Four of them, sometimes five – a dog or a spoiled cousin. Their lives are exquisite yet they long to escape something unnameable that compels them to leave home on the first day of the holidays: it’s a scorcher say the boys, and Cook has packed a hamper. As if these are reasons enough for what follows.

The girls must leave a note with full directions and a map of the adventure, with the time Mother and Cook should expect them back. Just like girls to dally! 

Then off they trot, the boys and the girls plus cousin or dog, and after a jolly good slog it’s the girls who want to stop. Just like girls to nag!

So the boys find an island in the last of the light, or map the best way up a mountain before tea, or reach a clearing in the forest’s heart that waits for their knapsacks.

The boys now must plan how they’ll attack tomorrow, tell the girls to take charge of domestic arrangements so the boys can rest their clever heads. The girls make up beds from bracken – there’s always bracken – and moss, just the right amount, to make beds soft for sleeping. And their make-do home for the night? Let’s say it’s a handy cave with a floor of sand, but it could just as easily be a hollow tree, an abandoned rustic’s hut, a caravan of red and gold. The boys’ choice will always be the right one, and will always, somehow, be waiting for them just when they need it.

Wherever they are, the girls must sweep the place, their brooms fashioned from twigs left from the firewood supply which the girls gathered quietly, for they mustn’t chatter, the boys say, while the boys do the hard work of thinking. And so the girls sweep, and while sweeping they speak in language they have learned every day of their short lives: wordless, urgent.

Their thinking done, the boys light the fire so the girls can cook the boys’ supper. The flames catch as they never fail to for the boys who keep the matches from the girls. Just like girls to moan!

And the girls should be busy anyway – there’s supper to find! Born to find berries blindfolded in every wilderness, these girls, and now the boys are sleeping, and when the girls have washed and dried and put away the supper things, and washed and dried and darned the clothes, they agree: they need to leave.

They creep, these girls, to the back of the cave, to the roots of the tree, under the caravan, to the hut’s hidden attic, and dig up the knives buried while sweeping. The knives pressed on them by Mother, by Cook, by the women they passed on their way who worried. Just like girls to be afraid!

They retrieve the berries they gathered, the poisoned and the safe. They light torches of moss from the fire that must never burn out, never leave them in darkness. Then they’re off. They take the cousin or the dog, and sweep their prints as they go. Just like girls to scope the exits!

Before going to the pub, I take a quick stroll, to pluck up courage.  Turn along the lane out of the village, my smart shoes softly tap-tapping on the tarmac. A few early stars shine bright in the clear autumn sky and my stomach does somersaults. Internet dating? Me? I must be nuts. I nearly walk back to the farm, then and there.

I stride the grassy track leading uphill, dew speckling the ends of my trousers. My daughter’s words come to mind. Too old to pick and choose, she’d said. Try it. You’re not going to meet anyone new, milking those ruddy cows every day.

I sigh, catching a whiff of my freshly ironed shirt, all mixed in with the smell of bracken in the hedgerows. She’s right. I need a woman. Need a change. Need to get out the damn door, once in a while. Five years since my wife Morwenna died. All I’ve done in the meantime is run the farm. Dawn until sundown, five years straight. Going out for a meal with someone would be good for me.

I stop dead, at the stone. This seemed enormous to me when I was a child. It towers ten foot high – a rounded oblong shape that seems out of kilter with the moorland landscape around it.

Blisland Stone. Tourists call it the Jubilee Rock. We villagers simply know it as the Stone.

I run my work roughened hands over the lichen-bearded granite. The rock is covered with carvings, like tattoos on a fairground freak. Some are relatively recent: coats of arms from rich families at the turn of the century.

The Stone is older than that, though. In fact, it’s the most ancient piece of granite on Bodmin Moor. Some say it predates humankind.

I crouch at the back of the Stone, feeling down for the secret symbols half-hidden by long strands of grass. Here there are jagged lines, off-centre squares, oddly dotted circles. The information board they’ve put up says these could be runes, dating from Viking times.

I know better, or think I do. 

They’re ancient as the land itself, and they hold power.

I trace one with my finger, squinting in the half-light. Everything is greyed out, shaded to black and white, now that the sun’s rays have gone from the sky. I do what I always do, and run my hand backwards along the line, three times for luck. The lichen crackles into fragments under my fingers.

It’s done, and I’m ready for this bloody date now. I stride back downhill and the lights of the village draw me in like a moth to a bonfire.

A clear night.

And yet, as I walk downhill towards the houses, my skin prickles. A thick mist shrouds the pub. I blink. Sometimes we do get a convection fog up here, in the summer months. Everywhere else in Cornwall can be broad sunshine, and we get a strange white obscurity in the air of the high moors. 

But I’ve never seen it on a crisp autumnal evening. I smell a strange floral scent, but there are few blooms in the hedgerow this time of year. I close my eyes for a second, trying to place it. When I open them again, my vision flickers. Just briefly, as if the world itself has adjusted.

It isn’t mist. More like a visual thing. I blink, and feel in the pocket of my wax jacket to check for my glasses. I’m forty-two, and like to think I don’t need them. I’ll be lucky if any woman’ll want me.  

 

I stand at the door of the Blisland Inn and my heart races. John Hick, out on a date with a stranger. I breathe in deep, and push open the oak door.

 

She said in her email that she’d get there at seven o’clock sharp and go to the table by the window. Well, I’m never on time and I know it’s a bad start to any relationship, but I walk straight across the pub floor to the bar. I can’t do this without a pint of ale in my hand. My mouth waters. I don’t look left or right, but I hear a low hubbub of voices and the crackle of flames from the fire. There’s the smell of woodsmoke and the slate flagstones are smooth under my feet.

You’d think I’d want a date farther away from my own village, my own farm. Away from the prying eyes of neighbours. 

But no – I’m honest, always have been. If I’m dating, I’d rather do it in the open space of my local pub. Let people talk, if they must. I’ve been brought up with these men and women, and they’re all familiar faces.  

I don’t recognise the barmaid as being a local, but that doesn’t stop me ordering a pint of bitter and grasping the glass thankfully. My stomach churns with hunger after a day in the fields.

Hang on. That barmaid. She’s gorgeous.

She stares at me with beguiling green eyes which dance with reflections from the fire behind me. She’s unsmiling and yet her face is fine-featured. Her long fair hair is streaked with silver and I fancy for a moment there are strands of gold along her skin, caught in the wrinkles around her eyes. She wears dangly earrings: on one side is a tiny silver sun, on the other is a wide full moon. I smile, starstruck, and pass her a five pound note. As she spins around to work the till, I breathe out and my heart stumbles to a steady pace. I’d been holding my breath, but don’t know why. This barmaid, she’s not my type, and I’m not here for her, anyway.

Turning, I scan the room for someone sitting on their own. 

A dark-haired woman catches my eye, and waves. I nod, and walk over.

“You must be John,” she says, and I go to take a seat opposite her. 

“Eve, isn’t it?” I put down my pint, and it slops onto the varnished wood of the table. My hands are chattering with nerves and I pull them back onto my knees, stretching out my fingers to ease the tension.

“You nervous?” she asks, and her voice is the same relaxed tone as when she called me on the phone, the other night. Perhaps she thought I was going to stand her up, and she wanted to check the number worked. 

“A bit.” I nod, slowly. “It’s not my thing, this internet dating lark.”

“And I’m your first, aren’t I?” She smiles, and it’s genuine. She’s trying to put me at ease. “It’s nice to be someone’s first. Haven’t been one of those in a long time.”

I chuckle. “Done this before then, have you?”

“Not for a while.” A shadow shifts across her face. “I – I lost someone dear to me. In fact, I’ve lost a few.”

“My wife passed away five year to the day. Daughter signed me up to the website, said it’d do me good.” I smile apologetically and reach for my drink, then pause. “Dunno if I’m ready, but here I am.”

She nods, and tips her head sideways, listening. Her hair’s curly and it bounces on her shoulders. “You’re looking good though, John. I mean, smartly dressed and that.”

I shift in my seat. “Clean shirt, is all. Should’ve seen me when I come off the fields earlier. Live in my overalls most days. Covered in, well, you know. I’m a dairy farmer. Got a herd of a hundred, give or take. Keeps me busy enough.”

“If you’ve been out all day, you’ll need feeding.” She hands me a menu and I reach for it. My hand’s shaking, and she laughs. “Look at that! Shivery with hunger, you are.”

“Let’s see what we fancy.” I open the menu in front of me but the words swim in front of my eyes. I daren’t sip my pint; I’m feeling anxious enough as it is.

Instead, I look at her closely. It was the eyes and the hair that I liked, on her photo, and I still do. Reminded me of someone, from years back. Different from my wife’s red curls and freckled skin, and God knows I need different. 

I landed on this Eve, and I’m not so sure she was telling the truth about herself. Is she like her picture, or no?

I took my photo the day I posted it. Standing in the fields, feeling like a loon, with green fields and blue skies. Looking like the farmer I am. There’s wrinkles on my forehead from the hard winters, and my neck’s thick as a bullock. I wouldn’t win any races, but my forearms are muscled from driving tractors across icy rutted fields.

I thought her photo was an old one, taken when she was younger. I frown, trying to make out what’s clanging in my head like a warning bell. Something’s off. I’ve a gut feeling – like at the auction, when I’m being done over for an animal that’s advertised the wrong age.

“Quick question, Eve.” 

She looks up, eyes all innocent. As she holds the menu, I notice her silver Celtic rings, intricate and beautiful. Suddenly, I can visualise her in bed with me quick as a flash. She’d writhe around, her hair loose on my pillow. I’d hold her tight against my chest, and she’d smell great. 

“It’s silly, really. I just wondered…” 

“I’m not after your money, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

I laugh. “No, it’s just…you’re…looking really good for your age. You’re the same age as me, you know?”

“And how do you know that so exactly, Mr Hick of a hundred cows?”

My laughter tails off. “Well…your age was on the site, see. And I’m forty-two as well.”

She frowns, as if trying to work something out. “Really?”

“Yup. And… you look bloody amazing for forty-two.”

She frowns again, then chuckles. “Honestly. If I was going to lie about my age, I’d have gone the other way, you daft bugger. Pretended to be twenty-one or something.” She puts the menu down. “What’s good here?” she asks.

“Haven’t been here in years, to be honest. But food’s always good.” I close my menu, running my hands over the black smooth cover. “I’ve chosen.”

“And?”

“Steak and ale pie.” I nod toward the bar, gesturing for the barmaid to come and take our order.

“Oh, don’t rush me.” She sips of wine. “I’m making the most of this. My night out. What about the pheasant in red wine?”

“I’ve a herd of cattle, remember? Always recommend the beef, in any form.”

“That’s it, then.” She flashes me a contrary look, and I warm to her. “I’m going for the pheasant, John. I like the wildness of it.”

“Not wild enough though, are they? Farmed down in the valleys, penned and fed up… then let loose to be shot by the posho’s one weekend a year.”

“Can’t put me off.” She unwraps her knife and fork, and they shine against the varnished wood of the table. 

The barmaid’s come for our order and I glance at her. She watches me with her icy green eyes and I can’t look away. Something’s certainly in the air tonight, something special. My blood’s rising. I’m getting so as I want to hold someone tight, and yet I’ve got to play this dating game all evening.

I lean against the hard oak back of my chair. “Steak and ale pie for me, and the pheasant for this young lady.”

“Less of the young, please. I sound like your daughter or something.”

The barmaid scratches her pen on the pad. “And to drink?”

“We’re fine, I think,” Eve says, “Oh, hang on, though.” She tips up her glass, and the red vanishes to the back of her throat. “One more, please. And a jug of water, if I may.” She smiles, waiting for her to leave.

I’m not sure what to talk about, and I fidget. The fire is suddenly too warm, and the room spins. “I don’t feel great.” I say.

“You do look a touch pale.”

I reach for the window next to me, and try to manoeuvre the catch to let some air in. It’s jammed. Damn thing. I give up, and meet her eye.

She talks, as the barmaid brings her wine. “So, tell me about yourself. Not that garbage on your profile. What life really means to you.”

I lean my elbows on the table. “Well, I was brought up here. In the village. Lived on the farm all my life, inherited it young.”

“Did you never want to leave? To travel?”

I shrug. “Nah. Well, maybe…when I was a teenager.” I stop, not wanting to remember. “Before then, though, when I was a kid – living here was heaven. All that moorland, the rivers to muck about in. I love it. Not just the fields and the farm, but the Moor itself. It’s part of me.” I break off, embarrassed. 

“It is gorgeous up here, you’re right.” 

“And whereabouts are you from?”

She smiles. “Funny you should ask. I lived in this village, for a bit, when I was young.”

“Really?” I shuffle my cutlery to one side. I lean closer, staring. “When? I mean, if you’re the same age as me …” 

“Would have been about seven or so.”

I stare at her. Trying to figure it out. Trying to place her. The school’s tiny, and back then it was even tinier. 

“Evelyn? From Miss Taylor’s class?”
I look at her dark curls, smell woodsmoke from the fire, and grip the edge of the table with hands that are white at the knuckle.

I blink, and in my head we’re out there, up on the moors, after school. I’m a boy in short trousers and my hands are black with peat-mud. Evelyn had persuaded me to dam the stream, and she stood in the middle of the water, her red gingham school dress tucked into her knickers, a devil-may-care attitude on her face. I finished, and smile at her, triumphant. The water pooled at her feet and deepened, puddling and trickling at the edges.

“That’s done it.” I smacked pebbles into the gaps, shoved in handfuls of gritty mud. “Water won’t break through this.” 

She laughed, and the water bulged and trickled over the dam. “It’s going anyway, Johnnie. Let’s smash it.”

We’d kicked down the damn then whooped with laughter as the water rushed away downstream, running clear. A skylark called, singing her high-pitched tune. We’d paid no mind.

“What’re we doing next, Evelyn?” I had to ask, every time. And every time it was the same answer.

“Gonna go find the faeries.” She’d leapt out of the water and ran barefoot up the hillside, skipping ahead, her dark hair dancing in the wind. I grabbed her sandals and scrambled after her.

We made it to the top of Rough Tor and I handed her sandals back. We searched among the stones and bushes. 

“It won’t be much,” she said, “Just a little sign. A clump of grass tied in a knot. Stones in a ring. Something like that.”

“Like this?” I squinted at a tumbled cluster of sheep droppings, tried to pretend I knew what she meant.

“Oh, Johnny. You are funny. That’s poo. Not faery-stuff. You’re not looking hard enough.”

At tea-time, my stomach had grumbled, and I’d persuaded her homeward.

I look at the woman opposite me, trying to fit her face to that girl with flyaway hair and a vivid imagination. I frown. Evelyn had moved out of the village mid-way through primary school and my heart had ached with sadness. The other boys were into football; the girls into Barbie princesses. No-one wanted to search on the high moors for faery rings like my friend Evelyn.

She smiles at me, leans forward across the table and I smell her perfume, sharp and sweet. “Do you remember me, Johnny?”

“You knew! You knew, and made me guess!”

“All part of the game, Johnny. All part of the game.”

She has the same eyes. The same hair, if I look closely. 

“I didn’t recognise you, Evelyn. Or are you Eve, now?”

“Well…”

“So? What happened, where did you end up?”

“Oh, we travelled all over, when I was a kid. Then…I had a partner, and a little boy. Went back to college, when we split up. Studied history at Exeter, then a masters in mythology.”

I shake my head. She’s bound to be out of my league. I was never one for the books, myself. “You always were too clever for me. All I am is a farmer. Always was going to be.”

“Nothing wrong with that. You’re grounded. Safe, I mean. You knew where you were going to stay, and you’re right here.”

Her eyes flick to the door behind me and it closes after someone. She tightens her lips and there’s a flicker of recognition in her eyes. I turn my head. A young man in jeans and tee-shirt has walked into the pub. He’s rubbing his eyes as if he’s been out at a rock concert, and he’s only just woken up. 

Her voice lowers. “Look Johnny, it’s complicated, this. My son…I haven’t seen him for a long time. I miss him, you know?”

She startles at the sound of a footstep next to the table. It’s the barmaid with our meals and the food steams on the plates. I unwrap my knife and fork, slowly.

“Any ketchup, or sauces at all?” The woman hesitates.

I shake my head. I want to talk to Eve, learn more about her. Where she’d lived, what she’d been up to, exactly what she’d been studying. My mouth salivates and I breathe in the steam of my steak and ale pie.

Eve’s eyes flash at me as I stab into the golden crust. “Don’t! For God’s sake, don’t eat it!”

The barmaid waits, smiling. Her elfin face looks down at us and I fancy her cruel, suddenly. She waits, like a hungry raven watching baby birds in a nest.

“Eve. You okay? It’s just steak and ale pie.”

“Don’t touch it. Please. It’s a trick.”

I look up. The fire flickers bright green in the grate. Burns down, then flares high, as if snatched by a gust of wind. The people in the room are statue-still, stuck at their tables with cutlery poised in the air like weapons. I gasp for breath, and smell spring wildflowers. Am I having a stroke? Is this it – the end? Too much excitement for a middle-aged man?

“Eve. Evelyn?”

She stares over my shoulder, then straight at the barmaid, as if she knows her, too. She’s cross, or upset, or both. “You tricked me. You said you wouldn’t. You promised.”

The woman smiles gracefully like an apologetic politician. She speaks, and my ears tingle. Now, her voice is silver bells, whistles and flutes, sharp and fine as linnet-song. I clamp my hands over my ears, but I still hear her, as if she’s speaking in my head.

“I never play fair, mortal ones. You should know that, you of all people. And this is so much more fun. Now, look who’s here to join us for dinner.”

Eve waves, frantically, at the person behind me.

“Mum?” The young man’s voice echoes, concerned. “Mum? You alright?”

She stands, knocking her glass over. Red wine splotches her flowered dress. 

“Get out, James,” she says, then switches to a low persuasive tone, “It’s only a dream, love. Don’t stay here. Just go right out that door and you’ll wake up. It’ll all be fine in the morning.”

“Mum?” He says again, but it’s confused this time, and the door slams shut after he leaves. 

Eve stays upright, face-to-face with the strange woman. “You’ve had your game – I’ve seen my son. Now let this one go. Please, your majesty.”

“Oh, my Evelyn. You know the rules, better than I.” She shakes her head, and there’s that scent of flowers again. Night-scented stock, it is. I recognise it from the kitchen garden, back home.

 The woman laughs, and viridescent fire dances around the logs in the grate, and I think I hear pixie-song.

My date stands up for me. “He hasn’t. I swear he hasn’t touched it.”

I look down at my pie. The fork drops from my fingertips.

“Evelyn?” I say. “Where exactly are we? And what happens if I eat this?”
She leans forward, sweeping my meal onto the flagstones of the floor. The plate smashes into shards of white china on the dark slate and the pie-dish sings out a high note. The other diners stay stock-still. If this is a dream – and perhaps it is – then I’m stuck inside of it. With my old friend Evelyn, who I haven’t seen for thirty-five years.

Evelyn looks down, embarrassed. “Well, Johnnie, it’s like this. I had a research project I was working on. Finding evidence. Of ancient myths. And …faeries. It went wrong. I went too far.”

Fear shoots a bolt into my heart. “Who are you?” I ask the green-eyed woman, and I know the answer already.

She laughs, and her eyes are cruel. “I’m the Queen of Fey. You’re mine, like the other one there. Mine until the end of time. If any sustenance reaches your lips, I’ve won you.”

“But he didn’t….” Evelyn’s eyes stop at my pint, sitting on the table in front of me. It’s only four-fifths full.

“Oh yes. Oh yes he did.” She points, and my stomach twists a fresh somersault. I glance sideways at the table, like a naughty schoolboy.

“Hang on, ma’am.” I push back the chair and its oak legs scrape against the stones. The sound pulls me back, and my head clears as if I’ve taken a breath of fresh moorland air. “Just you hang on.” 

I stand taller than her and I hold myself strong, staring her down.

“I’m a farmer from Blisland and I called for protection from the Stone before I came here. You’ve got nothing on me. Look at the table.” 

Both women stare down at the varnished wood.

There’s a mucky puddle of slopped beer around my glass.

“I spilt it. Not like me to chuck good ale around, but I was nervous.”

Evelyn’s eyes widen.

I seize the moment, and reach for her hand. It’s soft, and warm, and for a moment I’m back in my childhood. 

The barmaid, or queen, or whoever she thinks she is, narrows her eyes. 

I haul Evelyn towards me. “We’re leaving.” 

She reaches out for Evelyn and her voice turns to rock. “She’s mine.”

“Not any more,” I say, and dash for the door, holding my date’s hand fast.

I push open the oak door and a burst of fresh air hits my face. My legs feel stronger, now I’m away from that infernal warmth and that strange fire. I breathe in deep and look at Evelyn. Her face is excited and fearful, all at once. There’s a howl of rage from inside the pub, and the sound of a solid table crashing onto the floor.

“Time to head home to the farm. The Stone’s on the way.” 

Tears brim in her eyes. “Am I safe? Am I?”

I look around me at the clear autumn air, and the sprinkling of stars, all in the same places as earlier. A blackbird flits across the green and the sounds fade to the simplicity of a calm night. 

“Yes. We’re back. And she can’t interfere, if I’ve touched the Stone. I always do. No-one can take a Blisland man.”

She smiles, and leans on my shoulder, puffing out a breath of air. “I hoped you hadn’t changed. And you haven’t, Johnnie. Let’s go home.”

Jo grew up here in the town of Lostwithiel. Whenever we visit her parents, our two children repeat what they’ve heard. Lost within the hills, they say, is where we’re going.

A small town in the hills, either side of a tidal river. The river is sometimes just a few metres across, sometimes much wider. It has a bridge that is more than 700 years old. At low tide, the river flows through four of the six arches. At high tide, it flows through five. Two or three times a year, or when it floods, the river flows through all six arches. Last year, it flowed right over the bridge and into the riverside houses.

We come here from London in the holidays and spend a few nights with Jo’s parents, and in summer months the children play in the river, as they do this hot afternoon. It’s mid-tide, the river flowing through four and a half arches. The rough sandy-stone bottom of the fifth arch is only half submerged, and our children walk along the dry part under the bridge.

I can’t see them now but they’re old enough, seven and ten, to play together on their own for a minute. Bella and Ben, their brown curls always tangled. I exhale and lay back on the grassy bank, eyes closed, sun warm on my face. Water laps softly at the rivershore, birds and children do their chattering, small stones dig into my back.

It was just a few seconds I think, as I sit up, that I’d dozed, realising that I must have been dreaming the leeches sucking blood out my legs. I brush my hands over my legs at nothing there. And realise a silence, only the soft sound of the water this still day. I stand up and jump down the bank, following the way the children went a moment or so ago. There’s only a thin strip of sand now and my feet get wet as I bend my way through the fifth arch. But I see no children on this other side of the bridge either, just the river, with its little mud-stone beaches. I shout their names, and the sound seems to ripple the water. I look back through the arch at the grassy bank, at nobody there either. I walk a little further upriver and shout again. I call Jo’s phone in what I now suspect is still a dream, hearing my voice say things like I can’t find the children, they went under the bridge and they’re gone. I look up at the hills that rise from either side of the river and wonder if they’re getting lost within them. I look ahead at the trees that gather more thickly further upriver until they become forest. I look into the water and see no signs, no splashes or body parts, not even a ripple now—nothing but a duck with a fish in its beak, a fish too large for it to eat.

The tide is high now. The river runs fully through all five arches.

I climb up the bank and look into the river from there. Still nothing. The water is clear today; they’d be visible even if they were underwater. I start walking along the bank, toward the trees. Until now I have felt too calm, as though nothing is real. Now I feel a flutter of something between panic and sorrow, something between searching frantically screaming their names and sitting on the ground to sob. I keep it all at bay and continue walking, calling for them every ten seconds or so. I hear Jo’s shouts now as she has found her way to the river, and I shout back at her. People start gathering round, and I run back to her. Russell is among them, a retired policeman who lives on the corner of Jo’s parents’ street. Small town busybody, I’m thinking, as he stands there with his hands in his blue jeans pockets. And sure enough, here’s old farmer Jago walking over, has to be in on everything, and suddenly I hate this parochial place. Luckily Jo is here to tell them calmly how we’ve lost our children—they’ve probably just got caught up in their game, she adds. Has anyone seen them: two messy brown-haired children wearing just shorts? A woman with her dog offers to walk up the back streets to look for them, and Russell and Jago offer to walk further downriver, taking any opportunity for a gossip. We decide to call the police in five minutes if there’s no sign.

Jo and I continue again upriver, where we sense they’d have wanted to go, where there’s the woods and a little clearing to the left up ahead, where a massive old tree is fallen, its roots exposed. They climbed all over that tree last summer, grazing their knees on its growling bark. They’re not climbing on it now. There’s just the ivy growing over it, a single bee crawling, looking tired. We stand there for a moment, watching the bee. 

A slight breeze sends a chill through me, setting me off again towards the thicker trees, the beginning of the forest, Jo following close behind. As I enter the shadows a hint of smoke catches in my nose. D’you smell that, Jo asks, and we’re pushing through the undergrowth, the smell growing into our lungs as brambles scratch our legs and arms—even Jo’s cheek has gained a neat red line when I glance back at her, with a smudge of blood across her nose. We press on, stamping down the brambles, hacking against them with branch-sticks before we see another clearing in the shade, an area of sunlight. We barge on toward the light, until we burst out into it.

They are here, our two children, sat next to a small fire, eating fish. They don’t see us straight away. The noise of the fire and their eating of fish keep their attention away from our entrance on the other side of the clearing. We stand there for a second, staring. We look around, and it’s just them, alone, with a side of trout each on a white dinner plate, picking at it awkwardly with a fork and putting flakes into their mouths. On the fire is a wire mesh on which the trout must have cooked. On the floor is a silver spatula that must have been used to lift the trout off onto the dinner plates. Astonished and suddenly furious, I shout at them what on earth are they doing, why did they leave the river, why didn’t they tell me where they were going.

A woman wearing a deep brown hijab appears, and it is then I see a tent edging half in and out the trees. She’s staying in the tent, I guess, or living in it. She looks at us, says hello. What’s she doing here? We’ve got to get the children back to the river, I tell her, everyone is looking for them. Come on, I say to Jo, grabbing one of each child’s hands and pulling them away, back into the trees, looking back and saying thank you, I guess for the fish.

As we approach the river again we see Russell and Jago and the dog-walking woman are gathered back together, cheering as they see the children with us. They got lost in the woods, we explain. Now they are found. The river is still high, flowing through the five arches.

Mum, our youngest starts, looking up at me as we walk back up the hill to Jo’s parents’ house, still in a daze. Mama, she says, looking at Jo: I didn’t want the fish to start with, but actually it was tasty. Jo asks her again what happened, and this time Bella tells us they’d just gone a little way into the trees by themselves where they were playing with the piskies, and then they were lost. The way they thought went back to the river was just more and more trees. Then the woman had come, and showed them the way to where the sweet berries grow. She’d taken their hands and the children followed her because they didn’t know what other way to go. And the woman led them in further, until she sat them down next to the fire and put the fish on the fire and one minute later gave them the fish.

You should never go off with strangers, you know that, Jo says to them. They tell us she isn’t a stranger, we’ve seen her before. I don’t believe them, but I’m glad they’re found and we’re coming to Jo’s parents’ house, so I leave it.

Later, Jo tells me she wants to take some food to the woman, see if she needs anything. I tell her she should stay away. But Jo goes anyway, taking apples, carrots and hazelnuts. I run after her to catch up, leaving the children with Jo’s parents, shouting back that we won’t be long. Jo takes my hand and we walk down the hill together, over the bridge with the river fallen to four arches, and retrace the way through the trees. The shadows are longer now. As we get to the clearing, we hear voices and slow down. We peer through the trees, and see more than the woman: there’s about six adults in the shadows, and three children. Jo steps out, offering the food. I creep behind her. The woman sees us and smiles, starts thanking us and offering a place around the fire, and as we stand there hesitating about getting back to our children we’re amazed to see Russell walk in another way through the trees.

What are you doing here, Jo and Russell ask each other the same. Jo says we brought food; Russell says he’s been coming from time to time, since the group arrived. He asks us to please never breathe a word. Not even to Jo’s parents, because just one person will tell just one person until the wrong person knows. We promise, and he sits us down. He tells us slowly now, about how he’s part of a network stretching to the coast, consisting of a bunch of nosy old busybodies who pretend to be a bunch of nosy old busybodies but who secretly assist people who come to shore. This group in the trees had come halfway upriver one night, on a small fishing boat on a high spring tide. Russell’s friends had loaned them four canoes to help them travel further upriver. They paddled under the bridge of a crescent moon, when the river flowed through all six arches. They’re living here in the woods, for now.

Old farmer Jago is in on it too, he tells us as the sun sparkles low in the leaves. He shows us the two wooden huts they’re building for the coming winter. But he’s a right-wing anti-immigrant GB News watcher, I say, remembering the winter evening we’d seen it flickering through his open curtains. I wonder now if that’s part of his disguise.

These people from afar, they give us fish by their fire and show us the real meaning of Lostwithiel. It doesn’t mean lost within the hills, not at all. It derives from the old Cornish word Lostgwydeyel, so they heard. Lostgwydeyel means the place at the tail of the woodland. The woodland has a tail, because it is a living being. Up here in the woods, is the heart.