Now, seizing his sister by the hand, he led her from the woods to see what was after their village, the only home they'd ever known.

Brush and briars grew thickest along the edge of the forest where the sunlight was strongest. Standing at the end of the trail, they were flanked by bracken taller than their heads. Shielded, Gull thought, and a good thing.

The valley called White Ridge was a crazy quilt of colors. Where the forest broke, running in strips here and there was meadow, tall yellow-green grass dotted with blue and yellow wildflowers. Between and all around were stretches of mossy rocks and hardscrabble ledge. Down the center were the only fertile tracts, pockets of rich riverbed loam left from when the valley's stream had been a mighty river. The stream ran still, circling rocks and rippling over streaks of lime that gave the divided village its name. Thirty cottages stood far apart, each surrounded by hip-high rock walls that protected the scanty gardens from animals. The cottages were stone, with roofs of thatch or shingles or sod. A mill astraddle the stream creaked to the south, and an alehouse trickled a plume of white smoke. A bony road ran from the northern ridges, crossed the stream on the one-cart bridge, then sank into the bogs to the south. Along its eastern edge, the valley sported another forest called the Wild Woods, yet one the villagers would visit.

All of Gull's twenty years, White Ridge had been a quiet place, where the biggest fight all year would be from Seal's sons stealing one of Bryony's hogs. No one knew what today would bring. The woodcutter saw his hunched father, Brown Bear, his back broken by the same tree that had crippled Gull, and the thin shape of his mother, Bittersweet. Ranged alongside were his brothers and sisters. Gull waved his axe, but his family didn't see. They watched the northern ridge, as did Gull.