The girl stood frozen, slick sword hilt grasped in her skinny hand, blade flashing in the moonlight. It was heavy, its tip threatening the dew-frosted grass. The white haired woman - how long had she been standing there? - took a leisurely sip from her mug.

"I thought it might you."

Her accent was thick and Welsh, her tone soft, as if she were speaking to a skittish creature, like a deer in the forest.

"Why was I afraid of her?" thought the girl, "She's just an old lady after all."

The old woman nodded towards the blade.

"It speaks to you."

The girl nodded slowly, her tongue clumsy and dull-witted in her mouth, remembering the pull that brought her here.

The woman sighed heavily, looking suddenly very tired.

"It's been too long. I was ready such a long time ago, I've forgotten what it even feels like..."

Her gaze went right through the girl to some long distant memory, and then she turned abruptly towards the little house and beckoned with a lumpy finger for the girl to follow.

Inside was dim and grimy with old dust, but the little corner with the kettle and mugs was spotlessly clean. It was as if she lived on a diet of tea and cocoa, depending on the hour. Perpetually "putting the kettle on while we wait" and barely visiting the rest of the house.

The girl perched on the threadbare sofa, naked weapon balanced across her knees, while the woman made two mugs of milky cocoa. Questions were brimming over in her. The most obvious being, "Why do you have a sword at the bottom of a pond in your garden?"  It was somehow too absurd to be forced past her teeth. "Am I the rightful king of England?" was even worse, and she forced down a giggle.

"You might be, at that."

The girl started, not just because the woman moved so softly into the room, but because she had answered an unspoken thought.

"I can't read minds, girl. I have the Sight, not that you'll know what that is. What are they teaching children these days..." Her voice trailed off into fractious muttering.

The girl peered at the woman's face. The eyes were milky looking with a generous framing of deep wrinkles, and she doubted silently that they had any sight at all.

The crone set the tray down on the table between them.

"They think they're in charge, you know. They always have. Well. Not always. But for so long it might as well be."

She seated herself gracefully, like a queen, in a chair that was obviously favoured for the purpose, and cradled her mug deliberately in two hands. One moment she was just an elderly person, grumbling about Young People, and the next, with a gesture (or a glamour) she was a high-born lady of wealth and power, speaking on matters of state - and her faded bathrobe and gummy mouth bedamned.

The girl placed one hand on the sword to keep it steady, and reached with the other for her mug, brain cells scrambling to keep up.

"Who?" she asked.

"Men." There was a beat of mutual, satisfied, feminist silence, followed by an incongruous, "Women have forgotten their place."

The old woman smiled at the obvious bristling her comment provoked.

"Our place behind the throne, child. The invisible power behind the power. The rudder under the water. These days girls are wasting their time pleading for *equality*-" -she spat the word as if it offended her, took a few breaths to dissipate her obvious impatience, and gestured imperioussly to the sword with her mug. "They never owned it. Not really. We kept it. They wielded it. We let them. For justice and protection. That was the bargain."

The girl put a hand on the flat of the blade, admiring it's smooth glint, oddly unrusted for all time it had spent in the murky water, cradled in skeletal hands. The question spilled out at last.

"Who ARE you?"

A knobby finger reached out and tapped the worn script near the hilt.

"My aunt Vivianne kept it. I protected it, with spells I learned in the convent. My brother wielded it."

"Sorry," said the girl bluntly, becoming impatient with the riddles and changes of direction, "but I still don't know who you are or why you are telling me this."

"Because I don't know WHO YOU are." The opaque eyes searched her face. "Are you the keeper? the protector? Or.... Something else?"

The beginnings of comprehension dawned.

"Well, I'm a girl... Sooo..."

"Times have changed", the old woman smoothed her flannel pyjamas as if they were the finest gown. "Perhaps you are here take it. Or to replace me. Perhaps you are here to replace HER..." Another gesture with her mug, this time towards the scrubby garden and the secret at the bottom of it.

The girl's eyes widened in shock and fear and she recoiled from the apparently innocuous mug in her hand.

The old woman laughed softly.

"Oh, I didn't poison it. I thought about it. But I think... maybe.... you get to choose."

The sword glinted softly.