Prologue

A FOX, brOWSING IN THEdead beech leaves for the trail of a rabbit, stops still. Raises its head, ears pricked, paw raised, before turning and fleeing. The owls halt their night-time chorus, lifting as silent pale ghosts from the branches to find another patch of woodland. A small herd of deer scatters more noisily, crashing through the undergrowth in its haste to get away.

Something is moving through the trees now, disturbing the normal night-time harmony. Shadows with form, with substance. Rustling through the leaves, treading upon the woodland floor, snapping twig and bracken.

Deep in the woods they gather. The same clearing they have always used; and their forebears before them, since the legends began. A strange flock. Black-robed, beast-headed. Born of the unknown depths of the wood: an image from a medieval woodcut, a dark folktale to frighten badly behaved children. In the modern world, a world of busyness, of speed and connection, they make no sense. But here among the trees, hidden from moonlight and starlight, it is as if the modern world is the fairy tale: other and strange.

A short distance away, the old man sits in his study in the woods: a converted cabin surrounded by ancient trees.

The door is ajar to the elements. Now that darkness has fallen there's a chill to the air. It creeps in at the open door, it rifles through the papers on the desk.

In front of him is a single feather, its black down ruffled by the breeze.

The old man doesn't pay it any attention.

He doesn't pay it any attention because he is dead.