It cannot be true that the pure souls are drawn skywards to paradise by the moon, and the wicked ones fall in a fit on the ground to be transformed into beasts – the line cannot be drawn as simply as that, because how then would you explain the fishermen who became deer and the girls who became foxes?

There must be exclusions, exemption clauses, extenuating circumstances – a means to justify doing bad for good reasons, when your judgement day comes.

Or maybe it is easier to believe that no one watches over us anyway. That when we die, we just end. Perhaps that’s kinder to both the hunter and the hunted.

So, come, say the girls’ voices, lifted in song. Come one man to set all the women free. Bring forth a fellow who did not listen when Proverbs told him to keep thee from the strange woman. Bring forward the man who thinks himself exempt. Deliver to us a betrayer, a turncoat, a traitor, a man of violence, either of the hand or the mouth. Come a man that would have fallen and writhed upon the ground and become a snake anyway. Come a man like that.

The branches shift, the ferns whistle at the touch of the wind. Below, the sea rolls in anticipation.

The girls stand ready, naked as virgins; their weapons are themselves.

Their horned god steps forward, into the circle – into their house – a path he does not realise leads directly to hell. A mist settles on the earth, in league with the paltry moon, so they see only his silhouette, the shape of his coat, the coils spiralling from his head, no details of the face. This anonymity makes it easier.

He is an outline. He is a rough idea. He is no one.

The three-part harmony is joined by a fourth voice to deliver a song familiar from chapel. Oh, it is so very hard for girls to dance with a devil clinging to their backs; they must first shake him off.

The horned god is told to move closer, to take his pick, have a taste of their bodies, their weapons.

Though the real weapon, the wooden baton, is concealed behind one back.

As lips meet lips, wood meets skull with a swinging crack, a method learnt at school, beating against the doorframes.

Out you go, and stay you out,

We’re claiming back the day.

A scream goes up and the other roamers pause among the pines, if only to blame it on the foxes – always the foxes – before beginning their journeys home, discontented.

The beast thrashes on the ground, it tries to crawl away, and they fumble in the darkness, hold it by the ankles. Still the beast gargles and will not stop.

Will it ever stop?

They ask for the spirit of St Jade to come now, to give them the courage to go on, to finish what they have started – and she does.