Vince moved out of the trees and started walking around the pond. The ground was marshy and his boots sank in, stinking water seeping inside. He kept his eye on the Kin, watching to check its reaction, ready to turn and run the other way if it seemed at all threatening. He didn’t think it was. After a long time living in the Fold, he had only had cause to fear the Kin a couple of times, and he believed that both times were his fault.

Vince wasn’t sure just how long he had been shut away in this place. No two days felt the same length, and there was little other way of marking the passage of time. His phone had ceased working a day after he was trapped here, and his watch followed thirty hours later, battery bleeding dry. He’d started trying to track the passing days by scratching marks on the cave wall, but he’d forgotten a day or two, then forgotten that he’d forgotten, and then one day had felt like six. After that he saw little point.

Months, for sure. Probably a year or two. Every single day of his confinement—a natural day or one extended by the Fold’s strange physics—he thought of Angela, and he mourned for her because he was becoming more certain day by day that he would never see her again. The Fold was somewhere else.

All of which made trying to find his way back the only thing that kept him alive. He’d come to believe that communicating with the Kin might be the only chance he had.

As he approached the wounded creature he started whispering, as if talking in subdued tones to a wounded animal. “There, don’t worry, I won’t hurt you, just coming close to see if I can—”

The Kin hissed. Vince froze, still ten metres away, ready to turn and run. He thought it was female, her body wiry and strong. And covered in scars. He wondered how many times Grace had hunted her and taken her down, biting a chunk of meat from her body before letting her limp or crawl away. What would that do to a mind?

“I only want to help,” he said, holding his hands out.

“Fuck off, human.” Her voice was deeper than he’d anticipated, a heavy growl rattling like stones in a tin. “Why can’t she eat you? Huh? You got some sort of agreement with her? Some arrangement?”

Vince shook his head. No agreement, no arrangement, he thought, but he had often wondered the same thing. Why didn’t Grace bite chunks out of him?

The only reason he could think of was that he would not heal.

“Let me have a look at—”