Petal Mara was highy amused by her friend's reaction to an encounter with a fairy so it was only after a while as the family group continued their journey north that she reluctantly explained the matter.

"You want to go back, don't you, and get more fairies tangled in your hair," the Greenvale girl laughed softly as Danique looked over her shoulder repeatedly.

"Everyone was amazed. It was pretty special," Danique admitted.

"They're not really fairies," Petal said, observing closely the reaction of her friend.

"Tiny little girls with wings, fluttering about like a butterfly. That's a fairy, in a book or in Greenvale," Danique defended her magical experience.

"No, I mean, they have no fairy powers or are linked to nature or anything. They're like vermin really." Petal smiled as she said this for Danique's eyes widened in disbelief.

"You of all people, saying that," she berated the other girl sat opposite. This time she was next to the cousin with the staring eyes so did not have to endure his stealthy gaze.

"They escaped into the wild," the boy said. Narman he was called, Narman Berry. His head was as round as a berry and this helped Danique remember his name. She looked at him and this time he held his gaze. He was smiling a neutral kind of smile, as if unsure of the reaction to his words. "One of the wild barons got the crazy idea to enhance his land with some fairy tale props, giant mushrooms, singing flowers, and actual fairies his scientific staff constructed in a laboratory. Human figures with well-developed wings, always female of course as boy fairies would seem soppy," and he grunted at his own joke.

"They escaped?" Danique pictured to herself some sort of prison break by an organised escape team, with fairies digging tunnels or smashing windows and flying out in streams of colourful wings.

"Baron Cressfall tried to have them trained to stay in the ornamental gardens within his castle keep, but they developed appetites for shiny things," Petal continued the curious tale. "Once their interest was engaged they could think of nothing but possessing themselves of some foil or bit of ribbon."

"That taught them possessiveness, which in turn taught them territoriality," Narman explained.

"So they built nests. Comfort taught them to seek for soft things too," Petal said.

"My hair," and Danique took a handful of the soft dark strands and looked at it a moment, thinking something so ordinary had resulted in such an extraordinary incident in her young life.

"They're rare," Petal enthused. "Only a few of them ventured over the castle walls and they've been fluttering around the countryside ever since. That was well before I was born. No one knows how long they live or how they're surviving in the wild." She looked sad then. "They're too tiny to have developed high intelligence and can't speak or anything. The only good thing is they have very little organic matter in them so they aren't hunted by predators."

"Except boys with catapults perhaps," Danique said, getting a little weary of the one sat next to her and his sideways glances. She folded her arms and stared ahead at the winding green road, thinking what it must be like to be a fairy wandering around a world of giants without purpose. Fake fairies. It seemed of a piece with the way the people of Petal's Winkel approached life, making everything as nice as possible and covering up the bad things with optimism and acts of kindness. Danique could not help thinking this place was the polar opposite of Evernight, the shadowy land she had all but fled. Schooling at Miss Plazenby's was a way to stay away for as long as possible.

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"This is it!" Petal jumped up in her seat after a while of silence, looking round at a wide valley opening out ahead of the convoy of rumbling vehicles on their big fat bouncy tyres. Trees in isolation scattered across the landscape and fences could be seen crisscrossing up and down rolling slopes as far as the distant blue of the mountains that enclosed the bowl shaped space. Buildings clustered in discreet groupings, and a patchwork of colours suggested fields in various stages of cultivation. Greenvale was a wet and misty place half the year, but gloriously sunny in winter and summer so that several crops were harvested from the rich soil.

"Your father's farm?"

"One of them," chortled the happy girl. An elderly aunt touched Danique's knee.

"This little place is a nice holiday farm for the young ones to learn their trade," she said pleasantly. "The main complex is a hundred miles square and covers all those mountains yonder as well," and she indicated the snowy peaks. "Dear Petal will be staying with us old folk and helping out during the winter break. Lots of lovely fodder to gather in for the dairy herds. Hope you don't mind?"

"A working holiday. Couldn't think of anything better," the girl from Evernight replied, giving her smirking friend a cool look when the pleasant aunt was making to disembark from the lumbering car.

As it was she found her first few days on the farm exhilarating and healthy. Winter in Greenvale was almost as warm as Frangea. The sun shone on the golden fields and Petal taught her friend how to drive the bouncy buggies everyone used to get from place to place so that the fearless girl with cloudy black hair sought by fairies soon found herself roaring up and down lanes and cresting hills like a maniac. Only when she was pulling a trailor full of cut grasses with Petal precariously sat atop the huge bristly pile did she show any care in the way she drove her buggy. Once the latest load was delivered to the storage barns she was off with a shriek of joy, tearing up the nearest lane with a vengeance. Even Petal could not resist a race on her own buggy once chores were done. Of course she could never keep pace with her friend, so that on one occasion after a breathless pursuit she drove to the crest of a particularly prominent hill and found Danique sat in the saddle, engine idling, gazing out at the cloud shadows drifting across the mountain sides.

"Thinking of driving off into the sunset never to return?" she joked as she braked next to her friend, then gulped at how close the other had halted her vehicle, teetering by inches on the brink of a terrifying drop.

"Sort of," Danique said and turned quickly to look Petal full in the face. "We can use these, I mean to track down Jinthia Darry."

Petal's face fell.

"Oh," she sighed. "I forgot about her, with all the fun we've been having." Then she smiled and frowned all at once, not an easy feat. "You're right though. We've got to find out what happened to her."

"Is it far? To Gladsom, I mean."

"See that dark smudge on the ridge opposite? That's Castle Vortex, a border fortress where Baron Vortex lives. He rules Gladsom, some say harshly. Our Jinthia would probably live in one of the villages on the other side of those mountains."

"Then what are we waiting for? Harvest's done isn't it? Tell your aunt you want to show me the country a bit. We'll pack rucksacks, charge up our buggies and invade Castle Vortex before next sundown."

Petal Mara looked out across the hazy distance and shivered in spite of the mild air.

"I'm so glad you came," she said softly. "Without you I would not have even thought of such an adventure."

"That is what friends are for, leading the timid ones into death defying danger," and Danique cackled wickedly.