It is still cold enough at night to curl my toes and drink hot cocoa and wonder, if I woke at midnight, the witching hour, if I might just be able to step through to the land of always-winter from the world of never-snows. Mathilde says I need to wear oakmoss in my hair (she is my looking-glass friend, and we are most intimate on all matters) and that I ought to bring sardines for the beavers.

Secrets are the only real magic, anymore. The only, lonely, things worth keeping. What one knows that nobody else does. What one sees as the rest blink their blind eyes behind pigeon glasses. Gaps in the clouds, cracks in the pavement, pauses in a song where the Dust falls through. I am the miser of secrets. I scramble about, clutching at wisps of smoke which curl lazily between my fingers before I stuff them in black velvet bags and lock them all up in a crocodile skin trunk. Peeling telegraphs, cross stitch hearts, books in ancient greek with hemlock seeds pressed between the pages. Ebenezer never knew that all the gold in Threadneedle street is nothing to silver secrets.

And he came to me, star browed and milk breathed, all gentleness and yet as tall as I was with those great, heavy eyes. He searched my pockets for sugar cubes and I laughed, which startled him. Neither of us was very brave, but we each wanted something desperately from the other. I held out my hand, cold fingers, silver rings and hope, he pawed the ground in answer. I knew at that moment he would soon forget me, when I no longer came with the dawn and the dew, when I slipped from his world with the last of the summer.

“I don’t believe in coincidence.” Rose said “it’s messy and meaningless, a cosmic excuse for anything too difficult to explain.” She bit the blade of grass in half, savouring the bittergreen flavour.
“Then what do you call it,” asked the red haired boy “if it isn’t just an accident?” He liked the way the sun fringed her eyelashes, which were unusually pale and long. If he could he wanted to keep this conversation going forever, just the two of them on the bridge, but the sun would set eventually.
“Magic!” she whispered, with a frightening intensity. “I believe in Magic, and Fate and golden apples and Hades and unicorns in the glen.” She looked at him, waiting for a response. He didn’t laugh, instead he tossed his leaf in to the stream and watched it drift lazily beneath them and out of sight.

In the morning I found a cold silver bell, dripping dew, in my garden. Left behind by midnight revellers, it was caught on a vine and played a silken melody to the wind. I picked it like a tiny argent pear. I shall wear it on my charm bracelet and use it to catch Their attention, now and then.