The shadows spin around Tom in a whirlwind, the vague shape of arms appearing within the mass of darkness, clutching at his body and pulling him down.

Still the words fly from my mouth. ‘Eko eko azarak, eko eko zomelak!’

I chant and chant, and then my arms drop and somehow I know it’s done.

Tom writhes on the ground and the shadows pull apart and twist around on themselves, forming a long thin funnel that whips about his body. He yells and a narrow stream of darkness pours into his mouth.

‘Tom!’

He groans deep in the back of his throat and I turn away, afraid he will stare at me with bulging eyes, his face fixed in a grimace.

A window smashes overhead, glass shattering everywhere as a huge black seabird crashes into the room. The pane opposite breaks as another bird flies inside, and then another. More and more of them follow until the air is full of cormorants. They beat their powerful wings and I hold up my arms and shield my face. The birds screech and dive, their sharp bills snapping at the shadows and driving them away.

One of the cormorants does a somersault mid-air and lands before me. I look down, but it’s not the webbed feet of a seabird I see. On the ground are human feet: bony and dirty, the thick toenails curled under. I look up and a woman in a tattered black dress stands before me, a pair of huge, feathered wings protruding from her back. Long dark hair hangs about her shoulders, tangled with feathers and bits of fishbone. Her cheeks and forehead are covered with a spiderweb of black veins and her eyes are completely white. No pupils, no irises, yet somehow they are looking right into me.

She opens her lips and the cry of a seabird comes out. I stare, unable to comprehend what I’m seeing, and she shimmies her shoulders and repositions her feet on the floor. Her long white throat undulates and she makes a wet, convulsing rasp, like she’s gulping down a fish. This time when she opens her mouth, a cracked voice fills the room.

‘We heard your ca-a-all.’

The words are sharp and stuttering, as if she hasn’t spoken for centuries. Too shocked to wonder what she means, I stare at her face. Her mouth changes shape, her lips stretching thin and making the tendons of her neck stand out. She repeats the motion, her lips twitching up at the edges like she’s trying to smile.

‘We found you – sister.’

She lisps the last word, her tongue poking out between her teeth as if she’s forgotten how to shape the letters. I glance at Tom, who lies on the ground covered with black feathers. Instead of seabirds flocking around him, there are dark-haired women. Somehow I know that they won’t hurt him, even before I see one of them stroke his forehead.