Star Trek and all its intellectual property belongs to Paramount/CBS. No infringement intended, no money made.

Author's Note: This story is not graphic, but it contains references to child abuse, violence and non-con. If this type of material offends you, please do not read it.

A magpie chattering nearby is the first indication I have that I'm completely alone.

I don't move. I can't.

Minutes pass, and the magpie flits down onto the turf a few metres away. Its head turns, so it can eye me beadily. The remains of my sandwich lie discarded on the grass – that's what's attracting it.

I still don't move. I still can't.

Emboldened by my silence and stillness, the magpie hops closer to the sandwich and begins tearing at it. I shudder, and shut my eyes.

The afternoon advances. Soon it's time for roll-call, and then for tea. I'm not hungry. I can't imagine ever being hungry again.

It's long after tea-time when the voices start calling. The early spring evening has started closing in, and the sky beyond the bare trees overhead is pale, luminous green.

'Don't you fuckin' dare tell anyone, Reedie. You know what'll happen if you do.'

I didn't dare even try to speak. I just nodded, dumbly.

I have to go in. I can't just lie here till eventually I'm found, even if it would take till morning before the search got this far and at a guess I'd have frozen to death by then. Even though it's March, winter hasn't forgotten us, and in the mornings after cloudless nights the grass outside is white and crackling with rime.

I have to go in. I have to lie. I have to take my punishment for 'forgetting the time', and somehow I have to go on being alive among my schoolfellows.

Somehow.

'You're not going to send it–?'

'I already did! Who gives a shit about him anyway?'

Gasps. Nervous laughter. Somebody cursed. A few pairs of feet started edging away.

'David, for fuck's sake–!'

Someone's nerve broke. The earth transmitted the impacts of running feet – one pair. The rest hovered and shifted, the cold realisation starting to break through the excitement.

The phone began to ping the 'received' confirmations. Dozens of them.

He crouched down again. His hand was hard on my shoulder, where every muscle was already on fire from the struggling I'd done. In vain. Till there wasn't any point in struggling any more, and the only jerking was reaction from the pain, though they still held me down, just in case.

'Don't you fuckin' dare tell anyone, Reedie. You know what'll happen if you do.'

I know. And so it's imperative for me to get back to my feet, to get my clothing back into some kind of order, and to walk back to the school. To walk properly, moreover, though I've no idea how on earth I'm going to do it. My heart thuds with terror at the bare idea of moving, waking the awful pain that has finally subsided into a dull, grinding throb at the base of my body.

I'm six years old – well, six and a bit. Up till today, things that grown-ups do to each other's bodies has been mostly a mystery and wholly irrelevant, though obviously I know that boys and girls are different; I have a sister, and now and again I've caught glimpses of her without any knickers on, so that doesn't worry me at all. In the playground you get the older boys hinting that they know things, and sometimes they tell, if they feel like it; Christopher says it's because they like feeling clever, knowing things we don't. So I sort of get the idea about grown-ups and where babies come from, though to start with I didn't believe a word of it because that was just disgusting, and Mother and Father would never have done anything like that.

But none of the boys ever said anything about what has happened to me today. This is outside my universe.

Of course I knew from the start that David Sallis didn't like me. I don't know why. He just picked on me and called me names – 'Runty', or 'Reed the Weed'. And there were other boys – a gang of them, all twice as old as me – and they picked up on it, and I learned very quickly that at playtime I had to run and hide, or find a teacher and stay where they could see me. I could keep quiet about the bruises and cuts, but then they started to pull my uniform about and break my PADDs, and that got me into trouble. The teachers told Mother and Father I was careless with my things.

Mother and Father are coming to the school the day after tomorrow. I've been hoping that nothing will be said this time about my carelessness, because I've got very good at running and hiding, and the one time I wasn't quite quick enough, Christopher managed to borrow a needle and thread from his sister's sewing-box, and I managed to work out how to sew the arm back on my blazer so it hardly showed at all, unless you looked very hard.

It was because my parents are coming that I went out at lunchtime. Strictly speaking we're not allowed to, and normally I'm very good at doing what I'm told, but when we went out on a nature walk last week I saw the anemones among the trees and recognised them – they grow in the garden at home. Maddie calls them 'windflowers', which I think is quite a pretty name. I'm not allowed to pick any of the flowers at home, but I thought Mother would like it if I picked some of these for her; nobody will miss them and she must like them or she wouldn't have them in the garden, would she?

There's a wall around the school grounds, but it's very old, and here and there it's got broken places where you can get through, if you're small and determined. I grabbed a sandwich instead of having a proper lunch, though normally I try to eat lots of healthy food because I want to grow – I'm the littlest boy in my class, which is why I got called Runty. And I thought that if I was quick, I could eat my sandwich out here in the peace among the trees, and pick some flowers for Mother, and be back in school before anyone even noticed I was missing. I have a clean yoghurt pot in my locker that I keep anything small in that I don't want to mislay, and I could put some water in it so they'd last till I could give them to her.

There are flowers in front of me now. Beautiful white flowers, windflowers in the grass, but they're crushed and bruised, unfit to give to anybody; and there's earth packed under my fingernails where I clawed at it.

I have to move.

I grope a handkerchief out of my pocket and wipe my eyes and nose as best I can. I tried not to cry, I tried very hard, because Reeds don't cry, but after a while I couldn't help it. I looked at the windflowers and tried to think about Mother but then I couldn't see them any more and all I could think about was the pain.

The sky overhead is darker. Shadows are gathering among the trees. I've never been outside alone at night in my life, and I'm frightened. If I stay here I will get colder and colder and colder, and then I'll die.

Before today, I might have added 'and bad things will get me', but it's too late for that; they already did.

Father has a cabinet in his study at home. It has a glass front in the top of it, so that you can see the guns inside it. They are old, and beautiful, and sometimes he lets me handle them. He says that when I'm old enough he'll teach me how to shoot, because that will be a good thing to know when I'm an officer on one of the Empire's warships.

He doesn't worry about me handling the guns, because the ammunition is safely locked away. But he doesn't know that once I found the drawers of the cabinet unlocked, and opened one of them hoping to see the boxes of ammunition – not that I would have tried to put any in a gun, because that would be a very naughty thing to do, and dangerous, but just because I wanted to know if that was where they were.

There were no boxes of ammunition. Instead there was a book – a very old book. I like books, and I knew at once that this must be a very special book, to be locked away so safely. I carried it very carefully to the table and opened it, and started looking at the pictures, but I didn't look for long; the pictures in it frightened me, and I'd only turned over a few pages before I slammed it shut again and ran back to the drawer to put it away. And I never, ever told anyone that I'd opened the drawer or seen the book, but the things I'd seen couldn't be unseen.

The one that stayed with me most vividly was of a man tied to a post while another man cut him with knives. There were cuts all over his body, bleeding, but he was still alive; you could see his mouth open.

And now all I can see in my mind's eye, all I've been able to see since the fear and the pain started, is the picture of David Sallis tied to a post with his mouth open and cuts all over his body. I think Father would do that to him, if he knew, but Father must never know that I was disobedient and left the school grounds. He must never, ever know that I was so wicked, or that such a terrible thing has happened to me.

I have to move.

I brace myself, and grit my teeth.

Reeds don't cry, Reeds don't cry. I crush the handkerchief over my mouth to stop the whimpers of terror and pain as the movement feels like something inside me is tearing. I have to be brave, I have to pretend I'm a big boy and can deal with this.

After a minute I somehow get myself to my feet.

It's got so dark while I've lain here that it takes me a while to find where my trousers are – they must have been tossed away when someone dragged them off me. As best I can tell they aren't torn, but when with shaking hands I go to pull them back on, I realise with horror that there's blood running down my legs. If that gets on my trousers, someone will see – someone will know–!

Lots of people already know.

But grown-ups don't. Grown-ups must not know. Ever.

My handkerchief. I wipe the blood away, trying not to cry at how much of it there is.

But though I keep wiping, more keeps sliding down. Soon my handkerchief is saturated, and I don't have another.

Think – think!

Just as I'm about to despair, leaning on the nearest tree because I'm so light-headed with panic I can't think, I realise that my palm is resting against a patch of moss. There's plenty of it available, and it's soft and spongy.

Realising what I have to do next is enough to make my brain swim. But I have to do it. I have to get into school somehow, without anyone finding out.

I pull off as much moss as I can find on the tree and put it ready, wedged in the crook of a low branch I can reach easily. There are broken branches strewn around after the winter gales, and scattered twigs of all sizes. I pick one up that will fit between my jaws, and bite down on it, and then I grab a handful of moss.

And then I start doing what has to be done.