*** UPDATE  FEBRUARY 2020 

SHADOW WEAVER IS COMING BACK TO WATTPAD. For some time, due to publishing restrictions, it could no longer be read in it's entirety on this site. But now, as from March onwards, I will be posting a new chapter every week until the entire book is available here. Once the whole book is posted it will only be available for a short time, so if you're interested don't forget to add it to your bookshelf so you can see when we're getting close to the end and not miss it.  Thanks for reading, Claire xox

CHAPTER ONE 

I splay across a rock, semi-frozen. The finger-deep layer of snow against my back softens the lumpy stone. My eyelids soak up the sun's amber rays. After three months of winter's endless darkness, I am making the most of this serene breath of sunlight.

'Mirra, get down here!' my younger brother Kel shouts. He'll be six during the third moon, only a few weeks from now.

'I'm coming,' I say. But I don't move. Steal a few more seconds, longing for the all-night sun when it will be warm enough to lose our heavy parkas and furs and jump in the cool flowing river.

A thin layer of ice cracks as my brother leaps to my side of the stream. His boots crunch and scrape against the snow. I smile at his impatience, haul to my feet and slide down the rock, tiny white avalanches falling with me. Near the bottom, I hook onto a pine branch to stop my descent. Flakes clasp the needles. Ice necklaces hang in little trails between the branches, and a grey-backed spider's web dangles by my gloved fingers. The spider rocks in its diamond woven centre. Dead. But not for long. Like the fish and the beetles and the worms, it freezes when winter sweeps in and reanimates in the spring.

'So what have you got?' I ask Kel.

My brother lifts his sharpened stick. He grins at the stiff pug-faced fish skewered on the end. He has excavated it from the bottom ice where the fish struggle for refuge as the top waters solidify during the onset of winter. No master spearing techniques.

'A Grump!' he says. 'Now you have to say it: Long live Kelson the great hunter!' Blonde tangled hair flops over his brow. His fur trousers and parka hang off him. He fattened up before the long-sleep but now he's skinny again. The golden flecks in his blue irises glitter and swirl, not yet settled.

'Excellent find, Kel. Well done.'

'No you have to say, "Long live Kelson the great hunter!"'

'Long live Kelson, the great hunter!' I ruffle his hair. He ducks and I stride across the stream to fetch my pack, bow and fire bundle. We haven't long before the sun begins its rapid descent. Better to leave now and trace our snowy tracks back to camp before dusk comes down over Blackfoot forest.

Kel's lined up the fish I scooped from the riverbed ice earlier - Rainbow Sparkles, nose to nose; Suntrouts nose to nose; Mudwaters nose to nose. Two by two. Except the last one. A Ghost fish, with alabaster white skin so transparent, you can see the veins.

'Did you do that?' I ask. A rhetorical question because there's no one out here for at least a four day walk in any direction. Because other than Ma, Pa and Kel, I haven't seen another living person since I was ten and Kel a baby.

My brother nods, dropping the spear and picking up his wooden beetle farm. He inspects a frozen bug, turning the shell so it glistens. I gaze at the neat lines of his fish display, organised like a ladder. I'm wondering what he was thinking when there comes a whisper on the horizon of my mind's eye. A flare of colour, so faint, I'm uncertain whether I'm imagining it.

Kel arranges the beetle in his wooden box and ties on the lid. He doesn't seem to have noticed. Prickles of heat flood my cheeks. I stretch my attention through the forest.

A memory drifts in the mind-world like mist through a valley. Growing clearer, closer.

Ruffled blankets. Wreaths of curly brown hair. Twilight glowing on wooden tumble-down walls.

Then it vanishes as quickly as it came, tunnelling back beneath now-time. Kel's head shoots up. He saw that. You couldn't miss it!

'Is Pa looking for us?' he asks. My heart skips up a beat as I scoop up the fish carcases, wrap them in deer skin and dump them in my bag. He must sense it's not Pa as well as I do.

'Put your pack on,' I say, forcing my voice to sound calm. The churned up snow around the stream, the broken ice - any attempt to conceal our presence will be useless. I strap on my rucksack and pick up my bow and quiver. Kel stands stiffly as I shove his beetle farm into his bag and hook the strap around his shoulders. His glittering eyes blaze with shock.

'Let's go,' I say. Hand in hand, we leap over the stream and half-jogging, half-running move east, away from the falling sun. Our outbound boot prints guide us through skiffs of snow and crowded, prickly pines. If we manage to keep up the pace, we will be with our parents in fifteen minutes.

'Who are they?' Kel asks. Panic and our unrelenting speed makes his voice breathy.

'I don't know.'

'Are they looking for us?'

How could they be? No one knows we're here. 'No. No, they're not looking for us.' Not yet.

'Did they find the magic door?'

Irritation flickers through me. Not at Kel. It's not his fault our mother decided the best way to deal with his nightmares was not to deal with them at all. So he believes when he was a baby we found a magic door into a forgotten land where the bad men couldn't follow. I think they should have told him the truth a long time ago. I was four when I understood that nowhere in the three western Kingdoms of Ederiss, nowhere this side of hundreds of miles of impassable mountains and frozen tundra, would I be safe until I was seven or eight and my glitter-eyes faded.

I squeeze my brother's hand. 'It's OK, everything's fine. We just have to get back to Ma and Pa.'

The smooth white surface is unpredictable. Our feet slam into gnarled roots, jarring our bodies. Sudden hollows leave us panting with the extra effort of extracting boots from deep snow. My fire bundle, wooden sun-clock and the fish thump around in my backpack. Kel wheezes, breath hissing in and out of his small chest. Far off, the wind moans through the jagged mountain range blocking the north. An eagle screeches high in the empty vault of sky above our sheltered forest, searching the land for the rare creature that has already woken.

We have been jogging for ten minutes, when beyond the squeak and crunch of our boots and the clunk of our packs, I hear a dog bark.

'What was that!' Kel says.

'Run!' I drag my brother behind me, clasping his gloved hand. 'Faster, Kel.' We plummet down a drift, weaving between tightly clustered trees. The low sun glimmers and dances on the swathes of untouched snow.

Kel breathes in gasping snatches, and his face is turning bright red. My calf muscles ache, pain shooting through them at regular intervals. It is too soon after the long-sleep for such exertion. Kel claws his fist against his chest and I know we can't keep this up.

'I got a stitch,' he wheezes.

'Just a bit longer.'

'It hurts.'

'All right,' I say, slowing a little. 'You're doing really well.'

He looks at me with such trust in his eyes, I feel sick and the sense of panic churns my empty stomach. He has seen stuff like this in my memories. And worse. Before he was born, before my one and only friend Asmine was taken, we lived in the Sea of Trees beyond Black Ridge Mountain, where hundreds of Uru Ana families hide their glitter-eyed children. Out-running bounty hunters and poachers was regular enough.

I've tried not to think of Asmine for the last few years, but even if my little brother has heeded Ma's warnings never to enter our minds, we all have memories that rise unbidden from the darkness. He knows what will happen if men find him even if he doesn't understand how they came here.

Kel's hand snaps from mine. I reach to grab him but I'm not quick enough. He falls hard on a tangle of surface roots. I drop my pack and pick him up. His face looms before me for a split-second before I swing him onto my back: a red welt on his bony cheek where he is cut; snow and dirt; held back tears. His attempt at bravery makes my chest squeeze tighter and my own unwanted tears push up my throat. I swallow them down, while hooking my hands together behind me to secure his legs. He buries his head deep in my fur hood and I hear him snivelling.

I hesitate for a moment, unwilling to abandon the fish, my bow and fire tools. I throw Kel's bag up into a tree to hide it, then strap my own to my front.

'You have to carry my bow and quiver.'

'OK.' He bunches them under his arm and they press into my shoulder. I push forward, jogging again. We cannot be far now. Icy snow cracks beneath my boots. Our earlier prints have softened in the sun at the edges and now grow crusty and hard. This is tracking snow.

I think of setting out with the sunrise two hours ago. Desperate to get away. The week it takes for us to regain our strength after the long-sleep always drives me crazy. Hunkering around a spitting fire while strangling hours of darkness, unable to escape one and other. I couldn't wait to be far from Ma's smothering memories. Now I search for her mind to guide us home. Oh the irony.

The dog barks again.

Much closer.

There are two men following it, but I find it difficult to gauge how far they lag behind the dog. One mind is as hard and impenetrable as a fort. The other feels like wrestling in mud.

I scan the trees and spot a pine with several stunted branches at the trunk. I drop my pack and slide Kel off my back.

'OK, Bud,' I say. 'Climb up as far as you can.' He stares at me, cheeks stained with tear lines. 'I'm going to get rid of the dog,' I explain. He wipes his nose with his sleeve and nods.

'You climb up and don't make a sound. Now. Quickly.' I lift him onto the first rung. Pine needles shake and snow flutters from the branches as he begins ascending.

I pull off my right glove, hesitating between knife and bow. Knife-throwing is my strength. I've been handling and throwing them since I was five, practising until my shoulders ached and my arms were strong. But a bow and arrow is the hunter's weapon and far easier with a moving target.

I unwrap the fish, cut off one of the Suntrout's heads and drop it away from Kel's hideout. Then I jog back twenty paces. Standing absolutely still, I wait.

High in the trees, wind rustles snow-tipped pine needles. Somewhere close by I hear tapping. A squirrel or perhaps a bird pecking its way out of a sealed tree hole. I sense hundreds of small animal minds, sleeping under the ground, in tree hollows and snow-dens. I flex the arrow in my bow, my thoughts growing quiet and focused.

The dog lets out a single bark. I concentrate on where I feel it bounding in our direction. It's shaggy white and grey coat emerges through the trees. Large yellow eyes. Tail pointing upwards. A beautiful wolf dog.

If I don't do this, it will keep coming. It will lead the hunters after us all once we clear camp and vanish back over our maze of trails to hide our retreat.

The wolf dog slows, scenting the fish. I sight my eye down the arrow, tighten the flex on the bow. It looks up from my offerings, meeting my gaze. I release my fingers. The shaft spins through the air. There comes a loud yelp. The dog leaps forward and for a moment I don't understand. I think I've missed it. He keeps limping towards me, arrow jutting from the front leg. Then he sinks to a stop, baring his teeth, ears flat against his head. I grab my pack and return to Kel's tree.

'Hurry, Kel. Get down!' My brother scuffles and slips his way towards the ground. I reach out to help him from the last branch. His eyes flick over my shoulder. He sees something that makes him lose balance and cry out in fright. I catch his arm to stop him falling, push him back into the tree. Winding my hand around my back to retrieve the small throwing knife from my waistband, I turn.

Welcome to Mirra's world! I know it's a harsh place but I hope you'll stay to find out more about Mirra, her family and the adventure ahead! I love feedback, comments and suggestions, so please feel free to leave any thoughts. And if you liked it, don't forget you can vote!