At the beginning of the story Briar is having a dream and he knows it. He was dreaming that he was sitting in a giant oak tree in the heart of a forest with a bag full of emeralds in his lap. Suddenly the images of the tree and the bag of emeralds disappeared and two people were rushing him down a damp dark corridor. Then they throw him is a big cell and slam the door. The echoes of the door are each as loud as the first. He wakes to find that he is in a wagon and somebody is banging on the outside of the wagon. Briar sticks his head out from the wagon and tells his friend Sandry to stop the banging. When they get to Urda’s House, a place where you can get medicine the cheapest, they find out that his friend Flick is sick. They are told this by Alleypup. When you met Flick, she is covered with spots. When Rosethorn, Briar’s teacher, looks at Flick they all realize that this is a new sickness. Briar is challenged by the impact of this new disease most when his friends begin to get sick from what is now called blue pox. It is called blue pox because in turns up blue on all but the darkest person’s skin. Throughout this book Briar helps find a cure for blue pox and Tris and her teacher, Niko, try to find how the disease came to be. Briar has to face losing Flick and someone else of great important to him. Find out how Briar helps find the cure and who it is that he loses.
