It was Anne who broke ranks first, walking into the clearing to inspect the unexpected sight.

“There are boot prints still visible here,” she said, pointing to the indentations in the snow, “softened by the last snowfall, but still present. Someone has visited here recently—last night or perhaps early this morning.”

Emily looked at the prints as she walked around the stone to the other side. The horizontal stone was set so high that it met Emily between her breastbone and her waist.

“I was half expecting them to be the same as the ones I saw in the graveyard, but they are much bigger,” she said. “And these are the prints of a man’s boots, I suspect. What’s on the table?”

“Food,” Anne said, brushing a layer of powdery snow off a loaf of bread, some apples and a bottle of cider. “Left by the owner of those boot prints, I’d wager, for they are not rotten or spoiled.”

“Perhaps an offering.” Emily picked up an apple and took a bite out of it. “Usually when a child is born, or someone has died, folk still leave out gifts to the old gods, just as they would never forget to talk to the bees and tell them their news for fear of offending them.”

“Who would have thought it important enough to leave this here in weather like this?” Anne wondered, running her gloved hand along the surface to clear off more snow. In truth she had been expecting to find more strange markings, but there were none that she could see, just the smooth limestone she was so familiar with. “Not even Tabby would come all the way up here in this weather to honour the hidden folk.”

“Top Withens is the closest house,” Emily said. “Even so, there is nothing here to suggest what it might have been that shook Agnes Fielding so badly.”

“Who do you think made this altar?” Anne asked.

“No one, most likely,” Emily said. “It looks strange, I grant you, but this formation is hardly any different from those at Alcomden Stones—it is just that it is on its own and hidden away by trees. It most likely has always been here, or at least since a great wall of ice left it this way thousands of years ago.”

“Another thing to note,” Branwell said, “is the trees themselves. Scandinavian pines are not indigenous to these parts, but have most likely been deliberately cultivated. I would suggest that the trees were planted around these stones some forty or fifty years ago, with an aim to keeping them from public view, perhaps for some kind of ritual.”

Anne and Emily looked at Branwell.

“Branwell, what an intelligent suggestion!” Emily said.

“There is no need to sound quite so surprised,” Branwell said. “I do have my uses still.”

“See how it benefits you, not to be inebriated?” Anne said.