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steady her, and, opening her eyes, found herself in an open area within the trees, suspended above the ground and beneath the tree canopy.
    Rachel gasped, allowing herself to look quickly round. It was like a wooded cathedral; a vast open space created by the highest trees, which formed a roof over the top. Smoke hung in the still air. Below the green canopy, smaller trees, some skeletal and dead-looking, formed an internal structure, joined together by rope bridges such as the one they stood on, with galleries, walkways, ladders and crow’s nests made from scrappy planks and branches.
    Adam hauled Rachel up on to the wooden platform he had reached at the end of the rope, and Rachel was glad to have her feet on something more solid, even such rickety planks. Rachel followed Adam up a couple of wooden steps nailed to the tree trunk into a tiny tree house. There was barely room inside for both of them. It can only be a lookout, she thought. For hunting, or maybe as a hide for birdwatching.
    Adam pointed to a small slit in the side of the hut.
    Rachel pressed her face to the peephole and realized, with sudden, sickening certainty that they shouldn’t be here.

F rom her vantage point, Rachel could make out a kind of encampment below. Several logs formed rough benches round a fire. On the other side of the fire was a camper van that didn’t look as if it had moved for several years. It was painted green, covered in leaves and jungle netting, and where there had once been a VW badge there was now a spray-painted symbol.
    A Triskellion.
    In the centre of the encampment, at what seemed to be the focal point of the whole clearing, a tree had been turned upside down; its thick trunk sunk into the earth, the roots exposed to the open air like a pair of vast, cupped hands. Rachel thought how weird it looked, wrenched from the ground, uprooted, exposing the parts that shouldn’t be seen. Stranger still, round the edge of the encampment stood figures so well camouflaged that they might almost have been mistaken for foliage.
    When they began to move, Rachel saw that there werefifteen or twenty people below her, dressed in rags, furs and leaves, their faces blackened with earth. One or two of them had branches or antlers attached to their heads, like mythical forest creatures. Adam pushed his face close to hers to get a look at the scene and Rachel could tell from his rapid breathing that he was every bit as petrified as she was.
    On the ground, the headlights of the camper van blazed into life, spotlighting the upturned tree, as the door on the side of the van slid open. A tall man, wearing a worn, floor-length leather coat and knee boots stepped out and stood facing the upturned tree. His face was blackened, like the others, but his eyes stood out: a piercing blue. He stepped forward and leant against the tree with one hand as if deriving strength from it, muttering under his breath.
    After a moment, he turned to face the camouflaged men that were gathered round the fire, and studied them, unsmiling. His long hair and beard looked wet, as if he had recently showered. He nodded at one of the forest people who, with two others, opened the back of a battered, white truck that was concealed in the bushes.
    From the back of the truck the men wrestled two figures. Their heads were covered in sackcloth bags, but Rachel recognized one of them from his washed-out denims and T-shirt.
    “It’s those guys who beat you up yesterday,” she whispered.
    Adam hissed. “I know…”
    The youths writhed and struggled, but the bear-like forestmen were too strong for them and dragged them to the upturned tree, tying them by their wrists to the outstretched roots, so that their chests were pressed against the rough bark. They bucked and craned their necks backwards, straining and twisting, trying to shake off the hoods and see their captors. After a few moments their grunts and protests faded to whimpers and finally stopped and the area inside the woods