Black Swan Green Read Online Free PDF Page A

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    ‘You,’ sighed the sour aunt. ‘We suspected you’d come knocking again soon.’
    ‘I hurt,’ my voice’d gone all bendy, ‘I hurt my ankle.’
    ‘So I see.’
    ‘It’s killing me.’
    ‘I dare say.’
    ‘Can I just phone my dad to come and get me?’
    ‘We don’t care for telephones.’
    ‘Could you go and get help? Please?’
    ‘We don’t ever leave our house. Not at night. Not here.’
    ‘Please,’ the underwatery pain shook as loud as electric guitars, ‘I can’t walk.’
    ‘I know about bones and joints. You’d best come inside.’
    Inside was colder than outside. Bolts behind me slid home and a lock turned. ‘Down you go,’ the sour aunt spoke, ‘down to the parlour. I’ll be right along, once I’ve prepared your cure. But whatever you do, be quiet . You’ll be very sorry if you wake my brother.’
    ‘All right…’ I glanced away. ‘Which way’s your parlour?’
    But the dark’d shuffled itself and the sour aunt’d gone.
    Way down the hallway was a blade of muddy light, so that was the direction I limped. God knows how I walked up the rooty, twisty path from the frozen lake on that busted ankle. But I must’ve done, to’ve got here. I passed a ladder of stairs. Enough muffled moonlight fell down it for me to make out an old photograph hanging on the wall. A submarine in an Arctic-looking port. The crew stood on deck, all saluting. I walked on. The blade of light wasn’t getting any nearer.
     
    The parlour was a bit bigger than a big wardrobe and stuffed with museumy stuff. An empty parrot cage, a mangle, a towering dresser, a scythe. Junk, too. A bent bicycle wheel and one soccer boot, caked in silt. A pair of ancient skates, hanging on a coat-stand. There was nothing modern. No fire. Nothing electrical apart from a bare brown bulb. Hairy plants sent bleached roots out of tiny pots. God it was cold! The sofa sagged under me and sssssssss ed. One other doorway was screened by beads on strings. I tried to find a position where my ankle hurt less but there wasn’t one.
    Time went by, I s’pose.
    The sour aunt held a china bowl in one hand and a cloudy glass in the other. ‘Take off your sock.’
    My ankle was balloony and limp. The sour aunt propped my calf on a footstool and knelt by it. Her dress rustled. Apart from the blood in my ears and my jagged breathing there was no other sound. Then she dipped her hand into the bowl and began smearing a bready goo on to my ankle.
    My ankle shuddered.
    ‘This is a poultice.’ She gripped my shin. ‘To draw out the swelling.’
    The poultice sort of tickled but the pain was too vicious and I was fighting the cold too hard. The sour aunt smeared the goo on till it was used up and my ankle’d completely clagged. She handed me the cloudy glass. ‘Drink this.’
    ‘It smells like…marzipan.’
    ‘It’s for drinking. Not smelling.’
    ‘But what is it?’
    ‘It’ll help take the pain away.’
    Her face told me I had no real choice. I swigged back the liquid in one go like you do Milk of Magnesium. It was syrupy-thick but didn’t taste of much. I asked, ‘Is your brother asleep upstairs?’
    ‘Where else would he be, Ralph? Shush now.’
    ‘My name’s not Ralph,’ I told her, but she acted like she hadn’t heard. Clearing up the misunderstanding’d’ve been a massive effort and now I’d stopped moving I just couldn’t fight the cold any more. Funny thing was, as soon as I gave in, a lovely drowsiness tugged me downwards. I pictured Mum, Dad and Julia sitting at home watching The Paul Daniels Magic Show but their faces melted away, like reflections on the backs of spoons.
     
    The cold poked me awake. I didn’t know where or who or when I was. My ears felt bitten and I could see my breath. A china bowl sat on a footstool and my ankle was crusted in something hard and spongey. Then I remembered everything, and sat up. The pain in my foot had gone but my head didn’t feel right, like a crow’d flown in and