‘Sylvie, when are you going?’ When I open my eyes, she’s not there. ‘Sylvie!’ I call out. But she really has gone.

Blood pounds in my ears and my heart feels like it might leap from my chest. I flick on my torch and spin around. Its light only just reaches the tree trunks. Beyond them is a deep, murky darkness. Overhead, branches move in the breeze like bony, crooked arms.

‘Courage,’ I say, and take a few deep, shaky breaths. I head downhill, eyes wide open and flicking from side to side. ‘I’m not afraid of the dark,’ I say loudly, but my voice is feeble. I say it again, stronger. I’ll prove to Sylvie that I can handle this. I’ll turn up at the circus camp and show her.

CHAPTER 15

I jump across a creek and slip in the mud, banging my knee hard. The trees will end soon and there will be a paddock, I tell myself. Then I’ll reach the road. It’s all okay. Courage, courage, courage.

I sing Li Lin and Dimitri’s song, ‘You are my sunshine’. When I forget the words, I start on ‘Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah’.

It’s slow going in the forest. I push past branches, climb over fallen logs and twist my ankle on a mossy patch of ground. I’m sweaty and scratched and limping a little when I arrive at another boggy creek. I shine my torch around and see footprints in the mud. The awful realisation hits me: they are my footprints. I am back at the same creek.

A loud rustling comes from bushes right beside me, as if someone or something is about to burst out. I blunder through the mud and across the creek, soaking my shoes. There’s a crunching noise like a big creature heading straight for me.

Then my torchlight flickers and fades. I am in complete darkness. I spin back and forth, eyes wide, my heart thudding. The dark around me is vibrating with fear.

I try to remember the word for light. Is it gollian? ‘Swyn … gollian,’ I whisper. There’s a crack somewhere to my right and sparks spray from a tree trunk. But no light. Just a terrible darkness stretching for kilometres.

I feel very little and very scared. ‘DAD!’ I shout. ‘DADDY!’

A big wind tears noisily through the tops of the trees, and leaves and twigs rain down on me.

I start to cry. Sylvie is right. I’m not a magician. I’m just a girl afraid of the dark. If I can’t make my way through a dark forest without crying and screaming for my dad, how could I possibly travel to another universe? How could I possibly bring back my mum?

I sink to the ground and let out big, shaky sobs. My life with Mum is over. It’s just Dad and me now.