On either side of the drive the trees formed a sombre, impenetrable wall. He flashed the light in there from time to time to look into that dark labyrinth of trunks and its smooth, undulating white floor. It looked so luxurious, that interior, in spring and summer when the forest floor was a carpet of emerald-green sphagnum scattered here and there with cones. And in winter, in the thin morning sun, it looked so secretive and cosy between the pines that he envied the white-tails the beauty and simplicity of their domain. He sure liked to hunt in there. Stepping like a ghost over the deadfall, knowing the snap of one tiny twig would make the difference between coming home empty-handed or dragging back a deer with a rack on it like a tree. Yes, it was a different world all right, but he knew how to move around in it.

As he swung the flashlight back onto the trail ahead, the beam clipped something dark, moving quickly behind a fallen trunk. He swung it back and stopped in his tracks. Whatever it was it wasn’t moving until he did. He switched off the flashlight and listened, waiting for it to break cover in the silence. Despite the snow, the darkness was profound and for some reason Daniel Hawk began to feel uneasy. This wasn’t like him. He’d walked up and down this trail in the dark more times than Imelda Marcos had visited a shoe store and he’d never even flinched at the sounds of the night.

Now, however, he wasn’t enjoying the dark at all. For a few seconds there was no sound at all, then a rustling noise came from his right, in the trees on the opposite side of the road to where the shape had been. He switched the light on quickly and swept the beam across the dark regiment of wood. Movement again. Behind a tree. Daniel was puzzled. Were there two animals in there, either side of him? Nothing could have moved so fast as to reach the other side of the track and be well into the cover of the trunks in the time the flashlight was off. There had to be two. As if to answer him a branch ten feet up a pine rustled and bounced wildly ahead of him, shaking the snow from it in tiny waterfalls. It made him start, taking a breath of bitingly-cold air sharply into his lungs. This was crazy. Animals both sides and something up there in the branches. Daniel wasn’t liking this. Animals didn’t roam around in little gangs, keeping abreast with humans, their most fearsome and universally-loathed predator. Crazy.

He put the flashlight under his arm, cupped his big gloved hands over his mouth and hollered. ‘Go on. Whooooo! Gerrroutta here!’