The late summer twilight had begun to fade into dusk by the time they finished their excellent meal. Jodyth uncorked a large bottle of five year old Greenwade Fields white wine. It was a rare treat but no one asked if there was some special occasion. The old priestess sensed they all needed it and they all enjoyed more than one glass. Already a few stars could be seen peeking through a pale blue evening sky. Hella yawned softly, putting the thoughts of whatever awaited tomorrow out of her head. She was ready for bed, but it was not to be.

"Now we must go to see your young man," the goddess said to her.

"Now?"

"Yes now. There is a high tide just after midnight and we mustn't miss it. No, you two can stay. Just Hella. Yes, yes... Come along!"

Somehow Hella found herself being shepherded out of the temple and along the North Bank road in the direction of the city centre, accompanied by the determined-looking goddess, who had changed again into the younger-looking version of her persona.

"This form will be more suitable for our next task", she observed. "Young men don't pay so much attention to old women. And naturally, I know your young man will pay attention to you! That goes without saying. We have some persuading to do now."

"He's not my young man!" Hella insisted, shaking her head.

"Oh, yes he is," the widow answered with flat certainty as they walked much more briskly than had been possible the last time Hella came down this road. In fact, she had to scurry to keep up.

"How can you say that?"

"You have remembered I am the goddess of sleep and dreams haven't you? Nyx and Myx carry messages for me from in and out of mortal dreams and I had an interest in Maris when you told me about him, so naturally I told the cats to take a look. I don't want to ruin the surprise but let's just say that Gemulae isn't wrong when she tells you he's quite taken with you. And I know you like him."

Hella blushed bright red in the hot dark, although there was no one there to appreciate it. Pruth might be a goddess but she seemed to be quite an impertinent one, with no sense of propriety.

"What about my hair?" she couldn't help but ask rather timidly. "I know my hair wasn't as nice as Gemulae's or Jodyth's but I'm not used to being bald yet. What's Maris going to think?"

"What about your hair?" was all Pruth said abruptly. "There are more important things at stake here than your hair, Hella! Have you forgotten about the plight of the city?"

The priestess didn't have the courage to say that she didn't really understand what precisely that meant and what exactly they were going to do about it anyway. The goddess hadn't gone into details, so she kept silent and concentrated on keeping up.

"You worry too much", Pruth said at last with a kindly sigh as they stopped at the junction of Haltergarden Street and turned inland.

"Where are we going?" Hella asked. "Shouldn't we be heading for the quayside?"

"We won't find him there. Not tonight," Pruth replied. "Prince Maris will be in the palace. His name is Maris Lomas. He's the third son of the Fisher King. He's not just some ordinary fisherman, even if he likes to pretend he is."

"Oh!"

"Don't think too harshly of him. A little anonymity is a luxury sometimes for the sons of rulers. I understand that."

Hella hadn't been thinking too harshly of the fisherman at all, but she was now more than a little nervous, especially as they approached the palace precincts and came face to face with the guards.

"We have an important message for prince Maris," Pruth announced imperiously to the dubious soldiers at the gate. "Tell him that the youngest priestess of Wheat Street is here to see him and that she brings something that will be for the benefit of the whole city."

The white light of Lumina and the reddish glow of Celestria were both shining brightly over the ocean when the Pride of Laque sailed into the rising night time tides. The faint sound of the first bell came over the water from the Gull's Clock Tower in distant Nephatar. In the end, Maris had taken surprisingly little persuasion to round up a crew and head out on this speculative voyage. If he'd been surprised to see Hella and the widow he'd hidden it very quickly and whatever he thought about Hella's missing hair, he diplomatically said nothing, allowing her to bring the subject up first when she wanted to.

"Findil is protective of his fish under this hot sun," Pruth had told him. "He has taken them to deeper waters far from the coast. You will not find them there no matter how good the fish charming is. But there are other fish that come to the surface to feed at night. Do you know of them?"

"Only sprats, klapperfish and whelkeyes," Maris answered. "The mesh of our nets is too coarse for them. We pick up a few sometimes, more or less by accident, but they aren't worth our while."

"But what if you could catch them in larger numbers? What if I told you there was a way?"

So here they were, under the slow swell of the waves that were making Hella just a little seasick. She took deep breaths and felt calm return. She wasn't going to shame herself again!

"You must do this now," Pruth whispered to her. "Your hair is in the net and it belongs to you as much as to me. In fact it belongs to you completely now, because I am gifting it to you."

"I don't know what to do!" Hella whispered back in a mild panic. She'd been expecting Pruth to take the lead.

"It's easy," the goddess instructed her. "Easy for me because it has always been my net. Easy now for you, because it is your hair in the net. Not easy for anyone else."

Reaching into some pocket in her robes, Pruth passed the net to Hella. It was no bigger than a pocket handkerchief but it glowed faintly with a light of its own under the running lights on the ship. Maris gave them both a look that expressed doubt and perplexity but he still said nothing.

"There is a school of whelkeyes off the port side," Pruth said more loudly. "Cast the net overboard and imagine it growing to encompass them. Just do it!"

The Net of Pruth

In the warm salty air, the net took flight like a living thing. Hella could feel its will to expand, the nodes in the mesh multiplying and lighting as its geometry was reconfigured and it spread rapidly, fluttering and twisting in the night. Soon it was gleaming brightly over the ocean. The net did not seem to need more than a nudge of thought as though it knew what to do. It sank suddenly and closed around the fish it had been sent to catch...

It was two days after the incredible success of the night-time fishing expedition and Hella was to return to the palace for a meeting with Maris, the Fisher King and the senior mages.

"I still can't believe I told a prince he couldn't come to the temple," Jodyth was saying. "And he listened to me, so that just goes to show I was right!"

"I'm sure you were," Hella mumbled.

The haul of welkeyes which went on sale in the markets might have been unusual but they were well received as they went to feed a hungry population and to stock cooling pots all around the city. For the moment there was no more talk of a third fish charming mission and nothing had come of Kradovah Moltetch's threat to eject Hella from the Harmonic Order. Instead there was a hiatus to allow new plans to be drawn and Hella and her net were going to be part of them.

Jodyth was looking the young priestess over critically. From a trunk somewhere in her quarters she'd found a combination knitwear and lace dress with a lacy hood that might have been fashionable back in the days of the Puzzle Lords Directorate but now looked more than a little old-fashioned. It smelled of the camphor and cedarwood that had been used to keep the moths away, but it certainly fitted Hella well.

Hella's New Clothes

"Very nice. You can't keep going to the palace in the robes of the order. This is much more suitable. Lend Hella your mirror, Gemulae, so she can see how she looks!"

It was certainly different, the young priestess thought with a smile. She was still a little self-conscious about her baldness and the lace hood hid that, which was a bonus. She saw how anxious Jodyth was that she should like it. For certain it had once been a prized dress of her own.

"It's lovely," she said firmly. "And I'm so grateful that you let me wear it!" She hugged the old woman until they both had a little tear in their eyes, but that might have been the smell of camphor.

"Knock him out, Hel," Gemulae said with a cheeky wink. "And save the city whilst you're at it, eh? Just for the rest of us!"

The Polity Chamber in the royal palace wasn't the grandest of rooms, lacking the ornate sophistication and high sweeping arches of the Throne Room, the Great Ball Room and the Ambassador's Banqueting Hall but where those spaces were designed to impress and project the power and wealth of the Fisher Kings and Queens, the Polity Chamber was where the real business of government was conducted with less show and more thought than ceremony.

Since she was expected, Hella was waved through several guard posts before she reached the outer lobby where Maris was waiting to escort her into the Chamber itself. He gave her a warm smile.

"Don't be nervous," he advised. "My father and mother might be the king and queen but they are perfectly rational and they will want you to speak your mind. Before we go through, though, I have something for you. It's a sort of present. I wanted to give it to you earlier but then the occasion has never seemed right and I didn't want to take it out to sea the other night, so will you accept this now?"

He reached into an inside pocket and drew forth a silver flute, handing it to her and looking surprisingly nervous himself.

"I know it can never replace your favourite that sank to the bottom of the ocean", he said. "I was very sorry for that. I could rescue you, but I couldn't save your flute. I hope you like this one instead. I don't want you to be deprived of something so important for your music."

Hella's eyes were wide and shining. Perhaps it was just the reflection from the bright silvery surface but I rather think not. She felt uncharacteristically bold as she gave him a kiss of gratitude, which covered her rescue and this gift. Maris didn't object.

Before anything more could be said, the double doors swung back and they were admitted to the Polity Chamber where the king and queen, the first fish lord and the council of mages had already taken their seats. Hella wasn't surprised to see the City Harmoniser there too, but he no longer intimidated her the way he had done at their last meeting.

"Well young lady," King Nathaniel said, "it seems the city owes you a debt of gratitude for showing us how to catch fish again where my other advisors failed." He gave his mages and the City Harmoniser a pointed look. "But we still have a problem. It's not easy to adapt the fleet for this kind of night fishing. Can you help us? We need you to use your enchanted net to keep the fish markets in business and the city fed."

"Of course your majesty," Hella answered. "I understand. It's my duty."

"We can't rely on Hella forever though," Maris said reasonably. "There's only so much she can do!"

"That's true," the Queen said. "We need a better solution in the long term."

"Couldn't every boat catch these nocturnal fish if they had finer mesh nets?" Hella suggested.

"They could but no one has worked out how to make them strong enough."

"Well maybe we could learn from my net," Hella said. "Look."

She spread out a section of Pruth's net, expanding it sufficiently across the table so that everyone could examine it.

"Can you see that there are actually two structures? There is a wide mesh made up of these thicker fibres and then in between is the tiny mesh, split into units. The thinner threads only have to stretch between the holes in the main net which takes the strain off them. Could you make fishing nets in a similar way?"

There was a murmuring of interest as this was considered with some additional suggestions for ways it might be enhanced by enchantments, nothing that would be anything like as spectacular as the net of Pruth with its almost sentient behaviour and geometric warping, but perhaps something that would help in the weaving of simpler alternatives. When the meeting broke up it was agreed that the chandlers guild, the linen spinners guild and the lace makers guild would be consulted to see what they could come up with together. It was a positive outcome. Until the new nets were ready to deploy, Hella agreed to go night fishing as often as she could.