Black and White and All Shades Between by Helen Laycock

The siblings don't know that Ma and Pa have brainwashed them for years, so they still sleep through the skin-sizzling, blinding light and, like bats, embrace the night.

When Ma and Pa pass, they drag their bodies by half-moon to the copse, inhaling lungsful of earthbreath, as they swing the carcasses to the heap.

Like all the animals, and babies.

That's when the story breaks.

The windows pulse – red, blue, white – waking them.

Voices stretch like creaking trunks. Rumble like tumbling earth. The animals are quiet.

A bright birdless wing alights on the whelked wall as he parts the drape, squinting, his flapping heart a trapped pigeon.

She watches from the bed, her tiny, bloodless face peering through the willow-like curtain which cascades across her shoulders and chest and disappears beneath the cover like an underground river.

He lets the drape fall, and, in the diluted darkness, they move about the room, finding boots and coats. He slings a bag over his shoulder.

A moment later, they have slipped through the loose planks at the far side of the cabin into the forest where veins of watery sunlight interlace the canopy like caught lightning.

He leads her by the hand; she cannot open her eyes. His burn.

There is a rabbit in the trap, eye a miniature world lit by the white sky, but they cannot stop.

Ahead, woody limbs are outstretched – signposts pointing the way to freedom; behind, like concerned grandparents, others usher them to safety. The leaves are whispering, ‘Run… Run…’

They weave between the family of trunks like grey ribbons, every knot which had bound them together loosening in their wake.

Arms encircling him, her hair dips into the bubbling stream, heavying as he carries her across, a dark fringe of feathers, too waterlogged to fly. Balancing his precious load, he teeters on its slippery rocks which tip them benevolently towards the opposite bank.

She cries into his neck and the tears nest in his beard like fledglings.

Whimpering, she stumbles behind him across clumpy fields, one hand shielding her face as a blade of light penetrates her eyelids, the other cradling her curve. He pulls her up hills towards the sky, his arm tight as an anchored rope,  she as heavy as a sack of wet sand.

A new forest ruffles the horizon, and, like weary swallows with torn wings, they steer themselves unsteadily to sanctuary.

They stop, muscles trembling leaves before a storm, hammering hearts quietening, voices still buried in their chests. A swathe of tangerine and plum spills across the sky as the sun slips away. They hold each other, breaths synchronising.

Soon the cracked moon appears between the blackened branches. Exhausted, she slithers down a trunk, hand on her swollen belly, and opens her eyes to the silk of darkness and the flicker of starlight. The welcoming hoot of an owl hollows a hole in the night.

He looks around at the silhouettes. This is the place where they will start again.

His eyes shine as he hears a scuffle close by; his first catch. He crouches low, gripping a rock.

He has not seen the white stones glowing above the snout of the creeping German Shepherd.

He topples backwards, pinned by the weight of the growling dog. The rock rolls into the blackness. She hears a scream gurgling in her throat.

Flashlights glare, washing over their pale faces, and she covers her ears now as every bush betrays them, ringing out, over and over: ‘Find! Find! Find!’

They have never felt so lost in the dark.

What have they done wrong?