“Sorry, Edwin, I do feel quite rude eating when you can’t. Do you mind?” said Master White.

“Not at all, I’ll do some sketching,” he said, taking a small notebook and pencil from the bag around his body.

“Do you ever miss eating?” asked Prue.

Edwin thought for a moment. “I don’t miss hunger, but I do miss what I think is a memory of what it felt like to enjoy food.”

“Our gardener personifate always said he gets great pleasure out of working the vegetable garden even though he doesn’t get to enjoy the spoils,” said Master White. “Frances, what about the farm your family have – what does it grow?”

Prue told them about the vegetables and fruit they produced, and about the machines she’d built. She felt bad taking all the credit for them when really it was always her and Francis together.

The sweet-berry pie was delicious, almost as good as Dad’s island plum pie. Prue helped herself to a second slice and thought how extraordinary the day had been so far. She was still unsure about the moons and thin wall between worlds, but seeing a bit of qwortzite made the prospect of finding a way to Francis feel closer.

Just as they were starting to pack up, a scream echoed below. They all hurried to the edge to look, apart from Agapantha. Movement attracted Prue’s eye at the forest edge; a personifate hawk swept over from the tower towards a cat who was standing stock-still, pointing to something.

Master White ran towards the steps and the apprentices hurried after her.

They made it down twice as quickly as it had taken them to climb up. By the time they reached the bottom, a master who Prue recognized from the morning was already there, along with several other personifates.

They jolted to a halt as they reached the scene. Prue put her hand to her mouth.

“Oh no,” said Edwin.

“Poor thing,” Agapantha said quietly.

A pearl coloured personifate that looked like a winged rabbit was lying limp and lifeless in the ferns. Its belly was ripped open, revealing the inner wires, synthetic muscles and mechanical workings. It was distressing to see the complex components hanging out and ripped apart, but also to think this poor personifate had died again.

“What happened, Master Tinubu?” Master White said, her voice hoarse.

“Go ahead,” Master Tinubu said to the personifate cat.

“I was taking a walk about the grounds, when the white fur of this poor jackalope caught my eye,” the cat said sadly.

Edwin slumped against Prue’s leg.

The personifate cat shook her head. “I think she was called Rayana. She had just joined the messengers. She’d not even been in her second life for a full moon cycle.”

“I know her,” said Master White. She swallowed hard, her eyes filming. “I harnessed her.”