‘Harby?’ I try again, slowly moving onwards, watching for movement in the trees on the other side of the gap. The air smells earthy and damp like when Mum digs over the veggie patch.

As I part the long grass and step forward, the ground feels kind of crumbly. I glance down and stumble backwards, gasping in horror. I tremble as I cling on to the trunk of the huge pale tree and just stare.

Right where I was about to step there’s a big empty … nothing. A deep dark hole.

What is it?

Carefully I edge slightly closer and peer at the huge hole – it’s the size of a car. Holding a branch, I lean forward a little to look in; bottomlessly dark. This hole wasn’t here earlier, I’m certain of it. Great big massive bottomless holes can’t just suddenly open up out of nowhere! Can they?

As I stare in bewilderment I remember something Beaky was telling us a couple of weeks ago about a farmer who was in the paper because one night a big hole, a sinkhole it was called, just appeared in one of his fields. Lamont had heard of sinkholes already, he said they happen sometimes when there’s been loads of rain, a bit like landslides. I peer into the abyss – this must be a sinkhole!

Then I notice something awful: in the sinkhole, all caught up in some tangly roots, just a few metres down, is something … blue.

I blink and rub my eyes. But I’m not imagining it. I can see it clearly: it’s Harby’s bandage.

‘Harby,’ I call desperately into the hole. ‘Harby, are you in there?’

No answer.

SINKHOLE

Harby!

I shuffle away from the edge of the sinkhole, piecing everything together in my mind: Harby was upset, he was crying, he probably wasn’t looking where he was running and the sinkhole was so hidden and …

I blink at Harby’s broken spear in my trembling hand; he must’ve flung his spear aside when he fell.

‘Harby!’ I call again, my voice just a shaky little bleat. ‘I’m going to come down there. I’m going to find you.’

As I get closer to the edge, little sods of earth and pebbles loosen and tumble down into the darkness. I hear them land with a distant splosh far far down. The sound reminds me of … I suddenly get my bearings, realising where this place is in my Mandel Forest.

‘Druid’s Well,’ I whisper. When we were little we used to drop pennies in here and make wishes – the splosh sounded just the same. But in my world it isn’t just a huge gaping deadly pit, they’ve built a little wall around it and covered the opening with a criss-cross metal grid. So that nobody falls in, I guess. Oh, Harby! I stare into the darkness.

‘Harby! I’m coming down!’

I take off Dad’s backpack and lay Harby’s spear on the ground next to it.

Above the singing treetops the early morning sky is pale apricot, streaked with gold; it shouldn’t be so beautiful. I take a big breath and try to listen to the birdsong through the pounding of my heart. A familiar sound rises up from the forest – the call of the bird that sounds like a baby crying.