The Night Animals by Sarah Ann Juckes

Author:Sarah Ann Juckes
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK
Published: 2023-01-05T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

I think about that terrible last line a lot during afternoon lessons and I’m still deep in thought about it when Kwame rides us home on his bike.

‘What’s wrong?’ he says, like he can read my mind again.

‘Nothing,’ I say, quickly.

I’m not sure he believes me, as he takes a detour off the cycle path home and onto the canal, where there are bright white swans swimming over the place my bike lies at the bottom. It’s nice though, and it’s fun riding up and down the bridges with him. And when we go under the tunnels, we shout both our names together and they swoop and combine in the echo into one.

I lift my head to the sky as we race out of one of the tunnels. For a moment, the brightness on the other side blinds me, and so I try to blink the shape out of my eye for a long time before I realize what it is.

‘The ghost raven is back again!’ I shout in Kwame’s ear.

Kwame stops so fast, we’re almost both thrown into the canal, and he looks around wildly like he might be able to spot it.

‘Where? Where?’

I point up into the sky where the raven is circling over our heads – his rainbow edges glittering in the sunlight. He’s huge – his wings flapping and his body like a shadow, with a hooked beak. I look around for any others, but it’s just him here alone this time, his dark eyes fixed on me.

‘He’s beautiful,’ I whisper.

Kwame looks at me. ‘Do you think he’s here to give you some answers?’

The raven dives when he hears this, so I duck out of the way before his ghost wings brush my face. He caws out – and it’s that same strange echo noise I heard round the fox when she barked at me – like he’s in a long tunnel.

And then he flies away.

‘He’s going back that way!’ I shout at Kwame, pointing back where we just came.

Kwame tries to turn the bike round, but I jump off, looking towards home.

‘I can’t follow,’ I say, twisting the edges of my school jumper. ‘Mum might get worried about where I am…’

I think about her face when I came home from the canal last time, battered and bruised. Kwame bites his lip before he jumps off his bike, handing me the handlebars.

‘I’ll run and tell your mum where you are. You go follow the bird on my bike.’

I look at him wide-eyed. ‘But—’

‘It’s fine,’ he says, already running away. ‘I’ll catch up with you! My bike has a tracker on it.’

Kwame is strangely fast suddenly and he rockets away from me. I dither on the spot for a moment, torn between following him and also following the bird. But there’s something deep inside me that feels like the raven has caught a thread in my insides that he’s pulling away, away, and I want to get it back. I want to get some answers. About why the ghost animals are here.

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