It is Crab Skerry's first time joining the gorse game – the sensual, perilous coming-of-age ritual that the young villagers of Neverness perform every year. To win the game, Crab must dive into the field of gorse and emerge, bloodiest of all the boys, with an arrow bearing the name of one of the village girls. But this year the Gorse Mother (patroness of the ritual) interferes, and something will go horribly wrong with deadly consequences.