I freeze.

‘Mothga?’ I say.

The rising sun flashes in hazy stripes through the trees. Am I imagining it? Wishful thinking …

I stare at Harby’s blue bandage in the sinkhole. I inch closer to the edge, calling his name softly.

The cry comes again. Unmistakeably human. I think of Dara in the hospital. His tiny screwed-up face. And I know what I should do. I know what Harby would want me to do. Harby cared more about finding his sister than about anything else at all. ‘Make safe!’ I whisper. I grab the spear and backpack and run around the sinkhole, down the hill towards Mothga’s cries.

Between the trees I can see the river twinkling in the early morning sun. A few steps further and I can see the Pinnacle, huge and grey and solid like it always is. The sight of it calms me, unchanged and unchanging. The cries have stopped. I stand on the ridge, hidden amongst the trees, and I stare downstream, then upstream again; I catch a movement out of the corner of my eye.

A man steps out from behind the Pinnacle.

I drop down into the bracken, my breath catching in my throat. The Shadow Man.

There’s that sound again, closer, so much closer, the sound of the baby crying. My heart pangs.

Cautiously I peek out of my hiding place.

The man is huge, dressed in animal skins, his beard long and dark. He’s standing waist-deep in the fast-flowing water. In his enormous hands, squirming and crying, is a tiny baby.

I clap my hand to my mouth. ‘Mothga,’ I breathe.

MOTHGA

I feel like I’m turned to stone; I can’t take my eyes off the man and the baby. Without warning, he throws back his head and roars, a long, wordless sound. The baby screams, tiny naked arms and legs jerking in the man’s grasp.

He can’t, he mustn’t see me but I’m frozen to the spot. The man has fallen silent and he’s scanning about him with a kind of fierce intensity, like he’s looking for something … or someone. I shuffle lower into the bracken, still watching.

He takes a couple of splashy strides and dumps the baby down on a flat dry boulder. He turns and wades through the river, right towards my hiding place. My heart thuds in my ears but I’m too scared to move and I don’t even know if he’s seen me. When he reaches the shallows, he stops abruptly, water streaming off his thighs. I hold my breath. Has he seen me? He looks back at the crying baby. I see his hunter’s eyes narrow, his hands clench into fists. I’m shaking. What’s he going to do? What’s he going to do?

And suddenly he’s shouting again, and I have to bite down on my knuckles to stop myself screaming. I see spit fly from his mouth. He falls to his knees right there in the river and he shouts and he hits the water and hits the water and hits the water with his huge fists. Splashes leap around him, sparkling in the sunlight, mixing with drops of blood from where his hands are getting cut on the hidden rocks. But he doesn’t seem to notice. On the boulder the baby wails and wails, pink legs kicking in the air. Mothga!