The Crow Road

"Oh, what the heck," Fergus Urvill said, and rested his bike against a tree.

Lachy Watt let his bike fall to the ground. Ke

Sun came suddenly, making the grass bright and the ivy leaves sparkle; the wind pushed through the forest with a quiet roar, releasing drops of water all around. Ke

"Right," Lachy said. "Who's het?"

"Het?" Fergus said. "You mean 'it'?"

"You know what ah mean; who's goin het first?"

"Do One potato, Two potato," suggested Emma.

"Oh Goad, all right," Lachy said, shaking his head.

"And you shouldn't take the Lord's name in vain," Emma told him.

"Christ, Ah'm sorry," Lachy said.

"You did it again."

"You a Tim or sumhin?"

"I'm a Christian," Emma said primly. "And I thought you were, too, Lachlan Watt."

"Ah'm a Protestant," Lachy said. "That's what am are."

"Can we get on with this, please?" lisa said.

They all lined up, fists clenched; Lachy ended up being it, much to his own a

Ke

The castle had dark, intact dungeons at ground level, and a stone stair-case in a circular tower that rose to the open heart of the ruin, where a few jumbled stones and a floor of earth and weed looked up to the sky. The stairs wound further up inside the corner tower, pausing at each long-collapsed floor above, where a doorway looked out onto the central well. Another stairway pierced the walls themselves on the far side of the shell of the keep, rising through their thickness past another three doorways hanging like internal balconies, to a couple of small rooms at the top of dark chimneys which led to the base of the walls outside.

The castle held a variety of other dark nooks and shadowy cra

The rules were that you could hide anywhere in the castle; Ke

Ke

He was the last to be found, and for a while delighted in the fact that none of them could find him, even after Lachy had caught the rest and they were all shouting at him to come out so they could have another go. He lay there, feeling the damp breeze coming through the window and tickling the hairs on his bare legs. He listened to the shouts of the others, echoing in the castle's emptied shell, and to the voices of the crows and the wood pigeons in the trees, and he smelled the dark, wet smell of the moss and weeds that had found a foothold amongst the ruin's grey stones. He kept his eyes tightly closed, and as he listened to them search for him and call on him, there came a strange, tight, quivery feeling in his tummy which made him want to clench his teeth and bring his knees together and made him worry about wetting his pants.

I love this here, he thought to himself. I don't care if there is a war on and Fergus's uncle got killed in North Africa, and Wullie Watt got killed in the North Atlantic and Lachy gets hit by his dad and we might have to move to another house because Mr Urvill wants ours back and I don't understand trigonometry and the Germans do invade us; I love this. If I died right now I wouldn't care; wouldn't care at all.

Lachy climbed right up onto the top of the walls eventually, and only then did he see Ke

They played some more, and made fun of Fergus after he'd won a game because Ke

"Chimneys, ma arse!" Lachy laughed. "They're shite-holes!"

(Emma tutted, but couldn't help smiling.)

"Chimneys!" Fergus insisted desperately, blinking hard. He looked at Ke

They're shite-holes, so they are," laughed Lachy. "And you're just a big jobbie!"

"Chimneys," Fergus protested, his voice rising, his face going red.

"Big jobbie, big jobbie; big smelly jobbie!" Lachy chanted.

Ke

Fergus stared angrily at his sister and at Ke

Ke