With difficulty, Gary climbed into the driver’s seat and pulled it forward. “I’ve picked up a bit here and there. Things happen, people talk. It’s wild country. And a small town.”

“And the Damsons keep things tidy and never liked the Scotts.” I closed the door on him. Gary, my mother is vanishing and I don’t know what I am.

“Bettina,” said Gary.

I looked at him.

“You’re pretty messed up,” he began.

Below everything was that faint strain of friendly fury he had always inspired in me. “Thank you,” I answered crisply.

“Tina,” he said.

I sighed. His face was too white in the thin glow from dashboard and the kitchen windows. “Gary?”

“Sleep well,” he said. “Don’t go … digging things up, okay?”

“I won’t.” I was afraid there wouldn’t be anything to find. “Drive safely.”

“I’ll be just down the road,” said Gary.

VI’S STORY

THE SOUL OF THE BONE HORSE

This is the story Gary got later from Vi Damson, his grandmother, who still lived by the fringes of Woodwild, with few visitors except Old Pinnicke. Nevertheless, she heard a great deal.

Your parents don’t think it’s nice to talk about these things. Nice. They build half the boundaries in Inglewell: books or wire, it’s all the same. But they might as well be working with their eyes shut. So, someone has to tell you.

You’ve heard of the bone horse? That’s what we called it. Keeping pace with a car in the night, or—worse—in the daylight through burned scrub, where the light strikes rust-red, iron-grey, chalk-white from its head and flanks.

It’s older than me. Older than your great-grandfather. Something like it got around in my grandmother’s time, although her letters make it sound smaller.

Stories try to make sense of a land in lots of ways, especially when they’ve first got their hands on it. Maybe it started as an explorer’s horse. Or there were those camel traders. Likely it just began as a pile of bones, resting. You’ve seen those heaps glimmering white in the trees, so old but never scattered, never dragged away, never properly decaying because they’re still lived in.

People talk about spirits of place, but this is different. It’s collected the bits and pieces of everything that’s been done, and patched them together, then got up and wandered around, breaking fences in the night. Probably doesn’t know what it’s looking for.

This is what happened after that business at Woodwild: