The charred rocks had been dispersed, true, but it didn’t take her long to find the spot where they had presumably ringed a fire as recently as the night before. Some little way off, the grass was flattened in a near perfect rectangle of about six by three feet.

Something glinted in the grass. She squatted down and realized on closer inspection that it was a shell casing, and just as she had pulled on a latex glove and was about to pick it up, she froze at the sound right behind her.

It was no branch snapping. And no twig. It wasn’t even leaves rustling in a way the wind could never make them do. What it was, she didn’t know. Maybe it was just her imagination. Even so, she put her hands in the air and turned around slowly to stare straight into his black eyes.

The stag was standing only a few feet away from her and seemed at least as surprised as she was. She was struck by how majestic he was with his big antlers and jet-black eyes, which stared at her as though he could read her mind.

The bang was loud, but the accompanying echo made it impossible to pinpoint its origin. It was the whooshing sound, cutting through the air right in front of her face, that made her realize someone had shot at her. The bullet hit the grass a few feet to her left as she dived right. The stag was already gone, as though it had never existed.

She crawled through the grass, trying to collect herself. A normal rifle bullet travelled about eight hundred yards per second, more than twice the speed of sound. But the bang, the whooshing sound and the impact had happened more or less simultaneously, which meant the shooter couldn’t be more than about fifty yards away.

She’d been lucky. As that realization sunk in, shock took over. But there was no time for shock now. Now, she had to get away as quickly as possible. If only she could have spotted him through the tall grass. But she didn’t dare get to her feet, so she kept crawling at a perpendicular angle from the bullet’s trajectory.

She could only hope he could see neither her nor the grass around her move. If she could just get out of the open clearing and back into the forest, the trees would hide her and she could go around and come at him from behind.

Then one more shot rang out, and another.

She froze and was holding her breath while doing a mental inventory of her body to make sure she hadn’t been hit when she heard a dull thud. A sound that scared her a lot more than the gunfire.