"Believe me, it's not one I haven't pondered myself," Goneril replied dryly. "You should come to England," she said. "It would fascinate you."

"From the sound of it, I would be probably be either horrified or horrifying," he replied. "Or both. Or constantly asking ridiculous and obvious questions of everyone and they'd wonder who my minder was."

"You're a man," she pointed out. "You'd be a very short man there, but I assume you can glamour that. You don't need a minder."

"Yes, but imbeciles do tend to need minders," he said wryly. "Is there anything at all to recommend your country, other than a university that you yourself aren't allowed into?"

Goneril gave him a haughty look. "We have silverware," she replied. "And a napkin per person. And everything is generally cleaner and doesn't smell like manure. And the food is much better."

"Oh aye, I forgot myself, your spoons and tines, without which you are undone," he said gravely, but his eyes twinkled. "And that's not manure, it's moulder. Manure smells more grassy and this has a definite bouquet of wet rocks."

"Whatever it is, we don't have it at home," Goneril replied. "And we have all kinds of spices you've never even heard of. And we have mills that make our fabric for us, and bolts and bolts of cotton that anyone can buy."

"Where are you?" he asked finally, baffled. "I mean, where . . . " For once, Faolin seemed to have lost most of his directness and was left floundering for even the idea of what he meant. "Where in the world, if you're not here?"

"What do you mean, where?" Goneril replied. "We're technically in a...different world?" she replied. "We came here with the Sea Witch. Is that what you mean?"

He started to shake his head, then stopped himself, still looking confused. "There would be a lot of . . . implications," he said at last, "if there was a second world to which people could just cross back and forth. What you were saying before. That we might have already done so. Or that people from your side came here and back again."