He saw us off into Third Mile Wood from the back gate. A sun that looked shrunken white by its own heat stood above the trees, challenging breezes to cool the day down. The treetops flamed green, lending the foliage they shaded a secretive glow. Silhouettes of leaves crept back and forth on tree trunks, seeking crevices in the bark. On the forest floor, shadows passed over one another like a magician’s hands, elaborating the patterns of fallen leaves. Perhaps some or all of this was why my aunt kept glancing away from the path, unless she was tempted by the shade. A long curve led to a further unshaded stretch, and my aunt said “Say whenever you’ve had enough, Patrick. So long as you can find your way back I can always go on by myself.”

“Don’t you want me to come with you?”

“Why in anybody’s name wouldn’t I want that?” Her laugh was as hasty as her answer. “I wouldn’t like to be blamed for giving you sunstroke, that’s all.”

“I’ve never had it.” Since she was equally hatless I said “Have you?”

“All right, I don’t suppose we will,” my aunt said more impatiently than I thought was called for. “I expect we’re protected enough.”

She looked as if she felt she’d either said too much or ought to say more, and I wondered if her concern about sunstroke had left me feeling vulnerable to the relentless heat. My uninvited sensitivity made a mass of agitated shadows seem to dodge from tree to tree beside the path as though keeping pace with us. Or perhaps my aunt’s behaviour was affecting me, and eventually I said “What are you looking for?”

“Nothing I haven’t found already, Patrick.”

I thought this could mean she planned to show me aspects of the woods that had set off her imagination, like the inverted hooves and the log she’d said was waiting to be turned over, but she had yet to speak again by the time we heard voices ahead. They were high as birdsong, though I’d heard none of that for a while – so high that they’d left words behind. In a minute two giggling children appeared around a bend, and then a woman did. “Shush now,” she kept saying, more forcefully as they approached us. “No more hide and seek for you,” she declared as we met on the path.

“It wasn’t just us,” the little girl protested.

“Don’t start fibbing as well or I’ll never bring you here again.”

“It wasn’t,” the little boy insisted. “There was someone and they wanted us to find them.”

“That’s it now. That’s all.” To my aunt the woman said “They won’t be told these days, will they? Ran right off the path where I couldn’t see them, and they know I can’t run after them.”