‘Where are we going?’

‘To the rock of despair,’ he replied, as though that explained everything.

The gorge they were in was perhaps two feet wide, and the ground sloped down, sinking lower and lower, so the tops of the cliffs loomed higher and higher above them. The gorge narrowed and they had to turn sideways to squeeze through.

‘What happens if we get stuck?’ Harri asked as they edged on.

‘I guess we stay here until we lose weight,’ Elliot replied with a dark smile.

Another seemingly dead end, but this time Harri spied a tiny opening at the bottom of the rock face. Elliot dropped to his belly and crawled inside.

‘Come on,’ he said. His voice echoed out of the opening as his feet vanished into what looked like a stone mouth.

Harri’s heart pounded and her palms grew moist as she dropped onto her front. She clasped the cube in her left hand and used her elbows to drag herself into the small aperture.

‘How did he find this place?’ she asked as she moved into darkness. She wanted to hear another voice to know she wasn’t alone.

‘I think it’s something of a local secret,’ Elliot replied from some unseen place. ‘My dad brought me here ages ago. When I was little.’

Harri tried not to think of the millions of tons of rock suspended above her, or the ease with which she could be entombed and never found, and instead focused on following the sound of Elliot’s dragging feet. She moved into complete darkness and for a moment couldn’t see even the faintest outlines of form or shape, but the void didn’t last long and soon she was rewarded with dim light. She crawled into Elliot’s shoes.

‘Are you OK?’ she asked, fearing he was stuck.

‘Yes. Just give me a second,’ he replied.

He hauled himself out, and light suddenly illuminated the tiny tunnel. He leaned into the mouth and said, ‘This is it. We’re here.’

He helped Harri pull herself out of the opening. They were at the bottom of a well. It was a rough circle, perhaps twenty feet in diameter, cut into a solid rock cliff whose top was some two hundred feet above them. The walls were slick with run-off from an unseen stream, and they were so deep there was nothing but lichen on the surfaces. The only notable thing in the well was a nine-foot diameter boulder that was pressed against the north wall.

‘This place is called Lud’s Church. Puritans used to come here to worship in secret to avoid persecution. Legend says the authorities dropped this boulder from the top of the well to block the entrance to Pilgrims Cave, so they called it the Rock of Despair because it prevented them from being near their god,’ Elliot said. ‘Give me the cube.’

Harri hesitated, before handing it over.

Elliot looked at it reverently.

‘Now we see whether my dreams were real. Whether the promise can be kept.’