Equinox (Book One of the Firebird Chronicles) WATTY AWARD HIDDEN GEM WINNER 2015

Chapter Two (Part One): Monsters and Angels

Later that evening, I lay wide awake listening to the sound of the other girls' snores.

Moonlight filtered through the window, casting light upon my small desk that I used to invent. Seeing it sent my mind whirring rather than sleeping, and soon I was gazing at the desktop, conjuring up ideas of how to mend and create from the scraps that I had. Already on the desk was the small solar-powered electric lamp, which Reia was convinced would win me the Nobel Prize. I used it when I wanted to work through the night, and living in the dormitory meant my small lamp wouldn't bother anybody.

Next to the lamp lay my goggles, my proudest piece of equipment I'd fashioned from a real pilot's. I had heard from the travelling folk that flying machines were normal in richer parts of the world; I had haggled for those goggles with my life. Afterwards, I had taken them apart and rebuilt them, with a lens that could focus and magnify whatever intricacy I was working on.

I lay there for a while considering whether to move my aching, bruised body. What surprised me was that when there was movement, it was not me; someone gently padded across the wooden floor, a nightdress swishing in the quiet night.

Had it been any other child, I would have shrugged it away and rolled over. But I knew those footsteps like they were my own.

Where was Reia going in the middle of the night?

I waited for several minutes, wondering if she had perhaps gone to the toilet. But when it seemed like ten minutes had faded since her last footsteps on the stairs, I began to feel a sense of foreboding.

In my mind, I could hear her saying over and over, 'Confident that I'll never leave you, eh?'

Like a child, I was suddenly drowned by the possibility that Reia was leaving. What if she was running away...? Without me...?

I bolted from my bed, throwing on my tatty boots from where I'd kicked them off earlier. No cloak was nearby to throw around my shoulders; I stepped quietly across the room in just a shirt and loose trousers, my hair tied into a bandana like a pirate.

If Reia was leaving, I'm bloody well following! I thought savagely, stomping down the stairs.

I checked the latrines, but there was no sign of the girl. I was passing down the last flight of stairs in the multi-storey townhouse when I spotted the golden-haired girl, drifting like a ghost in the fields below.

What in heaven's name is she doing? If I had been confused before, I was now completely stumped. She's heading towards the woods!

Sure enough, the thin figure was stepping barefoot into the trees. Without question, I took the stairs three at a time as I raced to the hallway and grabbed the back door with sweaty palms. Unlocking the hatch seemed to take a lifetime until the door opened once more, and I could see blonde curls fading into the dark stems of trees.

God, why couldn't she have wandered in the opposite direction? I cringed, faltering slightly at the haunting atmosphere of the trees, and the whistling noise they made as the wind shook through them.

Then another thought struck me as I began to jog. Is she sleepwalking?

I hadn't known Reia to sleepwalk, but a lot of the children did and we'd grown used to it. Several did wander outside. But if Reia really was asleep, then who knows what danger she could come across in a dark wood at night, completely dozed off?

My jog quickened, until I was reminded by the harsh burning acid of the muscle in my legs of my earlier escapade, escaping much fitter dogs. It made no difference now; Reia was my only consideration, and my legs started pumping quicker as the trees grew steadily larger, and the air around me blacker. I hit the line of trees with such pace that for a moment, my eyes were blinded, as if I'd just snuffed out a light.