It’s when we’re level with the tip of the headline I see it. An angel’s head, bobbing by on the water. It’s carved out of wood, not very well, and its hair is painted a strange reddish colour, like you’ve never seen on a real person. I only know it’s an angel’s head cos it’s usually stuck on the front of Andy’s dinghy, which he named Angel. But Andy’d never take it off his boat! He carved that head himself, sitting out on his doorstep, whittling away. Even when the old boys who sit down by the harbour laughed and said it looked more like a pig than an angel, he still kept on at it.

By now Cat’s growling and yowling and leaping about like a crazy thing. It’s all I can do to keep him from climbing up on top of my head. And while I’m fighting him off and staring open-gobbed at the head, which is floating south, headed for Espaňa, I hear a noise like “whump”. Up on the headland. And the old station’s on fire.

Of course, the old station itself ain’t actually burning. It’s the beacon. A great pile of wood and kindling kept dry and stacked up on a raised platform. Cos a fire at Station Point can be seen at Wytham, and then they’ll light their beacon. And then the fires’ll be lit all along the coast until they reach the garrison at Chichester.

But there’s only one reason to light the beacon, and that’s Reavers. Now I know why Cat’s been in such a frenzy, and my hands go sweaty cold. And when we turn the point of the headland I can see the broken boats in the harbour, and the smoke rising from the village. Too much smoke; smoke like houses on fire.

My first break

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Background

• The Hinba Ghosts by Kate Green

• A1 Joe and the Roman Dog by Judith Low

• The Song of Sky and Evening by Charlie Scott

• Gemoc by Elizabeth Lawson

• The Beaten Road by Roberta Nichols

Background

• Reavers by Emily Diamand

• Jack Flynn and the Assassins by John M. O’Brien

• Tutankhamun: Diary of a Boy King by Laurence Rowley

• They Do Things Differently There by Ruth Furness

• The Secret Life of Jemma Jones by A. M. Conway

I look from the smoke, to the wreckage of the village boats floating in the water, to the beacon blazing on the headland, and I can hardly believe it. I only went away for a day! How could this have happened in just a day?

More scrips and scraps of wood come floating by, then a fish basket, then a slick hummock of something floating in the water. My breath stops in my mouth till the waves move again and show it’s just clothing, not a body. But it could have been. And they’re probably bodies in the village right now if the Reavers came down with no warning. Oh, don’t let it be Granny, or Andy, or Hetty, or . . .

Don’t let it be anyone, not even Lun.

I turn the tiller and head fast as I can, fast as this stupid little wind will take me, for home.

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