Parch Marks - Anna Orridge

Britain, 2057. Drought has left a trail of inexplicable parch marks around the long-dry riverbed of an ancient massacre site. TV archaeologist Eva Sinclair, struggling to evade violence in a future York riven by political tension and protest, seeks to understand what links these fern-like patterns with a Bronze Age community that also once faced the ravages of climate change. Even more concerningly - why are these same patterns appearing in the form of rashes on her skin, and those of others involved in the excavation? Eva Sinclair is struggling after an extramarital affair leaves her broke and dealing with a festering media scandal. She jumps at the chance to head to York to join an excavation of a unique Bronze Age site in the seceded North of England. Of particular interest are the highly atypical and mysterious parch marks in the shape of coiling ferns that lie alongside a harrowing, ancient mass grave. Eva is fascinated, but with protests becoming ever more violent in the wake of drought and water rationing, she finds loyalty to her colleagues conflicting with personal ambition. 1,300 BC. Ray is known in her village to have the Sense - the ability to feel the presence of the Serpent of the River, the Woman of the Spring, the Boar and all the other spirits that allow her and her community to survive and thrive. Plummeting temperatures and a series of failed harvests, however, have left them flailing. When a powerful tribe from the south arrives to seek hospitality and the healing powers of the Spring, Ray is left feeling she would be better off blessed with the ability to control the more emotionally incontinent members of her clan.