Cora Ravenwing (14 page)

“I knew it was her, though—instantly!”

“Oh, well—she’s unmistakable!”

“What on earth was she doing out on the common by herself on a night like this?”

“Exactly!”

“What a sight she was! She really looked like a witch, didn’t she?”

“I’m always telling you.”

“Oh, but there aren’t such things …”

“Well, you just think on. That’s all I say. I’m prepared to call a witch a witch even if you’re not.”

We sat in silence for a while and I considered the matter. At last I said: “Nonsense, Cora! You’re entitled to think the worst of her after what she’s put you through—but I don’t
see how she can possibly be a witch! I
know
they don’t exist. I bet she’d been babysitting over on the estate. The Spensers have her regularly—I know that for a fact—and probably loads of other people do as well.” But Cora just snorted and I knew she would persist in her own spooky beliefs whatever I said.

Later, when the rain stopped, we scurried back to my house. Cora came with me; she always did, and then went back home alone. I knew it was unfair, but I couldn’t have steeled myself to come out at all if I’d had to be alone in the dark for even the shortest time. I was always totally dependent on Cora during the night, but she never made me feel small. We were both a bit alarmed at the possibility that Mrs. Briggs had recognized us and might tell my parents, so we didn’t go out for about a week. But when nothing was said or heard we concluded that she hadn’t known it was us and resumed as before.

By the end of June the late nights were beginning to tell on me. I was used to feeling tired and was no longer irritable, but I had become permanently dreamy and
light-headed
in a way which was noticeable both at home and at school. At first that had the effect of making everyone else irritable, but eventually Mother became more worried than cross and took me off to Doctor Fairhurst. He couldn’t find anything wrong with me, of course, which was a great relief to Mother, but, all the same, I felt that she was
becoming
extra watchful over me at that time and I decided that Cora and I had better take a break for a bit and let me get thoroughly rested. I would tell her the next time she came.

As it happened, she came that very night. After the visit to the doctor I’d gone up for an early night. He’d told Mother I was probably just finding life a bit demanding
with puberty coming on. “Nothing a bit more sleep won’t cure,” he’d said, all jovial. Mother had been especially gentle on the way home and embarrassed us both by talking about all the little changes I could expect to find going on in myself now I was on the verge of womanhood. I had squirmed around hotly and stumbled on and off the kerb to cover my self-consciousness. I had been glad when we arrived home and Jo and Dory put a stop to the possibility of all such intimate discussion. I went to bed about
half-past
eight and was very deeply unconscious when the
finger-jerking
started up about one o’clock. As I came to fully, waved to Cora, and dropped my end of the cotton through the window, I heard the sounds of someone in the bathroom. Mother and Father must only just have come up to bed. I waited some minutes before dressing cautiously and
tiptoeing
out on to the landing. I could see a strip of light under their door; they must be reading. I hesitated momentarily, wondering whether to retreat, and then, on impulse,
scurried
on down the stairs, across the hall and kitchen and out through the back door.

“Get going!” I said, racing past Cora to the gate. “They’re still awake!”

“Did they see you?” she panted behind me, in some alarm.

“Course not, you ass! I’d hardly be here if they had!”

Soon we were well on our way to the common, scarcely able to stifle our mirth at imagined conversations between my parents and me supposing they
had
seen me. “Oh, off for a night on the common with Cora? How nice, dear! Don’t hurry back. Make the best of the weather. Got sandwiches?” I said in Mother’s voice, and Cora spluttered and screeched and held her ribs.

We decided to go and watch badgers again, because I
felt sleepy and thought it might be quite nice to drop off now and then and leave it to Cora to nudge me if they appeared. I explained to her how tired I’d been getting and that we’d better have a week or two’s break and she agreed.

“You poor old thing,” she said softly. “Need your sleep, do you? I can go on for ever with scarcely any.”

“Maybe you can. It’s just another of the ways in which you’re totally anti-social, then. Who’d ever want to live with someone who didn’t need any sleep?”

“Someone else who doesn’t need any sleep. Not that it needs to make much difference to anybody else—I’m very quiet,” she said, all prickly.

I yawned. “I’m only joking, Cora,” I said, giving her a mild poke, and she took my arm and smiled and said she knew I was and if I needed a rest of course I should have one and meanwhile we’d just make this a brief, relaxed sort of expedition.

In the wood it was warm and still. The sandy hollow between the roots of our big tree seemed still to retain some of the heat of the day and as soon as we settled down together to wait I felt waves of fatigue lapping over me. I told Cora to give me a prod if the badgers appeared and shamelessly fell into a deep sleep. In my dreams Cora and I wandered in broad daylight through Okefield right up to our own gate, where Mother was leaning and beaming and saying: “Come in and have tea.” We were friends for all the world to see, and the world approved. Everyone smiled and waved …

Suddenly I jerked awake. Something wild was panting and straining and heaving into my face—with fangs, foul breath, a lolling tongue. I screamed. Cora was there. A voice yelled: “Found them!” Hundreds of feet crashed
through the bracken. We were surrounded by hordes of wild beasts and wild men. We clutched each other
frantically
and shrank into the roots of the tree … but brutish hands seized us, wrenched us apart, swung us bodily from the ground. Torches blazed down. I pulled my anorak over my face as I was heaved into position over a giant shoulder. Far away a voice murmured: “Real babes in the wood, eh?” I couldn’t make nightmare of the reality or reality of the nightmare. Half-dreaming, through miles and miles of
darkness
, I swayed to and fro on the giant shoulder to the rhythm of the giant steps. And then we stopped, and the gruff murmur of voices stopped, and there was a crisp, sharp rat-a-tat on someone’s door and the door opened and I was carried into a house and put gently down on a sofa. I sensed that all stood back. Still dreaming, I slowly
uncovered
my face and blinked up at the faces round about. Then Mother, ashen and distorted, dropped to her knees beside me, sank her face into my shoulder and sobbed as if her heart would break. Her hair, loosened for night, fell across my face. Her tears ran down on to my neck. I couldn’t see. I didn’t move.

T
HAT WAS THE END OF EVERYTHING, OF COURSE. NOTHING
about Okefield was ever quite the same. Eventually nice things happened again and it was a good place to be brought up in—Jo and Dory and I have always agreed about that. But that first year that I spent there, at Okington School, was completely separate from all the other years I lived there—and from all the years I’d lived in Birmingham too, come to that. I have no difficulty recalling the faces and events of that year, where other faces and events blur and merge too easily. I have only by chance to come across one of my few mementoes—the hobgoblin bracelet from Mrs. Briggs, a poem of Hermione’s, Cora’s mother’s
forget-me-
not—and all the attendant details crowd back …

What had happened that night, of course, was quite
predictable
. My mother, concerned about my exhaustion, had gone to my room to check that all was well with me before settling down for her own night’s sleep. She and Father had panicked when they realized I was missing from the house
and had instantly remembered the strange winter visitations we’d had and some of Mrs. Phillips’s more horrifying tales of thugs and vagrants on the common. They’d called in the police, a search had been organized, half the village had been roused, Mrs. Briggs had reported seeing children on the common in the vicinity of the wood on an earlier occasion … No effort had been spared. Policemen, torches, dogs, volunteer neighbours, Father, Mrs. Briggs, all, it seemed, had pounded up through the village, past the church, on to the common. With flails and staves they’d beaten back gorse and bracken in search of me. Little credence had been given to Mrs. Briggs’s tale at this point, so nobody realized that Cora was missing too. I, alone, was believed kidnapped, murdered. Desperate urgency, terrible fear, was in
everybody
’s heart. All for me. And then I was found with Cora—in the arms of the “Devil Child” …

I didn’t return to school that term. It was near enough the summer holidays anyway. Mother and Father were never able to speak to me much about the entire episode; the topic became taboo in our household and Mother even had to get rid of Mrs. Briggs because she couldn’t refrain from raising it. That was the only good result of the business. Hermione never spoke to me again; she went off to
boarding-school
after the holidays and our ways would have been bound to diverge from then on in any case. Susan never spoke to me again; she stayed on at Okington School, but my parents decided to move me to the state secondary school in Heatherton so, apart from passing her in the village now and again, I didn’t see much of her either.
Barbara
started at Heatherton School with me and spoke to me once. She told me that her parents had forbidden her to have anything to do with me. I was to be an outcast as Cora had been. The only nice thing I’ve got to say about
Barbara is that she didn’t spread black gossip about me among our new schoolmates in Heatherton and so, after a dismally lonely summer, I was able to make new friends quickly when school resumed. As it happened, Georgia Jamieson went on to Heatherton too and, in the end, we became firm friends.

I never saw Cora again. She and her father moved from the area within a day or two of our last fatal expedition and nobody ever knew where they’d gone. It became a village joke for people to flap their arms and say: “The Ravenwings have flown!” Everyone was delighted.

But I have always grieved for that lost friendship and wondered what became of Cora. That’s why I’ve now written this account of our year together and mean to send it out for all to see. I am calling it simply
Cora
Ravenwing
because I’d like Cora to read it and know what I thought—and who could resist buying a book with one’s own name as the title?

Furthermore, I suspect that Cora is still living somewhere near Okefield. My parents, retired now, still live in the old family house and I visit them several times a year. Then I tramp again round my favourite haunts of long ago, the village streets, the common, the graveyard. There, one grave remains faithfully tended while the rest are now wild and overgrown. Round the back of the church, near the bell-tower, the roses on the grave of Myra Ravenwing still blossom and flourish as sweetly as they did all those years ago. Someone still returns frequently, someone for whom that spot is the most precious on earth. One of these days I shall crunch my way along the path beside the church, turn the corner, and there she’ll be.