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Chapter 01

Amelia-Rose struggled to hang the wedding dress on the line. The water-soaked material was heavy and she felt the sadness in her heart well up as she gently pegged it up to dry naturally in the balmy air. Memories were revived with each peg - good memories at first but then many bad ones. Soon they began to overwhelm her so she tried to make the thoughts go away by imagining them hanging up and being refreshed by the healing morning breeze.

A mother kestrel hawk hung suspended high above her in the almost still air of mid morning's timeless haze. Indecision haunted and held the kestrel vice-like between the sweeping, gold tinted moorland of Exmoor and a perfect azure sky. Temptingly, her prey scurried below - but so did another predator.

The hawk's heart quickened with images of her nestlings devouring noisily the tender meat she could see far below on the riverbank. In her mind's eye, their eager upturned beaks and hungry cries spurred her on. Her finely tapered wings twitched urging her to draw them in to her body and begin the diving, racing and reckless swoop into the valley and onto the kill.
 
She imagined sweeping up out of the valley proudly clutching her prey, confident once more in her offspring's future.

The mouthwatering morsel she'd spotted far below under the fir trees was a tiny brown field mouse but the kestrel's sharp eyes saw that it was not alone.
 
Drifting lazily downriver was a small canoe with its cargo of two small young children.
Nearby, hanging out her washing in the overgrown garden of her cottage with its blue flowering wisteria around the porch that matched her apron, was the small figure of a woman.

But it was the strange shadow in the valley that held the kestrel back - because she knew the shadow spelt danger. Instinctively she knew the shadow was also seeking prey.
It moved cautiously, almost imperceptibly and every action was calculated. Hugging the ground, it made use of every small clump of green gorse and brown bracken to hide its progress. The quiet valley with its winding river, small farms and country cottages, gave few creatures reason to fear, yet the shadow saw danger at every turn and prowled on.

Furthermore, the darkness in the valley that belied the bright sun was too deep to be caused by only one creature. The hawk sensed another darkness below, another shadow and it was for this shadow that the hawk's sharp eyes were searching but with little success.

The little mouse scurried again; its nose quivered searching for food smells amongst the earthy scents of the riverbank. But it scented only the soft fragrance of bluebells, wafting in the breeze from the water meadows beneath the trees, so he moved cautiously on, warm in the late morning sun.

Absorbed in her thoughts, Amelia-Rose didn't hear the clicked latch of the old wooden gate but, when it creaked open, she looked up in alarm.

Copyright of this site is Rob Hopcott's, 1999 - 2007, all rights reserved. All characters in this story are fictitious and no reference is intended to any person living or otherwise.
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