Raven Summer (15 page)

“So?” he said.

I looked back into his eyes. He waited for the story, but where to start?

“We went to Kane’s Cave,” I said.

“Kane’s Cave? Where’s that?”

I looked down.

“I … I …”

I what? I dreamed of running away with Oliver and Crystal? I tried to kill a boy who used to be my friend? I was young? I was stupid?

I felt Crystal’s hand on my arm.

“He tried to help us,” she said. “That’s all he did. To help us and protect us.”

“O-A!” giggled Alison. “O-A!”

Dad found a map. He spread it out before us. He told me to show him. I pointed. Kane’s Cave. I traced our route: the fields, the river, the moors, the hidden valley. We all leaned over it. Nattrass breathed the local names. Craw, St. Michael and All Angels, Rook Hall, the Tyne, the Roman Wall. He touched our little school, the field beside it. Crystal moved her hand beyond the map, traced the route back towards invisible Newcastle. Then Oliver: a sad sweep of his arm to show the great gulf of space and time towards his childhood in Liberia.

“It is me,” said Oliver. “I must be taken away. Everything will be well again.”

Then footsteps. And Mr. Nattrass was at the door. A hunched-over man, with the right arm of his coat pinned to the lapel.

“My boy,” he said.

“He’s here,” said Dad.

Mr. Nattrass cast his eyes across us. I’d never seen him beyond his sofa-and-television room.

“So what’s it this time?” he said.

“It’s me, Mr. Nattrass,” I said. “I … I attacked him with a knife.”

He considered me for a moment. He grunted a little laugh.

“Did you now? Many a time I’ve wanted to do the same myself. What’s the damage?”

Nattrass showed the dried blood on his clothes, showed the dressing. His father reached out and touched with his single hand.

“Hardly more than a scratch, eh?” He looked at me again. “A game that went wrong, was it?”

“No,” I answered.

“He’ll have asked for it, did he?”

“No,” I answered.

“You sure? You’re the one that used to come, aren’t you, when both of you were little bairns?”

“Yes.”

“I told him—they’ll not want you if you go the way you’re going. They’ll have enough of you.” He turned to his son. “Remember?”

Nattrass just stared emptily at him, seemed about to speak, then looked away, looked down.

“Never mind,” said Mr. Nattrass. “You’ll soon be free to go your own stupid way.”

Then lights, and the police car, and Jenkins and Ball coming through the door.

“Well, well,
well!
” said Ball as he came in. “Now, why am I not surprised to see how
this
has all turned out?”

It seems so long ago, so far away
, but it was here, at home, and just a few weeks back, when summer had begun to fade at last into the autumn. I tried to kill a boy and not much happened. Nattrass and his dad said it was a game that had gone wrong. We were boys, we were stupid, we didn’t know what we were doing. I was a kid messing about with a pruning knife I thought was treasure. Nattrass was a country boy who whittled sticks, hunted rabbits, dreamed of living a country life from long ago. We were cautioned for carrying knives. Mr. Nattrass and my mum and dad were ordered to take more control of us.

“I knew,” said PC Ball to me. “Soon as I saw you I thought, That one’s headed for bother if nobody keeps a leash on him.”

Oliver was taken away. He was not sent home to certain
death, of course. He is the worst of all victims, a child guided by monsters who were guided by monsters themselves. He is the child who has lost innocence, who has been taught to do evil. He is given our protection. And he is watched. And he is feared. Has the evil in him come to stay?

He comes to visit us. He comes with Crystal and their social workers. They are here today, this beautiful day in late October when the sky is bright and the air is cold, and our breath condenses around us, and leaves lie scattered on the grass.

He sits with Dad. He is writing his story again.

“This time,” says Henry, “it will contain nothing but truth.”

“If there is such a thing as truth,” says Dad.

Henry contemplates for a time.

“Yes,” he says. “There is truth, Mr. Lynch, and it must be told time and again and time and again and time and again. But sometimes the truth is found only after a journey through many lies.”

Crystal plays with the baby. Their laughter rises, echoes. They crawl together over the fallen leaves. Crystal holds Alison’s hands, and Alison awkwardly, joyously rises to her feet.

“Good girl!” says Crystal. “Oh what a good girl!”

Mum watches us all. She photographs us, but from a distance, making patterns of us against the sky, the grass, the trees, the ridges and the distant moors. She is happy. I know that she has begun to wonder about bringing Crystal or Henry or both of them into our family.

I wander alone in the garden. Ravens call from the fields.
There are always ravens. One day, I tell myself, the raven that began it all will flap down onto the grass before me. It will be followed by the hiker in the red hat. She will come into the garden and smile at Alison and tell us that Dad’s tale is true. No, she could not care for her daughter. And yes, Alison’s father was Thomas Fell, the man whose body was found in the north, the refugee from an ancient war.

So many mysteries, so many things to find out. I am growing, but I feel so young. I wander through the garden like a ghost. I go into the house. I find the money from the jar. I put it into a plastic bag. I go into Dad’s study. Death Dealer is in there, lying beside the keyboard. I take the knife and return to the garden. I kneel, and I cut away a square of turf. I dig down, and find what I have always found—stones, roots, worms, dust. I clear a space. I put the money and the knife into the earth, then close it up again. I press the turf back into place. I watch the dust drying on my skin. The ravens call. The sun shines down. The baby cries out happily again. I look up from the earth and watch her totter to her feet again. I look at all of us, gathered here in this familiar garden, which has become so very strange.

david almond
grew up in a large family in northeastern England and says, “The place and the people have given me many of my stories.” His first book for young people,
Skellig
, won the Carnegie Medal and the Whitbread Award, and was a Michael L. Printz Honor Book and an ALA-ALSC Notable Children’s Book.
Skellig
has since become a hugely successful stage play, directed by Sir Trevor Nunn, an opera with music by Tod Machover, and a movie with Tim Roth in the title role.
Kit’s Wilderness
won the Michael L. Printz Award for Excellence in Young Adult Literature.
The Fire-Eaters
won both the
Boston Globe-Horn Book
Award and the Whitbread Award.
Clay
became a TV movie on the BBC. David Almond’s work has been translated into more than thirty languages, and he is widely acclaimed as one of the finest and most innovative children’s writers in the world today. He lives with his family in Northumberland, surrounded by the landscapes of
Raven Summer.