Storm of Ash. Michelle Kenney

was Raven who suggested using Arafel’s story nights as an opportunity for communities to exchange stories and history. There was plenty of scepticism at first, but the evenings bred a little ease as we learned about our new brothers and sisters. And each new community arrival meant one certainty to me: August was still out there, still breathing. Which somehow still eased my own.

      A spotted tiger beetle scurried across the dirt floor before disappearing beneath a pile of large maple leaves. There was a momentary lull, before the telltale rustle, and a young corn snake slithered out looking satisfied. I watched unmoved. It was the way of the forest, from the smallest to the largest. Each and every species had its natural predator and check – all except, it seemed, for Lake.

      I pictured her vast, scaled head and grey spiny body as I swung myself up between the thick fringed leaves of a papaya tree, intent on reaching the fruit weighing down the topmost branches. Her existence had been harder to explain to the Council.

      ‘Lake is believed to possess extraordinary strength, speed and agility. Cassius intends to recapture and use her against us.’

      The Elders were still reeling from August’s bombshell about outside communities, when I shared the news that an unstable draco-chimera was also living among the mountainous peaks above our quiet valley. And their initial scepticism was rapidly replaced with palpable fear, even though I was careful to provide only as much detail as they really needed.

      ‘I’ve kept Lake’s chimera coding safe,’ I whispered to Grandpa, touching the tiny dart tube resting against my chest, just to reassure myself it was still there.

      It was a small consolation, but one of the few I still had. Grandpa had entrusted the legacy of the Book of Arafel to me, and the circle of knowledge had grown so much since then. I had to trust that protecting the genetic coding of the Voynich’s oldest secret, as well as Thomas’s original cipher, would thwart Cassius, until the day he brought his war.

      And found an army of freshly trained Outsiders waiting.

      One of August’s key instructions, before he left, was that training and weapon instruction should take place in the outside forest. It was also where a skeleton shift of Arafel hunters, Komodos and Lynx warriors kept careful watch on the fringe of the forest every day. If there was to be a battle, it would be in the outer forest, away from Arafel, our home and the only real retreat we had. And there was no doubt we had a formidable Outsider army now with a wide range of skills and weaponry.

      Training was intense and overseen by Bereg, Ida’s father, and a sharp Lynx captain called Marta. I assisted where I could, describing Cassius’s creatures and training some of the younger recruits in darting and knifing, but I escaped to hunt and forage whenever I could. It was the only time I got to escape, and pretend.

      Somewhere above my head a lemur called a warning as a green lorikeet swooped low. I lowered my borrowed slingshot and watched its silent dive towards the forest floor, before it flew up and out of sight. There were still some compromises I couldn’t make, though we were trying to widen our diet as much as possible.

      I leaned back into the fork of the gnarled papaya, and reached into my leather rations bag. It was still there, my lucky apricot stone. I withdrew it and rolled it around in my fingers, drawing some comfort from its mottled, wizened surface. It reminded me of the stone I’d rolled into the cage of the little apricot monkey; a seed from the outside world offering comfort and hope through the bars of Isca Pantheon. It was a promise I was determined to deliver.

      A young monkey swung through the cedar branches opposite, and Ida’s turaco call followed. I frowned. We were asking the other outside communities for so much, but there were rules about the infant animals.

      At the same time, a series of thin branches snapped in the bushes directly below me. Medium-sized … bold given its proximity … wild boar? Years of hunting had equipped me well when it came to assessing a potential meal and I focused on the bushes intently. A single bigger kill would keep everyone happy.

      I drew Harlo’s slingshot back, my eyes narrowing as a swift silver blade suddenly flew through the opaque sunlight beneath me. A hoopoe cried its warning seconds too late as the blade impacted softly halfway up a neighbouring tree, while my intended quarry rustled away through the undergrowth.

      Scowling, I watched as Ida’s different target swung through the low branches, screeching its distress. We’d made our feelings about young monkey meat clear, and while it was a Komodo delicacy, the forest couldn’t sustain the rate at which the tribe wanted to feast on them. Instinctively, I leapt into action, running swiftly through the neighbouring trees until I reached the baby bonnet macaque, which seemed frozen to the cedar trunk above the gleaming blade. My arrival startled it back into life, and it scurried swiftly up to the topmost branches, where a mature macaque chattered her relief.

      Satisfied, I yanked the blade out of the trunk and dropped to the ground, just as the low grunting of a confident predator filled the air. I swung up into the nearest fork and swivelled to glance at the snorting creature, which was only a stone’s throw away. It had to be the same wild boar, and by the way it was squaring up to me, a hungry adult male.

       ‘First rule of the jungle: never hesitate or show doubt.’

      Bereg’s training was entrenched in us all and his voice echoed through my head. Stealthily, I levelled Harlo’s slingshot just as a second flash of silver flew past and buried itself in the boar’s neck. It dropped forward onto its knees, eyeing me reproachfully, before collapsing in a growing pool of its own dark blood.

      The bushes parted a moment later and Ida, clad in a leather sarong and beaded tunic top, strode past me, her long plaited ebony hair glistening in the iridescent light.

      She reached down and placed her palm over the animal’s forehead as a mark of respect, before retrieving her knife and tucking it inside her leather waistband. Then she shot me a questioning glance, the painted seasons on her forehead and forked tongues around her oaken eyes crinkling with satisfaction. I swallowed my frustration and nodded; it was a clean kill and we were all hungry.

      Together, we strapped the boar onto a short length of hickory using a mixture of rudimentary signing and gestures. It hung there, unprotesting, and now that I was closer I could see why it hadn’t run when it could. It was starving. I suppressed another frown as Ida lifted her trophy over her strong shoulders and melted back into the bushes. Then we set off at hunting pace, and I took my last forage into the trees among the leaves and birds.

      The Komodo knew how to ground-run, even wearing a kill, and I had to concentrate to forage while keeping her dark silhouette in sight. A lone hoopoe’s echo rang among the branches as I ran down a twisted kapok branch and leapt into the tree opposite. It was an easy leap, and one Max and I used to navigate without blinking.

      I set my teeth, refusing to let the memories consume me, as two fat pheasants ran out of the bushes below. I raised my slingshot instinctively, and within a heartbeat they were still. Relieved, I dropped to the forest floor and grabbed their scrawny legs, just as Ida pushed through the bushes. I held up a count of two, and it was her turn to nod, her lips parted in a garish smile that displayed her impressive Komodo teeth chiselled into tiny points.

      Deftly, I strung the pheasants to my tunic belt, alongside my leather rations bag. It was full of wild roots, blueberries and the small papaya. The wild roots would provide an alternative stock to our usual cultivated vegetables, and now there was the boar and pheasant. It had been a good early shift. The sun was glinting through the dense foliage, casting longer shadows across the forest floor, which meant it had to be approaching breakfast time. I gesticulated at the sky and Ida nodded.

      We set out again, two hunters from different communities bringing food to share. It was progress, I told myself as a jaybird darted low in front of us, dropping the remainder of its meal onto the forest floor.

      In a breath, the jungle melted away, and I was free-falling towards the glass river with its slow snaking arms and muted starlight. My eyes closed briefly and I willed it to consume me, to take me back to oblivion. But the jungle loomed back anyway with its coarse sunlight and unapologetic life. I was