Editors note: Ms. Patterson's story will appear in three parts.

Once upon a time, in a kingdom where fairies were still a serious matter, there lived a King and Queen who had just had their first child. The girl was the very textbook definition of a firstborn princess, with golden curls, bright blue eyes, chubby cheeks and all of the other requisite princessly attributes. Upon seeing her for the first time, cleaned up and no longer squalling, her doting parents named her Chantinelle, and set to making preparations for the christening celebration.

Now, the Queen of this country was still quite young, and although in her girlhood she had attended the best finishing schools on all the Continent, she had never quite learned the sort of organizational skills she might have studied had she instead gone to secretarial school or taken an associate's course in accounting. As Queen, however, it fell to her to make the preparations for the christening feast, from arranging the decorations for the feast-hall, to planning a menu that would suit all her guests' discriminating palates, to hiring out a chamber orchestra to provide the very finest in Baroque accompaniment, to making up a guest list and addressing all the invitations by hand. For this was before the days of high-speed raised-ink printing, and in those times a true lady could show her worth by the quality of her handwriting.

So the poor Queen sat at her filigreed escritoire in the royal study, wearing down nib after nib on her goose-quill pen and occasionally chafing her dainty wrists to relieve their soreness. From time to time, as she inscribed yet another "His Majesty, Richard d'Armagnac, and the Queen Lisette cordially invite..." on yet another snow-white embossed card, her gaze would turn to her guest list to discern whose name she would have to spell correctly next, and she would invent excuses to avoid having to write up yet another matching invitation and place card. "Oh, we cannot have Monsieur Ballantine du Champs-Froids et du Maurier," she would cry, taking up a second quill and dipping it into a well of red ink. "He so despises the Comte d'Autrefois, and we must not have any squabbling at such an important public affair, please, dear Richard?"

"Mmhmm, indeed, chèrie," the King would say, sipping from a lead-crystal glass of brandy in his doe-leather armchair and quite engrossed in the latest economic reports from the wine country. "As you will." And so the Queen would touch her red-tipped quill to the name of M. du Champs-Froids et du Maurier, or whomever else she had deemed not quite up to snuff, and draw a single straight line through it, then dry her nib on the blotter and return to her postal duties.

At last the appointed day arrived, and both the King and Queen were quite pleased at the way the event had turned out. The little Princess slept straight through the baptism itself, awakening only to coo and sigh when the bishop marked her forehead with holy water. Once the cathedral portion of the festivities had concluded, all present adjourned, via phaeton, landau and pony-trap, to the throne room in the Palace. Princess Chantinelle, fresh and rested, lay in a satin-covered bassinet next to her parents' thrones, giggling in a most princessly fashion at the guests who approached Their Majesties to proffer gaudily wrapped presents. As the evening wore on, the piles of packages rose higher and higher, the cooks brought out platter after platter of delicacies liberally doused with heavy cream sauces, and the porters refilled King Richard's brandy glass again and again. "All in all," observed Queen Lisette, "such a delightfully successful occasion."

Suddenly, at the rear of the hall, a great gust of wind extinguished all the nearby candles and blew the whipped cream straight off a dish of trifle, into the face of the Marquise Hélène des Cuisses-Graisses, who had picked that unfortunate moment to return from powdering her pudgy nose. A flash of green light followed, forcing the onlookers to shield their eyes and squint out from between their fingers. It left behind a cloud of thick, tarragon-scented smoke in a particularly bilious shade of olive, out from the centre of which stalked a tall, narrow-waisted, impossibly pointy-eared figure.

She--for the creature's tightly-corseted bosom marked her as nothing but--wore a gown crafted of the finest damask, tulle and taffeta, reflecting shadowy emerald from some witchlight glowing behind her. The fabric rippled like water as the woman pointed a spidery, accusing finger at Queen Lisette, thundering, "What offense have I done thee, o Queen, that thou desir'st not my presence at thy child's naming-day?"

Her words echoed through the hall, reverberating off cornice and egg-and-dart-molding, so that even the most enlightened man of science could not help but realise that there was some magic at work. You see, it happened that one of the names which the young Queen had red-lined out, in her innocent desire to avoid calluses and carpal-tunnel syndrome, was that of the Right Terrible Dame Lucilla Avarissael baen Sidhe--otherwise known as the Wicked Fairy Verdina.

Queen Lisette rose from her seat so quickly as to make poor King Richard's head swim. He bypassed his goblet and reached straight for the brandy snifter as she reached her pretty hands out in greeting.

"Dear, sweet Fairy," she wheedled, "how good of you to grace us with your attendance! We had thought that surely, a personage of your rank and stature would have far more pressing engagements than--and it's such a frightfully long way to travel from--"

The Queen, you see, had never received especially high marks in elocution, and it was showing now.

"A thin-blooded excuse for an excuse," snapped Verdina, striding forward with a rustle of damask, the green smoke dissipating about her ankles. "Thou didst offer thine other guests the opportunity to rêpond, s'il vous plait--thine oversight wounds me deeply." She swept directly through the throng of dancers and diners, and stepped right up onto the gift-laden dais where the King and Queen sat with their child.

"My--my apologies, dear Fairy," stammered the Queen, not daring to get herself caught in any further half-baked attempts to provide an explanation. She took a half-step backward, sending the nearest stack of presents crashing to the floor.

"How nice," Verdina returned, trailing a jade-lacquered fingernail across the white satin of Princess Chantinelle's bassinette. "I see that thy guests, at least, are well-inclined toward courtesy." She smiled in the manner of a hungry eel, and touched her painted nails to her bosom. "But where is my own etiquette? I, too, have brought an offering for thy child."

Several guests, having paid particular attention as children to their nurses' fairy-tales, chose this moment to make quiet, hasty exits, preferring the chore of having to write letters of apology for their ill-mannered departures to whatever mischief the Wicked Fairy had planned, just in case her fit of pique were sufficient to warrant taking it out on the entire assembly and not just the Princess.

Verdina reached into the bassinette again, letting Chantinelle's fingers grip the talon of her index finger. "I gift thee with a brief childhood, Princess Chantinelle. Should thy feet ever touch the earth, in that instant, thou shalt die!" In a flicker of green light, the Wicked Fairy Verdina disappeared, leaving Chantinelle's baby hands grasping at empty air. A faint cackle echoed through the rapidly emptying throne room.

Queen Lisette collapsed into her throne, wrapping her arms around an embroidered cushion and sobbing into it so as to keep the few remaining guests from seeing her nose swell up. "There, there, dear," said King Richard, and retrieved the crystal goblet he had abandoned. He slipped one arm around her shoulders and pulled her up, then put the glass to her lips and made her down a sip of brandy. "That will brace you nicely." He continued administering the liquor until the Queen's bawling subsided into sniffles, then put a finger under her dainty chin and raised her eyes to look at him. "Since when does a month-old baby go walking about? We have time, chèrie, we have time." He downed the rest of the drink in one swallow, then blinked repeatedly, trying to focus on the empty chamber. "Wasn't there a party here a moment ago?"

Time indeed they had, but not much of it, for in a few months the little Princess would begin to crawl, and if at that time her feet touched the earth, that would be the end. So the King and Queen sent out a proclamation, offering a ten-thousand-gold-livres' reward for anyone--man, woman, or child--who could devise a means, magical or scientific, of keeping the Wicked Fairy Verdina's curse from coming to bear. Couriers bore the message to every town crier in the kingdom and every foreign court on the Continent, and every local newspaper and gentleman's magazine carried the announcement on their front pages.

The response was overwhelming. Within a matter of days, the gates to the capital city were crowded with academicians, herb-wives, natural philosophers, alchemists, logicians, astrologers, engineers, and every other manner of scientist or magical practitioner, each championing some means of breaking or putting off the Wicked Fairy Verdina's famous curse.

In the meantime, the King and Queen endeavoured to make certain the baby's feet could not come near the earth. The royal tailors designed a sort of padded knapsack for Princess Chantinelle's nurse to wear strapped to her front and shoulders, so that the nurse could carry her with less effort and not be tempted, in a thoughtless moment, to put the baby down. The royal carpenters built an immense elevated play-pen, the deep bed and high bannisters of which were made of sturdy oak polished to a mirror shine, so that as the princess grew older and more inclined to attempt to learn to walk, she might do so on solid planks of wood raised three feet off the ground.

Still, all the court knew these measures were purely stopgaps. Princess Chantinelle could not spend her life in an open-topped wooden box, and thus far, none of the learned men and women who had come seeking the reward had concocted a sure-fire means of circumventing the curse. The herb-wives' lore encompassed curses involving spindles, the scent of flax, and the conspicuous absence of gravity, but none of them had encountered a curse like this before, so they could do nothing to reverse it.

The astrologers drew complicated charts based on the stars' positions at the time of the princess' birth, and, working together, formulated a sigil that could be inscribed in gold leaf on a slice of pure diamond three inches in diameter, then hung about the princess' neck to protect her from all magical ailments. They disagreed, however, as to whether "death" constituted a strictly magical ailment, so after some consideration, the King and Queen graciously declined the astrologers' very financially reasonable offer to produce this protective bauble.

Everyone thought the problem was solved when one of the alchemists suggested that the princess partake of the Philosopher's Stone, which would grant her immortality and thereby prevent the curse from ever taking effect; but when the delighted King and Queen inquired as to where they might obtain this miraculous substance, the man had to admit that neither he nor any other alchemist knew how to produce it, and he went away empty-handed.

Nor did the academics meet with much more success. As a thing of magic, the Wicked Fairy's curse inevitably defied all rigors of logic and natural philosophy. This, of course, did not prevent the assembled scholars from establishing an ad-hoc Academy right there on the Palace grounds, and engaging in hours of disputation on each intellectual's particular discipline; but by the time the Palace bursar realized how much expense they added up in parchment, ink, and blotter-paper and kicked them all out, they had gotten no closer to the root of the problem.

The engineers, however, repaired to the Palace stables and carpentry-yard. Although they tore through an astonishing amount of wood, metal and rubber to do it, they managed to produce a full-scale working model of a three-wheeled, pedal-powered contraption upon which the princess could sit without her feet touching the ground. By pressing her feet to the pedals one after another, she could convey herself from place to place quite easily, so long as the terrain was smooth and flat and did not involve stairs.

It was hardly an ideal solution, but it was a solution, and not an especially costly one at that. Relieved, the King and Queen immediately commissioned a team of engineers to build a series of these three-wheeled vehicles, from toddler- to adult-sized, so that the growing princess might not find herself forced to ride about on a vehicle that was too large or too small. A second team set about redesigning the palace interior to accommodate a system of very large dumb-waiters, in order for the princess to navigate from one floor to another without being carried--but less than a week into their efforts, something even more peculiar occurred.

One of the Queen's footmen, an intrepid young fellow by the name of Rémy, had shortly after the princess' birth taken an extended leave of absence to his mother's home on the southwestern coast. While there, through skillful maneuvering, he obtained an invitation to a grand soirée at the Plaza Hôtel, where--as, upon returning to the capital, he breathlessly told the King's chamberlain mere minutes before the royal audience chamber was scheduled to open for the day--he met someone who could remedy the princess' situation without fail, and who was at that very minute waiting outside in a chartered coach!

The chamberlain sighed, crumpled his carefully prepared schedule into a ball and sent an attendant to inform the morning's assembled petitioners that there would be just a slight delay before His Highness could hear their requests. "Show him in," he told Rémy, then betook himself to the royals' quarters to summon them downstairs.

When the King and Queen descended into the throne room, however, they found waiting with Rémy not a man, but a short, stocky woman, wearing a tailored, fawn-coloured ankle-length skirt, a chocolate-toned jacket with mutton-chop shoulders, and a flat round straw hat atop her puffy honey-golden hair. A dusky pink parasol hung, furled, by its crooked handle over her left wrist; in her other hand she held a lumpy embroidered valise. It would have been easy to mistake her for a vacationing spinster from across the Channel, but for one thing: her long, sharply pointed ears, exactly like those of the Wicked Fairy Verdina.

"May I present, Your Majesties," said Rémy with a bow, "Madame Thessalia Astutrices Benvenatrix daoine Sidhe, onetime Solicitor General to the Court of His Most August Highness Oberon of--"

"Oh pish," said the woman, placing a bird-fragile hand on Rémy's arm. He broke off, and she stepped forward and dropped a curtsy. "Such a dear boy, I know he wants to do right by your Majesties, but there's no call for it, really. Why don't the two of you call me Miss Thessaly Jenkins, and we'll set ourselves to business straight away."

King Richard and Queen Lisette cast sidewise glances at one another, and the Queen put a nervous hand to her lips.

"Pardon me," said the King, resting one elbow on the arm of his throne, "but--ahem--what business are you speaking of?" For he was every barleycorn a King, and no one would dare correct his grammar in public.

Miss Thessaly Jenkins let out a fluttery laugh. "Oh dearie me--you mean to say your poor footman never explained that part? I'm a fairy, sweetings. A fairy solicitor, to be completely precise. Dear Rémy told me all about your precious daughter's predicament, and I should be a poor solicitor indeed if I couldn't determine some way around whatever manner of curse is worrying the poor poppet."

"Some way around it?" inquired the Queen, who, as the reader may have already surmised, could sometimes be a little slow on the uptake.

"But of course, ducks," cried Miss Thessaly Jenkins, clapping her little hands together. "After all, a curse is nothing but a magically binding statement, quite the same way you might enter into a contract that's legally binding. If some part of the curse is badly phrased, why, you can use that to your advantage, just as you might exploit a legal loophole in a contract you've signed."

King Richard lurched forward in his throne. "But how can Verdina be forced to abide by what you determine?"

"You have your earthly laws, dearie, and we have our own. They constrain us just as tightly as any laws you place on your people, and sometimes tighter. And of those rules, the absolute most inescapable is the one which states that we must stand by the precise wording of all our spells, curses and bindings. We haven't got your 'spirit of the law' to protect us; we must be letter perfect in all that we speak and write."

"But Verdina said quite plainly that should Chantinelle ever set foot to earth, it would be the end of her!" cried Queen Lisette, wringing her hands just as her finishing-school instructors had taught her.

At that, Miss Thessaly Jenkins' face broke into a triumphant grin, and she clapped her hands again. "Is that what she said, did she?" She sprung open the clasp of the little enameled reticule at her waist, and brought out a pinch of fine glittering sand, which she cast into the air. Miss Thessaly Jenkins cupped her hands to catch it as it fell, and there appeared between her palms a minute, glowing, winged person.

"What on earth is that?" asked Queen Lisette. She had to squint her eyes and shade them with one hand to get a good look at the creature, for it moved awfully quickly and beat its tiny wings for all it was worth.

"Why, this is a Summons," said Miss Thessaly Jenkins. "I shall have to serve it something, and it will go inform the Wicked Fairy that she has something to answer for. Is there by chance any tea, and perhaps a small cake or two?"

King Richard's chamberlain sent to the kitchens for some small, highly sugared cakes and a cup of tea, which arrived presently on a silver tray. The Summons dove head-first into the cup, which drained down to the dregs in a matter of seconds. It then leapt out of the teacup and onto the pile of cakes, worrying the stack into a mound of glazed crumbs. Once the Summons had sufficiently sugar-rushed and caffeinated itself for its journey, it leapt to Miss Thessaly Jenkins' shoulder and, if one could discern the motion through the brilliant glow, placed its tiny hands behind its back to await instructions. Miss Jenkins curved a hand around her mouth and whispered something to the Summons. It listened, bounced into the air, and zipped out the doorway almost faster than the eye could see.

"There, now, she ought to be along shortly," Miss Thessaly Jenkins announced, and dusted some stray crumbs off her kid gloves.

"What?" gasped Queen Lisette. "You can't mean that awful Fairy is coming here?"

"I can't see why not," returned Miss Thessaly Jenkins. "I should like to settle this outside the Fairy courts if at all possible. Fairy justices can be dreadfully long about rendering their decisions, and the curse would still be in effect while they deliberated. It would be such a shame if your poor poppet were to touch foot to earth sometime during the proceedings, then have the curse rendered null and void only a scant decade later."

King Richard gulped a larger-than-usual mouthful of brandy at the phrase "only a decade later," and didn't interrupt.

"Besides, if that were to happen, Verdina would win by default, and I have a vested interest in not seeing that happen. I quite pride myself on my record of successful mediations." She touched the knot of her ascot and smiled proudly. "In the meantime, shall we entertain ourselves with a game of bridge or canasta?"

"I--I suppose we can do that," Queen Lisette said, and motioned to the chamberlain. He slipped out of the room, and returned shortly with a deck of cards and six footmen bearing four chairs and a square filigreed table between them. The King and Queen took North and South, and Miss Thessaly Jenkins and Rémy took East and West, and had they not had to give King Richard a quick rules refresher, they might even have finished the rubber before the Wicked Fairy Verdina stormed through the doors of the throne room, looking even more piqued than before.

"Impudence!" she seethed, brandishing a slender black wand like a conductor's baton. "What sorcerer dared impress a Fairy creature into summoning me away from my--"

"Oh, pish-tosh," cut in Miss Thessaly Jenkins, stamping one of her brass-buttoned shoes beneath the table. "They no more summoned you than a rat summons the piper. I did it."

"I ought to have known," said Verdina, through her teeth.

"But of course," said Miss Thessaly Jenkins. "You have heard of the reward, haven't you?"

"What a niggling little trollop thou art," sneered Verdina. "I suppose thou wouldst pursue a plague-cart all the way to the charnel house, promising to take up their cases with Death herself." And in fact that would come to pass one day, though no one knew it at the time; but that is another story and will be told elsewhere.

Miss Thessaly Jenkins folded her hands before her and arose, leaving Rémy and Their Royal Highnesses with only a card table between themselves and the Wicked Fairy. "Better to hone one's skills among mortals than to draft a poorly worded curse, wouldn't you say, dearie? This one you've given little Chantinelle is just frightful. I dare say the Court would be quick to disbar you if they heard tell of such a pitiful showing." She took up her parasol from where she had left it during the card game, unscrewed the hooked handle, and tipped it on its end. A golden rod, topped with a seven-pointed star, slid into her hand.

"Insolent whelp!" Verdina stalked up to Miss Thessaly Jenkins, towering a good eighteen inches over her. "I'll have thee know that my wand I won under Plutus himself--none before him have negotiated so craftily!"

"And none since," observed Miss Thessaly Jenkins. "You know what they say, dearie--practice makes perfect. And I practiced two centuries with Laufgraben, Klezmer and Fay before establishing my own firm. So I hardly think either of our qualifications are in question."

Verdina tapped her wand against one of her impossibly long fingernails. "Perhaps thou'rt well-qualified to thy workaday practice," she scoffed. "But what service doth thy petty liens and petitions give thee against one who hath cursed Kings and peasants into oblivion, from here to the ends of the Continent?"

Miss Thessaly Jenkins smiled, lips pursed. The star at the tip of her wand sparkled. "Why, for one thing, a grand familiarity with all the law-dictionaries of all the lands. Which means Fairyland as well, dearie."

Verdina tossed her head back and laughed. "Much good may it do thee! How dost thou propose to re-define the ground?"

"Ah-ah-ah, ducks," said Miss Thessaly Jenkins, the tip of her wand glinting in time. "That's not what I heard. My clients inform me that you distinctly said, 'should her feet ever touch the earth.'"

Verdina's already green-tinged face grew even greener.

"Did I perhaps hear them incorrectly?"

Verdina gritted her teeth and glared.

"Do speak up, dearie. What was it you told them? Your exact words, now." For, you see, fairies are quite forbidden to lie, but many of them have become extremely skilled at bending the truth this way and that.

Verdina diverted her gaze toward a mousehole in one of the rear corners of the throne room. "I meant that should the princess ever alight upon the--"

"Objection!" crowed Miss Thessaly Jenkins. "The Court shan't care a farthing what you meant, and nor do I. Shall we settle this here and keep mum about it, or must we take this before all and sundry?"

Verdina crossed her arms, wand dangling between two fingers, and said in a sing-song mutter, "Should thy feet, ever touch the earth, in that instant, thou shalt die."

"Righto, then," said Miss Thessaly Jenkins. "And isn't it true that mortals are often given to walking upon carpet--or parquet flooring--or cobblestones--or linoleum--or aught else which is not properly earth?"

Verdina nodded, almost imperceptibly.

"And isn't it true that mortals often go about wearing stockings--or sandals--or rubber boots--or other things which come between their feet and whatever they might be walking upon?"

Again Verdina gave a reluctant nod.

"Then are we correct in saying that so far as Princess Chantinelle treads upon anything worked by mortal hands, she shall be safe from the effects of the curse?"

The knuckles of Verdina's pale, clenched fists had gone as white as paper. "I ought to put a plague on both your houses," she muttered.

"Ah-ah-ah," twittered Miss Thessaly Jenkins. "Paragraph two thousand three hundred and eighty-four point seven of the Uniform Code of Fairy Justice: no curse shall be laid absent an unprovoked slight. Now, I understand perfectly if you feel slighted, dearie, but you've brought it upon yourself, really you have. I mean, honestly, can you put forth any valid objection?"

Verdina pursed her lips, let out an exasperated sigh through her nose, and let her hands drop to her sides. "Not at this time. But we do not forgo our right of appeal."

"Of course not, dearie." Miss Thessaly Jenkins turned to King Richard and Queen Lisette. "Might we have the use of your card table for a little while? Now that we've arrived at an agreement, there's the little formality of drafting it up on paper. Purely for your protection, as I'm sure you know."

"That's...that's quite all right," King Richard managed. "Clairvaux!" The chamberlain rushed to his side. "We shall hold the remainder of today's audiences in...the ballroom on the second floor." Clairvaux sped away, calling for paper. King Richard rose, dazed. Queen Lisette took his arm, casting nervous glances at the Wicked Fairy, and Rémy ushered them out, followed by six nervous footmen.

Forty-six hours later, the throne room door creaked open, nearly bowling over a thoroughly exhausted Clairvaux. Miss Thessaly Jenkins stepped neatly across the threshold, and brought the door to behind her.

"Mademoiselle!" Clairvaux struggled to straighten the cuffs of his shirt. "Forgive my inattention! We despaired of your ever emerging--the Wicked Fairy--is she--"

"Out of sight and out of mind," Miss Thessaly Jenkins finished for him. "She's gone on her way with her signed-and-sealed affidavit, and I've a copy prepared for your lord and lady's records. Are they near by?"

"But of course, Mademoiselle," said Clairvaux, more securely in his element with his cufflinks fastened. He conducted her up the recently constructed dumb-waiter to the royal breakfast-room, where the King and Queen had just polished off the morning's toast and eggs.

"Oh, please tell us it's done!" begged Queen Lisette, the moment that Clairvaux showed Miss Thessaly Jenkins in.

"Signed and sealed," repeated Miss Thessaly Jenkins, withdrawing a stack of papers from a nearby bit of air, "and now delivered." She placed the sheaf on the breakfast-table, and dropped a curtsy. "Are there any questions I might answer?"

"Is dear Chantinelle really, truly safe now?" Queen Lisette clasped her hands and pressed them to her chin.

"Insofar as she only walks on something man-created, though you'll want to read the fine points closely." Miss Thessaly Jenkins leaned forward and turned the first few pages over. "Technically speaking, she ought even to be safe if she goes out barefoot on new farmland that the plough-boys have worked. But I shouldn't chance it."

King Richard slid a few pages toward himself in order to peruse some of the aforementioned fine points. He squinted at the agate type for a long moment, then ordered, "Clairvaux! A magnifying glass, my good man." Clairvaux stepped out once more, and Richard set the papers aside. "What risk, then, does this Verdina pose to the royal family in the future?"

"I shouldn't worry overmuch, poppet," Miss Thessaly Jenkins replied. "It's simply a matter of observing Fairy etiquette, much as you'd observe Court etiquette or Imperial etiquette or Visiting East Asian Potentate etiquette whenever the need arose. Just stay on your toes, and always err on the side of caution, and she shan't be able to trouble you like this again."

"But what if she does find occasion to place another curse at our feet?"

"Some Fairies are simply too quick to take offense," she observed. "A few bolts of lightning and puffs of coloured smoke, and most mortals are so cowed that they daren't think to challenge even the flimsiest of curses. A body wants reliable legal help for this sort of thing."

"We are most grateful, Miss Jenkins," said Queen Lisette, rising from her seat. "May we place you on retainer, should we ever need to enlist your services again?"

"Now you be taking this, there's a dear," said Miss Thessaly Jenkins, withdrawing from her reticule a gilt-edged calling card, which she pressed into the Queen's slender, grateful hand. "If there's any further trouble, just send one of your messengers to this address, and if he should spin around three times in that place with his eyes closed, he shall find himself in my receiving room quick as you please. Just remember to keep the baby's stockings darned, and mind she wears her overshoes when it's muddy out, and you shan't have a thing to fear. And, oh, do," she added, "feel free to mention my name should any of your acquaintances fall into a similar predicament." With that, she picked up her valise and parasol, and trundled out of the palace to a waiting royal carriage containing the ten-thousand gold livres' reward, which swiftly bore her back to the seaside hôtel where Rémy the footman had found her in the first place.

The incautious reader might think this an excellent stopping point, but alas, the story is only beginning.

To Be Continued Next Month

Story copyright Meredith L. Patterson, published by the Fortean Bureau
http://www.forteanbureau.com