The Raven Queen by Che Golden Page A

sodium lights and clusters of road signs, each group with its own white light to combat the sulphur. Despite the lateness of the hour, the road leading to it was still quite busy. No one seemed to notice the three children walking along, although one lorry driver did sound his horn in a blaring blast that made Maddy jump out of her skin, but he didn’t stop. She was wide awake and jittery with lack of sleep. The lights hurt her eyes and she felt a bit nauseous.
    They walked for a little while, cringing at every car that passed them in case the driver stopped and tried to make them go home, while looking over their shoulders to see if it was a taxi. When they drew level with the Blackrock Shopping Centre, Roisin refused to walk any further.
    â€˜We’re going to be walking on the motorway at thisrate and it’s not safe,’ she said, when Danny tried to persuade her.
    â€˜We have to keep walking,’ Danny said.
    â€˜Why?’ asked Roisin. ‘We’re supposed to be getting a lift anyway. There’s no point in hiding from all the traffic, is there, or scurrying away from everyone?’
    â€˜We might have to,’ said Maddy glumly. ‘There is no way a taxi driver is going to take us out to Blarney at four thirty in the morning.’
    â€˜What
are
we going to say if a taxi does come along?’ asked Roisin.
    â€˜Leave that to me,’ said Danny. ‘I’ll think of something.’
    So Roisin and Maddy slumped to the ground and sat cross-legged with bowed heads, fighting their tiredness and closing their eyes against the glare of the lights. Maddy’s eyes ached and the car headlights were painful as they swept over her face. Danny stood by the side of the road watching the traffic coming out of Cork and chewing on a cuticle.
    Despite the tension, Maddy found herself dozing off. Her head nodded against her chest and snapped forward, waking her up with a jerk. Her eyelids flicked open and she gazed at the deserted shopping centre, still lit up with lights trained on shopfronts and signs even though there was no one awake to go shopping. She foundherself thinking of her lumpy double bed in Granny and Granda’s spare room with its fussy, shiny wallpaper. She wished she was tucked up in it right now, thinking the thoughts she used to think when the biggest problems in her life were hating Blarney and missing her parents. The good old days.
    â€˜Taxi!’ yelped Danny, frantically waving his arm up and down as a taxi put on its indicator and pulled up a few feet away from them. Danny grabbed his rucksack and yanked a sleepy Roisin to her feet. ‘Just hop straight in,’ he said. ‘He’ll find it harder to get rid of us.’
    Danny jogged along the pavement, opened the rear passenger door and dived on to the back seat, Roisin and Maddy piling in right behind him.
    â€˜Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold your horses!’ said the driver, twisting round in his seat to glare at them. ‘I never said I was taking you lot anywhere – what are you doing out and about at this time of night anyway?’
    â€˜We need to get to Blarney, our Granda is really sick,’ said Danny.
    The taxi driver, a dark-haired man with red, tired eyes and stubble shadowing his jaw, snorted. ‘A likely story. Why aren’t your parents driving you out there, so?’
    â€˜They went out to him before the storm started and then they must have had to stay there. We haven’t heardfrom them and we can’t stay in the house all night on our own.’
    â€˜Give me their number and I’ll call them,’ said the man.
    Danny shook his head. ‘You can’t. My mam left her phone at home and my da isn’t picking his up – the battery has probably died on him. No one is picking up the landline either – my granda’s phone must have been cut off by the storm.’
    â€˜They’re probably on their way back out to you,’ said the driver.