Tim Lebbon - Reaper's Legacy

Lucy-Anne had never been to Hampstead Heath before. She was expecting a park, like any one of London’s other large green areas. What she could not prepare herself for was the sheer scale of the place. One moment they were running along a residential street, aiming for a wide junction with shops on the other side of the road. The next moment, they turned a corner and wilderness confronted them. A landscape of greenery, much of it strange. A swathe of wild hillsides, a forest, a jungle of trees and creepers. The shock was immense, and she was almost winded by it. Then when she breathed in again she could taste the Heath, and it was both alluring and terrifying.

“They called it the Lungs of London,” Rook said as they jogged. “So big, it’s like a different place. Countryside in the middle of the city. Sucks in a lot of London’s pollution, pumps out oxygen. It did, at least. Who knows what it pumps out now?”

Lucy-Anne heard but could not respond. At the end of the street two roads led off, the main one on the left providing what was once a definitive demarcation point between green and grey. Now, that line had been blurred. The Heath was spreading, bleeding greenery from its previously defined borders. The buildings there sprouted grasses, wore climbing plants across their façades, and several seemed to have trees growing through their slated roofs.

Nothing grows that quickly , Lucy-Anne thought. But every sense told her that the Heath no longer obeyed any natural rules she knew. While Evolve had acted upon the human population of London, perhaps here it had also touched the vegetation.

“How the hell are we going to find him in there?” she asked. Rook looked at her, eyes wide with excitement and fear. He could offer her no answer, no comfort. He only took her hand and pulled her along the street.

“The only way is to start looking,” he said. “I’ve sent my rooks ahead. They’ve been scouting the land while you rested.”

“And what have they found?”

“Wilderness. Strangeness. Danger.” He smiled at her. “All the usual.”

“And nothing to put me off,” she said.

“Of course.”

They walked on, and Lucy-Anne felt a sudden rush of affection for Rook, and gratitude that he would take it upon himself to do this for her. He was a wild boy himself, and strange, and she knew very well how dangerous he could be. But he was also showing himself to be very human.

“Thank you,” she said.

“Haven’t found him yet.” A bird drifted down to Rook’s shoulder, and the dark-haired boy tilted his head. When he did that, Lucy-Anne thought he took on the mannerisms and the look of a rook himself.

“Okay,” he said. “We can follow the road onto the Heath. It rises up out of London, and it’s pretty overgrown in places. But it looks safe for now.”

Lucy-Anne nodded and, hand in hand, they left the London she had once known.

They entered another world.

Walking into Regent’s Park had been strange, with its haunting shadows and strange inhabitants. But Lucy-Anne had always maintained the sense of London around her. The city exerted a gravity that had influenced her every step of the way, present in her memories for each step through the park. Here, she felt different. As soon as they moved out of the built-up area and started across the Heath, she was somewhere else. London and everything that had happened was behind her, and ahead lay a future and a place she could not even guess at.

She sensed strangeness all around, but it was with a kind of detachment that she found comforting. The grass was long and sturdy, and it waved with the breeze, forming complex patterns that seemed to speak of something secret. The trees were heavy with shadow, and lush banks of shrubs could have hidden a thousand watchers. But her focus was narrowing now to include her aim and destination, and little else. Andrew smiled in her mind’s eye and laughed in her memory. With the toxic city forgotten, it was his gravity that started to draw her in.

The wide path had once been immaculately maintained, with defined edges and its surface kept free of weeds. That had all changed now. They could still follow the route of the tarmac way, because the weeds and grasses that had grown through it were shorter and scrubbier than the surrounding heath. But nature had very definitely taken over here.

They were climbing slowly but surely towards a wide, gentle hilltop. Lucy-Anne glanced occasionally back the way they had come, and each look offered a more comprehensive view across London. As they approached the crest of the hill she could see Canary Wharf to the left, and to the right the dome of St. Paul’s was just distinguishable above the spread of other buildings. Patches of green marked the parks that had grown wild. One tall office building close to the centre of London had been gutted by fire sometime in the past, and now it offered only a fractured skeleton to the sky. Half a dozen smoke trails rose from across the city, leaning to the east like plants erring towards the sun.

“It looks so different even from this far away,” she said.

“It’s because you know how much it’s changed,” Rook said. “And there’s no sound of civilisation.”

Lucy-Anne listened and heard bird song, the howl of something larger, and movement in trees farther along the slope. No cars or sirens or screams of playing children.

A pack of dogs scampered across the slope down from them, and she shivered as she remembered their subterranean encounter with dogs on the way in to London. I dreamed of them as well , she thought. She glanced at Rook.

“We need to stay away from the trees,” she said.

“Huh?”

“I dreamed of you in there, and then…”

He took her hand and kissed her quickly on the lips. “I have my eyes,” he said, glancing up. A dozen rooks circled high above them. “Besides, we can’t avoid the trees here. You want to look, don’t you?”

“Of course.”

“Then we have to find someone to help us.”

“You’re serious?” She thought of the gargoyle people, the snake folk, and other mutations she had been imagining.

“If not, we might be looking forever,” he said. “The Heath is almost a thousand acres, and wilder now than ever before. You can feel that?”

Lucy-Anne nodded.

“There must be people among the monsters,” Rook said, glancing away from her. “There have to be.”

A rush of hopelessness flushed through her, threatening to corrode her determination. But she pressed her lips tight together and clenched her hands into fists.

“I don’t care how long it takes,” she said. “Come on.” She walked uphill, towards a line of trees that marked the end of this open area of Hampstead Heath.

Rook followed, and it was Lucy-Anne who entered the forest first.

They walked for a few minutes, going deeper into the woods and higher up the hillside. Paths crissed and crossed, and she was aware of frequent movement away from them through the trees. They were surrounded by a bubble of stillness and silence. Lucy-Anne had no wish to see what dwelled beyond.

An urge came to start shouting Andrew’s name. He could be close! she thought, and she walked tall to make herself seen. But she did not shout. She was too cautious for that.

Twenty minutes after entering the woodland, an intense feeling of déjà vu assailed her. She swayed, struggling against the compulsion to slump to the floor and let events wash over her. Not every dream comes true! she thought, and she searched among the trees for familiar scenes. There was nothing she recognised.

No bench, no man swinging in the trees, so—

She turned around and Rook was no longer with her.

Lucy-Anne felt her stomach sink, and her heart thumped painfully. Her vision blurred and then settled again, a newfound clarity making everything around her clear, sharp, and deadly.