Across the hillside and to his left he saw three people looking down into the valley. He didn’t know them, but something about them seemed familiar. He’d had this feeling before, and nine times out of ten he was wrong. But when that one-in-ten time occurred, he found someone else like him.

Kin.

He froze and dropped down, hiding behind a corrugation in the land. His heart fluttered like a nervous bird in his chest. He’d come here looking for a dead Kin—his father—and to discover more of the story of his life. He had never expected to find some living. They were so scarce, like the rarest of treasures, that he never grew used to finding them.

From this distance it was hard to make out any details about the three figures, only that they were women. Their eye colours were unknown, their shapes hidden, the shades and textures of their skin uncertain. Yet two of the three seemed to radiate an inhuman aura.

Perhaps it was simply that one Kin was always able to recognise another.

He guessed they must be here for the same reason as him, but he didn’t want to mix with them right now. He concentrated, gathering the sleek around himself, then started downhill. When he reached the junction between the living world and the dead he paused. He looked down at his boots where they still stood on green grass and damp soil, with ants crawling around them and a small spider exploring the thread of one lace. Then he took three steps and he was standing on the dried mud of the reservoir bed. He was a grey man in a grey world, and he started down the featureless slope towards whatever might be left.

* * *

Everything had changed, but he still found his way to the cave on the hillside, as if he was drawn there by something, a thread still connecting him to whatever might be inside after all this time. As a child he had never been allowed to visit the caves, but he and his friends from the town had often crept close. Others in town had dared each other to knock on the door of Old Man Parsons’ house, because Parsons had died when he was one-hundred-and-four and everyone said he would haunt that house forever. For Bone, Emily and Jake, the cave was the equivalent of their haunted house.

In truth, Bone had never been afraid. With him it was more fascination, and a subtle rebellion at going close to a place that was forbidden to him.