fallclimbers are neither quite slipper nor quite nightmare, which makes them harder, not easier, to file away. Six or seven of them work the face of the upper Loxley weir at intervals — jointed limbs ending in hook-tips, plates shifting to the colour of whatever stone they happen to be ascending — and at the top they go over and are gone. Van's field note on the question of where they go afterwards reads: *Do not attempt to follow.*

Van told me to watch for black flecks at gloaming — specks of darkness spinning at the edge of vision, present only at that precise low-light hour. He said it was dark matter in transit, pulled toward another source, and that seeing it was the sign of dunlockslyn the three-tailed venomtooth. He said this very quietly, which was the part that worried me most.