Raven Summer by David Almond

discovery. There’s a telephone number. Anyone with information should call it. Mum turns over stones, seeking for clues. She stands dead still, as if there might somehow be an answer to the mysteries in the atmosphere and air. Alison sits in the buggy and watches the flitting birds and gurgles and giggles with delight.

3
    Mum says we should have Alison christened.
    “You’re joking!” says Dad.
    It’s dark outside. The baby’s asleep upstairs. Dad’s scribbling in a notebook.
    “It’s mumbo jumbo,” he says. “And when was the last time you stepped foot in a church?”
    “At your dad’s funeral, but what’s that got to do with it?”
    Dad slaps his notebook shut.
    “Do you know what christening’s about? It’s about saying that little kids like Alison are born with sin and evil in them. It’s about washing away the evil in their souls. Now, tell me this: do you believe that Alison was born with evil in her?”
    Mum shrugs. She sips her wine. Dad continues.
    “And it’s also about dedicating her life to God. Now, it’ll come as a surprise to me if you believe in any God at all. So you’d be dedicating an innocent little child to a nonexistent phantom. And if I’m not mistaken, we didn’t get
him
christened, did we?”
    He points at me.
    “And do
you
feel evil?” he asks me. “Do you feel like your sins haven’t been washed away?”
    I laugh.
    “I feel like a perfect little angel, Daddy.”
    “Oh, aye?” he says.
    “I know all that,” says Mum. “But it’s also about marking her arrival in the world. It’s about welcoming her here.”
    “And for all we know,” says Dad, “she might already be christened. She might be a Buddhist or a Moslem or a Seventh-Day blooming Adventist or a Tenth-Day Birk or some other wacky mumbo-jumbo sectist.”
    Mum sips her wine.
    “How can she be anything?” she says. “She’s just a little girl, and I think we should say, Welcome to our world.”
    Dad groans, shakes his head, heads upstairs.
    “Have you seen how big his bum’s getting?” she says.
    She giggles.
    “It’s a writer’s hazard. He’s hardly moved for weeks. So what do you think about the christening?”
    I shrug.
    “Don’t really care,” I say.
    “I’ll go and see the vicar tomorrow, then. Any idea what his name is?”
    “Haven’t a clue.”
    She peers at me.
    “We could get you done at the same time, if you like,” she says.
    “No thanks. I’ll just stay evil.”

4
    It happens at St. Michael and All Angels.
The little chapel is in a field on a ridge above the village. It’s a Sunday afternoon. You can see for miles, all the pastures and empty moors of Northumberland stretching north. A few farmhouses. The scattered villages—Chilton, Wark, Bellington, Otterburn. The castles—Highton, Swinburn, Simonhope, Chase—tucked away in valleys and copses. The ruins of Rook Hall, and a dozen other ruins crumbling into the earth. The wilderness of moorland to the north, the dark bulges of the Cheviots far off, the limits of vision before Scotland starts. Sheep lie dozing in the little graveyard. Rooks caw. Motorbikes roar on the military road. A train clatters and hoots down in the Tyne Valley. The low-flying jets, again and again and again.
    Joe Tynan comes with a camera crew from ITV. Friends fromthe village and from Newcastle are there. Max and his big family are there. Jack Scott and his crowd are there. Social workers. WPC Jenkins and PC Ball, without their bulletproof vests this time. Doreen the paramedic. How could they
not
come? they all say. They couldn’t stay away. And here come Phil and Phil, and Crystal and Oliver. They laugh and cluster about us and lean close to Alison and they bill and coo and smile and smile.
    Crystal’s hair is gelled into loops and curls. Her green eyes shine in her face that’s caked with white makeup. She’s wearing safety pins in her ears, woven multicolored elastic bands around her neck.
    “I knew we’d meet again,” she says.