When nineteen year old university student Sorrel Christensen's actress aunt asks her to house-sit their lonely, sprawling estate two miles north of quaint Corbridge, Northumberland, she wonders how she managed to fall into such good luck. She envisions a long, hot, lazy summer spent riding horses and swimming in ice-cold streams, but she is faced with something rather more sinister – an accident and a strange journey to a land where she it out of place, and time.
Part the First
"...Ocado come on Thursdays, unless they call to say otherwise. The wine-cellar is always open-".
"And we've got some ancient spirits down there, too, just a whiff of 'ems enough to knock you flat on your back,", Sorrel's aunt, looking less than ecstatic at the untimely interruption, crosses her arms neatly over her chest and stares her husband down. He grins back at her meekly, and she furrows her eyebrows before continuing with her regimented list of things to know about an estate that was run meticulously with the smallest amount of input needed. (Sorrel is itching with summer holiday freedom and her stomach is churning with anticipation – but first she needs them to leave, step into their chauffeured Jag and zoom off down the gravelled drive.)
"...are you sure you'll be alright, darling? We've left a laminated list in the telephone cabinet drawer in the entrance hall...", Sorrel zones out again, distracted by her uncles reckless grinning and winking, as if he was saying 'she left a laminated list, not me!'.
"Yes, yes,", she says, trying hard to sound eager and pleasant, but fearing failure (her voice, to her ears at least, sounded bored and nonchalant, not an attractive sound coming from a girl excited for the languid summer that lay ahead), "everything seems straight-forward enough, superbly organised in every way,", she grins widely and opens her arms to sweep her ever-worrying aunt into a crushing hug, "you'll have a wonderful time and I promise to take good care of the house,".
"Cross your heart and hope to die?", uncle John asks, smiling like a fool and taking his chance to gather Sorrel in his arms and press a sweet kiss to her forehead.
She squeezes her arms around his slim torso (they were a fashionable couple, actors from London the both of them, with the upper-crust accents and manners to match) and tucks her chin into the hollow at the base of his neck; sweet, innocent, smiling like a Cheshire cat as she pinches his back.
"Of course, uncle dear,", she says teasingly, and she's rewarded with a short laugh and a quick swatting away of her hands. Her aunt leans in to kiss her cheek, and Sorrel slips a hand around her waist.
The three of them are a picture of familial bliss: she could be their daughter if it weren't for the vast differences in their appearances.
Her aunt and uncle have always been too attractive for their own good, a glance at a long-lost Hollywood glamour with their timeless elegance and perfectly tanned skin, dark hair and dainty features.
Sorrel is, by no means, unattractive, though there is a certain plainness about her; she's tall but not particularly slender or willowy, just an ordinary girl from an ordinary family from the rolling, ordinary fields of Hampshire. She's good-looking in a typically English way, brown hair, brown eyes, pale skin.
"We'll call to see how things are getting on, then. Have a good summer, won't you?", her aunt says with a tinge of ruefulness filtering into her voice.
Sorrel smiles sadly and they take their time saying sweet farewells, with echoes bouncing off the grand marble hallway they're standing in.
Lying in a king-sized bed on her stomach, Sorrel wonders how on earth she'd managed to land herself in such luck.
She's oblivious to anything except the brightness of her computer screen and the beat of drums and a wicked bass-line in the song filtering through the earphones of her iPod. She's trying with all her might to work on an essay set at the end of term, but Facebook is so easy and such an attractive prospect that she finds herself updating her status gleefully and uploading a picture she'd had the sour-faced, grumpy gardener take of her outside the wonderful manor-house earlier in the day.
She'd spent the day exploring the house in it's entirety, squealing over the size of the tub in the main bathroom (with it's jets and stylish trimming, it looked more like a jacuzzi than a bath), and eventually attempting to shoot an arrow in her uncles luxurious shooting range and failing quite miserably.
(Her uncle had played Robin Hood in a long running television series, and now fancied himself quite the archery expert; putting the bow back wearily, with pursed lips and furrowed eyes, she decided she'd have to get him to teach her when they came home.)
Eventually she gives up on trying to be productive and slips under the covers of the bed.
Her day had been filled with excitement, and she finds that she's sleepier than she'd expected – she slips into sleep quickly and easily and dreams of outlaws fighting zombies with lightsabers.
She wakes early the next morning. She'd forgotten to close the curtains the night before and the weak five o'clock sunlight is shining into her eyes. She's a student – prone to sleeping in to ridiculous hours of the afternoon, but as she throws the covers aside and pounds over to close the curtains (grumpy with her early morning wake-up call) she's pleasantly surprised at the sight that awaits her.
Three horses are grazing peacefully in a meadow she'd not noticed before, mist hanging eerily around their ankles.
The sun is rising over the Northumberland countryside, dragging it to life and as the morning chorus begins she is slipping neatly out of her pyjamas and into the breeches she'd not anticipated using too much – and especially not this early!
She pulls a tight-fitting Abercrombie & Fitch long-sleeved cotton shirt over her head, and tests the air through her open window (and deciding it's chilly) pulls a puffy, ragged old body-warmer from her suitcase.
It smells like straw and horses and bubblegum and just looking at it fills her with memories of ponies and jumping bracken and shirts and ties for pony club.
She's nostalgic, then, as she zips up her boots and wanders blithely down the stairs and out of the front door towards the stables.
It's an impressive little yard, maintained to perfection. There's not a stray bit of straw or poop on the cobbles and when she unlocks the tack-room door it smells like saddle soap and leather and she can't help but grin.
Besides the three horses turned out, there are two wonderful looking hunters standing sleepy-eyed and docile in their stables. One of them is Glenmore, a big grey gelding that had been the first full-size horse she'd ridden, and the other is Brent, a muscled young chestnut her aunt uses for the ferocious foxhunts across this county's infamous terrain. She imagines that the younger horse is sure-footed and full of a hunters courage, but she has a fondness for Glenmore that outstrips all desire she might have for a challenge; and she tacks him up with a practised ease that suggests she's done it many times before.
Leading him out towards the stone mounting block in the corner of the yard, she feels her stomach erupt with (in her opinion, entirely unwarranted) nerves. She hasn't ridden for at least two years, since her first big event where her young, inexperienced horse had hit a solid fence in the cross-country phase and gone head over heels.
He'd been fine, sold to a girl with nerves of steel and ready heels, and competing within the month. For Sorrel it had been a month of bed rest, badly bruised and broken, her face bleeding and in tatters.
She puts her foot in the stirrup and swings her leg over the saddle with an athletic grace befitting a girl who'd ridden since before she could walk, a girl who'd accompanied her parents on foxhunts when she was seven, jumped hedges that blocked out sky when she was twelve, one who eventually refined her skills and learned the deadly precision of dressage, the timing involved in showjumping, the eye and competitive streak to compete at the highest levels.
Glenmore puffs his nostrils as she picks up the reins and they wander out of yard, down the drive towards the gate and open country and Sorrel's face breaks into a slow smile.
An hour later and she's truly in the wilds of Northumberland, her fingers itching on the reins and her legs aching, she wants the wind through her hair, on her cheeks. They hit a stretch of flat grass and she picks him up, presses her heels against his sides and with a grunt and a swish of his tail he complies and jumps up into a gambolling canter. It's a nice, rocking motion and she giggles, leans forwards and asks him for more, and his strides lengthen, his neck stretches forwards and the countryside passes by them in a blur.
She's grinning, tears streaming down her face from the slap of the cool morning air and she doesn't notice how the ground is sloping, how it's turning to grey rock and how Glenmore comes back at her, slows.
Clapping his shoulder with her hand she says,
"Come on, lazy boy!", and kicks him.
But this time he doesn't do as she asks (understandably), his legs locks and his shoes scrape noisily over the rock.
Sorrel, caught unawares, looses her balance and tips forwards over the pommel, over his shoulder. She sees grey and green and brown and then black.
When she comes around, she wishes she hadn't.
Her eyes crack open and a sharp, white pain shoots through her forehead. She massages her head, wrinkled from her furrowed brows, pinched nostrils. Slowly, she props herself up using her trembling forearms and looks around.
Glenmore is gone; she hopes that he's grazing somewhere on the craggy rocks and that she won't have to go too far to find him.
The weather has changed.
She frowns, purses her lips and takes her riding hat off, runs a shaky hand through her hair.
It's cloudy and dark and threatening rain.
How long had she been out?
She stands up and surveys the area, holding her hand to her eyes as if it would help her look farther; Glenmore is nowhere to be seen. She's muddy and tattered looking and she wants to sit down and cry, but she forces herself to walk towards the woodland at the bottom of the hill, towards home. There is little doubt in her mind that clever Glenmore had returned there and was grazing outside the gate; the thought gives her a little hope and she starts the trek down the hill, picking her way through the landscape. It is a treacherous journey and all the while she finds her head screaming 'what were you thinking?'.
It is only when she reaches the line of trees that she notices something is wrong.
The fences; the wire fences that enclosed the woods wasn't there anymore. Could she have been so disorientated by her fall that she'd come the wrong way? No, it couldn't be that, this had been the only distinctive landmark as far as the eye could see.
Her back is propped up against a tree for support when she hears the hoof beats and her face quickly changes from a frown to an eager, perky expression.
She steps away from the tree she'd been clinging to as if it was something warm and soft and whispering comforting words with a sort of gormless grin on her face – it drops of her mouth like a stone when she sees the horse. It's about three feet in front of her, the riders face so close she can see the stubble on his chin. She screams shrilly and the horse shies, the rider snaps at the reins in surprise and the animal rears.
Sorrel's mouth falls open as she watches the man fall. Her eyes follow his path to the ground, and he groans.
He's dressed like he's come straight from one of her uncles film shoots and maybe she's in shock, maybe she smacked her head and she's got a concussion, maybe she's lying in a ditch somewhere and she's in a coma.
She can feel the panic rising thick in her throat like bile and though she tries to choke it down she feels as though she has to do something – she grabs the reins of his horse (also dressed like it's trotted straight from the set of Robin hood or the Gladiator) and jumps up into the saddle.
- End Part One
Okay, so a sort of introduction, I don't really have any idea where I'm going with this ;) Bare with me, it should get more exciting soon!