ENA is terrified that she will be left behind when the Ship returns. A Ship came from another dimension to drop her ancestors on Earth, and another one will come to get her - but no one knows when. All Ena knows is that if her aura is not clear, her whole community will leave Earth for the other dimension without her. Only those with clear auras can board the Ship, and clear auras are maintained by avoiding the Darkness. Trees, leaves, roots, dirt, un-purified water and food: all these things are filled with a Darkness that has immeasurable power to corrupt their auras, and ultimately lead to death.
Everyone who belongs to THE CIV, the society which traces its ancestry back to the other dimension, makes it their mission to avoid the Darkness and protect their auras. Members of The Civ are called DESCENDANTS. When Descendants make contact (accidentally or otherwise) with the Darkness under any circumstances, they must confess the incident in daily recitations. The Civ employs Chemists to make medicines in the Lab, has its own Healing Centre and Healers instead of doctors, and creates special equipment and protocols to avoid organic matter at all costs. (Ena's mother is a Healer and her father is a Chemist.) SPEXIDREN, shadowy, other-worldly creatures that came from the other dimension alongside The Civ's ancestors, guide all the members of The Civ in their quest to avoid the Darkness and prepare for the Ship's return. LUMINARIES (like priests) are special Descendants that interpret everything the Spexidren are saying. If a Descendant's aura is deemed to be too polluted, usually because they willfully break The Civ's rules more than once, that Descendant is excommunicated.
Understandably, Ena's extreme fears make her a target for bullies at school. One day, the most aggressive kid in Ena's class tries to get Ena to kiss a frog, which would harm her aura. She refuses and runs away, but he and the other kids chase her... all the way to the edge of the schoolyard. Terrified, Ena escapes into the forest to avoid more bullying. But there, Ena's fear of bullies is replaced by sheer terror at being surrounded by Darkness. She is certain her aura will not survive this. (She has to complete recitations when her toe touches the roots that peek through the sidewalk! How much worse is this?!) She gives up and waits for her inevitable end.
To her complete surprise, she feels nothing. She does not sense her aura's immediate destruction, the way the Spexidren teach. She does not sense anything is wrong with her at all. To her greater surprise, she starts to enjoy the calm tranquility of the forest. She begins to feel that she is actually a part of it - but does that mean she's become a part of the Darkness?
As she explores further, Ena meets an old woman named JEAN in the forest. Jean teaches Ena about the power of plants and shows her many more trails that criss-cross the forest. Her new courage and curiosity lead Ena to break The Civ's rules more and more, manipulating those around her to get what she wants. She starts to make excuses and look for times in her family's schedule where she can safely sneak away to visit the forest undetected. At the same time, she worries that her independence and self-assertion really come from being corrupted by the Darkness, a result of the time she spends in the forest. After some time, though, she starts to see cracks in The Civ's beliefs.
Is Ena really losing her aura? How much of The Civ's beliefs are carefully maintained lies? And what will happen when her parents and her community discover she's been sneaking around to the forbidden forest?
