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Chapters (27)
  1. Cover
  3. Title
  4. Chapter 1
  5. Chapter 2
  6. Chapter 3
  7. Chapter 4
  8. Chapter 5
  9. Chapter 6
  10. Chapter 7
  11. Chapter 8
  12. Chapter 9
  13. Chapter 10
  14. Chapter 11
  15. Chapter 12
  16. Chapter 13
  17. Chapter 14
  18. Chapter 15
  19. Chapter 16
  20. Chapter 17
  21. Chapter 18
  22. Chapter 19
  23. Chapter 20
  24. Chapter 21
  25. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
  26. ABOUT PHILIP WOMACK
  27. ABOUT LITTLE ISLAND

In the moonlight, Tom could make out every individual feature on his face. The man’s hair was carefully held back in a ponytail. Though he was smiling, it was not with warmth. He had a tattoo on his cheek, in startling scarlet, of a long-tailed, tufty-eared creature that might have been a leopard. As the man stepped nearer to Tom, and bowed, in a courtly, slightly mocking way, the tattoo seemed to dance.

‘We have known you were here,’ he said. His accent was hard to place.

The man stretched forwards as if to grasp him by the throat, but stopped, his fingers a few inches away from Tom’s skin.

‘Stay here, Thomas James Swinton. Stay here, and do not wake the past.’ He bowed again, and then stood up straight, ears pricked, as if he could sense something on the wind. His nostrils curved, and the leopard tattoo – or was it Tom’s imagination? – stretched and flexed its forelegs. When he bared his lips now, his teeth were sharp, and Tom had the powerful sense that he was in the presence of a wild beast.

‘Who are you? How did you know I was here? How … how did you know my name?’ He stumbled over the words. He felt at once as if he wanted to flee and that he wanted to stay with this person for ever.

‘Too many questions.’

It happened quickly. There was a flash of bronze metal; the man snarled and slashed at Tom, leaving a long, bright red mark on his forearm. Terrified, Tom sprang backwards, the pain sudden and sharp, the blood welling through his fingers as he clutched at the wound. A breeze from the sea rustled the crops, and a drop of blood fell and stained his trainers.

Growling, his attacker sprang away into the darkness.

Chapter 4

18th April, 1846

Today, Rohenga held a leaf up to the light, and showed me the tracings within it. ‘That is what we are. The Samdhya. The Holding Together.’ He laughed and threw the leaf away onto the wind. I wanted to keep it, as he had once touched it, but I could not watch where it fell.

— From the diary of Margaret Ravenswood

Tom hefted his bag on his shoulder as he stood on the platform at Holt. The wound on his forearm had shaken him, although it was only skin deep; it had caused a fair amount of blood, and he had thrown his T-shirt away, before bandaging up the cut and spraying it with disinfectant he’d found in the matron’s office.