The clock, it seemed, had no answer to make, for there came no response but silence.
‘Did you bring me here? What am I to do?’
Silence.
Perhaps it was thinking. Oriane thought, too, and only came up with more questions. ‘Who are you?’ she tried. ‘Or, perhaps more rightly, what are you?’
No answer, for a time. And then, just as Oriane was beginning to formulate her next question, she saw a ghost-mirror steal back into place upon the wall before her, and a picture formed within it.
A woman stood there, young and raven-haired. She possessed an air of vigorous energy, and her whole face shone with a confidence and enthusiasm for which Oriane felt a brief stab of envy. She was dressed in fashions Oriane would call outlandish, but which she knew to be common enough in Laendricourt: layered
