The path, in this light, was the scratch of a nail. A brief, battening gust of wind stung her face. She dropped her duffle bag, pulled off her coat and pushed up her sleeve with hands still yellow with iodine. Mrs Spicer hadn’t bandaged the scrapes—it only cost Linda a little pain to bring red blood beading. The cold soon numbed it. What are you doing, Linda Aberdeen? The scent of her blood, and her mother’s.

“I’m here,” she whispered, hoping nothing would answer. “I’ve come.” She turned and saw the beast.

Its pale eyes were bright as lamps with the last sun, its head low; the shadows along its ribs moved and flickered as it breathed.

It did not simply stand on the earth, thought Linda. It was part of the light and the wind, the scrubby trees, the bony hills. It contained them. She could smell the creature: earth and plants, blood and wildness. It lowered its narrow jaw and let out a high, rippling keening.

“Oh, you poor beautiful thing,” said Linda, and stepped off the path.

The creature sprang, but Linda expected that. She caught it bodily—much bigger than a child, but she had learned to hold tight. It was not ethereal now: its fur was greased and matted, its hot carnivorous breath snapped too near her throat. She could not let go. She could never let go. She’d have laughed, if she’d had breath.

Here I am waiting, Mr Scott, and a little something I picked up. I’m sorry, Winston, it followed me home.

Its claws tore her sleeve, and it changed beneath her touch, convulsing and contorting, bones and joints shifting into a creature stranger and ill-formed, multi-limbed, scaled and furred, bat-leathered, draggle-feathered. There had been something in the fruitcake, thought Linda distantly.

When it stopped struggling, the stars had moved on and the moon had risen. The face looking down at hers was a young man’s, though grooved with weariness and hunger. He was wrapped in her coat. All Linda’s strength had leached into the chilly earth.

“What did the old witch tell you, to make you do that?” he said, wondering. The moon silvered his hair—or was it whitening? It haloed him too brightly for mere moonlight, and the shadows around were peculiarly deep and clear, warm-hued beneath him as much as beneath the grasses, as if the same blood flowed through both. The lines on his face had deepened. He wasn’t as young as she’d thought.

“Nothing,” Linda tried to say, but her voice betrayed her: a broken wheeze that wrapped around her heart and clenched, cold. When she reached for him, her arm felt numb and gloved.