The new her, the Mary that was slowly emerging under the bright sun and pale moon of here, was made of different stuff. Maybe the old Mary was right, but there’d be no long-suffering social worker to dig her out this time. What she did now actually mattered. It was for keeps.

Up and down another ridge, the sparse woodland clinging to its flanks providing little cover for either of them. She looked behind her, saw nothing, and pressed on.

Almost immediately, there was a howl that sounded like it was right behind her. It wasn’t ridiculous. They’d come out of the woods at her and Dalip like they were ghosts before. So what should she do if they were just over the last rise? How was she going to slip to the side, so they’d miss her completely?

By doubling back on herself.

It felt so wrong, running towards the threat, not away. Any moment, the wolfman and his two pets would be standing in her path, blocking her way, forcing her to the ground with fists and feet and claws and teeth. She ran parallel to the ridge line, where the exposed rock rose from the thin soil like broken bones, and at a place where two huge boulders almost met, she climbed back up and squeezed herself through the gap to the other side.

‘Do not move,’ said the voice in her ear, close enough that she could feel his breath against her hair. ‘Do not speak. They might not be able to see you, but they will be able to hear you.’

Mary froze. The shadow unwound around her, covering her, as if a black veil had dropped over her face. She could still make out the landscape bathed in bright moonlight, but she was one step removed, as if she was watching it rather than living it.

Stone scraped on stone, close by. A clatter of pebbles, a heavy footfall as they steadied themselves. Hard breathing, a soft groan. The patter and pad of an animal and the cackle of a chain looping and straightening.

The wolfman walked right by her, looking into the slit of space afforded by the boulders. The moon shone silver off his wolfskin hood, and his breath condensed in the air in a glowing, transitory cloud. The nearest wolf stretched towards her hiding place, nose in the air, drinking deeply of the night’s scents.

She was in plain sight, and yet it was still searching for her. Nostrils twitching, teeth partly bared, muzzle turning in tiny angles; it knew, it knew she was there, precisely within a single leap of her, and it could do nothing. Confused, it let out a whimpering growl and put its head down in an acknowledgement of failure and submission.