“Hello, Freya,” Horst said softly. Then he looked at her fully, and even more of the savannah’s warmth was drained from his skin.

Freya raised her head lazily, brushing her shoulder-length hair from her face. “Father Horst, thank you so much for taking me in. It’s so kind of you.”

Horst’s muscles froze the welcoming smile on his face. She was one of them! A possessed. Below the healthy deeply tanned skin lay a wizened sickly child, the dark dress hid a stained adult’s T-shirt. The two images overlapped each other, jumping in and out of focus. They were enormously difficult to distinguish, obscured by a covering veil which she drew over his mind as well as his eyes. Reality was repugnant, he didn’t want to see, didn’t want truth. A headache ignited three centimetres behind his temple.

“All are welcome here, Freya,” he said with immense effort. “You must have had a terrible time these last weeks.”

“I did, it was horrible. Mummy and Daddy wouldn’t speak to me. I hid in the jungle for ages and ages. There were berries and things to eat. But they were always cold. And I sometimes heard a sayce. It was really scary.”

“Well, there are no sayce around here, and we have plenty of hot food.” He walked along the side of the bed towards the dresser below the window, every footfall magnified to a strident thump in the still room. The noise of the children outside had perished. There was just the two of them now.

“Father?” she called.

“What do you want here?” he whispered tightly, his back towards her. He was afraid to pull the curtains open, afraid there might be nothing outside.

“It is a kindness.” Her voice was deepening, becoming a morbid atonality. “There is no place for you on this world any more. Not as you are. You must change, become as us. The children will come to you one at a time when you call. They trust you.”

“A trust that will never be betrayed.” He turned round, Bible in hand. The leather-bound book his mother had given him when he became a novice; it even had a little inscription she had written in the cover, the black ink fading to a watery blue down the decades.

Freya gave him a slightly surprised look, then sneered. “Oh, poor Father! Do you need your crutch so badly? Or do you hide from true life behind your belief?”

“Holy Father, Lord of Heaven and the mortal world, in humility and obedience, I do ask Your aid in this act of sanctification, through Jesus Christ who walked among us to know our failings, grant me Your blessing in my task,” Horst incanted. It was so long ago since he had read the litany in the Unified prayer-book; and never before had he spoken the words, not in an age of science and universal knowledge, living in an arcology of crumbling concrete and gleaming composite. Even the Church questioned their need: they were a relic of the days when faith and paganism were still as one. But now they shone like the sun in his mind.

Freya’s contempt descended into shock. “What?” She flung her legs off the bed.

“My Lord God, look upon Your servant Freya Chester, fallen to this unclean spirit, and permit her cleansing; in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.” Horst made the sign of the cross above the furious little girl.

“Stop it, you old fool. You think I fear that, your blind faith?” Her control over her form was slipping. The healthy clean image flickered on and off like a faulty light, exposing the frail malnourished child underneath.

“I beseech You to grant me Your strength, O Lord; so that her soul may be saved from damnation.”

The Bible burst into flames. Horst groaned as the heat gnawed at his hand. He dropped it to the floor where it sputtered close to the leg of the bed. His hand was agony, as though it was dipped in boiling oil.

Freya’s face was screwed up in determination, great rubberlike folds of skin distorting her pretty features almost beyond recognition. “Fuck you, priest.” The obscenity seemed ludicrous coming from a child. “I’ll burn your mind out of your skull. I’ll cook your brain in its own blood.” Her possessed shape shimmered again. The lame Freya below was choking.

Horst clutched at his crucifix with his good hand. “In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, I order you, servant of Lucifer, to be gone from this girl. Return to the formless nothing where you belong.”

Freya let out a piercing shriek. “How did you know!”

“Begone from this world. There is no place in the sight of God for those who would dwell in Evil.”

“How, priest?” Her head turned from side to side, neck muscles straining as though she was fighting some invisible force. “Tell me . . .”

Heat was building along Horst’s spine. He was sweating profusely, frightened she really would burn him. It was like the worst case of sunburn he had ever known, as though his skin was splitting open. His clothes would catch fire soon, he was sure.

He thrust the crucifix towards the girl. “Freya Chester, come forth, come into the light and the glory of our Lord.”

And Freya Chester was solidly before him, thin sunken face racked by pain, spittle on her chin. Her mouth was working, struggling around complex words. Terror pounced from her black eyes.

“Come, Freya!” Horst shouted jubilantly. “Come forth, there is nothing to fear. The Lord awaits.”

“Father.” Her voice was tragically frail. She coughed, spewing out a meagre spray of saliva and stomach juices. “Father, help.”

“In God we trust, to deliver us from evil. We seek Your justice, knowing we are not worthy. We drink of Your blood, and eat of Your flesh so we may share in Your glory. Yet we are but the dust from which You made us. Guide us from our errors, Lord, for in ignorance and sin we know not what we do. And we ask for Your holy protection.”

For one last supremely lucid moment the demon possessor returned. Freya glared at him with a ferocity which withered his resolution by its sheer malice.

“I won’t forget you,” she ground out between her curled lips. “Never in all eternity will I forget you, priest.”

Unseen hands scrabbled at his throat, tiny fingers, like an infant’s. Blood emerged from the grazes sharp nails left around his Adam’s apple. He held the crucifix on high, defiant that Christ’s symbol would triumph.

Freya let out a last bellow of rage. Then the demon spirit was gone in a blast of noxious arctic air which blew Horst backwards. Neatly stacked piles of food packets went tumbling over, the bedlinen took flight, loose articles stampeded off the dresser and table. There was a bang like a castle door slamming in the face of an invading army.

Freya, the real Freya, all crusty sores, ragged clothes, and bony famined figure, was stretched out on the bed, emitting quiet gurgles from her chapped mouth. She started to cry.

Horst clambered to his feet, hanging on to the edge of the bed for support. He drew a gasping breath, his body aching inside and out, as though he had swum an ocean.

Jay and a troop of frantic children rushed in, shouting in a confused babble.

“It’s all right,” he told them, dabbing at the scratch marks on his throat. “Everything’s all right now.”

When Jay awoke the next morning she was surprised to see she had overslept. She hardly ever did that, the few minutes alone to herself at the start of each morning were among the most precious of the day. But it had to be dawn. A pale tinge of hoary light was creeping into the cabin’s main room around the reed blinds. The other children were all still sound asleep. She quickly pulled on her shorts, boots, and an adult-sized shirt she had altered to something approximating her own size, and slipped quietly out of the door. Thirty seconds later she ran back in shouting for Father Horst at the top of her voice.

Far above the lonely savannah cabin, the long vivid contrails of thirteen starship fusion drives formed a cosmic mandala across the black pre-dawn sky.