I reminded myself what Mary had taught me about the Kneefolk. ‘Well, I suppose at least they’re harmless,’ she’d once said, when we were riding back to Veeklehouse from Rockway Edge. ‘They keep out of the way of the rest of us, I’ll give them that. But they’re overgrown babies really, aren’t they? They’re like silly newhairs who don’t want to grow up. They tell themselves they know everything already when really they know nothing at all. It’s quite funny, when you think about it. All they’ve ever seen is their little bit of sand, and those trees of theirs that bend over in middle, and maybe a few bats and fatbucks, and yet they say there is nothing but this.’

And she was right. I remembered how ashamed I’d felt that time when me and Starlight and the others went down to Veeklehouse from Knee Tree Grounds. The flamelight, the trading sticks, the traders with all their wonderful things spread out in front of them, the people with bright feathers in their hair, and coloured fakeskin wraps, and batwings dangling from their ears . . . The Davidfolk had done so many things there, had learned so much, had been so busy. And what had we done out on Knee Tree Grounds meanwhile, other than catch fish and gather waternuts, and cut bits of bark from trees?

‘Mother, please, I’m sorry,’ I whispered to Gela. ‘I know it’s only your bones under those rocks. I know it’s only the old bones you don’t need any more, like an old wrap that’s worn through. I know your shadow flew to Earth, and put on new bones and new flesh and new skin. I know you’re alive. I know you speak to Mary. I know . . .’

Tears were running down my face, along with the sweat and the moisture from the fug.

‘Please, Mother, I beg you, speak to me. Just tell me you’re there, and then I’ll be able to reach out to you better, and get to know you, and learn what you want of me.’

But still there was nothing. I couldn’t hear Gela, I couldn’t feel her presence at all. In fact quite the opposite. Out there in that strange little patch of ground, surrounded by softly glowing fug, Gela’s absence sat beside me like a big cold person-shaped hole.

There’s no such thing as a shadow that leaves us when we die, Jeff Redlantern had said. We are the shadows. We’re the thin flimsy things that fade away. What carries on after us is the thing that’s always there, deep down inside us: the secret awakeness, the Watcher, looking out of our eyes, as we’d look out through the eyeholes of a buckskin headwrap, or through a mask.