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The door opens. Everybody turns, but only one recognises the face. Im going to hand it in, she says, proudly. My story. Violets not here to object, is she? Had to go running off looking into things nobody wants to remember. I want people to hear the truth – or the way I remember it, at least. More men arrived, taking the narrow path which wound sedately down from the road rather than the sheer climb undertaken by the first pair. They carried torches, the light staining the snow with ruddy tones. Jeren almost snarled at him.You know exactly what I mean and dont pretend otherwise. She needs you, Indarin. Now more than ever. Shes struggling. And, yes, she loves you so stop pretending you dont know it. Besides... She would have to tell him eventually. There was no way she could do this alone. “Besides, Ineed you too. I have to go back to River Holt. But Indarin shook his head.I cant, Jeren. And Lara knows it, in her heart. I dont think theres anything dangerous left in all the Dale. Mr Tunstall and Mr Rideal said the school had got a letter from her. Shed been upset about what happened. The school pretty much kicked her out. I have to do this, she longed to say, and yet dreaded forming the words. To see his face as he heard. To form them would make them real. Make it final and unchangeable. And even though she knew what she had to do now, perhaps she could still find a way. Or at least pretend so. The sword felt cold in her hands. The world slowed around her as a million thoughts rushed through her head. Thoughts of Shan, enslaved by the Fell, of Elaynes face, and Vertigerns as he tore across the space between them, stricken, bloodless, just like Shans had been at the moment of Anala’s death, a mirror of the event. The Enchassa gave me a choice, she managed to say at last. Join them, become Fellna, give up all I was or submit to him. Its so easy to fall, Shan. Just a touch and the infection crawls inside you. It burns. Burns like acid in your blood. She stumbled over the words, they came out soquickly. “The right incentive, giving in to rage and despair, or just... just blind need. We hold ourselves so high, but its just a lie. Away from the Ariah, from our kin, from the rules we live by... were no different. We came from the same roots and the same poison rests latent in our hearts. She can bring that forth.” She gritted her teeth. “Just a touch,” she hissed. Its been a Hellish summer. The torrent didnt let up from June through to August, turning the sun-bleached fields of golden hay into mile after mile of ruined earth. A whole years harvest has been destroyed and the rivers have swollen so high that there is talk of redrawing maps. A farmer in the Eden valley reported maggots eating into the living flesh of a whole herd of Swaledales; the meat beneath the wool as rancid as the ground on which they feed. In times gone by, the farmers in Borrowdale might have bunched their fists at the heavens, demanding mercy after the ceaseless onslaught.Earlier still, there might have been sacrifices. Ceremonies with bone-handle knives and virgins dressed in white. Eve knows there will be violence tonight. Farmers have burned their crops – bundles the green-topped bales of useless hay into stinking feathery oblongs and thrown petrol and flame upon the whole fetid lot. I need to talk to him. I need to see... Like a wave of gold, glittering with shards of agony, Jerens magic burst into the Otherlings retreat. They shied back, seeking to escape it but Shan held them still, calmed them with his will and they agreed to wait. To see. To experience this as well. You mean run back to Rivers and bare my soul? Her mum laughed.Oh, youhave to be joking. Put that rubbish back. Were leaving. Rowan takes a longer swallow, buying time. Decides to just take whatevers coming. And what am I doing? Jeren? Are you well? the Grey Holter called. Wheres Shan got to? Jeren winced inwardly. She had been his betrothed. But more than that, shed been the thing to which he had aspired, possibly still did. Elayne stood on a lower social level, but she too aspired. How could that be wrong? Why was it accepted for Vertigern to want her, but not for Elayne to want him? Whys he calling you Pickle? asks Snowdrop. Hes called Pickle, isnt he? Sorry, Im waffling on. I was trying to explain. Some of you will know that when I was a teenager, I went missing for a few days. I met somebody who played the guitar and sang in a lovely voice, and he got me and my friends stoned and drunk and we spent a couple of nights partying in the woods while people went a bit nuts trying to find us. You might even be sitting there now, wishing you could ask me about it. What would I tell you if you did? For a long time I would tell you the same thing I told everybody else. I dont remember. Whatever happened, its gone. I don’t think it’s some sort of suppressed memory – a way of protecting myself from trauma. I think it’s because I was so unbelievably out of it that I couldn’t make memories at all. So whatever happened, it’s not a memory to be retrieved, because it was never made in the first place. That’s what Catherine says when Idare to bring it up. She’s the same as me. It’s just a gap in her head, and maybe that’s for the best..