Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.
-- William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act III, Scene 1

Dani had barely been in her parents' house for five minutes before she remembered why she had left home at sixteen and cut as many ties as possible with her family.

"Have you still not found a husband?" Janice asked, shaking her head. "How can you raise all these children without a man to help?" She glared at her husband, who was buried in a newspaper and happily oblivious to everything around him. "Don't you agree, dear?"

Niall's head briefly appeared over the pages. "Oh, yes. Quite."

The children, squeezed onto the armchairs and sofas like sardines in a tin, had the common sense to keep their mouths shut. Or maybe they were just shocked into silence. Dani wondered how she would ever be able to keep their respect for her when they saw her parents' behaviour.

"And all of you crammed into one tiny house," Janice continued.

"We do not live in a tiny house," Dani said through gritted teeth. "It's bigger than this house." Truth compelled her to add, "Slightly bigger."

Janice didn't seem to hear. "And I don't suppose you've got a proper job yet. How do you live? Do you sponge off benefits?"

This was too much to bear. Dani almost dropped her teacup.

"I have got a proper job!" Her voice came out much louder than she intended. Her mother gave her a disapproving look. Dani took a deep breath and forced herself to speak more quietly. "I work in the Spar shop on Main Street[1], and I write."

Janice shook her head pityingly. "Those aren't real jobs, dear."

If it was possible for steam to shoot out of a person's ears, Dani would have been that person. The children began to whisper and giggle amongst themselves. This only added to her fury. Did the little brats not think that she worked hard to put food on the table?

"I earn money by them," she said with calm she didn't feel. "That, I believe, is the definition of a 'real job'."

With the hand that wasn't holding her teacup, she discreetly gestured for Imogen to sit up straight and stop slouching. The other children, thank goodness, were back to being on their best behaviour. Niall was still enthralled by his newspaper and utterly oblivious to everything happening around him.

Some things never change, Dani thought with no small bitterness. Her mother was still an overbearing embarrassment. And her father was still so preoccupied by anything that wasn't his family that the house could collapse around him and he'd never notice. Once again, she envied the children she had gone to school with. They had had happy families and parents who actually listened to them.

This was followed by a most unpleasant thought. Am I going to turn out like my parents?

Perhaps this visit wasn't a total waste of time. It was giving her plenty of food for thought about her own method of parenting.

~~~~

The children handed over their gifts and reluctantly allowed their "grandparents" -- mainly Janice -- to praise or criticise them. Then Dani and her eleven charges made good their escape.

"Thank goodness that's over," Dani said as soon as they were safely down the street. She quite forgot that it hardly set a good example to openly complain about her parents.

"Were they like that when you were growing up?" Amy asked.

Dani winced. "Sadly, yes."

No one spoke for the rest of the walk to Erneside. They were in the shopping centre and browsing through Poundland when a thought struck Dani. What was she to do with the children while she went to investigate the murder? Where could she leave them?

Before leaving Caledon, she had had some vague idea of leaving them with her parents. This idea had vanished like the morning dew after three seconds in her parents' company. So was she to bring them with her to a murder scene?

Perhaps that wasn't such a bad idea. No one would expect her to do it. Therefore, any passersby would think that she was leading a school trip, or doing anything other than investigating a crime.

"Now," she said, turning to the children and looking at them sternly, "I don't want any of you to cause trouble. We're going to look at the house where the girl was murdered, try not to get arrested, and then go home. Understand?"

They all nodded. She spotted a few disturbingly gleeful expressions on some faces. What a morbid assortment of brats she was raising! Visiting the scene of a murder was entertainment to them.

~~~~

Courtney had been murdered in the flat she shared with three other girls. Her housemates had been out at a late-night course in Enniskillen Tech[2]. At approximately half-past seven Courtney had ordered a small pizza. She had answered the door and given the deliveryman his money when he arrived. That was the last time anyone had seen her alive.

The murder was committed at approximately nine o'clock. Courtney's roommates were on their way home. They returned to find their house all locked up, just as it normally was when Courtney was alone, and with the living room lights on. They had knocked the door and rung the bell. No one had answered. A neighbour arrived, alerted by their shouting, and joined them in trying to get Courtney's attention. After ten minutes they called the police. The officers forced the door open, and found the corpse lying in the hallway.

Dani's first suspect was the deliveryman. But the police had had the same thought, and had interviewed him first. He had an air-tight alibi. The neighbour could also testify that she had been on the phone to her mother for an hour around the time the murder was committed. The housemates were definitely above suspicion. They had been busily testing materials for alkali in a crowded classroom when Courtney was killed. Over twenty people could confirm their alibi.

It seemed this was a crime without a suspect. Or rather, a crime with Dani as the suspect. But she would find the real murderer if it was the last thing she did!

The house Courtney had died in was relatively near the Tech. It was down a long road to the left of the college, in the middle of a distinctly run-down housing estate. Cracked walls, dirty windows and overgrown gardens lined the streets.

Dani gritted her teeth, looked round to make sure all of the children were still there, and set out for Number Eight, Piper Avenue[3]. It was a two-storey house covered with peeling yellow paint. A few wilted flowers drooped from a hanging basket over the door. The steps up to the front door were cracked, and weeds grew between the cracks.

Curious faces appeared at the windows of houses all along the street as Dani and the children walked by. She pretended not to notice. Long experience had taught her that it was best to ignore nosy people.

Dani rang the doorbell of Number Eight, then stood back and waited. The children were remarkably well-behaved for once. None of them were grumbling about sore feet, or wanting to go home, or any of the endless things they normally complained about on "family trips".

One of Courtney's former housemates answered the door. Dani had never met Samantha Conray in her life, but for some reason the other woman recognised her instantly.

"You're Miss O'Shannon, aren't you?" Samantha said. "Courtney talked a lot about you."

Curiouser and curiouser! Why would Courtney have even thought about Dani? Let alone talked about her a lot?

~~~~

"I suppose you're here to give us your sympathies," Samantha said as she led Dani and the children into the sitting room. She stopped and gave the children a doubtful look. "Er, are you a teacher?"

That was a fairly common misunderstanding. Many people automatically thought "teacher" when they saw an adult followed by a crowd of children. In most cases they were right.

"Oh no," Dani said, keeping her face perfectly straight. Her sense of humour, which had gotten her into trouble many times before, always delighted in people's reactions to the children following her like ducklings. "These are my children."

Samantha stared. And stared. And stared some more. "...All of them?"

Dani nodded as if there was nothing unusual in this.

Samantha looked at her. Then she looked at the children. Imogen, the eldest, looked barely two years younger than Dani. She looked back at Dani, her eyebrows raised. Dani returned her look without showing any hint of confusion or embarrassment. She'd learnt that was the best way to cope with this sort of reaction.

At last Samantha decided there was no point in questioning this. "Come in and sit down, everyone! The other girls are out, but I'll tell them you called. Would you like some tea?"

~~~~

The trouble with a large number of children was that rooms were rarely big enough to hold them all. At home, the children were used to crowding onto chairs meant for one or two people at most. In other peoples' houses, this was out of the question.

Samantha looked doubtfully at the long line of children, then at the armchairs and three-seater sofa in her living room.

"It's all right," Cathy said, seeing her look. "We can sit on the floor. We're used to that."

Dani winced. Talk about a sentence sure to give the wrong impression... "We don't have enough chairs at home, so when we all sit in the living room at once, some of us sit on the floor."

She wasn't sure if that was much of an improvement. Samantha probably thought they were all utterly insane.

"I'll put the tea on," their hostess said, and disappeared into the kitchen.

Perhaps she was going to have a nervous breakdown. People frequently did, when confronted with eleven children in their house. Goodness knew Dani came close to one many times.

~~~~

On the other side of Enniskillen, approximately a mile or so from Samantha's house, stood a large park. Officially it was called Brooke Park, but to almost everyone who visited, it was called the Round O [4]. Boots were moored there. Children played at the park near the jetty. People fed the ducks paddling in the river.

There were so many people around that one man sitting on his own attracted no notice.

At first glance there was nothing unusual about this man. He was sitting on a bench looking out across Lough Erne, his eye closed. Passersby, if they noticed him at all, would have thought he was sleeping. But occasionally his eyes fluttered open, and he glanced around with a sharp look that noticed everything while seeming to see nothing.

There was something unusual about his eyes. Instead of a normal colour like blue or brown, they were a deep, vivid yellow like a cat's. His movements were feline-like too, as he stretched out on the bench and tilted his head up to look at the sky.

Branches of the trees around him stretched over his head, blocking his view of the sky. Except on the rare occasions when the wind rustled the leaves and tossed the branches, allowing him a brief glimpse of pale blue emptiness and fleeting white clouds. An ordinary human would have seen nothing out-of-the-ordinary in the leaves and sky over the man's head. But a faint smile curved his lips.

"Hello, Irvinestown," he said, apparently to no one.

A sparrow fluttered down to land on the arm of the bench. Then it was gone and a young woman was in its place. There was no flash of light, or transformation sequence, or any of the things one would expect to see when a bird turned into a person. One minute the sparrow was there, the next the girl was in its place.

"Hello, Enniskillen," the girl said, somewhat frostily. She was about twenty, with brown hair and brown eyes, wearing a blue pinafore-like dress that had probably last been in fashion in the Edwardian era. "Didn't Ballinamallard speak to you? She told me she had."

The man shrugged. He too wore clothes long out-of-date; a white shirt, black waistcoat and black trousers in a late-Victorian style. His dark brown hair was just long enough to brush his shoulders, and his fringe fell over his eyes. "I'm not interested in getting involved in something as mundane as a murder investigation."

"This is about so much more than just the murder!"

Irvinestown almost shouted the words. None of the people around them even noticed.

"Tell me, then," Enniskillen said in a bored tone. "What is it about?"

A long silence fell, the sort of silence that spoke louder than words. Irvinestown glared at her older brother -- for all the personifications of towns saw themselves as siblings. Enniskillen closed his eyes again and apparently went to sleep.

"Our queen disappeared for years," Irvinestown said quietly. "Now she's suddenly reappeared. Aren't you even a little curious about what happened to her?"

"I fail to see the connection." Enniskillen didn't bother to open his eyes.

Irvinestown took a deep breath and counted to ten. "If you were doing your job and watching over your people, you would see the connection. The murdered girl knew something. I don't know what. But she knew something, probably about us, and someone killed her for it. Now are you going to do anything or not?"

Enniskillen's cat-like eyes opened wide for a second. He looked at Irvinestown, a cold, chilling look not at all in keeping with his careless demeanour. The other personification felt as if someone had thrown icy water all over her.

"No," Enniskillen said. "I'm not."

Chapter Footnotes:

[1] Spar shop on Main Street = I have no idea if this shop actually exists. Even if it does, this is a fictional shop.

[2] Enniskillen Tech = Strictly speaking this college has been renamed to "South West College", but it's still called "the Tech" in everyday conversation.

[3] Piper Avenue = As far as I know, there isn't really a street with this name in Enniskillen.

[4] the Round O = This park really exists. Technically "the Round O" refers only to the park's jetty, but everyone I know uses the name to refer to the whole park.