Kate Forsyth

It's one of the great treasures of her life.

And when she flees, it's one of the few things that she takes with her because it's small enough that she can slip it into a pocket or she can carry it in her hand.

So again, this found object that I found in Paris worked its way into the book and

Now, the little chest of treasures that Luke Carmen was talking about is what I call my story box.

I'm an oral storyteller as well as a novelist.

So I travel the world telling stories to a live audience.

And one of the things that I do, particularly if they're children, is I offer them the box and they put their hand in and whatever they draw out, I tell the story of.

I have an acorn in it.

And if that's drawn out, I tell the story of Charles II and his miraculous escape when he had to hide in an oak tree.

Just one example.

I have an old spoon with a kind of strange-looking medieval figure on it.

It's only tiny, it's about the size of my thumb.

If anyone draws that out of my box, I tell the story of sweet porridge.

which is a story from the Grimm oeuvre.

It was told to Wilhelm Grimm by Dorchen Wild, the young woman who was his primary source of most of his stories and who ended up being his wife.

It's a great story to tell.

As I master a new story, I find a charm or an object that suits it and I drop it in there.

For example, I used to have a gorgeous pair of red drop earrings and one night dancing wildly, one flew out of my ear and someone trodden and broke it.

and it looks exactly like a drop of blood now.

So I just dropped that.