On a tiny archipelago out of sight of the rest of the world lives Rory, a ten-year-old boy. He and his mother and a handful of survivors live an exhausting and precarious existence, entirely isolated. The sea is alive, and angry. Every man Rory can remember has been drowned. Everyone knows he'll be next. One night, for the first time since the world changed and the curse descended, strangers appear on the island. They're on their way to England, seeking a powerful magic ring. And one of them seems to know Rory by sight .... Caught up in their quest, Rory enters an England of terrors and marvels, at the heart of which lies a place where journeys unimaginably longer and older than his will reach their end: Pendurra.