Starry Swirl shone down cold and bright as we munched the tough green meat, without a proper forest to steal away its light. Another bunch of people came past us as we were eating and pushed on towards the Dark. We called out to ask them where they came from and why they’d left, and they told us they were from a place in forest called Tomsneck, halfway between Nob Head and Davidstand. They told us that New Earthers had grounded at Nob Head too, as well as at Veeklehouse and David Water. I thought about Nob Head and how we used to visit it when we were kids, with its high cliff and its little circle of stones, and the batfaced trader in bowls and pots called Met who always used to give us a bit of stumpcandy.

Again we rested up for a few hours, and then began to climb once more. The air was getting much colder now – or at least it seemed cold then: it was nothing compared to what lay ahead – so we put on those bodywraps and headwraps and footwraps. This took a while, because the little kids didn’t like them and some of them kicked and screamed to stop us from wrapping them. Metty managed to tear his bodywrap with his kicking and struggling, so I had to mend it, and Candy kept pulling off her headwrap: ‘I don’t want it, Mum. It stinks! It makes me feel sick!’ When we finally set off again, we didn’t look like people any more, but strange furry creatures, strange even to themselves, that walked on their back legs and smelled of wet fur and sour stale meat.