After the dark little world of the Coppice, the path suddenly opens. The trees fall behind them, and the Whitaker children step onto the high ridge. For a moment, nobody says much. The land seems to stretch forever. Fields lie below them in patches of brown and green. Stone walls run across the hills like long, crooked lines. Far beyond the valley, the distant hills rise against the sky.
On a clear day, Father tells them, they can see toward the Lindisfarne Hills.
The younger children try to find them first. “Is that them?”
“No. Farther away.”
“What about those?”
“Those are the ones you were looking at before.”
Soon everyone is pointing at something. The view is different from anything they have seen along the path. Down below, the places they have just walked through seem small. The coppice is only a dark patch among the fields. The lane is little more than a line between the walls.
From up here, the children can see how all those little pieces belong to one great landscape. And perhaps that is why the Whitakers have always known these hills so well. They don’t need a map to know where they are.They have walked the paths. They have crossed the fields.
They know the walls, the burns, the woods, and the places where the wind catches hardest.
In Broken Sanctuary, the Whitaker children are part of this same landscape. Their world is not made up of grand castles and faraway kingdoms. It is made of farms, lanes, hills, rivers, and the people they meet along the way.
And sometimes, all it takes is climbing a little higher to see how much of that world is connected. The children cannot stay long. The chapel is still ahead. And when they return home, there will be work waiting at the farm. But for a few moments, they stand together on the ridge and look.
Sometimes you have to climb above a place to see how it all fits together.
Welcome to Peckles-Wood Shire
Continue the adventure with the Broken Sanctuary novel, the first journey into the world of Peckles-Wood Shire. Then discover collectibles and keepsakes inspired by the Whitaker family’s adventure.
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The Illustrator’s Vision—The maps and illustrations of Peckles-Wood Shire are inspired by the real landscapes, places, and traditions of Victorian Northumberland. Created for The Chronicles of Peckles-Wood Shire, they blend historical research with imagination to bring the world of Broken Sanctuary to life and invite young explorers to step into the Whitaker family’s adventure of 1885.
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