SYNOPSIS The nights are drawing in. Frost will soon shroud the valley and a cat creeps silently through the trees. She is not safe and needs a place to hide. Horrific wildlife crime is uncovered by youngsters holidaying in the remote Scottish Highlands, yet no-one seems to care: ‘Oh, that’s what happens’ they say. But it’s not good enough for Sammy Leigh besotted by wildcats, or even her twin brother David, who is more entranced by history and dislikes cats. Young Jojo’s mercurial intensity unlocks passions lain dormant for centuries in places cast aside by civilisation where old forces lie in the shadows and seep through cracks in the rocks. However, remnants of human waste get washed up too in such places and some is as vile as only people can be. Freddy (as close to a weasel as any small boy could be, and according to David, ‘a health risk’) pokes into places best left undisturbed. When he finds strange chalk marks in a ruined croft, a trail begins which eventually leads to two sadistic killers, ‘Shotgun’ Keechy and ‘Glesgaman’ Morpho. Meanwhile, deep in the ‘Forest of the Eyes’, Jojo unearths an ancient Pictish standing stone, a gateway to the old world of warrior-raven Princess Keeown of the Ba-catha and her servants, the impish Coillia and starragan croworkers. Swayed by Jojo’s naive courage the princess relents in her hostility and assembles surreal forces in order to fight the ‘hewmens’. A freaky lone watcher, ‘Wee Willy’, haunts the Leighs while retired gamekeeper Auld Mac claims to regret killing wildcats and has taken up photography instead. Mistress Meg Muldoon, a ‘wise woman’ of strange and ghostly beauty lives in isolated Crankie Cottage by the falls. Intrigued by the children she explains how she lost an arm, and by degrees introduces them to ancient shadowy Highland 'presences' such as the Caoineag, who washes the clothes of those about to die and can be heard wailing in the night. For her pains Meg is attacked and her cat Bess killed. David is kidnapped by Morpho and guarded by his dog Mi’gin until rescued by Draiad - a dryad nymph or ‘ghillie dhu’ of the birches and favourably deposed towards children. But desperate for hard evidence they employ camera traps and stake out the ‘stink pit’ where corpses are dumped. Meanwhile the devious Coillia and his piskie-siths are plotting their own denouement and in a drunken brawl outside Morpho’s hovel. Mi'gin turns on his brutal owner, and Keechy goes berserk, firing at his maddened accomplice. Both are destroyed in a bizarre and chaotic showdown. Wee Willy is revealed as an undercover wildlife charity agent, and Auld Mac, who had long denied the presence of live wildcats, redeems himself with photographic evidence of the criminals and also proof that Sammy had been right all along to stake out the lair of the wildcat, found (of course) by Freddy. Mistress Meg is emboldened to return to Crankie Cottage, and Mi’gin replaces Bess in her affections. But, as Jojo, says, ‘Nothing’s ever over, not really.’