Alys flung herself back till the cold stone of the cross at her back stopped her. She pressed back against it and the dogs, their hackles high and prickly on their great backs, opened their mouths and roared at her like lions. 'Hugo!' Alys screamed over the noise. 'Hugo! Save me! Call your dogs off me! Save me!'

The horn blasted loud again and then a great roan stallion leaped out of the mist towards them and reared to a standstill. Hugo jumped down with his riding whip in his hands and beat his dogs back.

Alys flung herself towards him and he caught her up in his arms.

'Alys?' he said in amazement.

The other huntsmen rose out of the fog, one of them slipped a leash on each of the dogs. 'Alys, what are you doing here?' Hugo looked around and saw Morach, rising to her feet, her face a sickly grey and a bag which kicked and squirmed in her hand.

'What d'you have there?' he rapped out. Morach held the bag fast and shook her head. She seemed to have lost her tongue in her terror. She shook her head harder and harder like an idiot child incapable of speech.

'What d'you have there?' Hugo demanded again, his voice hard with his own fear. 'Answer me! Answer me! Tell me what you have in that sack!' Morach said nothing but the bag went suddenly still. Then Alys screamed, a sharp, piercing scream of pure terror, and pointed. The bag was splitting open, from bottom to top, like the rancid skin of a rotten peach. Splitting and bursting open. And out of it, marching like a row of crippled soldiers, came the three dolls. The scrawny, beaky, old lord, the grossly pregnant woman doll, and the sightless, fingerless, mouthless, earless Hugo.

'She did it!' Alys screamed, the words pouring out of her mouth like a river in flood. 'She did it! She made them! She hexed them! Morach did it! Morach!'

Morach stared Alys in the face for one full, incredulous second, then she whirled around and plunged into the fog, skirts snatched up, running as fast as she could like a hunted animal, into the deepest fog in the valley.

'Holloa!' Hugo yelled. 'A witch! A witch!' He jumped up into the saddle, seized Alys' arm, and hauled her up behind him. The horse was dancing to be off and Alys grabbed at Hugo's shoulders. The huntsman unleashed the dogs and they bayed and circled the hunters, as if they could not catch the scent. One of them pawed up at Alys, reaching for her, its wide mouth open, its breath hot. Hugo kicked it down with an oath. 'Holloa! Holloa!' he yelled again. 'A witch! Find the witch! Seek the witch! Seek her!'

The big dog bayed again and flung himself at Alys but then the huntsman blew his horn in a great discordant shriek and the dogs broke away into the mist. Hugo's huge stallion wheeled and dashed after them. Alys pressed her face to Hugo's back and clung around his waist, weeping in her terror.

Morach was ahead of them, scrambling downhill, slipping in the mud, crawling over the stones, and then up again, running for her life. The dogs sighted her and bayed a deeper note. She whirled around when she heard it and they saw a glimpse of her white face, then she fell to her hands and knees and dropped out of sight for one moment.

'A hare!' a young huntsman called. 'A hare! She'll change herself into a hare!'

As he spoke a hare broke from the ground beneath their feet, black-tipped ears laid smooth, head flung back, and tore away down the hill towards the river.

The dogs shot off on the new scent, yelping like mad puppies as the hare gained on them.

'She'll make a circle!' Hugo yelled. 'Cut her off! Turn her back!'

Alys, gripping while the horse leaped and bounded beneath her, was screaming into the wind, 'No! No! No!' but Hugo could not hear her. The huntsman was blowing his horn, the hounds were yelping and the brown hare, her long legs pounding, was sailing across the ground in great bounds, her eyes white-ringed with terror.

'She's heading for the river, Sir!' a huntsman yelled. They were closing on the prey but not fast enough. 'She'll get down one of those holes and we'll never get her out.'

'Faster!' Hugo shouted. 'Cut her off! Don't let her get to the river-bank! Drive her into the river!'

The hounds surged forward but the hare jinked and turned and snatched herself away. The horses stumbled and slithered down the steep hillside, the riders urging them on. The hare was headed for the stone bridge; they could see her clearly, racing across the grey stone slabs, and the hounds, a few lengths behind her and going faster on the stones. Then she leaped down from the bridge and flew off to the left, leaving the dogs snapping at the empty air, and dived into the deep cave Alys had found earlier. Baying with anger the hounds flung themselves at the opening.

'Whip them off! Whip them off!' Hugo yelled. They'll get stuck. She'll lure them down there and trap them.'

He flung himself from his horse and strode towards them, his whip hissing. The hounds fell back, snarling and dripping from their red mouths, and went to the huntsman. Hugo, shaking with excitement, went slowly to the mouth of the cave and cautiously peered in.

'Mortal deep,' he said. 'I'd go down there for a beast but not for a witch-turned-hare.' The men nodded. 'She could turn back,' one warned. 'Or change into a snake in the darkness,' another nodded.

'What'll we do?' the young one asked. Instinctively they looked towards Alys. She was clinging to the pommel as the horse shifted restively, and when she looked up her face was tear-stained, wild.

'Wait,' she said, her voice shaky and shrill. There was a rumble of thunder and a crack of lightning over the high dark hills to the west, the source of the river.

Hugo came back to the horse's side and looked up at Alys. 'Wait?' he asked. 'What d'you mean? Wait?' Alys laughed hysterically. 'The storm is come,' she cried. She looked westward. A few fat drops of rain fell sluggishly from the sky, then more, then more. 'So?' Hugo asked.

'The water is rising,' Alys said. Her voice shook and then she was laughing, laughing too much to speak, while the tears poured down her face. 'The water is rising. While you wait out here, dry-shod, she waits in there. Listening.'

Hugo gaped at her. 'Listening?' he repeated.

'She will hear the roar of the underground lake rising up, she will hear the gurgle of all the little streams flowing towards her, and then she will feel the rush and suck of the torrent around her ankles, and then, rising quickly, around her knees.

'She may try to come out, she may struggle to climb up, but her head will touch the stone roof of the cave and the water will come up, and up, and up, until it bursts over her face and there is nowhere for her to hide and nothing but flood water for her to breathe.'

Hugo was pale. 'We swim her underground?' he said.

Alys' face was gaunt with horror. Her voice was the high cackle of madness. 'Look,' she said, pointing to the high-water line of the debris of branches and straw. It lay like a ribbon along the river-bank, a clear yard above the entrance of the cave. 'Nothing will swim out of there,' Alys said, laughing and laughing. 'Nothing! You guard the entrance and the storm will do your work for you. The rain will be your torturer. The deep flooding river will be your executioner. Morach is dead! Dead as she feared to die!'