She had come too far. Sadie knew that as soon as she felt the cloying presence of the deepest Darkwood set in around her.

The sodden ground beneath her soft leather boots gave way to a thick littering of skeleton leaves. She would have to work harder now to remain silent.

A soft rustle and the cracking of crystal ferns echoed through the mist. Her prey was near. Slowly, silently, she notched an arrow to her bow and drew the string. Her arm remained steady, one eye closed as the other followed each subtle tremor of leaves. Here she waited for her opportunity, in the dark and damp cold of the deep forest.

Sensing danger through some animal instinct, the hare fled, twisting through the dense purple underbrush. Sadie traced the movement with the needle point of her bone-tip arrow, aiming for just the right spot.

With a soft thwack she released her draw. The arrow speared through the foliage, hitting its mark.

The hare fell to the soft earth, and Sadie strode to claim it.

She had never ventured this deep into the heart of the Darkwood. She wasn’t truly supposed to hunt this far. Her fellow rangers gladly hunted within their designations, tracking prey closer to home where the forest was lighter, less oppressive.

Standing amongst the towering trees, feeling unwelcome in this alien world of glowing corals and rippling roots, Sadie understood why.

Here the trees were ancient and creaking. The canopy twisted overhead in serpentine knots, the sky invisible beyond the silvern leaves.

The violet glow of crinklecap mushrooms illuminated the rough bark of the trees they barnacled, casting eerie undulations of light across the underbrush.

Sadie withdrew her arrow with surgical precision. Her kill had been clean, quick, efficient. The hare wouldn’t have even felt it. Satisfied with her work, Sadie moved her fingers over the hare in the silent prayer of Grimwood rangers, before placing a coldstone in its mouth and deftly tying the animal to her belt.

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Standing from a crouch, Sadie startled as something moved at her side. A glimmering mist was pouring from the hare. From its ears and mouth, from its glassy eyes. The mist took shape as it fell to the earth, a writhing mass of green and blue, suffused with flecks of gold and earthen brown.

Sadie stumbled back in alarm, then stepped slowly forward in awe, as the colours formed the shape of the hare it had spilled from. Knowing better than to touch it, Sadie circled the ghostly creature as the colours began to pulse, swirling and shaping around a brilliant point of light at its centre.

Crouching down, Sadie held out her arrow, the point still slick with the hare’s blood. The hare touched its nose to the bloodied tip, but otherwise took no notice as she slid the point of sharpened bone through its form. It moved through the hare as if through smoke, its colours swirling in momentary chaos around the arrow, before coalescing once again.

Sadie breathed in through her nose, exhaling slowly through her mouth in the way she had been trained for hunting, steadying herself in the presence of this remarkable, if unsettling, phenomena. As she was deliberating what to do next, a new light appeared in the foliage nearby.

The glimmering pearl of light was shrouded in a dancing silver mist, moving gracefully through the air like a sea creature floating in dark and deep waters. It flitted this way and that, as if seeking. As if hunting.

The ghost of the hare stilled as the humming chorus of a song began. Sadie felt rather than heard the melody. It rang like a bell within her bones, a sweet haunting call that Sadie ached to answer.

Enthralled, the hare touched its nose to the mysterious floating light as it twisted in ethereal spirals. The pearl danced backwards, as if enticing the hare to follow. The hare stretched forward as if eager to heed the call, yet its ghostly hind legs remained rooted to the forest floor.

The light sang and twisted with an insistence that frightened Sadie. She herself felt rooted to the spot, paralysed, unable to move or do anything but bear witness. The hare stretched, its colours pulling and twisting apart, tearing away from the light of its core.

The colours spilled to the ground as the dancing pearl spiralled, calling forth each small essence and fleck of the hare’s form until nothing remained but a small ball of silver light, dim and thready.

With a final burst of light, the remnants of both hare and the singing pearl vanished, and the Darkwood was still. The trees groaned and the air became heavy. As if the forest was grieving.

Tears spilled down Sadie’s cheeks as she forced herself up and out of her frozen crouch, fleeing back through the forest towards the village of Grimwood. Towards home.