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living one. I kept saying to myself, Elfritha is safe! She’s safe! and the words wove themselves into the pattern of my footsteps. After a while I thought I saw a familiar shape out of the corner of my eye: perceiving my need, Fox had come to keep me company and was silently pacing along beside me.
    Until I realized this, I hadn’t let myself face my fear of the coming night. With my animal spirit guide at my side, my dream – if it came – would not be so terrifying.
    When at last the light began to fade, I looked around for a place to sleep. I had passed the landward end of the Wicken promontory now and taken a short cut that I knew across the marshes to the north of Cambridge. Some years ago I’d had to find a similar safe path from the island of Ely to the mainland, and I’d discovered that it’s actually quite easy to do if you’re in the right frame of mind. I think it’s part of being a dowser, and that’s a skill I’ve had most of my life. It seems that, in addition to being able to find underground water and lost brooches, I can also trace the line of the firm ground through the fens.
    Now, not wanting to settle for the night out on the marsh – it’s far too wet, for one thing, and you’d wake up very soggy – I turned southwards and was soon clambering up a steep bank to the higher, drier ground. Presently, I came to an outlying hamlet. It was almost fully dark now, and the small group of mean-looking dwellings showed no lights. I made out the ragged shape of a tumbledown hay barn and crept inside. The hay was old and smelt a bit musty, but I heaped it up against the most solid-looking of the walls and reckoned that, with my blanket and cloak, I would be snug enough.
    I decided I could risk a little light, so set a stump of tallow candle on a patch of ground from which I’d carefully removed all the stray bits of hay, and struck my flint. The warm, yellow glow showed that the barn was even more dilapidated than I’d thought, and I thanked my guardian spirits for a fine night. I opened the pack of food and ate hungrily; I hadn’t realized how famished I was.
    I had almost finished when I heard a low growl from out of the shadows. Alarmed, I raised the candle and saw a black and white bitch slowly advancing on me. She had a wall eye and held her head turned slightly to one side so as to look at me out of the good eye. I spoke some quiet words – Hrype had taught me how to disarm angry animals – and she gave a soft wuff . I twisted off a small piece of the dried meat from my food pack and held it out to her. She walked slowly up to me and, with a gentle mouth, took it from my fingers. I smoothed my hand over her head, still speaking the spell, and soon she came to lie beside me. When I finally curled up to sleep, it was with the wall-eyed bitch at my back and, as I closed my eyes, the last thing I saw was Fox pacing to and fro in front of me.
    I don’t know whether it was my fatigue or the presence of my two animal companions: either way, I slept without dreaming. However, when I woke at first light I heard the echo of those words ringing in my head: come to me! I need you!
    With a new urgency driving me on, I got up, packed up my little camp, brushed the hay from my clothes and, with an affectionate farewell to my wall-eyed bitch, set off again.
    Quite soon I came on a busy road leading roughly north-westwards, and I guessed it was the route leading out of Cambridge that skirts the fenlands to the west. I cadged a ride with an elderly woman driving a small cart pulled by a mule and laden with brushwood, advising her on how to treat the stiffness in her poor, twisted hands in exchange. I gave her a small bottle of Edild’s remedy, explaining that she must rub it into her joints each morning and evening. She looked at me sceptically, but I just smiled; the remedy would work, I knew it.
    She dropped me off close to where the ferries run across to Chatteris, on its little island. Feeling