Their captain was called Gareth Jones. He was in camouflage. His face was streaked with black. He glared at us. He took our knives away.
“We’re not the law,” he said. “It’s not my job to find out who you are and where you’re from and what the hell you think you’re playing at. We could just leave you to it.” He watched the doctor clean Nattrass’s wound. “But what the hell are you playing at?”
He turned to me.
“You could have killed him,” he said. “Did you want to kill him?”
“I’m sorry,” I managed to gasp.
“I’m sorry,” I gasped at Nattrass.
The captain spat.
“Sorry?” he said. “You’re sorry? Do you not think there’s enough death and destruction already in the world? Well?”
“Yes,” I said.
He spat again.
“So what you playing at? And stop crying, will you?”
He sent for a truck. We climbed inside. He sat in the back with us and we were carried out of the valley and back towards the village.
“This is my fault,” said Henry.
“And who might you be?” said Gareth Jones.
“I am Henry Meadows. I am from Liberia. I am a war criminal and a murderer.”
The captain shook his head. He cursed.
“These are my friends,” continued Oliver. “I have deceived them. It is me you must take away.”
“Where we going?” said the captain.
I gave him my address. He phoned the police. He told them where to come to.
“You all right, son?” he said to Nattrass.
“Aye,” said Nattrass.
“Good.”
He glared at Crystal.
“And you?” he said. “What’s your story?”
She shrugged.
“I ran away with Oliver. With Henry, I mean.”
“With one or the other, eh?”
He thumped on the back of the driver’s cab.
“Stop bouncing about, will you?” he yelled.
“Yes, Captain!” came a muffled reply.
The truck bounced on. The captain laid our knives out on his lap.
“You’d think we were in bloody Iraq!”
It was early morning. Dad was still up. He came to the door as the truck pulled up outside the house. He had a pen and notebook in his hand.
“There’s been some trouble, Dad,” I said.
The captain came up behind me.
“You’re the father?” he said.
“Yes,” said Dad. “What’s going on?”
“Don’t you think you should have known, sir?”
“Known what?”
The captain sighed. The others climbed out of the truck. The captain pointed to Nattrass’s wound.
“The police are on their way,” he said. “May we come in, sir?”
We streamed into the kitchen: Crystal, Henry Meadows, Gordon Nattrass, me, the captain. I heard Mum coming downstairs. She came to a halt in the kitchen doorway. She was in a dressing gown. Her hair was all tangled. Alison was in her arms.
“Oh, Mum,” I whispered. My voice quavered and broke. “Look what I’ve done.”
The baby giggled. She started jumping in Mum’s arms.
“O-A!” she yelled as she pointed at me. “O-A!O-A!”
Monster. Monster.
2
Nattrass phoned his dad.
“Yes,” he said. “Yes, the Lynches’ house. Yes, I know what time it is. Yes, it’s trouble.” He sighed. I saw tears in his eyes. “Please, Dad. Please come for me.” He put the phone down. “Him!” he muttered.
We sat at the table. Mum made tea and toast. Crystal held the baby. She cooed and smiled. Dad rested his chin on his hand.
“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?”
3
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 con
tain 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.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2008 by David Almond
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Originally published in Great Britain as Jackdaw Summer by Hodder Children’s Books, a division of Hachette Children’s Books, London, a Hachette Livre Company, London, in 2008.
Delacorte Press is a registered trademark and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Almond, David.
[Jackdaw summer]
Raven summer / David Almond.—1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary: Led to an abandoned baby by a raven, fourteen-year-old Liam seems fated to meet two foster children who have experienced the world’s violence in very different ways as he struggles to understand war, family problems, and friends who grow apart.
eISBN: 978-0-375-89385-8
[1. Foundlings—Fiction. 2. Interpersonal relations—Fiction. 3. Conduct of life—Fiction.
4. Fate and fatalism—Fiction. 5. Northumberland (England)—Fiction. 6. England—Fiction.]
I. Title.
PZ7.A448Rav 2009
[Fic]—dc22
2009001661
Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.
v3.0
David Almond, Raven Summer
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