Raven Summer

  Max shrugs. Maybe he doesn’t want to know. Maybe he doesn’t want to think these things.

  “You,” says Crystal, “might think you are an angel, but you’re not. What you got is food and money and safety and parents that love you. But what if you didn’t have them things? What if your parents were—”

  Oliver hushes her. He puts his finger to her lips.

  “Tell them more,” she says.

  “Imagine this,” he says to us. “Imagine Liberia. Imagine me, not as I am now, but as a child, a little boy. Indeed, I have food, I have parents that love me, and I am happy, until this day. I am lying in the long grass close to my family home. The earth is warm, the sun is beating down on me. I am lying there to hide, because the soldiers have come to our village. For a long time we have feared that they will come. We have been certain that they will come. We have heard all the tales of what happens when they come. We have even played games about this, my friends and I. We have lain in the long grass and we have held sticks as if they were guns. We have imagined fighting for our village, driving the soldiers away. But now the soldiers are here and I am very frightened and there is no way that they can be driven away. I lie trembling in the long grass as the soldiers take my family, and another family, out into the fields. They give them rakes and spades. They point guns at them. ‘Dig your graves,’ they command. ‘Dig your graves!’ And my mother and my father and my sister and my brother dig their graves. And the soldiers stand close by, laughing and smoking cigarettes. Then they raise their guns and they slaughter my family.”

  No one by the fireside dares to speak. The voices drift across the garden from the house.

  Oliver looks into our faces.

  “I have no evidence of what happened. I do not even have evidence of who I am.” He points to his head, his heart. “The evidence is here, and here. And in my writing, in which I try to tell the truth. They say I cannot stay here. I am not angry that they say this. You cannot accept everyone into your country.”

  He looks across the fire.

  “I am Oliver Part. I am thirteen years old. I am from Liberia. My family was slaughtered. I ran away. I will not ask if you believe. It does not matter what anyone believes. I know the truth, and I try to tell it, and the truth is difficult.”

  “What will you do?” I say.

  His wide eyes shine as he looks across the flames.

  “I will not go back.”

  “We’ll fly,” says Crystal. “We’ll run. We’ll hide. They won’t find us.”

  Across the garden, someone plays the Northumbrian pipes, a slow soft tune. Then there’s a shadow, and footsteps in the grass. Nattrass. His face looms into the light.

  “Gotcha!” he says.

  He grins. No one speaks.

  “Just popped in to wish the baby well,” he says.

  His face twists, somewhere between a grimace and a grin.

  “The land’s full of strangers today,” he says. “You gonna introduce me, brother?”

  I’m about to tell him to shove off. Crystal stands up. She steps across the flames towards him. She raises her arm and points at him.

  “Who are you?” she says. “What do you want?”

  “I’m Gordon Nattrass, sister,” he says.

  He puts his hand out. She doesn’t take it.

  “I am not your sister,” she replies.

  “But we’re all one big and happy human family,” he says. He looks down at Oliver. “Welcome to Northumberland, brother.” He doesn’t put his hand out. Oliver nods, murmurs a greeting in reply.

  Crystal leans closer to Nattrass.

  “Go away,” she says.

  Philip calls from the house: “Crystal! Oliver! We have to go!”

  “Crystal,” hisses Nattrass. “And Oliver.”

  His eyes glitter as he laughs at Crystal.

  “I’ll remember you,” he says. “Farewell.”

  He turns back into the night.

  Crystal stands at the edge of the firelight, watching him go.

  “Friend of yours?” asks Crystal.

  “We hate him,” I say.

  “Good!”

  Philip calls again. We stand up.

  “If there’s anything we can do …,” I say to Oliver.

  His eyes shine brightly again.

  “I will think of you as my friend. And you as well, Max.”

  Crystal comes to me.

  “You’ll help him,” she whispers. “I know you will. You’re good and strong. I know you are.”

  She kisses my cheek, then starts back with Oliver towards the house.

  As we walk back, Mum appears with her camera.

  “Just one shot,” she says. “You look so strange and so lovely, coming through the darkness together with the lights in your eyes and the fire burning behind.”

  We stand still and face her. I stand at Crystal’s side.

  Afterwards, Max holds me back for a moment.

  “Do you believe it?” he says.

  “Believe what?”

  “All that stuff. All that slaughter.”

  I pull away and look at him.

  “Course I do,” I say.

  I stumble back towards the party.

  “The world’s a savage place, you know,” I say.

  “You’re such an innocent,” I say.

  6

  A couple of days later I pass Nattrass in the village.

  “Who’s the terrorist?” he says.

  “The what?”

  “The black lad. Whatsisname.”

  “Oliver.”

  I start to move on.

  “Aye, him. What’s he done? And what’s he doing here? And what’s he gonna do?”

  “He’s from Liberia. He’s looking for asylum.”

  “Thought so.”

  “And he’s not here. He’s in Newcastle.”

  “Best place for him. They’ll know what to do with him.”

  I start to move again, but I turn back.

  “You haven’t got a clue, have you?”

  He grins.

  “Have I not, brother?”

  “No, you haven’t. Terrible things have happened to Oliver. Things that you and me couldn’t imagine.”

  “And you believe him, don’t you? Course you do. Peace and joy and love and let them all come in.” He laughs. “You’re a pushover. Half of them’s war criminals, man. They’re here to avoid justice. They’re terrorists.” He makes a fist and thumps the air. “Send them back to their hovels! Bomb them back to the Stone Age!”

  He grins again.

  “Just joking,” he says. “Pal of yours, is he?”

  “Yes,” I say.

  “Thought so. That’s great. Great to have pals from all round the world. Universal love and joy. How else we gonna have peace and understanding.” He grins, then narrows his eyes. “Oh, and just one more thing, Liam. I can imagine, you know.”

  He looks at me, like he’s daring me to deny it.

  “I always remember that day your dad come into school, Liam. Remember? That day he was reading to us from his books and talking to us and getting us to write stuff down. Aye?”

  It was a couple of years back. Dad still liked to go into schools then. To get feedback, he used to say. To inspire the new generation of readers and writers. It was part of his duty as a writer.

  “One thing always sticks in me mind,” says Nattrass. “It was truly inspiring. All of us, he said, all of us have got the most amazing imaginations. D’you remember, Liam? Each and every one of us.”

  “It’s what he always says.”

  “Well, it’s absolutely true. Me, I can imagine anything. I can imagine the worst things in the whole wide world. Sometimes I amaze myself with the things that’s going on inside my brain. Sometimes, Liam, I can scare meself stiff.” He laughs. “Whatsisname’s tale, for instance. That’d be a piece of cake for a brain like mine. Blood and guts and savagery and slaughter. Dear me, it’s horrible just to think of it. See you around, brother.”
br />   And we move on.

  7

  I e-mail Crystal. I don’t know what to say.

  Good to see you at the christening. Hope

  everything’s OK.

  Best, Liam

  She replies almost immediately.

  It was good to see you again. It was great at the fire, eyes shining and skin glowing and the way our voices sounded in the crackle of the flames. We got to think of Oliver. Will you be ready to help him when he needs you? I’m in my little room. The sky is red and orange like a fire blazing bright above the roofs. The whole world is still. We all wait for the grate thing to happen. Will it be a thing of terror or a thing of marvel? Sorry if I seem intens. It is how I am tonight. Night night.

  Cx

  I imagine her in the city, in her little room, staring out into the fiery night. I imagine her pale face, her green eyes. I check again before I sleep.

  When you came into our home it was like we had been waiting for you. It was like I had known you always. It was like we would definitely meet again and definitely have to go through something together. Did you feel that too Liam? Cx

  I think back to the foster home. I think of their eyes on me. I think of the knife scar on Oliver’s face. I think of Crystal close beside me at the table. And I think of Alison, how I found her, how she went away, how I went to her again and found her foster sister and her foster brother. It was almost like she led me to them, just like the raven led me to her. And I think that yes, maybe this has all been intended.

  I think I know what you mean. I do feel something too.

  I don’t understand it.

  Lx

  Understanding doesnt mater.

  Cx

  8

  Still hot, but the days start to shorten. The darkening nights intensify our games. We play football until we can’t see the ball. We go on with our war games, we creep in the shadows, we ambush each other with savage cries. We wrestle and scream. We play Spotlight.

  Spotlight. The bay’s in the middle of the field, the stump of an old chestnut tree. We play when the stars of the vivid Northumbrian night are beginning to shine. When you’re It you take the torch. You stand at the bay. You close your eyes. You count as the others scatter into the ditches and trenches and hedges and copses all around. Then you switch on the torch and go searching, pointing the beam of light into the furthest fringes of the dark. You see a hiding figure. I see you! you call. And then you run, chased by the one who was hiding, and you thump the bay and cry, Spotlight spotted you in the night! You’re out! When you hide, curled up as if you’re dead on the hard earth or tangled in a hawthorn or balanced on a beech bough, you feel you’re far far away, in your own little isolated world. You hear the chanted counting ringing out across the field. You hear the grunts and stifled laughter of the others hiding. Then there’s the cry: The counting’s all done and here I come! You peep out. You see the cone of light dipping and swinging and searching. You hear the cries: Spotlight spotted you in the night! You’re out! You hear the frantic running. You see the torch beam whipping wildly as its holder runs. And you wait for the beam to come to you at last, to dazzle you, to get you springing into speed and life again.

  One night during Spotlight I’m deep in a ditch in the darkest shadows when Nattrass slithers in beside me.

  “Aye, aye, brother,” he whispers. “Mind if I share your ditch?”

  I try to shift away from him, but we’re crammed close together.

  “I could do you now and nobody’d know who it was,” he whispers.

  He holds up a knife. It shines in the moonlight.

  “I could, couldn’t I?” he says.

  “Yes,” I sigh.

  He laughs. He holds the blade to my throat. I push it away. He holds it to my throat again.

  “Come on,” he says. “Fight me off.”

  “Piss off,” I tell him.

  “Dangerous thing to say to somebody with a knife at your throat,” he says.

  I feel the edge of the blade on my skin. I lie there, tense, still.

  “One wrong little move and you’d be gone,” he whispers.

  But he takes the knife away, and laughs softly.

  “Just joking, brother,” he says. “You know that, don’t you?”

  He laughs.

  “I like to keep you on your toes, that’s all.”

  I look past him, see the torch beam swerving through the dark.

  “I found a video on the Net today,” Nattrass whispers. “I seen a man getting his head chopped off. It was a piece of cake to find.”

  The torch beam sweeps across us, doesn’t shine down into the ditch.

  “They said the bloke was evil,” he continues. “They said he was against God. They said that what they were doing was for God. Then they got a knife, a great big one …”

  “It wasn’t Greg Armstrong, was it?”

  “No, some Frenchie or a Kraut. So there’s still a bit of hope for poor old Greg.”

  “Why you telling me?” I say.

  He laughs.

  “Haven’t a clue. Mebbe I want to shock you, Liam. Mebbe I want to scare you a little bit. Mebbe I want to get you imagining the worst things in the world.”

  “I don’t need you for that,” I tell him.

  He grunts, grins. “They held his head right up in front of the camera. Hey, even I had to look away.”

  His skin gleams in the starlight.

  “You think I’m a pain in the neck,” says Nattrass. “You think I’m weird. You even think I might be evil.”

  I don’t say anything. I listen. I wait for the torch to find us.

  “I’m not, you know,” he says. “I’m just me, and I’m like lots of other folk. Mebbe a bit dafter, a bit wilder, that’s all.”

  “Is that right?”

  “Aye, that’s right. There’s lots like me. Why d’you think they put them videos on the Net? Cos they know there’s millions wanting to see them.”

  “And millions that don’t.”

  “Ha! Think about when you go to the flicks, Liam. When you’re sitting in the dark down at the Forum watching a film. What happens at the violent bits, eh? At the really savage bits. Like the last James Bond film when Bond smashes that guy’s head on the washbasin and there’s the crunch of bone and the splattering of blood and he goes on smashing him till the washbasin’s all smashed up as well. You hear it, don’t you? And you even—don’t you?—hear them laugh. That’s what I’m on about.”

  “That means nothing,” I say. “A movie’s all made up. The video you saw was—”

  “Real. Aye. But you don’t get it, do you? There’s no difference. Aye, you watch the picture with loads of others in the Forum. And aye, you watch the beheading all alone. But while you’re watching it in secret, you know you’re watching with a million others all around the world.”

  He holds up the knife again and turns it so that it glows in the moonlight. I think of Death Dealer, resting in a drawer in my bedroom. I could do you, too, I think. I smile at the vision of it, of Nattrass stretched out dead on the icy earth like an ancient fighter, with Death Dealer thrust into his heart.

  “It’s a vicious world, Liam. And you know why? Cos people love it that way. Cos all of us are beasts at heart. Your new mate, whatdeyecallim, he’ll know all about that. And so do you, Liam Lynch.”

  And he prods me in the chest with the knife point. Once. Twice. I feel it through my clothes.

  “Don’t you,” he says. “Even you. Don’t you? You know all about getting wild. We seen it with the snakes that day, didn’t we?”

  He prods me.

  “Go on,” he says. “Have a go at me. Go on. Go on.”

  I punch him in the face. I snarl at him to shut up. He laughs and stabs the knife at me again. I grip his wrist and try to twist the knife back towards him. We wrestle. The knife gleams right by my face. He’s stronger than me but he’s holding back. He’s grinning. The knife comes closer. Then he jumps free.

  “Whoops!” he lau
ghs. “Get running, Liam!”

  The torch beam glares into my eyes. I jump up, sprint, don’t get back in time.

  Spotlight spotted you in the night! You’re out!

  9

  That night I dream of Nattrass. We’re fighting on the field. We struggle for hour after hour. I think it will never end, but at last I plunge Death Dealer into his heart. I stand over him as his blood leaks out into the earth. Next morning, I see the horizontal cut on my cheek. Shallow, just a couple of inches long. A dark red line of dried blood. I close my eyes. I dream again of plunging the knife into his heart.

  At breakfast, Mum reaches out, touches it.

  “What’s that?”

  I feel the line.

  “Hawthorn tree,” I say.

  “Hawthorn?”

  “I was hiding. I ran into the tree. A thorn got me.”

  She gets her camera.

  10

  Crystal continues to e-mail.

  I wasn’t always with Phil and Phil. There’s been others. Mr. and Mrs. Pearson were best of all. They had a lovely house with a pretty garden and a little pond with goldfish and a cherry tree and a dog called Sam. There was a skyblue canopy across my bed and a dream catcher to catch bad dreams. They were teachers. They were about to love me very much. They wanted to make me so happy. They said I was the girl that they had always wanted. They wanted to adopt me.

  So I got a knife and I cut myself, up high on my arm beside my shoulder. There was blood on my sheets. And on my pillow. Not much, just a trickle and some spots. But enough to scare them off.

  I write to you because I don’t know anybody like you, anybody normal. And I think you and me and Ol were meant to meet.

  Cx

  11

  There’s a big gathering in Hexham for Greg Armstrong. It starts with prayers outside the abbey. I’m standing beside Max and Kim. Becky Smith’s on the other side of them. I take no notice of her. Prayers are led by a vicar, a priest, a rabbi and a muezzin. I don’t join in. Afterwards we all head towards the marketplace, where a little stage has been put up. A few old hippies are singing “We Shall Overcome.”