Ellie Harrison, with her comatose little brother over her right shoulder and every muscle in her weakened body crying out in protest, cleared the barn. She looked back as lightning scorched the sky with a horizontal fork of white-hot electricity. Now outside knew the building which she’d just left, it was the Horner’s place, and she’d been in their barn, the one screened from view at the bottom of their large garden, the one the forest had seemingly been intent on reclaiming for its own.
Only a week ago she’d been in this very garden, laughing and joking with both Seth and Lucinda, laughing and chatting with the other villagers, villagers who all along had plans for her and her brother, who in a way had been doing no more than grooming them for this very event.
Across that darkened sea o
