Sannah let her screen fall onto her bed, her eyes fixed blankly on the wall. She'd grabbed it as soon as Judit had gone, read everything she could on both rewilding and the Natives.

Far in the North, Sherbourne scientists were recreating the wild world that had existed before the environmental destruction of civilisation.

They'd planted thousands of kilometres of forest, reintroduced extinct animals. Said it was science's greatest achievement. The human manufacture of something that in less enlightened times had been attributed to God.

Nature.

They'd created the wild.

That new, wild world included people. Because people were animals, after all, and the primitive Natives had been living among all those other ancient beasts for generations before the Great Conquest. A keystone species in the forest ecosystem, one of the Sherbourne scientists said. Certain humans belonged in the wild. The wild needed them.

The historical texts on the Natives weren't quite so sympathetic. Animalistic. Heathen. Savage. Naked, painted blue.

For some reason, the naked was the part that gnawed at Sannah most.
Are they going to strip Judit, paint her blue? Make her fight to the death? The thought of her sister so vulnerable, being attacked...Sannah sobbed.

This couldn't be real. It was too weird. Too horrible. Judit was gone, and it was all Sannah's fault.

Her arrogance, her delusion, at thinking somebody as low and disgusting as she was could apply for Sherbourne University. That she could belong on those neat green lawns, among those people with shiny hair and clean shoes. To think she could do things, rather than having things done to her. She didn't know her place, and now she'd been punished. No, worse. Her sister had been punished for her.

She'd thrown herself into finishing the Sherbourne application she'd started at Goldmay, as if nothing else mattered—not even Judit. Sannah had told herself that she was strong, and disciplined, working for what was right. The reality was she was scared.

Scared to accept the horror their life had become. Scared to challenge authority, scared to live in the now, scared of the other kids. Scared if she stood up for herself, she'd be methy'd. Scared if she tried to make friends, she'd be rejected. Scared if she relinquished control, her true nature would emerge.

That most of all. Because she knew what she was. She was exactly like their mother. After all, everyone had always said they were just the same—their soft brown skin, high cheekbones, glossy black hair. They said Mum was pretty, but Sannah knew what pretty meant. It meant the hisses and whispers of men in the street. Lecherous looks. Something for sale.

People had always remarked on the similarity between Clera MaVae and her oldest daughter, usually before raising their eyebrows quietly at the Exotic woman's pale-skinned, ginger-haired second child.

And they were the same on the inside, too. Just as Clera had hidden her rottenness under a sheen of respectability, Sannah hid her own inevitable rottenness under her pathetic aspirations. And now Judit would be hurt, and it was all Sannah's fault. Just like when they came to Birchwood, when she left her vulnerable and crying by that school gate.

Sannah wanted to die. Slowly and painfully, as if suffering would somehow atone for her sins.

Which of course it wouldn't. There was only one way to do that.

Not to let it happen.

She had to get Judit back. Save her from whatever brutal fight-to-the-death this rewilding experiment was, whatever those God-like scientists at Sherbourne had in store.

Sannah closed her eyes. Opened them again. She sat on the bed, back straight, the room flung-out around her, possessions in disarray.

She was calm and still, but her fingers were clenching and unclenching all the time.

So, this is it.

She wouldn't accept what she was and what she'd done. For the first time, she was going to fight. Fight the world. Fight herself.

Sannah stared hollowly ahead, her eyes focusing in on a greasy mark on the wall. It was the shape of a heart, which she found oddly comforting. It had been left by some tack that had held up a photo that Judit had snatched, hurriedly, and shoved into her bag. It was a photo Sannah had loved. The two of them as toddlers, their heads together, curls mingling, faces silhouetted by the sun.