Prologue
At midnight, the child’s eyes opened wide in her darkened bedroom. Ice-blue and unseeing, her glassy pupils shone—and yet reflected nothing. She climbed out of bed to stand before the floor-length window, her lips pressed together in a hard, determined line. Her thin arms rose as though in silent command, and a gust of something ancient and primal crept across the room as though unsure if it had really been invoked by something so small. The lock on the window opened, witnessed only by the shadows enveloping the room. The window slowly creaked open, allowing the sharp winter wind to invade.
Bare-footed, her tiny form climbed out of the window before sliding down the drain-pipe without hesitation, friction leaving burns on her palms and knees that she wouldn’t feel until morning. Unseen, she strode across the landscaped garden at the back of her home, the wind whipping at her pale legs as she crushed a solitary budding snowdrop beneath her feet.
The moon broke through the clouds for an instant, highlighting the messy white-blond pair of plaits that hung down her back and almost reached her waist. The child kept walking, steady against the battering wind that threatened to knock her over. Dampened by smatterings of rain, her pink nightdress clung to her body, the faded print still valiantly displaying a unicorn that smiled eerily in the darkness.
Leaving her home behind, she walked along the road toward her destination, no street-lamps guiding her way through the suffocating darkness. Fearless, the child followed a path she had taken before—a well-trodden farmer’s track through a frost-covered field, and then another less-taken path through the woods. The wind howled, and brittle twigs snapped underfoot, but nocturnal animals fell silent as she passed, disturbed by her presence. Nature knew she was there and wanted no part of it.
She came out of the woods at a graveyard, and it was there that her determined stride finally slowed. The girl reached the church gates where she reverently waited as they swung open in welcome. The aching hinges creaked louder than the wailing wind which, come morning, would have been transformed by the superstitious into a story of the banshee’s warning.
The girl stepped onto hallowed ground, and her shoulders visibly relaxed. Her arms swung as though her body had been uplifted with joy. She walked past row after row of headstones until she reached a fresh mound of dirt. There, she sank to her knees, her fingers reaching into the soil.Finally.
“Margo!” a woman’s voice frantically screamed, the word almost lost to the wind.
The child heard nothing but the hypnotic call of her heritage.
A man and woman raced through the graveyard toward the little girl. After tripping over a headstone, the woman fell to her knees then drew her daughter onto her lap. The man caught up, shrugging off his coat. He wrapped it around them both.
“Oh, Margo, not again,” the woman murmured, holding the girl to her chest. She looked up at her husband. “She’s ice-cold.”
She’s always cold.“Let’s take her home.” He cast a surreptitious glance toward the village. “Before someone sees.”
“How didshesee? How does she make it all the way here in the dark?”
An old question, one he was sick of trying to answer. “I don’t know.” He knelt to rub the child’s feet, brushing away dirt and who knew what else. “She’s bleeding.”
He helped his wife up, but the child mewled like a kitten, her hands reaching for the grave.
The woman shivered as she battled with her daughter, trying in vain to warm her up. The girl’s struggle grew frenzied, knocking the coat away. The man gripped her hands and shushed his daughter.
“It’s time to go home, Margo,” he said, his words faltering as she gazed at nothing over his shoulder.
She was lost in her own world, and he would never be allowed to enter. He refused to look at the grave, refused to see how far his tiny daughter had gone this time. She’d never been like other children, and he knew people were talking. Her night-time adventures had to end before he lost her forever. He lifted her into his arms along with the coat, holding her as tight as possible. She kicked ineffectually, unable to free herself. Soon, she would be too strong to restrain, butthisepisode was almost over, and that was all he could focus on.
The couple snuck their daughter out of the graveyard, ducking behind a wall as the glare from a passing car’s headlights almost blinded them.
He blew hot air onto his daughter’s hands as they waited for the car to drive out of sight. She smelled like damp earth, and his heart cracked as she fought him off without even looking in his direction. She half-leapt out of his arms, but his wife caught her before she dashed back to the grave. She refused to let her go again.
And he stared out into the darkness and ignored the lump in his throat.
“They’re gone,” he said at last. “Let’s get home.”
“Why does she keep doing this?” His wife’s voice broke.“Why?”
“She’s sleepwalking.” He firmly guided his family away from the graveyard, avoiding the child’s shortcuts. “She wasn’t treated well before we found her. Maybe this is related to some kind of, I don’t know, latent trauma from the orphanage. We’ll likely never know for sure.”
“But why here, of all places? I told you we should have kept her in our room tonight. There was a funeral yesterday. It happens every time.”
“I thought I locked the windows.” He frowned, digging into his pocket to find the tiny key he knew he had hidden there. “I can’t figure out how she opens them without this.”
“And her eyes?” she whispered. “Changing colour like that? What’s wrong withthem?”
“It’s something to do with the sleepwalking,” he said reassuringly. “And the darkness. It’s an illusion. A trick of the light.”
“Every inch of me goes cold when I see her eyes like that.”
“Hon, it isn’t her fault. She won’t remember in the morning. It’ll be over. We have to keep doing what the therapist said. We’ll get through this.”