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Harry. The field’s name defied her. She stood at the edge of Hunter’s Brook, beyond the thick cluster of alders that formed her camp, and stared up that ramp of verdant land at the dimly seen darkness of the far wood.
    The name would not come. She could not cross the pasture.
    Each day, after school, she walked about the ramparts on Morndun Ridge, weaving between the thorns and hornbeam which grew there, each tree tapping the deep soil of the high banks. And it was here that she felt most at peace, now. The shadowy figure which she had seen those several months ago still prowled behind her, and her head reeled with strange thoughts: sights and sounds, smells and the touch of wind; she was never far from the borders of another land as she came up on to the breezy knoll and spent time in the enclosure built by ancient hands for a forgotten purpose.
    It was here, too, that she first saw White Mask, although she didn’t apply this name to the mythago until later. Glimpsed from the corner of her eye, the figure was taller than the first, and quicker, moving more rapidly through the trees, stopping then running on in an almostghostly way. The white mask caught the sun; the eyes were elfin, the mouth, a straight gash, sinister.
    But when this figure came close to her, one Sunday afternoon, Tallis dreamed of a castle, and of a cloaked figure on horseback, and of a hunt that took this knightly man deep into a dank and marshy forest …
    It was the beginning of a tale that would build in her mind over the weeks, until it almost lived within her.
    The field by Ryhope Wood continued to defy her. Day after day she stood by Hunter’s Brook, eight years old and drawn to the dark forest by something deeper than reason, struggling to find the
name
for the swathe of land that prevented her from crossing to the trees.
    Then, one August evening, a tall, dark stag broke cover in the far distance. Tallis gasped with delight, stretched on her toes for a better view. She hadn’t seen the beast for two years and she shouted at it. Trailing rags of velvet from the great cross of its antlers, the proud creature raced over a rise of land and out of sight, but not before it had hesitated once and glanced her way.
    (iii)
    ‘I’ve seen Broken Boy,’ Tallis said that evening, as the family sat at the table and played a game of ludo.
    Her father glanced at her, frowning. Her mother rattled dice in the cup and threw on to the board.
    ‘I doubt if you did that,’ James Keeton said quietly. ‘That old boy was killed years ago.’
    ‘He came to my christening,’ Tallis reminded him.
    ‘But he was wounded. He couldn’t have survived the winter.’
    ‘Mr Gaunt told me that the stag has been seen in the area for over a hundred years.’
    ‘Gaunt is an old rogue. He likes to tell stories to impress children like you. How could a stag live so long?’
    ‘Mr Gaunt says that it never sheds its antlers.’
    Margaret Keeton passed Tallis the cup of dice, shaking her head impatiently. She said, ‘We know full well what silly nonsense Gaunt spreads around. Now come on. It’s your go.’
    Tallis just watched her father, though. He was looking better, these days, not so pale, although his hair was almost totally grey now, and his eyes had a watery sadness about them. ‘I’m sure it was Broken Boy. It was limping as it ran. And its antlers were covered with rags. Death shrouds …’
    ‘Will you
play
, girl?’ her mother said irritably. Tallis picked up the cup and shook out the dice, moving her counter around the board. She looked back at her father. ‘Couldn’t it have been him?’
    ‘Broken Boy was wounded the last time we saw him. Arrow shot.’
    Arrow shot. Yes. Tallis remembered the story. And she remembered something else.
    ‘Like Harry,’ she whispered. ‘Arrow shot, like Harry.’
    James Keeton stared at her sharply and for a moment Tallis thought that he was going to start shouting. He remained calm, however. He suddenly sat back