I’m just about to let the door flap fall closed when I notice something glinting in a stray shard of moonlight, something small and white and glowy, right in the furthest corner of the hut. I hesitate, squinting into the darkness. What is that?

I step slowly into the hut, the entrance flap closing behind me. Inside, the hut is so dark. I edge towards the moonbeam and the curious little white thing glowing there. I bend and cautiously pick it up; it’s very small, it feels … familiar. I examine the thing in the thin strand of moonlight and I gasp.

It’s a tooth! ‘A deertooth!’ I whisper in the dark. A deertooth! Just like my deertooth! The one I found in my Mandel Forest! I pat at my shorts pocket, feeling for the familiar shape of my own deertooth; still there. I shuffle back out of the hut into the moonbrightness, to show Harby what I’ve found.

He’s still just standing there, right where I left him, staring at the smouldering fire. ‘Hey!’ I say as I approach him. ‘Look at this, Harby.’

I hold out the deertooth to him on my palm.

He starts back, as if in fear almost.

‘What is it, Harby? What’s wrong?”

Then he steadies himself, reaches out his hand and takes the deertooth. He lifts it up to the moonlight and stares at it, wide-eyed. I notice that this deertooth has a little tiny hole in it too, just like the one I found before. I reach towards my pocket to show Harby my deertooth too, but suddenly he grabs my wrist.

‘Mothga,’ he says breathlessly. ‘This Mothga deertooth!’

‘Mothga’s deertooth?’ I repeat. Why would a baby want a deertooth?

His grip tightens. Harby stares at me; I can’t read his look. Confused? Angry? Scared? ‘Ma,’ he whispers. ‘Ma make Mothga deertooth. Ma? Where Ma?’

‘Ma?’ I answer. Now I’m confused. ‘I thought we were looking for Mothga?’

He drops my wrist and stares all about him wide-eyed; he looks suddenly very very … little … like a lost little boy. ‘Where Ma?’

I NOT MEMBER

‘Ma?’ I say. ‘Is Ma your mum? Do you remember your mum, Harby?’

He blinks down at the deertooth in his hand and his face turns suddenly pale, like he’s just seen a ghost. ‘Ma,’ he says, and he curls his fingers into a fist around Mothga’s deertooth, squeezing his eyes tight shut. ‘No. I NOT member! NO!’

‘Harby,’ I say. ‘Try to remember! It’s important!’ My mind starts racing – if Harby can remember where his mum is then surely she’ll have Mothga with her. Maybe she’ll even help me find my way home! I joggle his arm, my heart trills in excitement. ‘Come on, Harby, try!’

But Harby shakes me off and starts that low hummy chanting, like he did to ward off the bear. What did he call it? His spirit song. But this time his spirit song is faster, desperate and feverish. I strain my ears to understand, but I can’t; it’s almost like he’s locked me out.