The chicken was dreaming. It was a strange sort of dream for a chicken, because it completely lacked earwigs, beetles and worms. There wasn’t even a grain of corn.

Instead, there was Wilygirl. And she was being very annoying. She kept poking the chicken with her fingers, and saying, ‘Wake up, Bayam. Remember who you are. Remember Lodosh and Kaleem. Remember Seleeg and Potoq. Come on, we need you. Wake up!’

The chicken turned away from her and summoned up some mice, little brown ones with fat tummies, that ran away in the most enticing fashion when she chased them. Now that was the sort of dream—

‘Wake up!’ cried Wilygirl. ‘I know you’re in there somewhere, and we’re desperate. The Harshman’s got Pummel and soon he’ll get Otte. You don’t want that, do you? He’ll be unstoppable then. He’ll kill Sooli, who’s the new Bayam. He’ll kill all of us. He’ll kill the Saaf. He’ll eat the land’s witchery.’

Some of those words bothered the chicken. She tried not to think about them, but the mice she was chasing suddenly turned on her with teeth like kitchen knives. And then they were chasing her, screaming, ‘Bayam Saaf Harshman! Bayam Saaf Sooli!’

The chicken ran and ran. But there was a black cloud around her now, and she couldn’t see where she was going. She flapped her wings. The black cloud turned to black water. The mice vanished. The chicken swam for her life. Someone shouted in her ear, ‘Bayam, wake up!’

With a gasp, the chicken swam up out of the curse and remembered.

Suddenly, her wings were arms and her beak was a mouth. Her red comb was black hair; her feet were no longer claws.

She stared at Wilygirl, who stared back at her.

‘I – not a chicken,’ said the Bayam. ‘The curse – it makes me forget. But I am not – I am not a chicken.’ She looked around. ‘I am asleep, yes? You have come into my dreams, just as I came into yours?’

‘Yes,’ said the girl. Duckling, that was her name. The Bayam remembered all of it now. But it was an effort to hang onto it. The curse was so strong – it beat against her like huge black wings. It tried to drown her.

‘We must be quick,’ she said. ‘Even in a dream I cannot hold this shape for long.’

Duckling nodded. ‘Tell us how to beat the Harshman.’

In her dream, the Bayam let her consciousness expand outwards. Almost immediately it touched ice, and the bitter coldness shot straight to her heart. She flinched away. ‘He is everywhere. He has become part of the Keep. Part of the towers.’

Duckling’s eyes widened. ‘Then how do we kill him?’

But that blow to her heart – that spear of cold – had loosened the Bayam’s hold on her dream. She looked down at her feet and saw yellow claws again. She looked at her arms and saw wings.

‘You must—’ she said, and every word was an effort. ‘You must bring down – the Strong-hold.’

Duckling’s eyes widened even more. ‘How do we do that?’

Earwigs, thought the chicken.

No, thought the Bayam. Not yet.

But already everything was beginning to drift away from her. Memories, thoughts, the girl, they became smaller and smaller, even as she tried to cling to them.

‘How?’ cried the girl, from so far away that her voice was no more than a squeak. ‘How do we bring down the Strong-hold?’

For one brief second, the answer was piercingly obvious. The chicken squawked, hoping the girl would understand. Then she turned her head towards the line of dream earwigs that were marching past, and with a cry of delight began to snap them up.