cast her mind back to the first time she had made a leap. Something that Kit had said about lines etched on the landscape came drifting back into her consciousness, and she looked for anything that might resemble a line. Although it took a few moments, the realisation finally dawned on her that she was, in fact, staring right at it: a perfectly straight course through the beech copse, a thin trail with trees on either side and the merest trace of a path on the ground like that wild animals made—a fox run, perhaps—but straight as an arrow until losing itself in the deep shade of the little wood.
Wilhelmina swallowed and found that not only had her mouth gone dry, but her heart was beating very fast. “This is it,” she said to herself. “This is one of those leys.”
Her feet were already on the path before she had even decided what to do. Walking steadily into the grove, her eyes fixed on the stone-shaped instrument, she noted that the glowing light began to pulse gently with every step. The faint chirping sound did not grow louder, but the squeaks came faster; she stepped up her pace and the chirps came more quickly.
A breeze stirred the nearby leaves; the branches overhead moved with a sudden gust, and darkness descended over her—as if she had moved into the deep shade of a large tree. Just that. Nothing else. Three more steps carried her out from the shadow of the tree and into . . . a broad sunlit glade.
The beechy copse was gone. The curving riverbank was gone too, along with the surrounding fields and hills. Instead, she stood in a pool of bright sunlight at the bottom of a deep canyon. Behind her stretched a long incline etched into the cliff face leading to the grassy sward on which she stood. Towering over her on every side were high limestone cliffs, and directly below her a shallow river sloshed around the huge stones and boulders littering the valley floor. She heard a ragged screech and glanced up to see a hawk soaring through the cool, bright air.
“Mina, you’re not in Bohemia anymore,” she whispered, her voice falling softly in the silence of the glade.
The device in her hand still glowed softly but was no longer sounding. What a clever little thing, she thought; and then, What shall I call you? Ley lamp, she decided on a whim, and the name seemed to fit.
Curious about where she had landed, Wilhelmina proceeded to look around, taking care not to wander too far lest she lose her bearings. She tucked the ley lamp into her pocket and continued down the path to the bottom of the canyon. Around the next bend, the valley widened; the limestone walls receded. Someone had planted fields of corn on the rich flat ground either side of the river. A short distance ahead she could see a few stone and timber buildings, but there was no one about.
As Mina approached the buildings, the riverside trail became a twin-track road that ran through the tiny settlement and on, through the little farmyard and around another bend. Since no one seemed to be about, she paused to look inside one of the buildings as she passed; it was a simple animal shed with straw covering the floor and an empty manger below a squared hole in the wall, which served as a window. She moved on, following the road as it wound ’round the bend. In the heights above her another hawk had joined the first, and both soared in slow wheeling circles.
Just around the bend she saw that someone had made a dam of river rocks—a primitive construction of stones heaped one atop another across a narrow part of the river. The water pooled nicely behind this simple barrier, forming a wide, placid pond. On a rock ledge just above the pond stood a stout stone building, which on closer inspection turned out to be a ruin. The roof was gone, and two of the four walls had tumbled into rubble, but the remains of a great wooden wheel and several grindstones lay amongst the jumble of wreckage.
“A mill,” Mina surmised. The thing had long been derelict; weeds grew in the rubble and grass had seeded itself on the upper courses of stone and the ledges of what had been windowsills. But someone still used the pond, for she saw a rope tied to an iron ring in