Wythen looked down into the eyes of the pheasant, which were glazed with suffering and whispered quietly to him. ‘Old friend, you may die with hope in your heart for they have gone and I believe they will succeed. And then all our suffering, and the suffering of those before us will not have been in vain. Do you hear me, old friend? There is hope.’

Sterndale’s eyes then lost their panic and became calm and as he sank beneath the waves of death he held on to the hope in Wythen’s eyes so that he died with a heart that was, finally, at peace. Then the owl left the side of his dead friend and flew up to the Great Oak. There he perched on one of the high branches to look out over what was left of the wood and wait for the end.

The animals walked through the frozen fields in silence, each nursing his grief privately like a wound. With the loss of their home they felt as if they had been cut adrift and were floating aimlessly in nothing; the lifeline that had always reached out to them wherever they might be had gone for there was nowhere to go back to. They walked in a dream; their only security now was the security of the journey, and their only home wherever they happened to be at any particular moment. They had just lost everything and were not yet able to appreciate the safety of having nothing more to lose. They would never forget the pain of their grief that night but in time it would become less sharp and would become simply a part of themselves instead of this huge dark cloud which dominated and threatened them constantly, hanging over them so that they were unable to escape its shadow. And Brock and Nab, although they could never think of Tara without the tears coming to their eyes, would eventually be able to talk about her and their times together with some happiness at their recollection.

They had to walk slowly because of Sam’s injured leg, which was getting worse the farther they went so that now his limp was very pronounced and the wound had opened up and begun to bleed again. Worse even than that was the fact that the cold got into the gash on his head, making it throb terribly and giving him a splitting headache.

Perryfoot had found it impossible to walk at all and very early on, when they had just passed out of sight of the wood, Beth had torn off part of one of her tee-shirts and fashioned a makeshift sling which she tied around Nab’s neck and then placed the hare in, much to the boy’s surprise and Perryfoot’s delight. At first he had been apprehensive but as he got more used to the idea of being carried in this way he began looking around with some of his old arrogance and Nab detected a familiar twinkle of mischief in his black eyes. When he was alert like this his ears stuck up erect and now they kept getting in Nab’s face, but after a while the combination of utter exhaustion and the rhythm and warmth of Nab’s body as he walked, lulled the hare into a deep sleep so that his ears fell flat along his back out of the way.

Warrigal flew ahead of them, low over the fields at about hedge height and it seemed to Nab, watching him swoop and glide like a shadow, that he had spent the last half of his life travelling like that with the owl always just in sight leading them to their destination.

He looked down at Perryfoot’s closed eyes and smiled inwardly at the thought that the hare at least was in peaceful oblivion. Beth, holding his hand by his side, had long since given up trying to make any sense out of what she was doing and abandoned herself to the rhythm of the walk. It seemed a long time now since she had left the cottage, and the image of her mother crying frantically for her as she stood in the doorway flashed back into her mind as a memory from a forgotten world. Even the magical happiness of their walk to Silver Wood seemed to have taken place an age ago so dark was the cloud of misery that now hung over the animals. And she shared their grief for, in a sense, she too had lost her home and her loved ones as well as having seen the ruin of theirs. Already she felt as if she had known the boy for years, so easy and relaxed did she feel with him and despite the fact that they had not been able to say two words to each other which could be understood. Yet this did not seem to matter, so close was the empathy and understanding which for some miraculous reason seemed to exist between them. She turned her head slightly to the right to look at him as he walked by her side. His head was bowed now and the anger that had filled his dark eyes seemed to have given way to a dull sorrow which had even touched the way he walked so that instead of the limitless energy which had seemed to propel him before, his steps seemed plodding and tired. She suddenly felt an enormous wave of sympathy towards him and a wish to protect him and look after him and make him happy again. She had no idea of where they were travelling or why but she sensed that in some way they were involved in the making of history and that the boy was somehow in the centre of it and that he would need all the love and care she could give him in the days ahead. She gently squeezed his hand and he looked at her as if he understood all that she was thinking and was grateful. She smiled and he returned her smile and for a moment he escaped the clutches of the nightmare that was pulling at his mind. When she smiled it was as if a shaft of sunlight had pierced a darkened room, providing hope and encouragement for the future; a glimmer of joy at the end of a tunnel of gloom, urging him to go forward to meet it and to become lost in its brilliance. Nab wondered whether or not, without her, he would have had any will to carry on. He glanced quickly behind him and saw, some way behind, the limping figure of Sam and by his side Brock, looking old and worn. In the sling at his front lay Perryfoot, unable even to walk and only Warrigal, in front, seemed remotely capable of undertaking the enormity of the task which they had to accomplish.

When the Christmas bells tolled at midnight, sending peals of music over the moonlit fields, Beth’s heart was touched by a pang of homesickness but the animals stopped and looked at each other grimly in anticipation of the slaughter it foretold.

In Silver Wood, in the old days, a Council Meeting would have been called to discuss tactics and to prepare the wood in readiness. ‘They have nearly all gone now,’ thought Brock. ‘Only Wythen is left.’

His mind flashed back with a little thrill of recollection to that Council Meeting, so many seasons ago, when he had broken the news of the arrival of a baby Urkku in the wood. And then he realized, as did the others, that although by the time the killing began they would be a long distance away from the wood nevertheless they would still have to be extremely careful, wherever they were, for the slaughter went on all over the land.

And so they trudged on slowly with their thoughts drifting between the past, the future and the present, and the only sound the crunching of the frozen surface of the snow as they walked. The trees, dark, shadowy and mysterious in the moonlight, seemed to move in acknowledgement as they passed, the boughs dipping slightly, and the sound of the breeze in the branches seeming to greet them and wish them good fortune on their journey.

In the distance the little copse towards which their eyes were fixed stood out clearly on the skyline where it stood encircling the top of a large hummock which grew like an enormous molehill on the relatively flat stretch of moors surrounding it. Soon the colour of the sky behind the copse grew lighter and the animals found themselves among the gently rolling foothills which led up to the flat summit of this small range of hills and, as the first rose-pink streaks of dawn began to appear in the sky to herald the beginning of a new day, Christmas Day, they stood looking across a bleak expanse of moorland in the middle of which was the copse. The snow here was deeper and the wind was quite strong so that it had drifted in the little hollows and against the tussocks and the walking was difficult. Brock and Sam could now only go very slowly because of the dog’s injury and the others had to keep waiting for them. The wind was much colder up here and Beth was thankful that she had brought so many clothes; looking at Nab’s bare legs she gave a little shiver and huddled deep into her grandmother’s cape. They saw no other animals but there was the occasional track of a hare in the snow and once or twice they heard the chuckling of a grouse in the distance. Finally, as a pale watery sun appeared in the clear morning sky, they climbed up the slope of the hummock and entered the copse. They carried on climbing through firs and the occasional twisted oak until they reached the top which was bare of trees and through which sharp angular outcrops of rock showed, where the wind had blown away the snow. The snow had also been blown off the heather and clumps of it clung on to the patches of earth between the rock or else seemingly grew out of the rock itself, its roots finding a precarious foothold in the cracks. It moved with the wind as seaweed moves with the waves and the strong gusts seemed to be trying to pull it away, yanking at it savagely.