The fork's tines protested as they bit into the rime-crusted earth, a sharp, metallic ring in the pre-dawn hush. Maggie Thorne leaned her weight into the handle, the cold of the iron seeping through her thick woollen mittens. Above the ridge, the Yorkshire sky was the colour of a bruised plum, silent and vast. She worked the lower turnip field alone, the rhythm of the harvest a dull ache in her shoulders that kept the biting November wind at bay.
A smudge of oily black charcoal marred the horizon, rising in a lazy coil from the pine wood. It wasn't the clean, white drift of a farmhouse chimney. This was thick and foul, smelling of burnt rubber and high-octane fuel that curdled the crisp morning air. Maggie straightened, wiping a bead of moisture from her nose with her sleeve. That shouldn't be there. The moors were supposed to be empty, save for the sheep and the restless wind.
She dropped the pitchfork and began to climb the slope, her boots heavy with ox-blood mud. The silence of the Brackenmoor woods felt heavy, a physical weight pressing against her ears as the light shifted from grey to a pale, sickly gold. She reached the first stand of trees, her breath hitching in her throat. From the edge of the pine wood, the slow, dragging crunch of heavy boots breaks the morning quiet.
