She reaches the low boards that block the exit. The moment has come. Now she must dive beneath the water, push through into the unknown, fight the tangle of weeds and swim to the outside. She knows if she thinks about it any longer she will not move, so in one desperate, sudden action she forces herself under the surface. The sensation of going beneath the water is more than she can stand. She loses her balance, falling through the twisted undergrowth, her feet sliding so that she disappears into the brackish blackness. She reacts as she has always feared she would, as she has always imagined so vividly in her nightmares. She inhales. The mouthful of water becomes a lungful in a soundless scream of terror. Tilda feels time stop. Her intellect tells her she must get up, must break the surface, must push up, grab something, find air. Her instinct tells her to fight and flail and clutch and claw. But the blackness is enticing, the silence seductive. And the cold, the bone-deep cold, has her in its tight embrace, numbing her will as well as her body.

Chapter 1

1

SEREN

All is darkness. Blessed night. Freed from light and troubled vision, my thoughts are fed instead by the howling of the wind outside. The sound forms pictures in my mind, where I see the trees moving in the raging air. Willow and hazel pull at their roots as they dance. Birch and ash bow to the mighty force from the skies. But the oak will not bend the knee. He stands stubborn and steady. Would sooner break than yield. My mind is like the willow; it flexes and springs. My heart is a knot of oak. Let them try to wound me. Let them try.

TILDA

Feet find firm ground, thudding into dry mud. Nike on hard earth. Breathe in. Breathe out. In on second left footfall. Out on second right. Lengthen stride, a couple of inches, no more. Pace, rhythm, run, step, the poetry of movement, of exertion.

Tilda loves to run. Tilda needs to run. Her style is loose, fluid, easy, but with power and purpose. And with every step she lets her mind overlay the beat with plump, juicy images—images she will gather together for when she returns home, a crop harvested from the amber autumn landscape through which she now runs. All her best work has been created this way. Running charges her body and her mind. If she does not run, her thoughts become composted in her head, overheated and overcrowded, potentially fertile but unusable. Too much of a mass to be employed as separate artistic ideas. She turns off the woodland track and follows the slender path out of the trees and across the open fields.

Breathe, pace, breathe, pace. Heart strobing against ribs. Lungs efficient, trained, strong. Turf opening up, stretching out. The vista is uplifting. Lush, plush, velvet grass. Green is the color of life.