A few miles south of the Hills, the Lonsbrook river drops in, close to the hillside bank and runs deep and swift. The usually very feral water was absolutely still. There were no signs of any living beings or activity in it; it was the silence before the storm. On one side of the river the golden foothill slopes curve up to the strong and rocky mountains, but on the valley side the water is lined with trees – willows, fresh and green with every spring, carrying in their lower leaf junctures the debris of the winter’s flooding; sycamores with mottled, white, recumbent limbs and branches that arch over the pool. On the sandy bank under the trees the leaves lie deep and so crisp that even a lizard makes a great skittering if he runs among them....