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Clarimonde lifted the parasol above her head, casting its light further through the fog. Tall, dark shapes leaned in around them, sullenly hunched within the mist. As Clarimonde focussed more intently upon them, she realised that they were buildings.

“This part of Faerie looks awfully similar to London in some ways,” she observed. “I may not be an expert on the subject, but I think that is uncommon?”

“Yes, uncommon,” Lord Foxglove agreed dimly. “This is all very curious.” He paused just a few feet away, and straightened abruptly. “There are stairs here. That seems relevant; Hollowvale has always preferred to keep important things up high.”

Clarimonde shuffled closer to the faerie in order to investigate. The pale light of her parasol trickled through the fog, barely illuminating the base of a wide stone staircase. Shallow steps spiralled up and away from them, swiftly disappearing into obscurity.

“That… does seem relevant,” she admitted slowly. “But what about the hearse? Are we leaving it here?”

Lord Foxglove shrugged. “Well certainly, we will not be taking it up these stairs,” he said. “The poor thing will stay where it is for a bit, I expect. The last few days have been awfully exciting.”

Clarimonde glanced back at the hearse, which was now almost entirely shrouded by mist. The feeling of doom that sometimes accompanied it had lessened; for the moment, it was more like a nagging sense that she had forgotten something important at home and would surely regret it later. Perhaps, she thought, this was a sign that the carriage was sleepy.

Lord Foxglove liberated her valise and took her by the arm as they began to climb the stairs—as though they were out for a day trip, rather than blindly exploring their way through Faerie. The dark buildings around them slowly fell away, until Clarimonde saw the shape of pointed roofs spread out beneath them.

After several minutes of climbing, however, there were still more stairs leading upwards. A chill wind had begun to nip beneath Clarimonde’s travelling cloak, tugging at her parasol and making her shiver.

Lord Foxglove sighed heavily. “I wonder if these stairs are meant to deter visitors,” he murmured. “How terribly clever and inhospitable.”

Clarimonde grimaced. “Is it possible that the stairs have no end?” she asked him. “It would be very silly of us to climb forever, if that is the case.”

“Oh, almost anything is possible in Faerie,” Lord Foxglove assured her. “But that would require an awful lot of work—and I seem to recall that the Leanansidhe cannot abide hard work.” On that point, he paused thoughtfully. “We have that much in common, I suppose. I am already tired. Do hold here for a moment, Miss Betony.”

Clarimonde paused dutifully as the faerie handed back her leather valise, wondering at his intentions. Part of her hoped that the faerie would soon perform another marvellous parlour trick in order to smooth their way—but clearly, she had offered him too much credit. Soon enough, in fact, she felt the prick of tiny talons at her shoulder as a small white sparrow settled upon her shoulder.

“I see,” Clarimonde said tartly. “You expect me to walk us both up to the top, then?”

“One should never flutter about alone in a dark lady’s domain,” the bird tittered at her. “Really, it is for the best that I stay with you.”

Clarimonde shook her head. “I should have known,” she muttered to herself. There was hardly any point in arguing the matter with him, though. “As you wish, Your Lordship.”

The stairs did eventually end—though Clarimonde had to climb for nearly half an hour before she overcame them.

Finally, she found herself at the top of a flat, blustery cliff, walking amongst uneven rows of scattered gravestones. A great shadow of a building loomed ahead of her through the fog, towering over everything else in sight.

“I don’t understand,” Clarimonde muttered, in between laboured breaths. “Why is there a graveyard in Hollowvale? Who would even be buried here?”

“Oh dear,” twittered the bird on her shoulder. “I begin to suspect that we are not in Hollowvale, after all.”

Clarimonde groaned softly. “You said that you were certain!” she accused the faerie. “I swear, Mr Fox, if you tell me that I must now climb all the way down those stairs again⁠—”

“No, no!” the faerie bird assured her. “Nothing like that. I merely overlooked the obvious explanation.”

Clarimonde closed her eyes briefly, trying to shove down her frustration. “It is not obvious to me,” she said, with long-suffering patience. “If you could please elaborate, I would appreciate it.”

The bird fluttered down from her shoulder, alighting upon a particularly crooked old gravestone. “I believe,” it said, “that we are still somewhere in England. The new Lady Hollowvale has left Faerie entirely, and has brought her realm here with her.” The little white sparrow cocked its head. “That is very dangerous in this age—letting mortals wander in and out of your realm all over the place. But I suppose that she is familiar with the old days, when that was a more common practice.”

Clarimonde frowned at the surrounding gravestones. “Then these gravestones are real,” she said slowly, “and so are all of the buildings down below. And that very tall staircase…” She sucked in a sharp breath. “There is a staircase in Whitby like that, so near to heaven that people call it Jacob’s Ladder. And that building over there—could it be Whitby Abbey?”

“I have never been to Whitby,” the bird mused idly. “But I suppose that is as good a guess as any.”

Clarimonde eyed the tall dark shape ahead of them. “We might as well investigate the abbey,” she said. “I cannot imagine what has become of it, if Faerie has taken hold here.”

Lord Foxglove fluttered back to Clarimonde’s shoulder as she wound her way deeper into the graveyard. To her surprise, the gravestones soon gave way to wild, rambling gardens, which had blossomed with ghostly white roses. The grand building resolved itself into a towering abbey which looked far too well kept for its age. In fact, had Clarimonde not known better, she might have believed that it had been freshly built.

Eerie blue light flickered from within the abbey’s windows, dancing across the fog-shrouded gardens with silent invitation.

“These gardens belong to Hollowvale,” Lord Foxglove said. “I am sure of it now. You will find the Hollow House inside that abbey, I expect. Whatever it was before—it is something very different now.”