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  Und die nie der Sonne lachten,

  Unterm Mond auf Dornen wachten.

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Introduction

  Quarter One: Whispers in the Dark

  I

  II

  III

  IV

  V

  VI

  VII

  VIII

  IX

  X

  XI

  XII

  XIII

  XIV

  XV

  XVI

  XVII

  XVIII

  XIX

  XX

  XXI

  XXII

  XXIII

  XXIV

  Quarter Two: The Witch in the Water

  1: Approach of Evil

  2: The Lang Candle

  3: The Trysting Tree

  4: A Mind Smeared Across the Head of the Mill Hammer

  5: Stone Foot

  6: Presence

  7: The Devil in Welden

  8: Grace

  9: The Giving Ground

  10: Sin

  11: Right- and Left-Handed Men

  12: The Curve of Life

  13: Sir George Is Defeated

  14: Witness

  15: The Water Gives Its Answer

  16: The Nail

  17: Gaining Water

  18: What Fear Can Do

  19: Fuller’s Mill

  20: Witchcraft in England

  21: Damnation

  22: Rope

  Quarter Three: The Easiest Room in Hell

  Saturday, March 26

  Sunday, March 27

  Sunday, March 27—later

  Monday, March 28—early morning

  Monday, March 28

  Tuesday, March 29

  Wednesday, March 30

  Thursday, March 31

  Thursday, March 31—later

  Thursday, March 31—later, continued

  Saturday, April 2

  Saturday, April 2—later

  Dreaming

  Saturday, April 9

  Sunday, April 10

  Wednesday, April 13

  Friday, April 15

  Saturday, April 16

  Monday, April 18

  Monday, April 18—continued

  Quarter Four: The Song of Destiny

  1

  1

  2

  3

  5

  8

  13

  21

  34

  55

  89

  144

  233

  377

  610

  987

  1597

  Also by Marcus Sedgwick

  Copyright

  * * *

  spiral (noun) from Latin spira, and Greek speira, “a coil.”

  from Proto Indo-European sper, “to turn, to twist.”

  1. A spiral line, course, or object. 2. A two-dimensional curve, the locus of a point whose distance from a fixed point varies according to some rule as the radius vector revolves. 3. A continuous rise or fall, as of prices, for example. 4. A helix (nontechnical use).

  * * *

  * * *

  helix (noun) from Latin helix “spiral.”

  from Greek helix related to eilein, “to turn, twist, roll.”

  from Proto Indo-European wel-ik-, from root wel- “to turn, revolve.”

  1. A screw-shaped coil. 2. A curve on a developable surface, especially a right circular cylinder that becomes a straight line when unrolled into a plane.

  * * *

  INTRODUCTION

  Generations of stars lived and died.

  Around 4,600 million years ago, the death of one of these stars, in a supernova, causes a shockwave to hit a vast molecular cloud, or nebula, made of dust and gas. Words cannot describe how large this nebula is. Only numbers can; it would take a particle of light sixty-five years to cross it.

  The shockwave triggers a reaction in the nebula; the dust particles within it are drawn together and as they collide and stick together, so their gravitational attraction causes more and more material to coalesce, so that now a small part of the cloud starts to collapse and spin. Over the course of the next 100,000 years, the competing forces of gravity, pressure, magnetism, and rotation creates the beginnings of the Solar System; the vast majority of matter forms at the center of this spinning disc, the Sun. Around it revolves a mess of gas and dust that will, as tens of millions of years pass, form the planets.

  The Solar System at this time is cluttered and chaotic; an overcrowded maelstrom of rocky planets, gas giants, moons, and asteroids all hurtling through clouds of dust and gas left over from the Sun’s formation. Collisions are inevitable, and they occur.

  About 4,500 million years ago, a giant body the size of Mars hits the newly forming Earth. Known as Theia, it slews into the proto-planet at an oblique angle; most of its matter fuses with the Earth. Its iron core sinks to join with the iron core of Earth; but a significant amount of the crusts of both planets is flung back into space where it becomes our Moon.

  The impact of Theia proves critical to our existence.

  The Solar System is bathed in electromagnetic radiation given off by the Sun, deadly to most forms of life—certainly to human beings, but the iron core of Earth is larger than it would have otherwise been, large enough to remain hot and liquid. The warm liquid rises and falls in strong convection currents within the Earth’s core, which, together with the Earth’s high rotational speed, gives the planet a powerful magnetic field. It is this magnetic field that repels the great majority of the radiation, sending the charged particles back out into space, or spiralling down the lines of magnetism to the poles of the Earth, where they collide with the atmosphere, causing the Northern Lights, and their southern counterpart.

  The impact of Theia also causes a wobble in the Earth’s rotation—it is this wobble that gives us our seasons; spring to summer to autumn to winter; and yet it is also the continuing presence of the Moon after the collision that stabilizes the Earth’s motion. Without which the variation in temperature between our seasons would be much greater, lurching between extremes of hot and cold that could make our life here impossible.

  A period of relative peace arrives, but then around 500 million years later, the gravitational effects of Jupiter and Saturn not only move Neptune and Pluto farther out into space, but also start to influence the uncountable number of asteroids in orbit. Many are pushed out into deep space, but some are propelled into the inner Solar System, colliding with the Earth and the Moon.

  As the Earth is struck again and again, the temperature of our planet’s surface rises high enough to melt rock, turning our home into a deadly hell. Yet the Late Heavy Bombardment, as it is known, dies away relatively rapidly. In its wake comes a steady trickle of impacts with icy comets and asteroids. These deliver water to Earth from the outer, colder regions of the Solar System; water that will form the oceans. And they also deliver something else; organic compounds, from which the development of life itself is possible.

  The Late Heavy Bombardment would have almost certainly eradicated any life on Earth that existed at the time; and yet, the earliest forms of life we have discovered, simple cells without a nucleus, known as “prokaryotes,” date to immediately after the end of the impacts.
>
  Impacts of objects from space still occur.

  It is believed that the time of the dinosaurs ended in a mass extinction around sixty-five million years ago, the result of a collision with an asteroid. Even in the life of our own species, events such as the Tunguska explosion of 1908, or the Chelyabinsk meteor strike of 2013, show that the danger is not over; collision with an asteroid large enough would throw enough dust into the atmosphere to block out the Sun for many years, causing vegetation, and those animals that depend on it, to die out. Of all the species of life that have ever existed, it is estimated that 99.9 percent are now extinct.

  Yet somewhere in the time since the dinosaurs were destroyed, the mammals that somehow survived evolved, eventually leading to the arrival on Earth, some 4,598 million years after its formation, of mankind.

  We cling to the surface of our planet; we live, for the most part, in a tiny layer of breathable gases wrapped around a ball of rock that flies through space, revolving around the Sun. But our path through space is not circular, because the Sun itself is traveling; heading away from the galactic center as the Universe expands. So the shape that we describe as we fly through space is not a line, nor even a circle; as the Earth revolves around the Sun, which itself moves out through space, we form quite another shape altogether; the three-dimensional spiral known as a “helix.”

  There are four quarters to this story; they can be read in any order and the story will work. The four quarters are assembled here in just one of twenty-four possible combinations; this order makes one kind of sense, but the reader should feel free to choose a different order, and a different sense, if desired.

  Marcus Sedgwick

  Hadstock

  May 2014

  QUARTER ONE

  WHISPERS IN THE DARK

  I

  She is the one who goes on,

  when others remain behind.

  The one who walks into darkness,

  when others cling to the light.

  She is the one who will step alone into the cave,

  with fire in her hand,

  and with fire in her head.

  She walks with the people,

  climbs up beside the waterfall.

  Up, as the water thunders down.

  Up, through the cool green leaves,

  the summer’s light lilting

  through the leaves and the air.

  They have come so far,

  and ache with the pain

  of their feet and their backs,

  but they cannot stop,

  because the beasts do not stop.

  From where they climb,

  they cannot see the beasts with their eyes,

  but they know they are there.

  In their mind, they see the deer:

  their hooves, their hair, their hearts.

  The antlers on the harts,

  among the hinds who have the young.

  They take the long path into the valley,

  moving slowly, day by day,

  while the people climb the waterfall

  to meet them

  with arrows and spears.

  II

  Just once, she slips,

  her cold foot wet on green moss rock,

  and close to the spray,

  the water wets her neck.

  Her face close to the drop,

  her gaze falls on the frond of a fern.

  A young plant, pushing its way out from rocks,

  the tip curled tight.

  Curled in,

  in close-coiled secrecy

  round and round, tighter and tighter,

  smaller and smaller,

  forever, it seems.

  She stares, forever, it seems,

  then a hand holds hers,

  and pulls her to her feet.

  The waterfall thunders;

  and they are deaf.

  Muted by its power,

  they climb in silence

  to the year’s final camp,

  in the trees, under the cliff,

  under the high caves,

  the high hanging dark

  where magic will be made.

  Where magic must be made.

  III

  Her thoughts are deep in the caves,

  though her body is with the people,

  at the leaf-fall camp.

  Through the trees; the great lake.

  The lake that spills itself down the waterfall.

  The great lake: that will be crossed

  to meet the beasts at dawn.

  They are silent, for the most part.

  They speak with their hands

  as much as with their tongues.

  A gesture; do this.

  Do that, go there; the pointing hand.

  Come. Sit. Faces talk as much as mouths.

  Besides. They know what to do.

  All of them. The old and the young,

  each works hard.

  Man and woman, boy and girl.

  Only the very young do nothing;

  and there are no very old.

  She, who has been bleeding for two summers,

  will soon give more young to the people.

  It has not happened yet,

  though she has been with some of the men,

  and some of the boys have tried,

  it has not happened yet.

  She knows it will,

  just as the deer they hunt have come to mate,

  out there on the plains beyond the lake,

  so the people too make new.

  The one who will go to the caves walks,

  and speaks

  to the one who will lead the hunt.

  The one who will lead the hunt approaches her.

  He looks at her and tells her food,

  and food it is she goes to find,

  while others make fire, and others

  fetch wood and others sharpen spears,

  and others put huts together from the skeletons of old ones

  and others find the boats they left before.

  A few of the people set out from camp, foraging.

  She leaves them to go their way,

  while she goes hers. Leaf-fall is here,

  yet the evening is warm.

  She leaves her furs behind

  and walks naked with the moist green air on her skin.

  Through the trees of the wood, which stretches along the whole lake shore,

  beneath the cliffs, beneath the caves,

  beneath the high, hanging caves.

  She has a basket, folded from reeds,

  and she fills it with what she can find.

  There are nuts, which will be good on the fire.

  Berries. She finds a root she knows,

  and then she lifts

  the spiraling fronds of ferns, and finds snails.

  Large snails. Good eating.

  She places them in her basket,

  one by one.

  One hovers in the air on her fingertips,

  as she traces its shell with her eyes,

  round and round, tighter and tighter,

  smaller and smaller.

  Forever.

  Or so it seems.

  The snail tries to slip up her fingers, to escape her grasp,

  and she puts it in the basket.

  Time to eat.

  At the camp, the fire is fierce,

  And they have returned.

  Some have left their furs,

  others stay in theirs.

  She feels the cold as the sun dips from the trees,

  and slips her fur over her back.

  They eat.

  There is dried meat.

  Fish from the great lake.

  There are berries and the nuts she found,

  which toast on the rocks by the fire.

  When the eating is done,

  the telling begins, and the one who does the telling

  tells of the hunt that will come.

  And then he t
ells

  the old tells of the beasts,

  and the tell of the fight between the Sun and the Moon.

  He tells the tell of the journey to the caves,

  and the one who will make the journey stares into the flames,

  and he sees darkness.

  But she doesn’t listen to the stories.

  She holds the shell of one of her snails,

  its body in her belly, its back in her hands.

  And by firelight she stares at it.

  There is something about the shell,

  the shape of the shell.

  Like the shape of the uncurling,

  unfurling ferns.

  It is speaking to her,

  she’s sure, but she doesn’t know what it says,

  because it speaks in a language she doesn’t know.

  She picks up a stick,

  a small dry stick, and puts its end in the dust at her feet.

  She moves the end of the stick, and a mark is made in the dust.

  A short, curved line.

  Her eyes are fixed on the shell;

  on its colors, on its curving line,

  the slight white line in the center of the curving body, wrapping in,

  wrapping in.

  Tighter and tighter, round and round, smaller and smaller.

  Or, looked at another way;

  out and out, larger and larger.

  A shape like that could go on forever,

  or so it seems,

  and still it speaks to her,

  and still she doesn’t know what it says.

  But she knows she has seen it,

  when her eyes were shut.

  She shifts her foot and the line in the dust is gone.

  IV

  As the firelight dies, they make ready.

  There will be no sleep.

  Spears are resharpened, hardened in the fire ash.

  Spear throwers checked; here, a new one is made.

  Pitch and cord bind stone to shafts,

  a splinter of flint with fresh-cut edge:

  an arrow.

  Gut is pulled across a new bow’s back,

  it takes strong shoulders to bend it,

  but then, the people are strong.

  And the strongest will cross the water,

  the night-dark water, with half-moon

  light to light their way, across the great lake

  to the plains. Where, at dawn, the deer will be

  waiting, unaware that they are waiting to die.

  And then there he is: the one who will go to the caves.