Daix ran like mad, and we didn’t stop until she and I had planted both feet in the Puca’s cobbled courtyard.
‘Right,’ she said, slightly out of breath. ‘Good.’ Somewhere en route her burgundy ensemble had altered; now she wore a fourteenth-century kirtle, lavishly embroidered, with a band of gold about her brow. Fitting.
My garments hadn’t changed, which was also fitting. Daix learned long ago not to mess with me in that respect, if in few others.
The Puca’s a humble building, viewed from the exterior. Stone-built, with cloudy, mullioned windows and an air of mild, tumble-down neglect, it doesn’t look like much. The painted sign swinging over the heavy oak door depicts the Puca, in the shape of a cat, wearing the familiar tall, buccaneer’s boots (there’s more to the legend of puss-in-bo
