“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.”