Maisie stopped dead in the middle of the path, her stomach lurching as she realised what was missing. With frantic fingers she felt around her neck, under her collar, inside the hood of her coat, but found nothing.

​

Her scarf was gone.

​

Her scarf was gone, and the afternoon sun was slipping toward evening. What should she do? Go home without her scarf, or search for it and be late for tea? Either way, her mother would be furious.

She teetered for a moment, on the brink of a decision, watching the low orange sun settling into a bank of milky white cloud above the valley.

​

Then she remembered the weeks her mother had sat knitting in the nook by the window, her needles clicking in time with the raindrops against the glass as Maisie played at her feet.

 

There was nothing for it.

​

She ran back the way she had come with loping, lurching steps, racing down the narrow pathways and through wooded copses, leaping over little burns and crashing through the heather. The hills rose around her in great folds of green and grey. Heather brushed against her boots, still brown from winter. Below, the Tarras ran over a wide bed of rounded stones, bright as a ribbon in the lessening light.

​

She followed the path she had taken earlier, searching under bushes and between the roots of old trees, peering into the places where the path disappeared beneath the grass.

 

She did not find her scarf.

 

But there, lying among the long grass, was a feather. She crouched down and picked it up. It was long and brown, banded with darker stripes, soft enough to tickle her palm.

 

Something moved high above her.

 

She looked up to see a hen harrier riding the thermals, then suddenly dropping lower, skimming over the heather on pale wings. Maisie grinned. Her mother had taught her to recognise the birds by their shapes and their calls: harriers gliding over the moor, curlews with their bubbling cries, dippers bobbing beside the river.

 

She tucked the feather carefully into her pocket, and ran down towards the river, where she had paddled in the shallows, jumping from stone to stone until her socks were soaked. She searched along the bank, lifting handfuls of grass and peering between boulders.

 

She did not find her scarf.

 

But her fingers closed around a smooth stone, dark and cool with river water. She rubbed her thumb across its glassy surface, and felt some of the tightness leave her chest.

She wondered if anyone else had ever picked up this stone. Her mother had told her that people had walked these hills for hundreds of years, gathering stones to build the wobbly walls that snaked across the valley, and following the same boundaries that people still rode each summer.

She put the stone in her pocket beside the feather, and clambered up the hillside. Here the heather grew thick and tangled. She pulled her skirt above her knees to keep it clear, and clambered onwards.

 

She did not find her scarf.

 

But a flash of white caught her eye. A tuft of sheep’s wool, wrapped around a thorn. She reached out ginger fingers to free it. It was still soft and springy, untouched by mud. She scrunched it between her fingers and held it to her nose, breathing in the rich lanolin.

​

Across the valley, sheep moved slowly over the hillside, their bells sounding faintly in the distance. They always seemed to know exactly where they were going, following old tracks through the gorse and bracken in slow, single-file lines.

​

She tucked the wool beside the feather and the stone and followed the path into the gill. The ground grew wetter beneath her boots. Pools of dark water gleamed between decaying leaves, and gnarled trees gathered in around her. She poked at the peaty soil with a stick.

 

She did not find her scarf.

​

But there, tucked into a tuffet of bright green moss, was an acorn. Her mother had told her that the valley was home to hundreds of different plants, each finding its place: in the heather of the moor, the wet peat of the bog, the tangled woods and along the river’s edge. She picked it up carefully and smiled: if she’d found an acorn, the oaks must be nearby.

​

At last she reached the twisted old tree that she’d spent the afternoon climbing. She looked up at it again with awe, feeling the tiny acorn in her palm, and wondering how something so big had come out of something so small. Her mother had told her that some of the old oaks in the valley were more than 400 years old. Older than anyone alive. This one was the tallest she had found. And there, caught on one of its branches, was something red.

​

Her scarf! Tangled amongst the winter-bare twigs, its fringes fluttering in the wind. It must have been pulled from around her neck while she was climbing between the crooked boughs. She thanked the tree for taking care of her scarf, then pulled it free and wrapped it around herself. It was a little damp and covered in bits of wet bark, but Maisie didn't care. She had found it, and now she could go home.

 

Satisfied, she slipped her hands into her pockets. Then she grinned. She had almost forgotten the things she had slipped in there: a feather. A stone. A tuft of wool. An acorn. She took them out and cupped them gently in her palms. Four little pieces of the valley: something that flew above it, something shaped by its river, something carried by its sheep, and something grown from its soil.

 

She returned the treasures to her pockets, settled the scarf snugly around her neck, and followed the wide path back home as the evening light settled softly over the hills.

 

She would only be a little late for tea. And she couldn't wait to show her mother what she’d found.