The Raven's Children by Yulia Yakovleva

Author:Yulia Yakovleva [Yakovleva, Yulia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780241330784
Publisher: Penguin Random House Children's UK
Published: 2018-06-06T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHT

There was no end to the fog. It seemed to go on forever. Shura quickly lost sense of time. He had no idea how long he had spent walking, his arms stretched forward, staring helplessly into the whitish misty air. His feet pounded hard on the tarmac.

Gradually Shura started to see pale-blue patches of light overhead, fuzzy through the fog. After a while he could see dim lights far ahead, as the fog started to thin. Houses began to tower above him, to his left and right: dark, looming silhouettes. Somewhere in the distance he heard a gentle splashing sound – the river? Every now and then he saw a lonely window lit up in one of the houses, and, without knowing why, Shura crouched down and crept along against the wall.

No one was following him.

Shura realized that he was walking along the embankment. Only he didn’t recognize it to begin with. The houses seemed to shiver in the chilly dawn half-light. Shura noticed only a few wrinkled, brown leaves on the trees.

‘It’s autumn!’ He was amazed. ‘How long was I there, at the Grey House?’

The last time he’d seen the trees, they were trembling in the March breeze. Since then, the trees had blossomed, grown leaves, enjoyed the summer and then lost their leaves in the autumn winds. It seemed like barely a week had passed, perhaps a couple. What if it had actually been more than a year? Two? Three?

‘What if I’m already ten?’

Shura closed his eyes in horror.

By now the fog clung only in dips and hollows. A large harvest moon gazed down from the sky. Beyond the river’s granite wall loomed a bulky shape, flickering with glints of light. In the distance, beyond the heavy splash of water, Shura could just make out a tarnished golden spire, faintly reflecting a glimmer of moonlight.

It was the Peter and Paul Fortress! Shura rejoiced as though it were an old friend. From there it was just a stone’s throw to his aunt’s. And then they would all sit down together and figure out what to do next. Shura had a spring in his step now, eagerly looking in the distance for the bridge to the other side to emerge from the fog.

But the strange thing was that the spire didn’t get any closer; if anything it seemed to be getting further away. Shura quickened his pace. The spire got smaller and smaller, until it was minuscule. It was like looking through the wrong end of the binoculars. Yet the embankment still looked the same.

What’s going on? The faster I walk, the further it is to go.

Ahead he spotted a hunched figure in a coat and mittens. And further on, another and another.

‘Hi!’ shouted Shura.

One woman turned round. ‘Hush,’ she whispered in fright. ‘What are you doing, boy?’

‘I’m looking for …’ Shura began.

‘Shhh!’ she exclaimed in a whisper. ‘I know. I know what you’re looking for. Just don’t shout. The woman you need’s over there, see? With the briefcase. There …’ She waved her hand towards the river.

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