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into the darkness of the trees. Sometimes as she walked she thought she could hear a distant thudding like the chopping of wood, but whenevershe paused to listen, it died away. Then ahead, at the edge of the trees, she saw a signpost.
    It stood beside the path among the tall feathery ferns, pointing into the forest. Its post was green with lichen, and Cally could see no word written on its blank pointing arm. In the direction of its pointing, there was no trace of a trail cut through the woods. There was nothing but the trees. The signpost pointed nowhere.
    Yet it gave her a direction; it was better than the endless straight shadowed path. She plunged through the ferns and into the trees, following the signpost’s blind finger.
    Almost at once she was lost. The ground was rough and treacherous, hummocked with moss-covered boulders and rotting branches that caught at her feet. Stumbling through the trees, ducking beneath dead trunks that leaned against the living, Cally turned this way and that, fighting her way through low leafless twigs with her hands up to shield her face. Overhead a squirrel chattered shrilly at her, but she could not see it. Sometimes she found herself clambering over small rocks piled in long broken heaps, as if they were the fallen remnants of what had long ago been walls. But the wood had swallowed the walls, grown over and through them.
    She thought again that she heard the thudding of an axe somewhere far off, but could not tell it from the rhythm of the blood beating in her ears.
    The pines were thinning out now; they were smaller, with ferns and scrubby undergrowth between them, and Cally could see broken cloud in the sky above. Then, looking ahead, she saw something among the trees that was not a tree: a dark, straight pillar half as tall again as a man. She went towards it; then caught her breath and stood still.
    It was a pillar of granite; its white-flecked surface gleamed dully in the grey light. But it had a head. Carved into the top of the pillar, so lifelike that it seemed about to move, was the face of a woman. The features were clear and beautiful, framed by long waving hair that flowed down and into the rough-cut stone beneath; the mouth smiled, and the eyes were welcoming. There was a gentle kindliness in the face that made Cally feel warm, cherished, as if the sun shone. She looked at it for a long time, feeling her taut wariness gradually relax—until she moved a step further, and saw the other side.
    At the back of the head, another face was carved, staring out in the opposite direction. The long rippling hair was the same, merged with the hair of the first. But this face was startlingly different. There were the same clear-cut features, but now they were cold and stern; the mouth was a thin cruel line, and the eyes bored into Cally’s with a dreadful chill menace that made her skin prickle with fear. Instinctively she moved aside, but the eyes seemed to follow, relentlessly holding her own.
    Cally moved hastily backward to the mildness of the first stone face. But it no longer reassured her; she could not force out the image of the second, waiting on the other side. Then beyond the pillar, she caught sight of a figure standing some way off among the trees. It wore a blue cloak, with a hood pulled over the head: a bright shout of colour in the sombre wood. It stood very still, the dark opening of the hood turned towards Cally, as if it were watching her.
    For a moment Cally felt cold with fright; she stood rigid, her fingernails digging into the palms of her hands. But the gentle stone face smiling at her from the pillar gave her confidence once more, and she took a deep breath.
    â€œHi!” she called, waving one arm at the cloaked figure. “Hi!”
    She moved forward, still waving—and suddenly the figure was no longer there.
    Cally blinked. Her eyes had been fixed on the patch of blue, and she knew that it had not moved—and there was no cover among