Angry red appeared on the walls like a coat of paint. It blistered and peeled, then flaked off, each flake drifting slowly in the lamplight. Doncia sat on a rug near the warm stove, rocking slowly and watching. She forced her clenched hands apart and slipped one into her pocket to grasp the cool metal of her pocketwatch.

Mother was ironing, her face a sheen of sweat. The oil-fired iron hissed and burbled, and steam from other people’s clothes rose in angry clouds. Some of it snuck under the lamp glass, flaring the flame, and Mother paused and looked up, her eyes clear, grey, and sharp.

‘In no way is it your fault,’ she said, ‘nothing you could have done might have prevented it, and nothing you can do will bring him back.’

Things said once were often true, Doncia knew, and things said many times were possibly still true, but when somebody said something way too many times it was definitely time to doubt.

She squeezed her pocketwatch, willing the red flakes to disappear, and one by one they began to wink away. The pocketwatch was the last thing Father gave her. It told the time of course, and it could measure how long it took to run up to Clee Castle gate, but it was also somehow special on the inside. She squeezed it harder. Every little tick-tick-tick echoed from the walls, the cast iron stove, and even her own teeth.

The last of the red flakes disappeared, dissolving into the clouds of steam.

‘Good night Mother,’ she said.

🔸⏱️🔸

A noise woke Doncia in the middle of the night. She hooked her fingers under the catches and heaved the window up. Cold blasted in, making her cough.

High in the gap between their tenement and the next, a few pinprick stars snuffed out then flashed back to life. She felt something out there, something big and new and important.

She dragged her chest under the window, then stood on it and climbed out. The railing was old and rusty, goosebumps tickled her arms, and the metal treads made her feet numb, but it was only two flights to the top. She pushed open the squeaky gate and started out onto a channel between the sloping tiles. The milky-way arched overhead, seeming to hang close.

She found a relatively comfortable place to lean back. Though she wasn’t sure what she was waiting for, it seemed sensible. She shivered. Even if you might not believe in something, even when you see it, you still don’t want to miss it.

The stars twinkled so close she reached out and pretended to pluck one. Mr. Langwish said philosophers thought each star kept a family of worlds, like a mother duck with a family of ducklings, and on each of those worlds lived people just like her. As unbelievable ideas go, it was a good one, and if it was true, those stars can’t have just gone out and come back on again. Something must had stopped her from seeing them, must have got in the way. So she waited to see if it might come back.

A bell chimed twice—the bell on the clock tower at Clee City Station.

A tiny bat flitted around her three times then buzzed away over the roofs.

She stretched her neck and moved her head around. The station clock chimed the half-hour. She started to shiver more, but didn’t want to give up.

Some of the stars went out! A big, dark creature was flying across the sky, from the direction of the castle, and as it flew got in the way of the stars. Doncia couldn’t quite make it out, but imagined it was shaped just like the tiny bat, only larger than a person.

The rooftop might not be such a clever place to be, but the creature was so close there was no time to flee. She scrambled along the channel and hid under an eave. She shivered more now, but not from the cold. It was going to fly directly over. Her left hand slipped into her pocket and gripped her pocketwatch.

The creature didn’t seem to see her, but she could see it was a little like a fox, a little like a woman, and a lot like a bat. The wings were black, but the body was grey, and it flew terribly fast. As fast as it had come, it was gone.

She could feel her own heart beating, hard and rapid like it was right up in her throat, and though she tightened her muscles she couldn’t stop shivering. There was a demon flying over the roofs! Only she had seen it, only she had come up onto the roof in the cold dark night and caught a glimpse of a demon.

She climbed carefully back down the fire escape and in through her window. The frame was stiff, and when she got it going it slipped from her hands and banged against the sill. She jumped into bed and pulled the covers up, so she could pretend to be asleep if Mother came to investigate.

A demon was flying over Clee. Now she just had to decide if she believed in it or not.