Fay wandered down to the pond, carefully averting her gaze from the castle whenever the streets twisted to give her a glimpse. She felt a bit aggrieved, because it really felt as if the streets were twisting on purpose, just to upset her. She ploughed doggedly on, delicately hopping over open drains, walking around animals or children as if they were lumps of stone or brick.
They meant as much to her as stone or brick. Fay preferred adults or inanimate objects. The first you could talk to and the second you could use. She hadn’t liked childhood, she reasoned, so why should she like children? It was completely an invention that all women loved children. Completely.
Eventually she skirted around the gallows tree. Her eyes hugged the ground as she went round it and she tried not to smell th
