Then there is the dress. It has been owned by many sisters before her and has been taken up, taken out, taken down and taken in by her mother so many times that it really ought to have been taken away. But Tiffany rather likes it. It comes down to her ankles and, whatever colour it had been to start with, is now a milky blue which is, incidentally, exactly the same colour as the butterflies skittering beside the path.

Then there is Tiffany’s face. Light pink, with brown eyes, and brown hair. Nothing special. Her head might strike anyone watching—in a saucer of black water, for example—as being just slightly too big for the rest of her, but perhaps she’d grow into it.

And then go further up, and further, until the track becomes a ribbon and Tiffany and her brother two little dots, and there is her country…

They call it the Chalk. Green downlands roll under the hot midsummer sun. From up here, the flocks of sheep, moving slowly, drift over the short turf like clouds on a green sky. Here and there sheepdogs speed over the turf like comets.

And then, as the eyes pull back, it is a long green mound, lying like a great whale on the world…

…surrounded by the inky rainwater in the saucer.

Miss Tick looked up.

‘That little creature in the boat was a Nac Mac Feegle!’ she said. The most feared of all the fairy races! Even trolls run away from the Wee Free Men! And one of them warned her!’

‘She’s the witch, then, is she?’ said the voice.

‘At that age? Impossible!’ said Miss Tick. ‘There’s been no one to teach her! There’re no witches on the Chalk! It’s too soft. And yet… she wasn’t scared…’ The rain had stopped. Miss Tick looked up at the Chalk, rising above the low, wrung-out clouds. It was about five miles away.