**The Times instant Top Ten bestseller****Named a book to look out for in 2024 by the Sunday Times, Guardian and BBC****A small hardback edition featuring an afterword by the author**From the internationally bestselling and prize-winning author of Piranesi and Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, an enchanting and haunting Christmas short story_________________________________'A church is a sort of wood. A wood is a sort of church. They're the same thing really.'Nineteen-year-old Merowdis Scott is an unusual girl. She can talk to animals and trees - and she is only ever happy when she is walking in the woods.One snowy afternoon, out with her dogs and Apple the pig, Merowdis encounters a blackbird and a fox. As darkness falls, a strange figure enters in their midst - and the path of her life is changed forever.'Like Hilary Mantel, Clarke has made the very notion of genre seem quaint' Guardian'A miraculous and luminous feat of storytelling' Madeline Miller **With exquisite illustrations by Victoria Sawdon**