She strode across to the window, stumbling slightly on a clutter of bones. The cats, flowing after her, stopped and began to circle the pile, sniffing. Claudia looked through the grimy glass. Where she should have seen the tops of trees, the vanishing and reappearing slide of the little stream, the round pink dot of the Well and a vast stretch of baked brown grass, there lay the enigmatic expanse of the Gray Lake. Its flat dark surface took the peaceful evening sky and mirrored it into the semblance of an approaching storm. Its long shape was lavishly fringed with goldenrod. Beyond it, steep yellow-clad slopes wandered away, and above them mountains lost themselves in mist.

The air was full of voices. “Something’s amiss,” she said, to make sure, and instantly they echoed and answered her.

She fixed her eyes on the red gingham cuff of her dress, where the machine-made lace staggered like a badly drawn rune; and the voices stopped. She had found them useful and pleasant once; but they were mockery as often as they were counsel, and there was no manner of telling which from which.

She turned to the mirrors in her mind, but their power was dimmed. She had been bound here once. And in any case, the blue flame, whereby she knew the hearts of the children, burned here also, but like the conflagration of a summer forest after lightning. Even if they had seen or heard tell of this place, the children’s little flicker, that gave her the best part of her power, would be lost in the larger burning. To tamper with this greater fire would give notice to those she wished, for a while yet, to avoid.

I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker, said the voices.

“So, my old enemies,” she said, and chuckled.

She stepped around the fascinated cats, avoided the water-beasts, and walked down the long hall to the rooms at the back of the house. Faintly beneath the smell of dust and water, the scent of cinnamon still lingered. The voices said, A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.

She laughed; and, as often happened, this silenced them.

The room of mirrors was glittering clean. She moved from one little diamond pane to another, until she found what she sought. The youngest girl and the oldest boy, staring in awe, fear, and suspicion at a man in a red robe.

“And my old friends too!” said Claudia.

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more; Or close the wall up with our English dead! She scowled again, considering that. Some of the voices spoke mere gibberish, and not any foreign tongue she knew the sound of. But even in those that spoke most clearly, odd words would surface from time to time. English dead. What sort of dead were those? The sort that walked, perhaps. As she did, and the man in red also.

She laid her hand upon the glass. “Burning one,” she said, “knoweth Chryse what thou art about?”

The children did not hear her, but he did. He only smiled.

With the spatter and drum of rain on a roof, the water-beasts rampaged into the room behind her and demanded the explanation she had promised. She smiled too.

“That one, children,” she said, and showed them the man in red. “Not the little ones whom you have seen before. That one.”