Chapter One

New Mexico

Sometimes it's what you don't see. It's the items that are hidden from view that are the most telling; ones hidden in cupboards or concealed under throws, behind pictures. Or even in rooms shied away from your casual visitor. It's those things that are most telling about the character of a person, the things they wish you not to know.

The good man and his wife standing in front of the house my father had built when I was a boy have no idea of the dark things that have happened in that place, and nor should they need to. For them, Prosperity is a new start. What has occurred within those four walls previously need never touch their lives although they may wonder what the faint scent that clings to the air inside might be.

Sage. White sage. Used to cleanse in so many religions; rids a person or a place of its sins. I am more familiar with the stuff than I wish to be.

After seven months I return to England. This time my journey there will not be one of flight as it was last time. Instead it will be one of hope, that the people I have left will still be there, well and alive. I am unsure of my welcome, for there are still sins for which I need to atone.

"Ethan."

I turn around to the copse behind me and see my old friend through the trees. Her face is a creased as a linen shirt after being slept in, brown weather-worn skin framing the white of her eyes.

"Ela," I say, backing into the trees so the new proprietor of my childhood home will not be disturbed. "I thought you had gone south for a few days?"

"I had," she says, looking up to the skies. "But the weather changed its mind and decided to keep the storms until after you have left, which makes it a good time to pick the roots and leaves."

I laugh. The old woman has never fooled me, even as a boy, but then she has never tried. "You weren't going to let me go quietly, were you?"

Ela smiles. "No, Ba'cho. But then you never went anywhere quietly." She is watching the birds in the trees rather than me. As much as she can't fool me, I cannot read her so I don't know whether her thoughts are about those birds or the events of the past few months. She is a wise woman, the tribe's eldest member as no one can recall when she was born, if she ever was. "You will remember this time what I have taught you?"

I take a seat on a fallen tree, the bark smooth having been used for that purpose by many others already. "I can't afford to forget."

"The herbs? Your Miss Ives will help you?"

"If she…" I stop and look away. Grab a blade of long grass to chew. I don't think of Vanessa often. I speak of her only to Ela, and that is out of necessity. But she resides in my dreams and in the chill that creeps rarely into the wind that I am sure is sent by her moors.

A bird of prey circles. Somewhere something has died. "She knows you are alive and yes, she is angry, but mainly at herself."

"She has no reason to be cross with herself."

"Neither have you. And if we need to have that conversation again you will need to delay your leaving." Ela sits down, the carved stick forever by her side. "The herbs and the amulet will help if you believe they will. You have done your atoning and can do no more of it. You have a purpose and the gift – for that is how you must look at it – will help you serve that purpose."

"This past week," I say, still watching the birds circling, "has been the first time I've had chance to consider what's happened. Everything. Miss Ives, my father, Thomas, Sembene. One moment I feel settled, as if a shard of light has crept through the darkness and then I remember what might be to come."

She's looking at me now. "What will be to come."

"I can't undo what's done."

"You can't ignore that part of you, Ba'cho."

"Even though it makes me into something I don't want to be?" A leaf drops to the ground, catching the slight muttering of a breeze on the way down.

"I do not understand why you are still ashamed. All of us have done things we regret. It is this regret that stops us from becoming evil. None of us are truly pure, not even the most reclusive of monks or pious of priests. Anyone who claims not to have this darkness is likely concealing it in my experience," Ela said. She stands up and taps me with the stick. "Come. You will eat with me tonight and we shall discuss things further."

I stand and follow her through the trees to what should have been a reservation, but in my absence my father had relaxed the restrictions and had lived with the Indians peacefully. We pass the marker of my brother's grave, where bare earth once was there is now grass, more than three years' growth.

"Ba'cho! Ba'cho!" I hear before I am bowled at by two of the boys, Ela's great grandsons. "We have new bows," one of them tells me.

"Afterwards," Ela says. "First you must help cook supper."

It is dusk by the time we have eaten and I have aimed at tree targets with the boys. The late summer sun has left the evening warm, but the wind from the moors still whispers. I have rolled a cigarette, a habit of Vanessa's I have chosen not to give up and watch the trees dance. Around me are the wooden houses of the tribe. The remains of fire's flicker and the air is scented with food. The darkening sky is tempered with deep oranges and reds; a painting for a rich man's sitting room.

"We leave at sunrise," Ela's grandson says. My childhood friend and the enemy of my father. Tak. He will ride with me to the port and we will bid farewell, just as we did three years before. "And next time you return don't bring the inspector."

He and Rusk did not like each other. There had been an element of distrust that had bordered on being humorous to all apart from the men concerned.

"He will bring a wife next time," Ela says from inside the home. "Maybe a child."

This makes me laugh. "I don't think that's what's in the cards," I say.

"You don't read them."

"Neither do you."

Ela appears, hands on hips and I remember my boyhood, being chased after stealing food from her, running through the forest barefoot and hearing only our laughter and her empty threats. I had grown up here, away from my father's discipline and my brother's golden halo. It was here I had learned of ways and customs other than my Catholic church and here that I saw different horizons to what my father had planned for me. "There are other ways to see someone's future, Mr Chandler," she says, coming outside and sitting down. "Before I take to my sleep let me give you some more advice."

"I'll add it to the volumes."

She tuts at me and Tak smiles. His wife is beside him now, his boys in bed. Nascha, he reminds me often, is alive because of me. I did what he couldn't; I saved his wife. He saw mine die. "There are people who see through the veil between worlds much more clearly than the rest of the world. You and I both know there is a thin divide."

I remember chanting, voices, hallucinations and speech coming from things that should never have spoken. I remember arrows flying across a full moon and a uniform that I had been forced into. I looked at Tak and saw his grandmother's power flicker quietly in his eyes. "Always."

"Beware the dead, Ethan. Beware those who should be in the ground."

A/N I haven't written fan fiction in a few years and I should be writing something else as I have a book due with an editor in just over a month, but having binge watched both seasons the characters just wouldn't leave me alone and it was a wonderful chance to try a few things out.

The next chapter will be likely published tomorrow.