Read the first chapter!
One
It was a good thing the starlings came when they did, because Oliver Marsh was about to try and kiss me.
Poor Ollie. He was a nice boy. If I’d have been born to love that way, I’d probably have loved him. But nature is rarely that simple, so Papa would say.
Ollie had suggested a walk along the old motorway (now mostly reclaimed by trees, and teeming with life) and, because I can never tell when someone has an agenda, I said yes. We’d stopped by the pond that was once a carpark until the nearby communities smashed it up to make way for the wild to come back. What was left of it was an art mural, now. There were a few logs cut back from trees, arranged in a circle, for campfires, picnics, and storytelling. Some camera traps, tacked to surrounding trees, helped us keep an eye on the wildlife, and sensors checked the humidity and air quality, and fed the data back to the labs we shared with Salmon Rise, the nearby fishing village. Bits of old tarmac still littered the banks, but the frogs and the dragonflies didn’t seem to care. Even with the trees breaking up the skyline, I smelled the sea not far away. Heard the whisper-hiss of her waves in the distance. Ollie took hold of my hand. He was breathing fast. He turned me to face him.
“Linna,” he said. All breathy. Cheeks flushed. He looked so sweet and young, but all I could think about was that little spot of moisture on his lower lip and how I really didn’t want it near my face. So I blurted the first thing I could think of to distract him.
“Look! Starlings!”
And there were. Thousands of them. They burst from the surrounding trees and blackened the air. Their song, a fog of noise. They drew shapes in the sky, like in Papa’s stories of the times before. A great, many-winged beast churning the heavens. I pointed, though I didn’t need to. Not like Ollie could miss them. We stood frozen. Necks craning. Mouths open. That is, until a few of the starlings decided to crap on their way by. Then we closed our mouths pretty sharpish.
“Where’d they come from?” Ollie asked.
I shrugged. “No idea. Papa says most starlings are migratory now. Have to travel further to find food. They’ll be gone in a few days, I bet."
The thought made me sad.
“Maybe Papa, Nisha and Freidrich will need help tagging some for the lab,” I said, more to cheer myself up than anything else. “We could volunteer?”
Ollie side-eyed me. “If we wanted. I haven’t chosen my expertise areas yet. Have you? We could choose together?”
I didn’t answer. Something small and guilty squirmed under my ribs.
The starlings danced over the tree line and were gone. I hugged myself.
“Better get back, yeah?”
Ollie looked disappointed, but his Dads had brought him up well. He rallied. Smiled. “Sure. I’ll walk you to the farm.”
We didn’t go back the way we’d come, but instead followed the proper road. A packed dirt path winding through the trees, careful not to bite into the woodland too deeply. It was wide enough for two solar vehicles to pass side-by-side. Little wooden bridges, and tiny underpasses marked it every fifty feet or so. Wildlife corridors, so the voles and foxes and deer could cross it without fear. We saw a few rabbits grazing peacefully. They let us get pretty close before they bolted.
It was only a few paces on from the rabbits that Ollie spotted the solar vehicle.
“Your Pa?” he asked.
I shook my head. “No. He’d use his e-bike and rickshaw this close to town. Anyway, he took his samples yesterday. Don’t reckon that’s even one of our fleet.”
All our SVs were pale green, splattered with dirt, and their hefty tyres left distinctive tracks. This one was white. Or had been. Bigger than ours. Its wheels weren’t wheels at all, but caterpillar tracks, like the ones once used on old war machines. Like we’d fitted Vivvie Cartwright’s wheelchair with for forest school trails.
A trailer was rigged to this SV, the cargo wrapped in waterproofed hemp-cloth and tied down with rope.
My heart hammered a panicked tempo. “Are we expecting visitors?”
“Don’t think so.” Ollie wandered round the SV, frowning. “Footprints! Heading towards the river. We should follow.”
I waved my hands at him. “Don’t be daft! Why’d anyone be going to the river now?”
The summer had been hot, as they all were these days. We’d worked hard to conserve the river’s water, but it was as low as I’d ever seen it, and the ground was dry, hard, and cracked. The confederacy villages agreed not to bother it until it recovered. We’d sent word to the city that we were monitoring the situation. The city diverted some of its water supplies to us, and allocated a few of its top ecologists out here for a bit, but there wasn’t much they could do if the rains wouldn’t come. A few of our wilders tried to help the local animals as best they could, but fish were dying, and the herons left weeks ago.
I folded my arms. “We should go home.”
“You can go,” Ollie said. “I’m gonna check it out.”
Of course, I followed him. I’m many things but damned if one of them’s a coward.
We stayed within the trees and followed the footprints. Wasn’t long before we saw her. She’d wandered into the middle of the riverbed, which was almost dry now, with just a narrow, slow-moving trickle running through what should have been a ten-foot-wide river, flowing gently down the hillsides to meet the sea.
She was kneeling. Didn’t care there was dirt all up her overalls, caking the bottom of her boots. She had a smocked shirt embroidered with storm clouds and lightning. It’d been ages since I’d seen work that fine. A green, broad-brimmed hat shadowed her face, but her wild, grey hair flew freely about her shoulders. She fumbled with something.
“There you go, fellas.”
Her voice was gruff. Cracked. Reminded me of the bullet-noise of hailstones pelting rooftops. She rose. Stepped back.
“Go on, then.”
She’d been crouching over a wooden box. Like one of the release-cages we used in the village to rewild injured animals. And that’s exactly what this one was. The sliding hatch was pulled back. We stared. After a few seconds, two little brown noses poked out, sniffing. They were followed by bulky, lumbering bodies. Low to the ground. Fluffy with brown fur. Eyes dark as river mud. They dragged flat, paddle-tails behind them.
I gasped. Covered my mouth.
“Beavers!” Ollie breathed. “What’s she doing? They won’t last with the river in this state!”
We’d been trying to wild beavers in these woods for ages. There were breeding projects a few miles north of us, and towns out west had seen their rivers recover like miracles with beaver reintroductions. But the beavers we released here never wanted to stay. A few years ago, we stopped trying. Didn’t seem fair, if the beavers didn’t like it here. Only, every year since, the summers got hotter and the storms got worse. The ground dried and cracked. The rains came, ran off the hard dirt without soaking in. The river rose, then burst. Houses this close to the sea were always built on stilts, nowadays, but our farmland drowned. Our equipment suffered. Took weeks to fix. Our turbines couldn’t stand the winds. We had no power for weeks. And Papa would suggest we try the beavers again in the spring.
Only it was autumn, now. They’d leave, surely? Wander upriver where the other beavers went. Who the hell was this old woman? Didn’t she know anything?
It was right then she glanced back. Looked straight at us.
Eyes grey and wild as a hurricane. Skin chapped. Weathered. Baked by sun and clawed by wind. Her lips cracked open and she smiled wide enough I saw she was missing three back teeth.
Something kicked in my gut. It couldn’t be.
We ran.
Didn’t stop until we got to the farm. Ollie touched my shoulder when we reached the gate.
“Right,” he said. “Well. See you.”
I only nodded. Still too stunned to speak. Neither of us said what we knew the old woman was. But it was obvious. Though I’d only ever heard tales whispered after nightfall. Kid stories. Guess I’d always thought they were legends. But here she was. Real. Human. Come right to the border of our village.
A storm wife.
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