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PROLOGUE (#ulink_f14972e2-92ee-5ddc-b0f7-00d7b2cd0bd9)I

Koloku Island, Southeast Asia, the Palaccas Archipelago

July 1, 2014

The jungle comes alive at night.

In the darkness strange shapes creep and fold. Liquid shadows are black as ink and the undergrowth moves. Things shift unseen, slipping beneath leaf-silk. The air quivers, hot and clenched. It smells of the colour green, fragrant and private; and the purple sky, glimpsed in diamonds through a trembling canopy, is bursting with stars.

There is no safe way to arrive on these shores. The water is shark-infested, the land crawls and seethes. It is a forbidden paradise set apart from the world, and it does not welcome visitors. Peril lurks in swamps. Cat snakes drip from trees. Leopards prowl with silent intent, eyes gleaming gold at the scent of the kill. On a far-off branch, the panicked screech of a proboscis monkey rips through the pregnant heat, high and taut and violent. Fruit bats clap leathery wings.

It is impossible to see in the depths of the rainforest. Dense threads thick as rope are damp and fat and scented like rot. Enquiringly they finger the skin, coiling around wrist, knee or ankle, tethering any who trespass into the sucking, clinging earth. This is no place for humans. The wilderness took over a long time ago.

Beyond a wall of jade, the beach is torn into view. Cliff shards soar, rugged and sheer, their lofty peaks silhouetted against star-crust, prehistoric and bone-sharp. Rivers thread vein-like into the slithering jungle and grottos are sliced out of the rock, interiors caked in salt. Palm trees rise like swords against the sky, a hundred feet up, maybe more. The indigo lagoon shimmers like silk, kissing the pink crust of the reef, beyond which spreads the wide, dark Aralanda Sea. Water whispers onto sand, sighing as satin over pale shoulders. It brings secrets from the far-off Pacific, drifting them onto the shore like shells, for nobody to hear and nobody to pick up.

Everything is still.