Sometimes, when passing through the lowest level of the tower, she would stop there in the middle of the floor and look up into the great hollow shaft to where the Witch was known to reside in a chamber at the top. Round and around her eyes would follow the rising spiral stair. Sometimes smothered in gloom, it clung as ivy to the curving stone wall. Sometimes it was illuminated by shafts of light from tall slits in the masonry.

These slim windows were regular and narrow, intended for defensive archery - yes, all that she knew well; quite clever, and so on. And yet the charm of these slivers of light and breath was not simply from this heroic application, but because through them, at regular, radial intervals, you could see higher and loftier views of the castle grounds.

Then, nearing the trapdoor in the furthest reaches you might even begin to see beyond the castle walls, perhaps even as far as the Lake Beyond the Briars. Might and perhaps. Since she had never dared the stairs that high to see for herself. They were old, wooden and wormy. It was not that she was afraid of heights, nor concerned about the lack of a railing; she was a reckless child. In fact, she would have gathered her skirts and hopped up the walls like a monkey, side to side, if the tower were only narrow enough.

No, she was not afraid. If anything the decrepit and dizzyingly, inherently hazardous nature of the tower, with its elegant swirl of rotting timber and teasing glimpses of what the hawks must see, was keenly attractive on the whole... except for the chamber at its peak where the Witch was known to reside.

From her vantage far below, she could only dimly find the floorboards to the room capping the tower. Occasionally at night, curious and violent scuffles sounded down to her. She would then feel as though she were down a covered well, looking up through the tarry void at the gleamings of light through the floor that made her ceiling. With held breath, she marked the time between such muted crashes and the soft touch of dusty silt upon her nose; dust that drifted down to her upturned face as powdered sugar on gaudy cakes.

That was night, when the Witch was active. Now, during the day, sunlight pierced the tower through the thin windows and made straight golden blades of shifting liquid light in the air. She had seen a trick once (and just a trick; it was not magic - not real Magic, she knew even then) that involved a box with narrow openings all over, like the tower. The trickster hid inside it. He invited those watching to jab scimitars into this box while he groaned and chortled and carried on in a most amusing manner. In the end, the box bristled with blades, and it looked plainly as though he must have been run through by at least a dozen wicked points, and yet he expressed none of the agony one would expect. Her sister, older and wiser, spoiled this delightful display by leaning over and saying, "He's quite flexible, I've seen him through the keyhole with the maids. He is dodging these blades in ways you can't imagine, but that's all there is to it."

She looked up now, with the setting sun skewering the tower, and she pictured a giant crowded inside with her. His head would go into the Witch's chamber. His body would flatten and curl like a serpent to avoid the cutting light.

The two times that she dared climb the spiral she was frightened off by the Witch. Once, at night, she felt surely she could approach under the cover of the Witch's usual ruckus. And yet, just as she was starting to see the peaks of the castle wall outside, the noise above stopped entirely. And it was a keenly predatory, listening silence; the severity of it, the sudden abruptness, startled the girl into fleeing down and around and out of the tower, without a backward glance. In such a silence, her own pounding heart and ragged breathed resounded as though she were screaming her fear to the heavens.

And then once, during the day, when the high chamber was quiet (as usual, for the Witch was sleeping), she crept up to that same spot on the stairs and dared a step further. The cautious daylight calm then broke with such sudden thrashing about from above that the whole tower itself shook and threatened to topple down about her ankles. Needless to say, she turned tail and lit out for safety.

So after those two attempts, she contented herself with her ground floor view and the lower windows on the stairs. As for the Witc