A winsome, atmospheric short story, this draws on characters from a series of books by the author, and thus the context is opaque to a reader who doesn’t know the stories.

What I found so engaging is that the action takes place in a museum. The two characters, Gareth and Lorre, have come to see an exhibition promising to tell 500 years of history by means of portraits. For a retired museum curator like myself, this is instantly appealing (authors rarely put museums in their books, and then often get them wrong).

The surprise is that these two men, who don’t appear old, are in fact old enough to have experienced 500 years of history—so the exhibition presents a different sort of interest for them. Then they discover a miniature portrait set in gold that changes the conversation, and leads to a discussion and reminiscences with these two magical humans.

Someone not familiar with Noone’s books won’t learn quite enough to totally understand the conversation; but the general idea of the meaning of portraits, and what they document, fascinated me. It is not something often discussed in the books I read, and I loved the idea of history coming alive through the stories portraits tell.

Believe it or not I haven’t spoiled anything, and this story is well worth the read just to experience this tantalizing little snippet of a fantasy world. Of course, I’ve bought Noone’s novel “Magician” for my Kindle. I want to know more.