Free Raven Summer by David Almond Page A

hippies are singing “We Shall Overcome.”
    “There’s no harm in praying, you know,” says Max as we move towards the stage.
    “There’s no good in it, either,” I say. “What’s God going to do to get anybody free? And if he can do it, why hasn’t he started by now?”
    “It’s better than doing nothing,” Max says. “It’s as good as singing along with that wrinkly lot.”
    “Is it?”
    I see Kim and Becky are trying to hear what we’re saying. I raise my voice. “Maybe it’s God that’s the problem,” I say. “If there
is
a God, maybe we should be praying to him to get himself down here right now and explain himself. Because if there
is
a God, he’s the biggest war criminal of them all.” I check to hear that Becky’s listening. “And anyway, there isn’t a God. He’s dead, he’s gone, there’s only us.”
    Greg’s wife’s on the stage. She appeals to his captors. Poets step up and read their poems.
    Kids from school carry homemade banners.
    SET GREG FREE
GIVE PEACE A CHANCE
TROOPS OUT NOW
    We keep clapping our hands and stamping our feet and chanting the words. I yell louder than anyone.
    Dad steps up. He reads a page from something he’s working on. Mum and I stare at each other when he quotes her own words.
    “We all have the capacity to harm,” he says. “But we have to transcend that capacity. We have to help the angel in us to overcome the beast. Or we are doomed.”
    I hold Alison for a while. She smiles and giggles and loves it all. Everyone sings “Blowin’ in the Wind” and she moves in my arms to the rhythm.
    Becky slides past Kim. I shift away.
    “Are you avoiding me?” she says.
    I put a sneer on my face.
    “Why would I be avoiding
you
?” I say.
    She tickles the baby’s chin.
    “Oh,” she says. “Your big brother is such a toughie, such a weirdo!”
    She walks away.
    Nattrass passes by with Eddie and Ned. They stand watching the stage, grinning. They link arms, they sway, they start dancing like there’s a barn dance going on, winding and twisting their way through the crowd.
    Nattrass chants:
    “A-one two three, one two three, Down with
evil!
A-one two three, one two three, Down with
death!
”

12
    There’s an e-mail from a name I don’t recognize.
I want to click it away, but it says
For Liam Lynch, the Foundling Kid.
I grit my teeth and open it. There’s an attachment. I open that as well. A video begins.
    The picture’s blurry. There’s a figure sitting on a chair at the center of a small poorly lit room. He’s wearing jeans and a striped shirt and there’s a black hood covering his head. His head’s tilted forward, like he’s asleep. Music’s playing: a beaten drum, a scratchy squeaky stringed instrument. There’s some chanting. None of the words are recognizable. Three figures walk into view. They’re small, with padded jackets on, with full face masks on, circles for eyeholes, slits for mouth and nose. They stand around the man on the chair—one at his back, one at each side—and they face the camera. They holdthe man’s shoulders as if to restrain him. The figure at his back has a piece of paper. He unfolds it and begins to read in a grunty guttural weird voice. Again hardly anything’s recognizable:
Jabber jabber jabber God jabber jabber jabber Allah jabber jabber jabber Blair jabber jabber jabber Bush.
It goes on for a couple of minutes. The man on the chair doesn’t move. The men at his side stare into the camera. The man at the back closes the paper, drops it. He goes,
Jabber jabber jabber death.
I click Pause. I can’t go on. Lean back from the computer screen and breathe. Look around my room, my ordinary world. Look out of the window into cold, empty Northumberland. Breathe deeply and click Play again. The man at the back has a long-bladed knife. I lean right back, grit my teeth, hold my head, but I watch. Can it be real? Surely not. It’s just not possible, is it? The man on the chair just sits there. He hardly moves as the