They Who from the Heavens Came (The Wisdom, #1)

They set off for Wiltshire early the following morning. Seth rejected Oz’s suggested driving music outright.

‘What’s wrong with my music?’ Oz asked.

‘Come on. Classical? No.’

It was interesting, Itzy thought, that he liked classical music. It reminded her of their father. He’d had a thing for Beethoven, who was also supposed to have been moody. Maybe he was an alien, too.

Seth, as it turned out, had a penchant for classic rock. He insisted on cranking up the car stereo to ear-shattering volumes and singing along at the top of his very out-of-tune voice with bands like Pink Floyd and The Eagles.

‘You can check out any time you want, but – you can never leave!’ he wailed.

The windows were all the way down and the wind whipped through his dusty hair. His elbow was propped up on the window frame, his fingers dancing in the air. Sparks flew from the space he struck. Itzy couldn’t help thinking the lyrics to Hotel California were especially sinister that morning.

‘Hey, you’re really good,’ she called from the backseat.

Seth twisted around so he could see her. ‘Yeah?’

‘Oh yeah. You should try out for X-Factor.’

He laughed and continued his performance.

It took them over four hours to drive from Ealing to Wiltshire, and most of that was down to London traffic. They received a range of stares from other drivers sharing their traffic jams. Some appeared amused by Seth’s ‘singing’; others looked like they might open their doors and do something about it.

‘So where is it?’ Itzy asked as the car crawled down a barren country road surrounded on all sides by fields.

‘You know what the trouble is with crop circles punched out of maize fields?’ Seth threw over his shoulder. Itzy shook her head in the rear-view mirror. ‘You can’t see them.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘He means,’ said Oz, ‘corn is tall. If you want to see the patterns, you have to get higher than the field. Then you work out where to go, when you’re back at ground level.’

Itzy’s eyes ran over the landscape, stopping on a hill. ‘You mean we’re climbing that?’

‘Exactly,’ Oz said.

He drove the car into the countryside equivalent of a car park, where a handful of other day-trippers had left their vehicles. The Ferrari stood out like a black eye next to the family-sized Citroens and Toyotas.

The trio stepped out and stretched their legs after the cramped journey under the low roof of the car. Seth inhaled and took in the smell of manure. ‘Fresh country air,’ he joked in a poor imitation of a Somerset accent, and they began walking.

The hill was taller than it looked. It took them a half-hour to reach the top. Up there, the wind tossed Itzy’s hair around, slapping it in her face and getting it caught in her mouth. She put her hands to her face to hold it back, and looked out over the fields.

She’d not thought to bring a jacket or a jumper, because on the ground the air was hot with the beginnings of August. On the hill, she regretted that omission. A chill rushed over her bare arms.

They weren’t the only ones on the hill; it was covered in visitors with cameras, but they weren’t there for the crop pattern. As it turned out, they were standing on the remains of an old castle that had been destroyed long ago; and down one side of the man-made hill was an enormous chalk etching of a horse.

‘Crop circles tend to appear at historical sites of interest,’ Oz explained. ‘I was reading about it, last night.’

They spread out over the hill and stared across the landscape. At first, Itzy didn’t see anything of interest, just enormous patches of green, green and more green, all of it cornfields. In the distance were other crops, wheat and rapeseed, but those had already been harvested. They were lucky the patterns they were after had been done in maize, as it was the only crop left standing so late in the year.

‘I see it!’ Seth startled a nearby family.

His companions rushed over and looked in the direction he was pointing. There, in a swath of corn, was a series of curved lines, sketching the shape of a bird – and beyond that, other familiar shapes. Itzy gasped. It really was just like the ancient lines in Peru.

The trio scrambled back down the hill. Their feet slid on wet grass and momentum pulled them toward the bottom. On the ground, Oz took the lead.

‘Shouldn’t we, like, ask permission or something?’ asked Itzy as she stepped gingerly around sheep droppings.

Seth didn’t turn around, but said, ‘From who?’

She shrugged. ‘Dunno. A farmer? It’s not our field, you know?’

‘But which farmer?’ he pressed.

She threw her hands in the air. ‘I don’t know! Just someone!’

‘Temper temper,’ she heard him say.

They hit the edge of the maize and stood around an opening where the seven-foot cornstalks had bent in parting as if to allow them through. Oz ducked his head under a leafy extension and disappeared into the crop.

Seth swept his arm and bowed in a cavalier manner. He winked at Itzy and said, ‘After you.’

She breezed past him and stepped through the maize archway. Once inside, the pathway narrowed and cornstalks stroked her face. They were so tall, it felt like she was being swallowed by them. She could even imagine they were alien beings, their leaves their limbs, caressing her and luring her into a trap. She was hit with a wave of claustrophobia and her heart rate quickened.

Hands fell on her shoulders and she shrieked.

‘Easy,’ Seth dropped into her left ear. ‘It’s just me. You looked tense.’

‘I don’t like close spaces,’ she told him.

They fell into comfortable speechlessness, just listening to corn as they rubbed past. Then Itzy said, ‘About yesterday. When you…I mean when I….’

Seth laughed. The sound was dense, with no space to echo. ‘Hey, no worries. I know you were only messing with me.’

‘You do?’

‘Sure. It didn’t mean anything to me either, so just forget it.’ He paused. ‘That’s what you were going to say, isn’t it?’

Itzy swallowed. ‘Yeah. You took the words right out of my mouth.’

Then she heard Oz say, ‘Whoa,’ and the corn started to give way. Suddenly, Itzy and Seth stumbled into a clearing.

From the hilltop, the patterns had looked so much bigger, but snaking their way along the pathways, it didn’t take long to traverse the entirety of the bird design. At the same time, the paths themselves were so much wider than she would have guessed, which dissolved some of Itzy’s anxiety.

The sky above was clear and beautiful, the air free of toxins. The fresh oxygen made Itzy dizzy, but in a good way. She gulped it down in long, slow breaths, savouring it. It filled her with a sense of peace she couldn’t explain. Perhaps there was something about that place, some energy rising from beneath the ground, because she could see that same calm on her companions’ faces.

Oz removed something from the pocket of the leather jacket he wore. There, it was warmer than it had been on the hill, but all the plants growing up around them meant there was still a breeze that sent an occasional chill through the bones.

Itzy looped her thumbs through the waistband of her jeans. ‘What’s that?’ she asked.

In Oz’s hand was a small square of metal and plastic that looked vaguely like a tablet computer. ‘It’s something I found in my – our – dad’s things.’

Itzy came closer to inspect it. ‘What’s it do?’

‘Well, I’m not sure, but I think it’s a little like an electronic dowsing rod.’

Itzy’s brow crinkled. ‘A what?’

‘Dowsing rods are meant to pick up the energy emitted by ley lines,’ Oz explained.

‘Oh! I’ve seen that. Yeah, yeah, it was that Derek guy.’ She snapped her fingers, trying to remember. ‘You know who I mean…he did that ghost show years ago….’

‘Most Haunted?’ Seth guessed.

‘Yeah! Him!’

Oz’s brow rose. ‘Are you comparing me to Derek Acora?’

Itzy giggled. ‘You actually know his name, that’s brilliant.’

Oz shot her a dark look and then went on. ‘Anyway. This is a little more sophisticated than the traditional dowsing rod. It picks up electromagnetic energy and measures it. I think.’

‘You think,’ Seth echoed.

‘Well, I’ve never tried it before. I only found it the other day. But I thought it might come in handy.’ Oz shrugged. ‘You never know.’

He pressed a button and the device lit up. The screen filled with what looked like a graphic equaliser. Then it started clicking.

‘Spooky,’ said Itzy, her attention held by the device.

Seth tilted his head in contemplation. ‘It’s like a Geiger counter.’

‘Are you saying it’s radioactive out here?’ Itzy asked in alarm.

Seth shrugged. ‘I hope not.’

‘It’s strange,’ Oz spoke more to himself than to the others, ‘the way it gets louder and faster – if I do this.’ He held out the device in the direction of the cornstalks bordering their bit of pathway. ‘I wonder what happens if I –’

His words were lost in the crop as he left the path and was enveloped by leaves.

Itzy looked at the ground. On the pathway, the cornstalks had all been pushed down. They hadn’t snapped the way one would expect. That was the mystery of crop circles. She’d seen it on a documentary, once. Apparently, experts could tell the difference between the explainable and the very much inexplicable.

The explainable circles (so-called, whether they were circular or not) were ones where the crop had been broken. The inexplicable ones seemed to have been pressed carefully down without damaging the stalks. There was a very loose theory that they were pulled down by steam emanating from ley lines below the ground, but that didn’t explain the perfect geometry of the designs.

Once, the British military had observed a series of fields in the West Country, to see if they could catch a crop circle being made. People reported seeing red lights flashing in the sky, and then the patterns had appeared in a matter of seconds.

Perhaps most mysteriously of all, crop circles weren’t a modern phenomenon. The first recorded circle was centuries ago, in 1678 in Hertfordshire, England. It looked like someone had taken a lawnmower and run it through the field in a spiral that was smashed at the sides, making it long and narrow. The people believed the devil had come in the night and mowed patterns into the fields.

Something flitted past in Itzy’s periphery. It might have been a person. Except that was ridiculous; they were the only ones there. Crop circle exploration clearly wasn’t the tourist attraction she’d assumed it would be.

‘Seth,’ she said –

then realised she was alone.

‘Seth! Oz!’ she called out, her voice pregnant with panic.

‘In here!’ Seth returned. It sounded like it was coming from inside the crop.

‘Why’d you walk off without me?’ Itzy cried, aware she sounded childish.

‘I thought you were right behind,’ Seth’s voice came back. ‘We found the spider!’

The spider?

Oh yes. One of the other Nazca patterns.

‘I think I’ll just stay put until you come back!’ Itzy called out across the field. She didn’t want to roam through the maize on her own.

As usual, Itzy’s imagination ran away with her. She was struck by a rather vivid vision of them getting lost in the maize. It would grow dark, and without street lamps, they wouldn’t be able to find their way out. They would be trapped in that field all night.

Itzy’s claustrophobia returned. She was self-aware enough to know it was a remnant from the days when she would hide in her wardrobe, as a little girl. The hiding wasn’t what had been so scary. It was what lay just outside of the doors – and the thought that it might come for her.

Her thoughts were interrupted by the sunlight swiftly dimming. The sky had gone overcast in a way that didn’t feel natural, even for England. A breeze iced through her, wrapping her hair around her face. When she managed to peel it away from her eyes, she did a sharp intake of breath and staggered backward.

Standing a metre away was a boy who could have been eighteen, possibly older. He had soft brown hair just long enough to dust his long eyelashes. He was dressed in grey track bottoms with a matching hoodie, the hood down over his back. It was hard to tell how big he was, under the waves of fabric, but his face was strong and angular.

He might have been easy to ignore and forget, if not for two things:

One was the golden tint to his skin, so strange to see in a place like England.

The other was his piercing grey eyes.

Itzy felt her insides turn to water. It was the boy from her dreams. She knew it was crazy, but every instinct screamed it was true. Could she have been dreaming about someone real, after all? Had her dreams been prophetic?

‘Wh-where’d you come from?’ she found her voice. She hadn’t heard him approach, and after all the alien talk, she was almost ready to believe the boy was a phantom.

He shrugged, but his stare was watchful and penetrating. ‘Same place you did, I expect.’

He’d spoken. She now had a voice to put to the vision that had haunted her dreams for so many months. His accent told her he wasn’t from around those parts. What was it? Northern Irish? It was nice – better than nice, she decided.

As if recalling something he’d been instructed to do but still had trouble remembering, he gave a little wave and said, ‘I’m Aidan.’

‘I’m…Itzy,’ she said. The more sensible part of her brain was unsure if she should be giving her name to this stranger who had just startled her in the middle of a cornfield.

The impulsive part argued that he wasn’t really a stranger. Whether he realised it or not, she knew him. She had been waiting for him.

‘Would ye be here alone?’ he questioned.

‘No. My friends…they’re somewhere,’ she said. She looked around, as if they might appear at any moment.

Aidan nodded like maybe he didn’t believe her. ‘Not a lot of pretty girls would be interested in crop circles,’ he said smoothly.

Itzy felt stupidly flattered. Apart from Ash, no boy had called her pretty before.

‘I’m not,’ she said. ‘Interested in crop circles, I mean. We just thought…you know, something different, something to do.’ She hated the way she was grappling for words, but she couldn’t seem to help it. It was the way he was staring at her, taking her in, appraising her with his eyes.

Aidan let those eyes land on hers. His gaze hit her like a brick to the chest and left her dizzy. She hoped it didn’t show on her face.

‘I’m sorry if I scared ye,’ he said, his voice deep and throaty. ‘It’s so quiet out here…and ye were so lost in thought, like. I didn’t want to banjax the moment.’

Itzy got the impression that maybe he, too, was used to spending time on his own. She remembered what he had looked like at the edge of the river, in her dream. She found herself easily slotting the real Aidan into that picture.

‘What kind of name would Itzy be, then?’ Aidan asked. He stuffed his hands in the pockets of his hoodie, so his arms bent at right angles.

‘It’s Itzel, really. It’s this Mayan thing,’ she said, sick of having to explain it.

Aidan’s brow went up a fraction, like he’d heard something more than what she’d just said. Then it smoothed back just as quickly.

‘Ya know, I always wanted to go there. See the pyramids,’ he said carefully, studying her reaction. ‘I’ve been to Egypt, but the Mexican ones are different, they are.’

She felt an inward stab of jealousy. ‘You went to Egypt?’

‘Aye, with my parents. I’ve always had a wee interest in mummies and mythology.’ He grinned at her. It was a lovely smile. It did something to his eyes, made them sparkle and look almost innocent.

‘So,’ she said, ‘what brings you here?’

Aidan’s smiled widened. ‘I’m a crop circle enthusiast, ye might say.’

Itzy lifted a dark eyebrow. ‘Really?’

‘Aye.’ He dug his hands deeper in his pockets. ‘I’m part of a forum called the Crop Circle Connector. Ya get all the announcements and photographs, like. I’ve spent the summer driving round the countryside to visit them.’ As if reading her mind, he withdrew one of his hands and held it in the air, saying, ‘Before ye judge, I promise that isn’t as geeky as it sounds.’ She made a face like she found that hard to believe, and he laughed. ‘Okay, maybe it is. So…would this be yer first time?’

The wording was suggestive, but the question harmless. Nonetheless, Itzy blushed as she answered, ‘Yes.’

Aidan shook his head in disapproval. ‘I can’t believe yer friends left ye here on yer own, like.’

‘They didn’t,’ Itzy argued. ‘At least, they didn’t mean to. I was sort of…in my own world, I guess, and didn’t see them go.’

He nodded like he understood. ‘I spend most of my time in my own head, too, I do.’

She shivered as a fresh breeze swept through the maize. Aidan removed his other hand from his pocket and tore the hoodie over his head. It pulled up his clothing, revealing his flat stomach. It had that same unusual golden tan. With the hoodie off, he wore a plain white t-shirt that showed off his sunny arms, which were lightly muscled like Seth’s.

He approached Itzy and tossed the hoodie over her shoulders. When he tied the arms around her neck, she could feel his breath on her skin. It sent a shiver down her spine.

‘Ta,’ she said in a shaky voice, ‘but you didn’t have to do that.’

He shook his head at her as if he thought she was being silly. ‘It’d be no good having ye foundering.’ His hands lingered on her shoulders. When she met his eyes, they bore into hers until all she could see was grey.

Something tickled her forearms, where they protruded from the warmth of the grey hoodie. She jumped away and scratched herself.

‘Are ye alright?’ asked Aidan.

‘Yeah, I just….’ The tickling sensation returned, interrupting her.

She twisted to see what bug had singled her out for torment. But it wasn’t a bug at all. It was a leaf. More precisely, one of the cornstalks bordering the pathway was leaning toward her. It didn’t appear to be a trick of the wind; the stalk looked conscious.

She did a quick turn and saw that all the cornstalks were leaning, inching their way closer to her. Black lines sparked in the air around them. Strangely, when she turned back to Aidan, he didn’t appear surprised by this development. Could he not see it?

Something wrapped around her ankle and she slipped to the ground, landing on a bed of folded cornstalks. She kicked herself onto her feet, but the maize closed in on her. Leaves rubbed against her arms like a lover. She was yanked back to the ground by a particularly feisty cornstalk, which coiled its way up her right leg and disabled her from running.

She looked up at Aidan, who looked angry. More than angry. But not at her. He was shouting something that she couldn’t make out through the pounding of fear in her ears.

He dropped to the ground and grabbed her hand, but she slipped out of his grasp. She felt herself being tugged along the pathway. She flipped herself onto her stomach and dug her fingers into the earth, trying to stop herself, cursing her short nails that couldn’t catch the soil.

She flew backward, down the path, screaming all the way, and Aidan ran after her. She tried to keep her head up, but she kept bouncing on the ground. Pain stabbed through her scalp, burying itself in her skull. She could feel the skin on her arms tear apart.

Just as she was about to lose all hope, she heard her name shouted through the corn. It was Seth. It was a relief to know someone were coming for her.

Then again, it meant what was happening was real.

She opened her mouth to scream again, when she felt the air leave her lungs. She was choking. It seemed to do something to the plants too, because the dragging ceased so abruptly, her body snapped forward and her face crashed into the ground, making her nose bleed. The snaking plants quickly uncoiled, like they were being yanked from her limbs.

Air slammed back into Itzy’s lungs, and she gasped heavily. She had just begun to recover her breath, when the ground beneath her trembled. A deep growl accompanied it, followed by the cracking of cornstalks.

A fissure appeared, stretching as far down the path as she could see. It yawned open, and Itzy rolled onto her side to avoid falling into the cavern making its way for her. The plates under the ground lurched toward one another, colliding and pushing each other up into a peak. The land lifted into the air, hurling her backwards into the waiting crop.

She screamed once more, but this time the cornstalks didn’t reach for her. She stared at the ground, which was now the shape of a volcano, its mouth rising toward the sky, which had turned a murky colour. The growl morphed into an outright howl, like an animal in the throes of death. Wind gushed all around.

She leapt forward and crawled up the side of the split earth. She lifted herself over its edge and saw white fragments burst from the cavern. They whirled together in the air, a miniature tornado of bones, and assembled themselves, one piece at a time. She gasped as they formed a skeleton – a dinosaur skeleton. It stood erect on bent hind legs, like a bird, and its arms darted, the talons flashing. It screeched, the horrible sound of a chicken losing its head, and lunged for Aidan.

Aidan dodged the skeleton and found himself lying on the top of the precipice. His upper back leaned precariously over the cavern and the muscles in his arms flexed in response. A noise erupted from the deep; whatever was in there sounded ravenous.

The skeleton came for him again and he slid sideways, scraping his arms on rock. He jumped, landing on his hands and knees, on safe ground. His head rotated sideways, watching the skeleton. Blood dripped from the corner of his mouth, which was open and panting.

He leapt to his feet and dusted his hands on his track bottoms. His face was set in hard resolution.

Now there wasn’t one skeleton but a whole army of them. They weren’t all dinosaurs. One looked like it might have been a squirrel. Another looked more like livestock, a sheep perhaps. And there were others. There were so many, it made Itzy’s brain hurt to contemplate. This wasn’t happening. It couldn’t be happening.

The dinosaur slashed one of its talons across Aidan’s face. Blood gushed from the stripes, but he hardly registered it. He wiped his hand across his cheek, as if he were clearing it of rain. His fingers came away clean, his cheek miraculously undamaged.

Then he closed his eyes.

All at once, Itzy felt herself suffocating again. The air was too heavy, and there was too much of it. It clogged her lungs and she worried they might burst from the pressure. The veins in her arms turned red under her skin, like they’d been cut open, but the skin remained intact. They thickened and pulsed, threatening to pop.

Suddenly, the light dimmed and she felt herself drawn into an unnatural darkness. She turned toward its source – and gasped.

Before, above and below her were doorways repeating into infinity.

She turned back and saw the maize field through one of those doors, while she hovered in some nowhere space and watched. The skeletons were stumbling. Seth and Oz had doubled over. Only Aidan appeared unaffected by whatever was happening.

‘Melody!’ she heard him call. His voice was distant, despite being right there in front of her. Had she been moved into some other dimension, a vestibule where she could watch the scene unfold without being part of it?

An instant later, the field filled with the sound of soft music. Despite being outside, there was a guitar. It was acoustic and jangly, gentle, soothing. In a way, it was stranger than seeing the living skeletons.

Everyone and everything in the field stopped mid-motion – everyone except Aidan.

An organ struck, giving the impression of being in a cathedral. Then there was a choir, their harmonised voices climbing out of silence and charging to the forefront of Itzy’s attention. Even in her protective box, they hummed in her ears.

Aidan stood amidst the frozen chaos and closed his eyes. One by one, the skeletons disassembled and the bones dropped back into the chasm. When Aidan’s eyes flashed open, they seemed to burn like fire and had a distant look to them, like he could see something no one else could.

He lifted one of his hands. He clenched it into a fist, and the ground contracted in response. The volcanic peak crackled and fell, until the earth was flat once more. The air went still and the music stopped.

Curiosity overtook her, and Itzy threw herself through the doorway. She fell into the cornfield and landed on the ground, dirty and torn apart. When she looked up, the mysterious doorway had vanished. In its place, black sparked in the air.

Itzy pulled herself to her feet and hurried to the middle of the clearing, where Oz and Seth stood poised to strike Aidan. A girl with messy streaked hair, and a younger boy with dyed black hair falling into his eyes, materialised out of the cornstalks and flanked Aidan’s sides. The girl’s attention was fixed on Aidan as if he were some god dropped down from heaven and she were one of his disciples.

When Itzy reached Seth’s side, he looked stricken by what he saw. She glanced down at herself and noticed her arms and legs were coated in red gashes and her clothing was torn. She felt her head and found an assortment of leaves, branches and dirt tangled in her jet hair.

He opened his mouth to speak, when he was cut off – by Aidan.

‘Are ye alright?’ he asked. He came very close to her and held her eyes. She saw her pain mirrored in his face.

‘I – I don’t know,’ Itzy said. She was worried she might start crying in front of all of them.

He reached for her, touched her cheek, and she felt her face grow hot. Then Seth knocked his hand aside, and Itzy stumbled backward.

‘Leave her alone,’ Seth ordered in a hard voice Itzy had never heard him use before.

Aidan straightened and met Seth’s glare. Itzy recognised the expression coming over him. It was pure, unadulterated hate. She had seen it so many times on her father, and she had felt it so many times in herself.

‘Aidan,’ the messy-haired girl said. She sounded shocked, like she wasn’t used to seeing him this way.

The sound of his name seemed to jolt him back into the moment. He looked around at his audience like he had gone somewhere in his head and only now remembered where his body was. Itzy recognised it; it was just like when she fell out of one of her trances. That was how she knew:

They were all Descendants, too.

Aidan closed his eyes and breathed deeply, as if centring himself. When his eyes reopened, his face moulded into apology and he stepped away from Seth. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘No one was meant to get hurt.’ His eyes flitted to Itzy. ‘I thought…I thought ye could stop it.’

Itzy started. ‘Why would you…?’

Aidan sighed. ‘It was meant to be a test. We heard yis talking about that wee Energy Sensor.’ He pointed at it.

Oz looked at the tablet in his hand like he’d forgotten he was holding it. ‘You know what this is?’ he asked the strange boy.

Aidan’s expression suggested he was privy to some secret he wasn’t sure he should share.

Seth’s brow went up. ‘Hey, I know you,’ he said. He wagged his finger in Aidan’s direction. ‘Yeah, I saw you at the funeral.’

Itzy’s eyes widened. ‘You were at my father’s funeral?’ she asked Aidan.

He cocked his head to the side and studied her with new – and troubled – interest. He pursed his lips. ‘Ya really are Stephen Loveguard’s daughter, then,’ he said. ‘And you,’ he turned to Oz, ‘are his son.’ He looked up at the sky and laughed, before facing them again. ‘I should have known. Who but Osiris could drag the dead out of the ground?’

Itzy exhaled. ‘You did that?’ she said to her brother.

Aidan’s eyes sparkled with amusement. ‘He didn’t tell ye what he could do?’

‘Don’t answer his jibes,’ Oz ordered without looking at his sister. His skin was bloodless as he stared at Aidan now. ‘How do you know who we are?’

Aidan let out a breath. ‘Yer da and I…I guess ye might say we were friends,’ he said.

Itzy and Oz gasped in unison.

Seth, though, wasn’t so easily persuaded. ‘Well, you’re not our friends,’ he said in a cold voice that was disturbingly calm.

Aidan opened his mouth to reply, and then closed it. He looked frightfully sad. ‘I am sorry,’ he said.

‘I don’t care,’ said Seth. He crossed his arms over his chest.

Itzy’s eyes darted from Seth to Aidan, and to Seth again. ‘Seth,’ she murmured – but he didn’t lose that hard, unfamiliar edge. She appealed to Oz, but he too looked wary of their intruder.

Aidan’s shoulders slumped under the weight of their mistrust. ‘Shame,’ he noted with what Itzy believed was sincerity. He spun on his heel and flicked his hands. ‘Melody. Verdi. C’mere.’

His companions followed him toward the cornstalks. The boy – who looked like a goth Cousin Itt – took the lead, and the foliage parted to let him through. The girl went after him.

Aidan was last to go through. Just before he slipped into the corn, he twisted his head over his shoulder and caught Itzy staring after him. Their eyes locked a long time. Inexplicably, she felt the urge to run to him. At all costs, she had to know this boy. She just didn’t know why.

But before she could bring herself to move, he disappeared into the corn.

Seth let out the breath he’d been holding. It came out as a whistle. He leaned forward, his palms pressed to his thighs. Beside him, Oz still stared in the direction Aidan had left.

‘What happened?’ Itzy broke the silence.

‘I think,’ said Seth, righting himself, ‘we just got served.’