A fresh wave of croaking and cawing eddied across the crowd, perhaps the more anglophone of them translating for the rest. The lead dinosaur’s head cocked at an angle. “Yes-yes,” it said simply. “Good-good. All-seasons-and-skies Mal-welcome.” Then it was addressing its people, punctuating its rapid chatter with corkscrewing twists of its neck and occasional gestures from one taloned foot or fluttering displays from its arms.

“ ‘All seasons?’ You think we’ll be here for a year?” Lee murmured. “Is this…winter for them? Or does it get colder?”

Mal blinked rapidly. “I…All the seasons means…just, time, Lee. As much time as there is, as anything takes. It’s…Their language and their thinking gets really weird with time. There’s now and next season, and then there’s all the seasons.”

Lee moistened dry lips. “Do you mean…forever?”

Mal nodded once, birdlike as the dinosaurs.

“Mal, we can’t be here forever.” She laughed shakily. “Mal, this is…We’re in a forest in the Cretaceous or something. We’re in Walking with Dinosaurs. This is…incredible, Mal. This is amazing. To visit. But we’re not living here. We need the Nissa or whoever they are to send a Stig to pick us up…right?”

Mal said nothing.

“Right?” And abruptly all that panic, which Lee was absolutely not going to give in to, was yammering in her head. “I mean, we were just in London, Mal. We had coffee and cars and Star Trek and books and washing machines and takeaways. Look at them, they’ve just about got…bronze.”

“Actually that’s another lot, over France-ways I think,” Mal said in a small voice. “But they trade for it. I went once.” She sent Lee an almost angry look. “I lived, Lee. I was here four years. The same four years where you had your coffee and washing machines.”

Lee gaped at her. “Are you saying this…that I’ve earned this? Is this fucking revenge?”

“No!” Mal snapped, but Lee was backing away.

She broke into a run, the dinosaurs flurrying apart before her as she cut between the huts, looking for magic doors, for caves that might lead to other worlds, for lamp posts and wardrobes. Looking for anything she might recognize.

When Mal found her, she was by the smallest of the livestock pens, the one furthest out. A couple of the bolder hatchlings had followed her out there to gawp, but Mal shooed them away. She stopped a couple of metres away, hesitating.

“Lee—”

“Look,” Lee said dully. “They’ve got sheep. There’s parallel evolution for you.”

“They’re stolen,” Mal said. “Rustled. A whole flock, including lambs. Got dragged all the way from Bodmin in our world to Bodmin in their world, to here on the migration route—traded for bronze, amber and feathers. Like me.”

Lee stared at her. “They sold you?”