we went to look for red squirrels

We went to Kielder Water and Forest. Pine trees telegraph pole true, straight arrows to the sky. We were in search of red squirrels, wee embodiments of the Devil in Celtic folklore. Sun broke out. We moved among the slatted light of the pines. There was birdsong. Spring song recently arrived from African shores.

I saw shadows move among shadow. A shift in the air, a dark shape on the far side of a tree trunk. Every time I looked it vanished. Like that game I used to play as a child of trying to see myself looking away from the mirror.

It was futile, this search for elusive red devils. There was only the shadows along the forest floor, the creak of moving trunk, the sound of the sea shooshing ashore as wind messed with the branches.

Then, out on the lake a distant sound beyond the trees. The high drone of a speed boat pulling someone, the skite of a flat blade cutting water in wide parabolas. It droned and it droned and the water swished in the lake, in the high branches of the trees. Something was transforming. Magic was being spelled. The red squirrels were about to show themselves and take us far into the moss and dark places of the forest. The drone held us. We awaited our audience with the devils. 

Then the spell broke. The sound of the water was no longer in the tree tops, no longer in the lake. There would be no red squirrels. The drone of the speedboat was gone. Suddenly our heads were turned, and saw through the trees to the deep centre of the lake where spray of water was still describing parabolas, cursive runes on the surface of the water. And there - through the stilled shadows of the forest - we saw the ghost rider cutting through the water. His shadow entering the material world.
High above the wind started moving the tall pines. Somewhere in those branches the red devils were watching us. We were the ones that were hunted. We were the ones trying to fathom the warnings cut out of the water on the lake by shadow, spoken by the wind in the tree tops.
We blinked, we said nothing to one another: we headed out of the forest before it was too late. Unseen eyes. The shadow cutting through the lake. The sun being pulled behind thick cloud. Distant dogs barking a warning. We were about to see our squirrels.