• Chapter One



    The sky was bleeding.
    This is, quite obviously, not a literal statement, merely a clever metaphorical fact, if facts can even be metaphorical, that is. What I mean is that if there were ever a perfect metaphor for that morning sky, it would be just that, however morbid.
    Deep shades of red lined the horizon, as if the sky had applied fresh rouge, fading to a pale pink where the colours stained the wisps of clouds above the treetops. The sun continued to rise, as if being reborn, as if time were doubling back on itself and the blood reds of the sun’s sacrifice to the night were melding and mixing themselves back into its growing rays.
    Soon, oranges and yellows bloomed in the sky, spreading above the treetops as unnaturally tall flowers before their bright petals faded and fell to reveal a pale blue sky. And the sun continued its rise, until the many rooftops in the valley below sparkled and glowed with the presence of its ethereal and mysterious power.
    Fallengrove began to wake up.
    After a good yawn and long stretch, easing out the stiffness that usually comes with spending a couple hours in a tree; I decided it would be best to get back to my room. It would never do, after all, to be late to school on your first day. Kicking my legs out I took one last look at the town below me, slowly being swathed in the pale golden light of the early morning, and found myself wondering if maybe, just maybe, I might come to tolerate this place, for all its obvious flaws.
    My branch shifted and groaned as I stood and I stared down at it, suddenly apprehensive. It might, after all, be a safer bet to climb down and use the door instead of making my way over to the awning below my bedroom window. And I might have taken that easy route, if it weren’t for my absolute obstinacy and the fact that mother dearest would blow a gasket if she knew I’d been climbing “that old Grandpa Tree” again, which was totally unfair. Anyone with a brain – a functioning one, that is – would know that it would be absolutely impossible to get a good, proper view of the sunrise from anywhere else. Except on the roof, but I’d decided not to push that particular issue.
    Nerves or not, though, if I didn’t get moving soon I really would be late to school, which would be just absolutely prodigious of me, really. The previous night’s storm had washed away most of the surviving snow and seemed to have warmed the air considerably, but that still didn’t cover for the fact that I was only wearing shorts and a t-shirt. I scrambled along the branch, moving as fast as I could while still keeping my balance relatively well, which was, in itself, miraculous.
    A gust of wind crept up on me then and I teetered precariously, waving my arms like a tightrope-walker trying to maintain his delicate balance on that oh-so-thin wire strand. I very nearly screamed as I felt myself tipping backwards. Then the wind let me go and somehow I managed to re-balance on my branch. I looked down. Scattered among the trees roots and around it at about a three meter radius were other limbs of various sizes, ripped and flayed from the tree by the violence of the night’s storm. I shuddered.
    I grabbed for an old protruding knot on the trunk of the tree, using that as a handhold to swing down to the branch below and across from me. A few steps into my trek to the open window, the wind, that malicious wind, began to blow again. I swore and took smaller, slower steps, carefully edging toward my goal. As I began to lower myself into a crouch, a raised voice from within the house lost me my footing.
    “Tain! You’d better be awake by now!" Called my mother’s voice.
    My arms pin wheeled, flailing helplessly as my balance was lost to the wind and my mother’s shouts. I fell backwards, my stomach flipping wildly and angrily. Through the instant of pure fear I was too surprised even to scream as air rushed past my ears, my hair snagging on tiny branches. Instinct seemingly kicked in and my hands shot out, reaching desperately for handhold.
    My reaching fingers scraped painfully across rough bark and my hand grabbed for it, halting my descent but jarring my shoulder agonizingly. I stretched my other shaking hand up to wrap itself, too, around the branch and hauled myself onto it, then lay there, arms burning with the force with which I clasped the rough bark, trying not to hyperventilate.
    Through the open window, which was now a couple metres above my head, Rielle’s voice came, faintly but shrilly. I took a deep breath and began to scramble laboriously back up the tree, like a monkey who’d just had a heart attack. Shivering, I made it to the branch I’d previously fallen from and dropped from it onto the awning below my window.
    “Beltaine!” Rielle cried as I crept to my window.
    “Coming, mom!” I yelled through the window, swinging one leg over the sill and clambering rather unsteadily through.

    x------------------------------x-----------------------------x


    Washed, dried, and squeaky clean, I surveyed myself in my bedroom mirror. Red-brown hair stuck out in odd directions, its slight curl unruly and temperamental, clinging to my cheek bones. My eyes, a dark brown, were lined with kohl. I was somewhat disappointed with myself for playing the wimp. I wasn’t sure how acceptable my “look” would be in such a small town. Rielle had warned me earlier that being an “almost-Goth” might hinder my being accepted in a place like Fallengrove. So, to satiate her, I’d used a lot less. Plus, it would save on eyeliner.
    Besides the lining I’d given my eyes, I wore no makeup. Foundation and cover up weren’t really necessary and I didn’t like the way eye shadow made me look; too heavy-lidded.
    Backing up, I gave my new uniform a once over. Who had ever heard of a public school with uniforms? Talk about insanity. Completely ridiculous. I scowled at my reflection, glaring at the black slacks and blazer. Could things get any worse?

    I was forced to move away from my only real friend. The solace my dearest mother had offered?
    “Don’t worry hun, if Gwinn really is your friend, you guys’ll keep in touch.” Fallengrove was possibly the most boring place in the place in the country; zero entertainment.
    “I thought you liked hiking?” Rielle had said. And the move was in the middle of the semester.
    “You’re a smart kid, you’ll be fine.” And all of it because my mother was having some kind of crazy mid-life crisis thingy.
    I loved her and I could deal with the move, but that didn’t take care of the injustice of it all. If she had told me about it earlier I would probably have respected the decision a hell of a lot more, too, but I’d found out less than a week beforehand. We’d moved near the beginning of April, on the second Thursday of the month, which had given us plenty of time to unpack and get things organized, although it was really me doing most of it.
    Rielle had been out, rushing around in search of a job I had reminded her she should have found before the move. She’d found one by that Saturday. She was now, proudly, the new sous-chef at Fallengrove’s only “fancy” restaurant, Loon’s Necklace. The person who’d named it must have had some kind of serious creativity deficiency.
    Having seldom left the house I had met almost no one, besides the overly friendly and very cliché pie-bringing neighbours, and wasn’t much looking forward to the humiliation of meeting potential “new friends”. I wasn’t much good at making friends, most of the time I just couldn’t be bothered to put up with stiff, uncomfortable introductions. So much for preference though, this day would chock full of stiff, uncomfortable introductions. Lucky me.
    A sharp rap on my door startled me and I whipped around. “You’ll end up a very vain young woman if you keep that up,” Rielle said, amusement saturating her voice. I rolled my eyes, hiding my embarrassment at being caught staring into the mirror, and grabbed my bag, slinging it over my shoulder. “No worries though, hun, you look gorgeous.” She smiled, “Much better without all that eyeliner you hide behind.”
    “Gee, thanks,” I grimaced.
    She laughed, “No problem. Everything’s set up with the school, just go to the office and they’ll give you your timetable, right?”
    I nodded, trying to hide my growing dread, “Got it.” This was bound to be one of my worst days. Rielle noticed my hesitation and smiled reassuringly. She was beautiful. It was completely unfair for a mom to be so great looking. And she knew it too. She was excessively proud of the fact that she’d been mistaken for my older sister several times. This was annoying.
    I was lucky to share her prominent cheek bones, big eyes, and near-perfect complexion, but beyond that, there was little that could be compared between us. Her eyebrows arched perfectly, her lashes were long, dark, and utterly gorgeous, where as mine were short and sparse. She was thin in a way that no mother should ever be in the natural universe, and somehow had curves any girl would die for, a perfect figure, while I was left with a sad, boney imitation. I’m not saying that I don’t have curves, I do, they just suck in comparison. At least she didn’t beat me in height, we were both a solid 5’10”, which suited me just fine, I liked being tall.
    “You chicken or something?” Rielle teased me from my train of thought.
    I grinned at her, “If I am, can I not go?”
    “Funny, but no. That just means that I get to tease you later.” I sighed and pecked her on the cheek before trudging past with a grumbled goodbye.
    “Good luck!” She called enthusiastically.
    “I’m doomed…” I muttered dramatically, “I have no luck, I’d even be happy with bad luck…”
    When I stepped out of my house, though, a sudden movement in the distance caught my eye and I looked up, past my “Grandpa Tree” to the forest beyond, where a multitude of birds had erupted from the canopy, among them one that looked enormous. Huge, dark wings rose slowly among the others and took off, angling back, farther into the forest, while the others slowly settled back into the trees, leaving the skies to the greater bird, I assumed.
    Perhaps this place really wasn’t so bad, I thought, this was certainly something to investigate. Strange enough to tell Gwinn about, once internet was set up, something I sorely missed.
    As I walked, the wind picked up, stirring the limbs of nearby trees until they groaned, as if sharing in my utter misery. Then my hat, blown from my head by that same malicious wind – I swear it was the same one, it was not paranoia – decided it would lead the way to the school, and my impending doom.