Normally, I would have approached a pair of missing kids with tact and care, taking it slow so as not to exacerbate any distress. Then, slowly, I would have established who they were while trying to find out, circumspectly, whether their abductors were still in the vicinity.

However, with a couple of tons of enraged fairy tale on our arses, me and Dominic bore down on the girls and unceremoniously picked them up and threw them over our shoulders – practically without missing a step.

Beverley stayed behind us, a hand on my back in encouragement.

‘Faster,’ she said.

I’m young and I’m fit, but an eleven-year-old is still a weight and even down the slope the best I could manage was a lumbering trot. Dominic was keeping level but I could tell by his gasping breath that it was costing him.

We were getting close to the bottom of the slope, but there the replanted area ran out and plunged into the darkness, cliff face to the left.

‘Go right, go right,’ yelled Beverley behind us. ‘Across the river.’

I went right and stumbled forward as the ground fell away, managed to drop the girl before I landed on her, and came down hard on my shoulder in five centimetres of freezing water. I heard one of the girls give a shrill little scream at the cold.

A hand grabbed my collar and pulled me upright – one handed – it was Beverley. She had her other arm around the waist of a girl and once I was safely up she bounded across the river with her as if the girl weighed nothing.

I scrambled after them, my feet slipping on the pebbled bottom of the stream bed, and threw myself onto the opposite bank.

‘Are you all right?’ asked Dominic, but he wasn’t talking to me. He was crouched down in front of the two little girls and checking them for injuries. ‘Can you make a light?’ he asked me as I joined him.

There was a stamping and bellowing from the other side of the river.

‘Not a good idea,’ I said.

Both unicorns were amongst the long grass of the far riverbank, visible as horse-shaped refractions of light and shadow.

Beverley put her hand on my shoulder and stepped forward to face them across what looked, to me, like quite a narrow stretch of shallow water.

‘Yeah,’ she shouted. ‘You want them – you come get them.’

A sapling crackled and split as a horn the length of my arm smashed into it. Hooves smashed down in frustration. But I noticed neither unicorn advanced into the river.

‘Come on then,’ yelled Beverley, for whom de-escalation was something that happened to other people. ‘Get one hoof wet – I dare you.’

Then, with a final snort, they whirled and vanished.

‘Thought so,’ said Beverley. ‘And stay that side.’