I was studying in my pink and white room when I heard three knocks on our cracky wooden door, my mom had told me she would fix it but she always forgets, I stood up and wobbled to the door and opened and what I saw next made me stand up in happiness.

What was standing in front of me was... Grandma!?!?!

"Hiiiiiii" I said happily as I hugged my grandma, I could smell her old fashoined "CK" perfume. "I missed you so much my grandma said as she added my mum into the hug. When my grandma finished hugging and kissing me and my mom I bolted into my room and closed all the books I had began and went put to play with my grandma. Everything was smooth until...

It was May Bank Holiday, and a sunny one at that. Mum had the barbecue already ready, fire leaping from the steel basin and into the sunny sky like orange ribbons. The smell of cooking burgers and sausages made my stomach rumble already, as I trailed out the door, dragging a wagon of toys behind me.

“Goodness, Mae, what do you have there?” Grandma asked as she saw me come into view.

I spun around in my princess dress and showed her the toys, placing them one by one on the grass in a circle. “My teddies!” I said brightly, pointing them all out. “They’re having a picnic with us.”

Grandma smiled and leant down to join me and the teddies on the lawn. “Well, is there room for two more?” She asked, winking. From her bag she produced a long box, wrapped in pink flowery paper.

“Mum, what did you get her? She has enough toys!” My mum looked over from the grill and tutted, smiling despite herself.

“Nonsense, Louise. This is a special doll,” Grandma said, pushing the box towards me. “Just for you, Mae.”

I grinned and tore the paper off. Inside sat the most beautiful doll I had ever seen; a girl with shining turquoise eyes and dark skin like mine, hair as soft as feathers, dark and tumbling across her back. A peacock feather pinned back her curls, and she had sparkly blue eyeshadow and green lipstick, matching her long, indigo silk dress. When I held her up to the sun, the dress shimmered in shades of green and purple, and the train of gold feathers on her dress glimmered. She had matching shoes too, golden heels with a single turquoise gem set into the toe.

I turned her over in my hands, entranced. She smelled, ever so faintly, of Grandma’s CK perfume.

”Grandma,” I whispered. “She’s beautiful!”

Grandma smiled at me. “The Peacock Princess. I made her myself.”

Mum came over now, staring in shock at the doll in my hands. “Mum! How much did that cost!”

Grandma only shrugged. “It was a labour of love. Take good care of her, Mae.”

And the doll’s eyes gleamed back at me with something human.

Later that night, Grandma made me her famous hot chocolate and we sat in front of the TV, talking about school and my friends. I eventually got tired and said goodnight to Mom and Grandma, then I went upstairs to my room.

I woke up again in the middle of night, hearing something outside my door. I hugged the Peacock Princess, the "most perfect doll in the world for the most perfect girl", Grandma said. I thought for a while, trying to decide whether I should get out of the warmth of my bed just to see what the noise was. Probably Tilly, my cat.

Soon, I heard Tilly shuffling around outside Mom's room. Maybe she wanted to be let in? I thought about my poor freezing cat, who might just want to sleep in the heat of Mom's bed. I got up to go and let her in. I opened my door and peeked out, letting my eyes adjust to the darkness. But I couldn't seem to find Tilly.

I heard her meow angrily from downstairs, so I followed the noise and slowly went down, trying not to wake Mom and Grandma. The Peacock Princess dangled from my hand, and I dragged her down the stairs. Hopefully she didn't get mad that her beautiful hair was getting a bit tangled. I will brush it later.

The lamp was on in the living room, and the kitchen lights were on. I got up on my tip toes to check behind the couch for Tilly, but she wasn't there. I left the Peacock Princess on the couch, propping her up on cushions so she was comfortable, then I went towards the kitchen.

Grandma was in there! She was stirring something in a huge pot, a pot I had never seen Mom take out from the cabinet. It was old, rusted, and the handles were about to fall off. I wondered why Mom would ever have such an old pot; she loves her new, shiny stuff. Grandma suddenly turned around, her eyes wide. I couldn't tell why she looked so... weird.

"Mae! Go back to sleep, you wicked child. NOW." She whispered harshly. I shrunk away from her. I had never heard her speak so mean to me. What was wrong with her? "Grandma, I- I was just looking for Tilly... Have you seen her?" She stormed towards me, grabbing my shoulders to turn me away from the kitchen and lead me to the staircase. While she turned me around, I noticed another dolly sitting on the kitchen counter next to the pot. She looked like Mom. Why didn't she give her to Mom when she gave me the Peacock Princess?

Grandma pushed me into my room and told me sleep again before closing the door behind her. I pressed my ear to the door and listened to her go back downstairs. I sighed, hoping Grandma would be normal in the morning and Tilly would be found again.

I dragged myself into my bed, tugging my blanket over my head and wrapping myself up like a baby. I turned onto my right side, where I found the Peacock Princess lying next to me.

I woke up before the sun did, something inside my chest pulling me downstairs like a string tied around my ribs had been given one sharp tug from the kitchen. I lay still for a moment, blinking at my glow stars, and felt it again. A pull. Wrong, but hard to stop, like when you press your tongue against a wobbly tooth.

The Peacock Princess was still beside me, facing the door.

I didn't remember turning her that way.

I wrapped my blanket around my shoulders and went downstairs. The kitchen light was orange and low, not the usual strip light at all. Grandma had put something over it: a cloth, dark red, draped over the fitting, and it made everything look like the inside of something alive. She was standing at the counter with her back to me, stirring the big rusted pot in slow, deliberate circles. Anti-clockwise, I'd find out later, meant unpicking the seams of things.

She heard me on the last step.

"Sit down, Mae," she said, without turning around.

"You knew I was coming?" I climbed onto a kitchen stool and pulled my blanket tighter.

"You have been coming to this kitchen your whole life." She still didn't turn around. "I have been waiting for the night you came on your own."

I looked at the pot. The steam rising from it moved strangely, curling in deliberate little shapes, like letters in an alphabet I didn't know yet. The smell was there again, that deep green smell, earth and rain and something under it, like tarmac or stone. It pulled at me the same way the string in my chest had. I gripped the edge of the counter to stop myself leaning towards it.

"What's in there?"

Grandma finally turned around. Her face was soft in the red light. "Rosemary," she said. "Bay. Rainwater, a curl of your mother's hair from her hairbrush, and a word." She paused. "The word is the important part."

"What word?"

She smiled. "When you are ready for it, you won't need to ask me."

She moved aside so I could see into the pot properly. I slid off the stool and went to stand beside her, and the steam rose up around my face and I breathed it in before I could stop myself. Then I felt it. Something cracked open in the middle of me, gently, like an egg from the inside out. Warmth rushed up from my stomach and into my fingers and I grabbed the edge of the pot to steady myself. The steam kept moving in those curling shapes and suddenly, for just a second, I could almost read them.

"Grandma," I whispered. "I can nearly--"

"I know." She put her hand over mine on the edge of the pot. Her palm was very warm. "I know you can."

She talked for a long time after that, low and steady, while the pot bubbled gently between us. She talked about her own grandma, who had come over on a boat with nothing but a trunk and a gift she didn't have a name for. She talked about how the gift doesn't announce itself, it just arrives one day like a smell on the air and you either follow it or you don't. She said that following it feels like coming home to a house you've never been in before.

"Does Mum know?" I asked.

Grandma was quiet for a moment, stirring slowly. "Your mother," she said carefully, "has many gifts. This is not one of them." She glanced at the doorway to the hall, checking it was empty. "And she would not understand it in you either. So this is ours, for now."

"Show me something," I said.

Grandma raised her eyebrows, pretending to be surprised, but she was already reaching into the pocket of her dressing gown. She produced three small grey stones, each one with a hole worn through the middle, and set them on the counter in a triangle.

"Hag stones," she said. "Water wears the holes through. They see what ordinary eyes miss. Put eye up to the hole. Let your hand choose."

I let my hand choose. It went to the one on the left.

I looked through the hole and looked up, and the kitchen looked different. The red-draped light pulsed slowly like a heartbeat high above us and the steam from the pot appeared weaved from a very fine silver thread, winding around Grandma's wrists and shoulders and all the way up to the ceiling, connecting her to something far above the house. Where it brushed against me, I felt it.

The pull.

I lowered the stone slowly. The kitchen went back to normal.

"That's mine?" I breathed.

"That has always been yours." Grandma tucked the stones back into her pocket and turned back to the pot. "We will meet like this, you and I. In the mornings, while Louise sleeps." She said it plainly, like it was already decided, and I suppose it was. "There is much I should have taught you already. I have been waiting to be sure."

"Sure of what?"

She looked at me sideways, her eyes warm and dark and very serious. "That you were brave enough to come downstairs on your own."

She sent me to bed just as the sky outside was turning from black to the deep blue that comes right before grey. The Peacock Princess was propped against my pillow, facing the door, watching me come in with her sharp turquoise eyes sparkling beneath the starlight. I picked her up and looked into her eyes and I thought about what Grandma had said. The word is the important part. When you are ready, you won't need to ask. I turned her over in my hands, my blood still singing from the steam and the hag stone and all that warm impossible knowing, I was almost sure that the Peacock Princess smiled back at me.