That night Prue couldn’t sleep. She went to the window and watched the stillness of the farm under the grey-blue spell of evening. The silver symbol on the front of the card glistened in her hand. She imagined the city of Medlock in the south and the mechanical ghosts roaming the streets there. It was natural for Mum to keep her daughter from going off to the city; she’d already lost one child. But if there was some way to bring Francis back, for all of them, shouldn’t Prue grab it with both hands? Shouldn’t she at least try to lift the cloud of gloom that had seeped into every inch of the farm? Craftsman Primrose was leaving in the morning – it wasn’t as though she had time for a debate with her parents, which would undoubtedly end in a no anyway.

She picked up the frame bedside her bed which contained a photograph of Francis. Her brother’s dense, coiled mane of hair, like her own, framed his infectious grin, just like Dad’s, his hazel eyes like Mum’s, dimples in his cheeks like Prue’s. He was leaning against a mechanimal plough horse – they’d just finished adding a turbo to it that morning, then they’d raced it around the farm together for the afternoon and been told off by their parents for not getting the bales made like they were meant to. She put a finger to the scar on his cheek, too faint to see in the picture, but she knew it was there. He had been only one year older than her – the photograph had been taken just a few moon cycles before he became ill. That meant the age he was in the picture wasn’t far off what she was now. The void inside of her tugged terribly.

Again, she looked out the window at the farm and imagined she was sitting with Francis under Haywood’s Oak, the tree Granny Haywood had planted as a girl. In the quiet of night, everything seemed possible. It was like stepping out of time.

Somewhere, not far away, an owl hooed; she knew it was stupid, but it felt as though it was calling to her.

In less than a minute, Prue had put on her best shirt (the one with daisies on, which Francis had mended the pocket of), a woollen jumper and long dungarees, bundled her hair into a messy bun on the top of her head, and gathered a few other items on to her bed: comb, toothbrush, Dad’s home-made rosin soap, underclothes, and her best mini-hand-tool set. She grabbed her bag and stuffed it all in, then remembered the sixpence under her pillow, which she put in her front pocket along with the photograph from the frame and the card. Then she crept downstairs and took the notepad from the dresser.