I'll be there t'greet ye.' Ang rose up; a grubby, out of place heroine on top of the floral bedsheets, a horse shoe outstretched between both hands and a wicked glint in her eyes. 'And ye best afear it, 'cuz I'll smack ye well!'

She swiped through the throng of piskies with the horse shoe. They scattered, shrieking and clamouring. Ang's next swing caught three of them, and with a sickening sizzling sound they dropped from the air.

'Catch it! Bind it! Stop it!' screamed the nearest piskey. They released their hold on me completely and descended on Ang in a swarm.

I shrugged myself free and brandished my own horse shoe. 'We can do this the hard way,' I shouted, 'or the very hard way!'

Their enraged buzzing filled the air as the piskies turned as one toward me again. Their heads tracked the movement of the iron. I sensed they were calculating how best to knock it out of my hand.

A metallic snap punctuated the buzz. Goron put away a pocket-sized pair of bolt cutters and held up a very spiky section of the iron birdcage. He passed a prong each to Branok and Merouda and nonchalantly announced, 'Looks like a whole lotta piskey dust in this room, lads.'

'Could enchant a whole engine wi' this much fuel,' Merouda agreed darkly.

I sidled to the window and pushed it open.

The lead piskey hissed at us, long and low. 'Nasty, nasty knockers. She'll come for you too. Queen will get you one day, if piskies don't gut you first as prey.'

The swarm rushed past me – a quick sting of teeth on my cheek – and out the window into the night.

Goron admired Ang, still in her fighting stance. 'Cor. That were right good, lass.'

'Stop it or I'll knock yer eyes out,' she replied haughtily.

Merouda kicked Bernie's prone body. 'She dead or what?'

'She's breathing,' I said, bending down. 'I don't see any blood. I think she'll be okay. Help me get her onto the bed, would you?'

I imagine, from the little I knew of her, that Bernie would be genuinely delighted to know that she was manhandled into bed by three knockers and a coblyn dragging her by the armpits and ankles (and one man self-consciously trying not to touch anything inappropriate).

We cleaned up the room, sort of. The knockers fastidiously collected the remains of the piskies – I didn't want to know what they'd be doing with them. I stopped by Bernie's journal on the way out and flipped to the most recent page.

Taking great care, I wrote in capital letters, USE STRONGER IRON, and underlined it three times. She didn't seem like the type to be put off by an incident like this. You could only hope she'd learn something from her mistakes.

We waited in the car awhile, until Ang slipped silently into the passenger seat. 'She's wakin' up,' she said. 'Looked a bit confuddled first, but then sharp as a pick in no time.'

Goron nodded. 'She'll be right. Our lot'll keep an eye on 'er fer a bit now as well. It were a good cup o' tea.'

I wondered, on the drive back to Mên-an-Tol, whether I should feel sorry for Bernice. She was chasing a dream she knew very little about, and on false pretences, no less. She wanted to go and live with the fairies, for goodness' sake. She had no idea what she was asking for there.

Neither did I, if I was being honest. Fairies, in my circles, are just a warning.

Don't look for them. Pray you never find them. And if they find you? Run as fast as you possibly can.

Piskies were as close as I'd ever come to real fairies. They'd shown up on the Black Market only a few years ago, some idiot flaunting them in a cage at the annual gathering of traders. What a mess that had been. He'd probably been a bit like Bernie.

He ended up nothing like Bernie, what with being fed through a mincing machine. It'd belonged to a merchant of mythical meats, who wouldn't stop screaming for days afterwards. Piskies were banned from Markets now.

I shuddered those thoughts away. We'd had a narrow escape tonight. Iron is good protection, but you can't carry a horse shoe in your pocket everywhere. I'd only told Ang to grab one after Branok had mentioned piskies at Mên-an-Tol – because you can never be too careful where piskies are concerned, and this damn well proves it.

We pulled up at the dirt track and I parked the car. The walk seemed inviting now. I could use it to clear my head.

'You go on ahead. I'll catch up,' I told the others.

Ang's eyes glinted in the moonlight as she cast a look over her shoulder. She shrugged and trotted off with the others.

I stopped to breathe in the cool night air. What a waste of time it had all been. All that effort, and we had nothing to show for it.

I knew this was not, strictly speaking, true. We had the hospitality of Goron's knockers at our disposal, and I was certain to acquire some good business there. I'd been itching for a heftier sort of trade recently. Pawning off mouldy charms and feeble tonics on street corners was beginning to wear thin. Normally, I'd be overjoyed at the chance to fill my pockets with genuinely magical merchandise – produced by knockers, no less.

So why was that excitement eluding me?

I let my feet drag as I started down the track to Mên-an-Tol. A cloud shrouded the moon for several moments, plunging my path into deeper darkness. How fine it is, to walk in shadows, I thought. How exhilarating, to not quite know if your feet will meet the ground.

Then the clouds drifted apart, and mundane moonlight illuminated the tedious reality of a muddy track on a barren moor.

I wished it had been Quiet Eyes, I realised.

Disappointment, that's what this melancholy was. I was disappointed that it wasn't Quiet Eyes we'd found lodging in a Cornish country bed and breakfast – as if I'd really thought we'd find her in such a place. As if we really wanted to find her, at all.

But I think, perhaps, I really did.

I tried to shake off the thought, but it was already there, worming a cold little trail through my brain. How exciting it had all been. To dance with death and power and intrigue, to linger on the edge of answers before having them snatched away, to play a game with invisible players and feel the coyness in a smile that you never actually see.

How thrilling it is, to walk in shadows.

Mên-an-Tol loomed low ahead. It was a disconcerting set of shapes in the darkness, where gloom merged with stone and stretched their silhouettes into aliens in the moonlight.

As I drew near, one shadow detached from the rest.

'Ah,' I said. 'I'm going to go ahead and guess you're not part of a welcome party.'

I couldn't make out any features, but the figure's height told me it wasn't a knocker. So, the more likely alternative was: trouble.

'Hello, Jack.'

The voice froze me. It contained a soft slur in the enunciation, an underlying hum of amusement, and a coy smile which I had never truly seen but knew very well.

'You needn't be afraid,' Quiet Eyes said, before I could choke out the witty greeting that had stalled on my tongue. I shook myself sensible.

'I'm not.'

A chuckle. 'You should be.'

'I have something you want, right?' I said, vying to beat her to her own words. 'That's why you're here, isn't it?'

Another, softer laugh. 'No, Jack. You do not have anything that I want.'

'But we–' I clamped down on my tongue. She must know about the phoenix egg we'd stolen from her. She must. What other reason could she possibly have for seeking me out? I'm sure she read the thoughts as they ran across my face.

'Oh, Jack. I don't care for such trivial things. Baines and Grayle have their prize, and you have yours.'

I spluttered. 'I wouldn't call a phoenix egg trivial.'

'No longer of consequence.' She waved a hand, as if waving my consternation out of existence. 'It is, what would you say? Old news.'

'You don't even care that we took it from you? Aren't you here for revenge, payback, anything?'

Her expression twisted. 'Do you want revenge from me, Jack?'

I swallowed. My stomach was coiling itself into knots. Something was about to happen. 'Why are you here, then?'

She took a step forward into moonlight. I felt like the play of light and shadow perhaps gave me a better sense, for the first time, of her true shape. As if I could trust a mere reflection more than the solid reality; the way the light gleamed an outline of hair; the way darkness moulded a shape out of voided space. I drew contours in my mind like an ethereal dot-to-dot. Still, all I came up with was generically 'woman', and even that left me questioning how and why I'd drawn such a conclusion, and was everything I thought maybe based on her voice alone, and was my only true recollection of her still only a smile and a faintly Parisian accent, if either of those were true at all?

The shapes shrank away, leaving behind the same vagueness of unfamiliarity as the rest of her features.

She was a mere step away.

She smiled.

Then words tripped off her tongue which I knew would be the ruin of me.

'I have a job for you, Jack.'

* * *

Author's Note

We've finally reached the end of episode 3! I think this needs a bit of work, but I'm happy with the overall shape of it.

So... what did you think of the ending?