Tom had slipped up to his room as soon as he could. It was a warm night, and he opened both his windows and sat on his bed leafing through Margaret Ravenswood’s diary, keeping an ear out for the chimes of the grandfather clock. He did not drift off, reading by the light of three flickering candles, his curtains gently flapping. Leana had come up with him and sat curled by his side, her ears twitching occasionally. She never offered her belly to be rubbed, but instead sat just near enough to him to be tickled if she wanted to be.

In the diary, Margaret described her meetings with Rohenga. The rector’s daughter found him fascinating. He told her more and more about the Samdhya and what they did. They hunted something they called the Knot, but the entries were not very clear about what that might be; it only appeared every so often, but when it did, the Samdhya would muster and ride to find it. Most other times they seemed to feast and hunt the game in the woods.

One day, the diary simply stopped, three days before she was due to marry the awful curate. Tom closed the diary and found himself wondering what happened to her.

Had she run away with the Samdhya? Could a human join them?

Moonlight stole softly through the casement into his bedroom, and he could see almost as well as if by day. The house creaked and rustled, but he could hear no movement that might suggest people. They had all gone to sleep, he surmised; that is, if Jack ever slept.

After his parents drowned, he had stood outside their house, wishing and wishing that time would fall away and that he would be able to walk through the door and they would be there. There would his father be, sitting in the battered armchair by the television, looking busily through some papers for his court case the next day. Tom would come in, and his father would look up and smile. ‘An easy win, this one,’ he would say. And his mother would be in her study, finishing writing one of her lectures, and she would come down and they would have dinner together. It wouldn’t be special, or different; it would just be normal. Cauliflower cheese, roast chicken, frozen peas. Things he had not eaten, the way his father cooked them, for years. He remembered the hum of the dishwasher, the soft orange light on the landing as he went to his bedroom.

A thought came to him. He could ask Jack. He could ask Jack if he could go back. Just once, to see them. He would not be able to touch them, talk to them, but he could see them before they drowned.