“Cool, huh! But there’s just one thing,” Edwin called. “Everything beyond Medlock looks pretty black to me, and I don’t know the way to your farm!”

He was right. It would be hard to navigate by night.

A deep horn sounded in the far distance.

“The evening Gigantrak!” Prue called.

Just outside of Medlock, pale-grey smoke rose in the night sky and fast-moving dots of light travelled swiftly across the landscape. “That Gigantrak goes north to Batterthwaite. Follow it!”

They flew across sweeping fields and glimmering lakes and kept the Gigantrak in sight all the way. It was swift, but Edwin managed to just keep it in sight.

A couple of times Edwin faltered, his wings unexpectedly missing a beat.

“Are you all right?” Prue called.

“I think so – it’s as though all of a sudden my mind is confused, and I feel like I’m back in my stoat body. I’ll be fine, I just have to focus.”

After a couple of hours of increasingly laboured flying, they had reached Batterthwaite. “The next village is Staplefield. Follow the river!” said Prue.

“How are we going to find a stag-man in the dark?” said Edwin. “And what are we going to do when we find it?”

“Well, I don’t think we’ll be able to reason with it,” said Prue.

“Lucky I’m in the body of a lion, then!”

As they flew over North Owlcot, the shape of the landscape in the moonlight was so familiar to Prue.

“Land on the hill over there, behind the trees,” she called. “Let’s find the stag-man before it sees us.”

They looked down on the farm in the valley below. She saw the lights on in her parent’s room, and felt relief that everything seemed all right. They were in there, she was sure. But the creature was somewhere down there too. She scanned the moonlit fields for any unfamiliar shape. Her heart missed a beat in a brief moment of mistaking a scarebot for the stag-man.

“Can you see anything?” Edwin whispered.

She shook her head.

“Where would you hide in waiting if you were one of them?” he said.

“Somewhere close enough to act, but far away enough to hide. Where you can see, but not be seen.” It was suddenly clear: the place where she and Francis hid on so many occasions.

“Haywood’s Oak!” She pointed at the single-standing tree in one of the fields close to the farm. There was nothing there. Then she saw it: a tall shape behind the tree. Antlers, sharp and fierce, tinged with the yellow-orange of the blood moon. It was the stag-man.

“There it is. Now what do we do?” said Edwin. His voice was determined, but Prue felt the quiver in his muscles.