‘Is that a caterpillar?’ Safa asks in simple curiosity. Ben and Harry glance over, expecting to see something big and grotesque, and they’re not disappointed to see a big, grotesque, hairy, bulging, striped thing stuck on the side of a tree. Over a metre long and with a body as thick as one of Harry’s legs. ‘I’m allergic to caterpillars,’ she says conversationally. ‘I get a rash.’

‘You’ll get more than a rash from that thing,’ Ben says in a voice that also sounds entirely too normal and disconnected from the weirdness he still feels inside.

‘Big, isn’t it?’ she says, staring round in what must be the most awesome understatement ever made.

‘Noisy,’ Harry remarks. ‘Malaya in forty-one . . . that was noisy too.’

‘Bit further?’ Safa asks them both. Harry nods. Ben shrugs, almost fatalistic in mood.

They stop talking as an armoured thing waddles from the undergrowth. Like an armadillo crossed with an anteater and bred with a tank, but it doesn’t pay them the slightest attention. They turn constantly at the sounds of motion around them. Ben jerking nervously, Harry and Safa both calm and assured. They move on, stopping every few steps to stare and gawp at something else, like the thickness of the vines climbing the trees and the oversized ferns and other flora abundant everywhere the sun can penetrate.

Butterflies too. Bigger than they are used to, but not as big as the caterpillar they saw, which makes Ben think it wasn’t a pre-metamorphosis caterpillar at all.

‘Head back,’ Harry says, breaking the reverie. He stretches his back out, looking up at the canopy. ‘I can normally tell the time of day, but getting nowt here . . .’ he trails off quietly.

‘What’s that?’ Ben asks, pointing off to the right to some black things hovering in the air and juddering with a movement that’s frantic and panicked in a way he recognises but can’t seem to understand.

‘Don’t know,’ Safa says, walking towards the objects. ‘What are they?’

A dozen or so of them seemingly vibrate in mid-air in the space between two trees. The three stay side by side watching until a subtle but distinctive sound brings them to a stop.

‘That was a step,’ Safa mouths, turning slowly to look at Harry, who nods and holds a hand up, signalling them to be quiet.

‘Could have been anything.’ The words leave Ben’s mouth with the air from his lungs vibrating through his voice box, which creates the sound and formation of words that are projected across the distance and used by whatever is behind them to mask another step being taken. Silence again and they hold position with Harry inching slowly round to stare behind.

‘Anything?’ Safa whispers. Another shuffling step is taken as she speaks.