Sublime

paucity

rebarbative

palimpsest

As I made my way along the shoreline I tripped over the remnants of a picnic left among the dunes. There was a newspaper, some bunched tinfoil, a blue plastic bag and an abandoned packet of digestives. I had stopped and tidied the mess together, and noticed that the newspaper's crossword was completed with a thick red marker pen; the clues had been

bacchanalia

An air altogether of occupying a time not his own – might he be more at ease in an Edwardian dining room, say, or on a pitching clipper’s deck? Very likely.

In the months that follow, word spreads among the new-made steadings: the fey are abroad, invisible, of course, as told in the stories, but also nothing like the stories, for they seek bright iron. She listens to them, unseen, and smiles to herself as they whisper that no man may leave an awl or a chisel for a moment unwatched, or it will vanish;