Sitting in a valley in the bleak moorland of northern England, Greywinton is a village that is home to just a few people. The first snow of winter comes early, but one year it brings with it some strange events: eerie glows from the hilltops, strange noises in the sky and some very odd, never before seen plants. The few residents, and a single, stranded, visitor are worried about these apparitions, but do they need to be? Are the glows in the sky unseasonal peat fires? Has an aircraft crashed?
The only way to find out is for someone to climb up onto the tops to find out, a dangerous exercise in thick, blinding snow and freezing temperatures. But it has to be done .
The answers just lead to more questions, but those few people should indeed be worried, very worried indeed.
This is possibly the most bizarrely inventive of the author's 'first contact' science fiction novels, albeit the shortest, but its descriptive clarity makes it deeply fascinating.