Prologue
Walking through a stand of scattered birch saplings, Drake drank in the spectacle. It was as though he watched a dance from some long-past, simpler time. A dance to mark the turning of the season, perhaps. The coming of the cold months.
The dancers, leaves shaped like jagged yellow-brown tears, twitched expectantly, waiting for their partner, the September breeze, to sweep them up and swirl them around in a brisk jig.
An involuntary shiver ran through him. A shiver of dread, rather than cold. At least for now. The summer had been bad. The winter would be worse.
The saplings were a sign of hope; he should hold onto that. A sign that the decline could be reversed, that with effort and nurturing regeneration and regrowth were possible. That rebellion wasn’t futile.
He tried to push away the sense that they were also a sign of frailty. Something that could be swept away as easily as Drake’s dwindling band of unbound rebels. The sense that it was only the fact that the Hive didn’t consider them to be worthy of notice that spared them.
‘Hello.’
It was as though the breeze had caught him up in its dancer’s embrace; he spun at the voice, ducking into a crouch.
Heart racing, he was struck by the sure notion that the thought itself had delivered him the attention he dreaded. Expensive, new clothes. Clean. Confident. He checked off as he took in the girl standing watching him. Kind of pretty. He added guiltily.
‘Hello?’ she said again irritably, as though addressing someone slow-witted.
‘You…’ he wasn’t sure where his tongue was going with this. ‘You are not one of us,’ he said, stating the obvious.
‘One of… us?’ she asked, a shy smile tugging at her lip.
His guard went up. ‘Who are you?’
‘I?’ Her nose lifted, and her eyes narrowed as she considered. ‘I am someone with manners. Someone at liberty to walk out here among these trees- at liberty to be unbound. Someone curious about the sorry-looking stranger staring at me. A stranger who appears to be none of those things.’ She held his gaze, mirth sparkling in her eyes.
‘Wait!’ He heard her yell as he turned to flee.
