The sound of the bird’s flapping wings vanished into the dark. Abandoned, he stood and stared around him. He had been dropped to the bottom of an enormous nest in the crown of a tree. Moonlight filtered through the massive leaves: The nest was empty except for a small scattering of bleached white bones. He had to get out of here! Ark tried to scramble up the sides, but the feathers lining the branch-built construction were slippery and the edge of the nest too high.

Suddenly, he heard a slithering sound followed by a soft hiss somewhere up above. His beating heart told him that this was a wild wood. Nothing known. Nothing safe. In panic, he burrowed under the feather lining, intending to pick a hole in the nest and wriggle through. Plumber’s instincts. He pulled enough feathers out to see the structure of the nest. This was no flimsy pigeon roost. The branches were torn, bent around, and woven into ropes thicker than his arm. Without a saw, this open-air nest was a wicker prison and he was bait in waiting. But whatever it was that crawled along the branch up high must have lost interest. It slid away, its rough skin rasping against bark.

Ark breathed a sigh of relief. He looked up into the starry night. There was the familiar Plow, digging the furrows of the heavens, and Orion the hunter stared down at him. Ha! And he was the one hunted. He sat back in the nest, feeling lost. Why had he run straight to Grasp’s place? He was in such a righteous rush to save his sister, he hadn’t paused to think. He should have smelled a trap! Now it was all over, or would be as soon as that raven returned with its cronies. But apart from the lonely call of a nightjar, the forest remained strangely silent. The softness of the feathers finally soothed him. It had been a long night. Had he really only left the Rootshooters a few hours ago? His eyelids were heavy and he began to drift off into strange dreams where eyes stared at him from the shadows.

A voice broke into his sleep. “Well, well, well, what have we here?”

Ark woke suddenly, aware of a sharp branch sticking into his back. His shift had dried and stuck to his wound and his whole body ached. The light had changed, night swapped for a cold, predawn mist. The hours had flown. Ark licked dew off his lips as he looked up, wondering for a second if rescue was at hand. However, the face that peered over the top of the nest did nothing to reassure him. Its owner was an old woman. Her skin was dark as if competing with night itself, but her eyes were as green as vivid moss. Her thin form reminded him of a snake. Was that what had slithered above him in the dark?