She carried her torch, her AirWave and a phone that still had some charge. One question remained unanswered – two, if she included that of what this night would bring. She’d wait for both answers out here, away from the others. She’d fought enough and done enough; if the Tatterskins returned tonight there’d be no chance for any of them.

There was a third thing, too; not a question, but a knowledge she wouldn’t share. Not for a long time; perhaps never. Depended on who, if anyone, needed to know.

At the Height, she swept ice and snow from a picnic table and sat down. She had a handful of treats in one jacket pocket; she fed a couple to Reuben, stroking his hair, and he rested his head on her thigh. He likes you, Madeleine had said.

She wouldn’t think of Madeleine, not just now. There’d be time enough for grieving in the days to come.

The sun became a line of red and disappeared; the sky turned black. A million or more pin-prick stars spread out across it like glittering dust. Down in Thursdale, Barrowman Farm’s windows glowed.

Reuben whined and nuzzled her, so she fed him again. Well, she’d been considering getting a dog for a while now. Might do her good, to let someone in at last, through the closed doors of her home and heart.

Ellie put the AirWave and the phone on the table, pondering which to try first. In the event it was neither, because she heard a faint noise: a steady, regular beating. She didn’t dare admit she recognised it until she saw the helicopter’s navigation lights in the distance, travelling slowly towards the Height.

Ellie fed Reuben another scrap and ruffled his hair again.

“No point telling them,” she said. “Is there?”

Reuben looked at her, tongue lolling, eyes bright. His only concern just now was how long it would take before he received another treat. Hard not to envy that.

And what would she tell them, anyway? Any of them? How the Eye had stared into her, she into it and how they’d understood one another? How she’d realised that it had closed not because they’d stopped the Dance, but because the time simply wasn’t right yet? The Tatterskins could have danced all week and still it would have slept on – for a month, a year, a century, a millennium, Ellie didn’t know. That was the worst of it. All the death, Madeleine’s sacrifice – none of it had mattered. Next winter, the one after, the one after that, it would start again. Another frozen body in the snow. And in a year, a century, a thousand years, beside one particular body, etched in charcoal, would be the Phoenician letter hē.