Raven Summer

  He laughs.

  “I am a visionary artist, Liam.”

  I wait. He keeps on laughing. His breath is on my face.

  “So have they arrived yet?” he says.

  “What?”

  “Have they arrived?”

  He grins.

  “Now, that got you, didn’t it?”

  I stop struggling. I have to know what he knows.

  “Like I said, I’ve got me spies out,” he says. “And there’s talk of a black lad and a white lass walking in Northumberland. A black lad and a white lass that look like they should be somewhere else, certainly not on country lanes, and they stick out by a mile. So who on earth could they be, I wonder. And where could they be heading for? It’s a mystery, eh? Or mebbe it isn’t a mystery at all.”

  He licks his lips.

  “Not saying nothing, brother?” he whispers. “Cat got your tongue, brother?”

  I turn my eyes from him. I see him lying on the earth with my knife in him. I blink away the vision and I move at last. His laughter follows, follows.

  8

  Mum’s in the kitchen when I get back. There’s a big sheet of wallpaper rolled out on the table. She’s daubing Alison’s hands with paints, helping her to make handprints, helping her to smear hand trails and finger trails of paint.

  “This one should long be in bed,” she says. “But we painted and painted and painted and …”

  She shows me a great ring of green and blue paint on the paper. “This is me. Isn’t it, Alison?”

  Alison giggles and gurgles and daubs some more.

  “And now it’s Liam’s turn,” says Mum.

  She unrolls a stretch of clean paper.

  “Tell him to stand still,” says Mum.

  Alison gurgles.

  “What color?” says Mum.

  Alison plunges her fist into a pot of black. She drags it across the paper. She swipes yellow over it, green, orange, red. She giggles. There’s paint all over her face and arms, all over the table, dripping to the floor.

  “Let’s do his eyes,” says Mum. “Let’s do his mouth. Let’s make him really really horrible!”

  She holds Alison’s hands, pats them down to make weird facial features. They giggle together. Mum holds the painting up. It’s a weird goggly-eyed thing with yellow hair bursting out all around the head. The paint slithers and runs and drips off the page.

  “This is your Liam!” Mum says. “Look at him. He’s a monster!”

  Alison laughs and laughs. There’s paint on her face, on her lips, on her tongue.

  “O-A!” she echoes, trying to talk. “O-A O-A O-A!”

  I make wild faces. I take a fingertip of red paint and make jagged marks on my face. Alison laughs and screams.

  “Aaaagh!” cries Mum.

  “Aaaaaaagh!” cries Alison.

  “Run!” says Mum. “Liam is a monster!”

  She picks the baby up.

  “Come on,” she says. “Let’s get away. Where shall we go? I know! The bath!”

  And they’re gone, and Dad comes in.

  “Still with us?” he says.

  “More visions?” I say.

  “Yes,” we both answer.

  9

  I light my fire. I eat slices of cold pizza and drink lemonade. I have Death Dealer. I have the money from Alison’s jar. I read at the little table by the camping gaz light. I watch the moon rise over Northumberland. I peer into the dark. I listen. I look back to the house and see Dad looking towards me from his window. I wave. Can he see me? He waves and turns back to his work. The moon climbs higher. I see the silhouette of St. Michael and All Angels against the eastern sky. I throw more sticks onto the fire and it flares and scatters sparks like dancing stars. I try to stay awake but I keep slumping in my chair, keep drifting. I hear the baby crying. I hear Nattrass’s voice and the dreadful noises of his exhibition. I hear Dad’s fingers on his computer keys and the whirring of his printer. I hear owls, and distant barks and howls and screeches. I hear my heart, its steady beat, the crackle of flames, the hiss of embers. Voices speak inside me. Mum: I’m not meat! It isn’t in me! Alison: O-A! O-A! O-A! And Crystal’s voice. Then silence and deep darkness until I find myself rising again and looking back down upon myself, slumped in the chair by my fire. I rise into the moonlit night. I look down upon the house, my tent, my fire, my village. There’s the wall, the road, the distant orange glow of the city. The earth is beautiful. Silvery light, dark shadows, a multitude of sheep, lights glowing in cottages, the headlights of a few cars, stars and stars and darkness deep around them and beyond them. The great dark rolling horizons to the north. I pause over the ridge above the village, above the chapel of St. Michael and All Angels. And there they are, two figures moving through the field towards the chapel. I want to call out their names, to tell them I’m here. I drop lower. I can hear their feet moving through the dry grass. I hear the click of the latch as they open the little gate, hear the creak as they pull the gate open. They enter the garden of gravestones around the chapel. The sheep that are lying there shift in their sleep. The two figures move towards the further wall of the churchyard. They point down towards the village. They point towards a tiny distant flickering light. I hear the murmur of their voices. I can make out one word: Liam. I try to call out to them, but have no voice. I want to go lower but I can’t. I have no control of what I do. I watch them hold each other. They become one shape, one shadow. Then they separate, pass through a stile in the wall. They move downhill towards the village through the fields.

  Then the vision’s gone, and I’m in a deep empty dreamless sleep, then I’m awake and slumped in the chair by the fire, and filled with the vision of having been out there, up there. I keep my eyes closed, wanting the vision to linger.

  Then there are footsteps in the garden. And a voice.

  “Liam! Liam!”

  Crystal’s voice.

  10

  They come from the shadows under the trees, like figures from a dream. I see the gleam of Oliver’s face, the white bloom of Crystal’s. They move across the grass towards me. I grunt a greeting. Can hardly speak. Crystal kisses my cheek. I don’t know what to do. They have little rucksacks, with sleeping bags attached to them. They pull them off. I tremble. I don’t know what to say.

  “The police came,” I mutter.

  “Of course they did,” says Crystal. “We’re escapees, runaways, fugitives.”

  “Where will you go?”

  “Where they won’t find us,” says Oliver.

  “The back of beyond,” says Crystal. “And then beyond that.” She laughs. “Can you point us in the right direction, Liam?”

  I just stare. Crystal waves her hand before my eyes. Her pale cheeks, her green eyes, her grin.

  “He thinks we’re a dream, Ollie. Wake up, Liam.” She takes my hand, touches her cheek with it. “We’re real,” she says. “We’re here in your tent. And mebbe we could hide in it forever and forever, but mebbe not.”

  “Were you at the chapel?” I ask.

  “The place where Alison was christened?” says Crystal.

  “Aye.”

  “We were,” says Crystal. “We were heading for you, Liam. Liam’ll help us, we said. We came to the chapel and we looked down and we saw your fire flickering. That’ll be him, we said. It’ll be his sign. He’ll be watching, he’ll be waiting. Were you?”

  “Yes,” I say. “Yes. As soon as I heard you’d gone, I knew you’d come.”

  “I knew you’d know.” She holds my shoulders. She looks into my eyes. “We couldn’t not have come. It’s fate, Liam.”

  “Yes,” I say. “It’s fate.”

  She grins.

  “Wake up,” she says.

  “Wake up,” says Oliver.

  They’re both laughing.

  “It’s so exciting,” says Crystal. “Running off, heading out of the city. All the darkness outside, all the light and all the space. We slept the first night in a graveyard. The next in somebody’s shed,
till a dog starts barking and chases us away. Then bus shelters and barns and oh so many places …”

  “Lettuces from people’s gardens,” says Oliver. “And carrots and—”

  “You had no money?” I say.

  “Just a little,” says Oliver. “We have to look after it. We might be gone a long time.”

  “Last night we ate a chicken,” says Crystal. “Oliver killed it with his knife. We cooked it on a fire, the poor little thing. It was absolutely lovely. We buried its bones. We thanked it for being our prey. We wished its spirit safe passage into the dark.”

  I get out some food: cheese, bread, biscuits, stuff I brought out from the house. They eat it ravenously.

  “I have some money you can have, as well,” I say.

  “You’re a good person, Liam,” says Oliver. “Don’t do anything you might regret.”

  “I won’t,” I say.

  I lick my lips. I hesitate.

  “I’d like to come with you,” I say.

  Crystal laughs.

  “To the back of beyond?” she says.

  “Yes.” I laugh as well. “Just for a little while. I know the way.”

  “Then perhaps you should,” she says. “What do you think, Ol?”

  He lifts his shoulders slowly.

  “Maybe you should, Liam. But you must take great care.”

  Outside, the sky’s already starting to get light.

  “We should move,” I say.

  11

  I roll up my sleeping bag. I strap Death Dealer to my belt. I slip into the house, collect bread, fruit, cheese, sausages, ham, put it into a rucksack. I write a little note: Gone wandering. Back soon-ish. xL. I hang the note on the tent door, then I lead Crystal and Oliver out of the garden and into the fields through the predawn light. I lead them around the edges of growing crops. I open and close gates. I retrace the route towards Alison’s finding place. The light intensifies, a low mist blankets the river, skylarks sing and curlews call. The air’s cool and bright. We walk. I imagine walking with Oliver and Crystal into the back of beyond and beyond, disappearing from my old life, beginning again, being born again.

  Jak jak!

  It’s there in front of us, perching on a gate. It flaps its wings. It bobs.

  Jak jak!

  “A crow!” says Crystal.

  “A raven, townie,” I say, and smile.

  “Jak jak!” I cry. “Hello there, Jack!”

  We come to Rook Hall. We clamber inside, totter on the fallen stones. The sun rises, a great orange ball in the eastern sky. Its light pours in through Rook Hall’s gaping roof, shines through chinks and gaps in the walls. A raven perches on the broken wall above.

  Jak jak! Jak jak!

  We sit on the ancient carved stones. We eat and drink. The mist dissolves. The river glitters and glints. Upriver, the castle turrets sharpen against the clear sky. A distant low-flying jet streaks through the sky. Then another, then another.

  We trace the patterns of ancient rock art with our fingers. I tell them how ancient it is, how nobody knows what it means.

  “Maybe it means nothing,” says Crystal. “Maybe it’s just itself, carvings, nice shapes and patterns in the rock.”

  I take out Death Dealer. I scrape the rock with its point, but I hardly make a mark. I scrape a simple pattern, a loose spiral, like a snake.

  “It stands for the people who made it,” says Oliver. “It says, Here I am. Here I was, before I was taken.”

  “Taken?” I ask.

  “Taken by war, by enemies, by death. It’s like when I write my tale. We’re here for a while, we make our mark, and then we’re taken. We’re gone.”

  Jak jak! Jak jak!

  Crystal stands up. She spreads her arms like wings. She juts her head out. She jabs the air. She calls, “Jak jak! Jak jak! Here I am! Look! I’m the raven! I stand for nothing but myself! And I am absolutely gorgeous!”

  Jak jak! calls the bird.

  “Jak jak!” calls Crystal. “Jak jak! Jak jak! Jak jak!”

  She starts to take off her shoes.

  12

  She tiptoes barefooted to the river. Rolls her jeans up. Steps across the dried-out sandy bank, steps into the water and giggles at the cold. Stands shin-deep and watches the water flow smoothly across her calves. Dips her fingers in then scatters water droplets all around her head. Holds her arms out wide and turns her face to the sky and reaches up like she’s about to fly. She cries the raven’s call, then just calls out, part laughter, part howl, which turns to:

  “I am Crystal! I! Am! Crystal! I am here! I am free!”

  She wades back out again. Waves at us. She takes off her jeans, her jacket, her fleece, her T-shirt. She’s so thin, so pale, so vulnerable, so beautiful and bold. She steps back into the water in her bra and pants. There are dark scars at her shoulder blades, like remnants of great wounds. She wades out until she’s waist-deep. Crouches down and hoots at the cold and crouches again and wades a little deeper. She closes her eyes and plunges right in and bursts back up.

  “Come on!” she calls. “It’s great!”

  We strip to our underwear and wade into the water. The water’s icy, the riverbed’s all pebbles and stones. We kick and splash and pour handfuls of water across each other. We dive and let the current carry us, we swim against the current, we swim across the river towards the other side. When we’re all swum out, we stand and hug each other. Our skin is cold. Our hot hearts beat fiercely underneath.

  By now Crystal’s pale makeup is washed away. Her face is exposed. She puts her fingers up to the marks there, to where the skin below her left eye is red and blemished from her childhood burns. She shrugs.

  “It’s skin, that’s all,” she says. “Usually I cover it up, but sometimes I think, What the hell….”

  We wade out again. We stretch out in the sun on the rock beside Rook Hall. Birds sing and the river flows and the breeze whispers in the trees. A jet roars over and another jet but we just laugh and wave our fists at them.

  “Just go away!” says Crystal. “Just go home and be quiet for a while.”

  Her razor scars are high up on her arms. The scars of her burns are on her waist and thighs. The knife scar is on Oliver’s face. There are others on his chest. They’re so damaged, the two of them. Crystal leans across and kisses Oliver, and I see that the scars at her shoulder blades aren’t scars at all, but are black and blue and red tattoos of scars.

  She sees me looking.

  “My pal did them,” she says. “Another foster home, couple of years back. She said I was a wounded angel.”

  Then Oliver sits up and looks back towards the village.

  “What?” I whisper.

  I look where he looks and there’s nothing: empty fields, empty tracks, hedgerows. A tractor rattles in a distant field somewhere.

  “Perhaps nothing,” he says. “But we should go on, Liam.”

  And so we get dressed. I lead them on to the ancient reivers’ track beside the river. We walk quickly in single file through the dappled shadows. We walk northwards, towards the place of safety that Max Woods and I prepared, long ago when we were little children.

  13

  It’s easy at first, but soon the path’s tangled and overgrown and we have to shoulder our way through dense shrubs, duck under overhanging branches. We hear dogs barking, children playing in the gardens of old estate houses. We keep low. We keep silent. The path follows the river, then curves away, then curves back again to a wide turn in the river. The bank here is a beach of great stones that clunk and slide as we tread across them. Trees have toppled here, their roots washed out by water. There are massive rocks spread out across the river. It’s the ancient raiders’ crossing place. On the other side, an apparently unscaleable wall of moss-covered rock. I roll up my jeans and step from rock to rock across the gushing water, and lead the others across to it, to the fissure that Max and I discovered ages back. At some time someone has cut deep footholds into it. You climb by stepping upwards, by gr
ipping the stems of stunted trees that grow out from the rock. And it’s suprisingly easy. The fissure’s wide as a man. The footholds are deep. The trees are strong. You could carry a rustled sheep on your back. You could carry the bloody body of a victim. Or you could haul them up from the top on ropes.

  We hesitate at the top. We look back to the tree-lined shining river, to the castles, to the smoke rising from cottage chimneys, towards the hidden village and the city far beyond. Then we turn to the next horizon: tough grass, peaty earth, outcrops of black rock, and bleak moorland going on forever.

  We walk to the north again. I think of the savage ancestors that walked here long before. Their blood and bones are mingled in the earth. Their breath is in the breeze. Their cries are in the cry of the curlew and the skylark’s song. Their ancient instincts are in us. They live on in our memories, stories, dreams.

  The world looks bleak. Nowhere to shelter, nowhere to hide. But I lead my friends over a ridge and there it is. A small hidden valley. There’s a copse of twisted trees. There’s a trickling stream, a track of stones, gorse and heather, gnarled blackthorn and hawthorn and birch, and a wall of rock behind. I lead them across the grass, into the trees, towards the rock, to the head-high cave at the heart.

  14

  The air’s almost still. There’s the gentle sound of trickling water. The cave isn’t deep. A few strides and you’re at the back. Must have been carved out hundreds of years ago, hammered out by raiders. I imagine them gathered here, bristling with arms, boasting about their battles, their cruelty, their wounds. I imagine their tethered stolen sheep, their sacks of plunder.

  “It’s Kane’s Cave,” I say. “One of the places we said we’d come to if a war started. Or if the world dried up or started to burn. Or if our families died in a plague.”

  I laugh at the daftness of children’s dreams, at the beauty of them.

  “Watch this,” I say.

  I kneel down at a moss-covered rock. It’s as broad as my chest. I grip it, start to lift it. I lift the edge free of the earth. I tip it over. I scrape away the stones and soil beneath, and there it is.