As he looked at the men, flanked on one side by him and on the other by the dog, like prisoners being escorted, he could feel his animal side reawakening. In the middle of these woods he felt he was part of the environment, could feel himself becoming one with the wild countryside. He too was becoming wild again, just like the woods, rocks and paths that nobody had ever trodden, paths used only by the wild boar that came down to the soft soil and watering holes at night; wild boar that fought for survival like their fellow mammals and always followed the same route, wearing the ground away to create tracks that resembled human paths. It had been a long time since there were any humans in the area. Apart from the three of them, there was not a living soul there. And there were fewer and fewer hunters to explore the remote parts and stray from the beaten paths. The younger generations didn’t go hunting there any more, having moved far away and left the farms behind, and the older generations couldn’t tackle the steep hills. Deep in the valleys of the hills, nature had become wild once more and the animals were dancing.

Lise had gone up to the balcony. She was planning to do a fifty-by-sixty-centimetre painting. She wanted the light to be coming from the left, so she needed magenta and yellow at the bottom of the canvas, with light blue above it for the sky. She would have to put the bright sun-drenched light in the foreground first, with a softer light for the background. The only problem was that the sun was scorching hot and the paint might dry. She made some sky blue to test it out, but she needed more white to make the pure shade she could see in front of her for the bottom layer. She was starting to sketch when she suddenly heard barking in the distance – yes, just there, on the other side of the hills, a series of quick, deep, rough barks that didn’t sound like a dog. But what other animal barks? She didn’t know. She thought about Franck and the hike he had been so keen to do with his partners, even though it was more than thirty-six degrees and he might get lost, sunburnt, fall, or even have a stroke. She had never seen him as tense or serious as he had been when they left.