White Crow Read Online Free PDF

around.’
    ‘That’s not possible.’
    ‘It’s true. You can read all about it in the museum if you like. Of course, it was quite a long time ago.’
    ‘How long?’ Rebecca asked, tilting her head on one side, so her hair hung across one eye. Another one of those mannerisms.
    ‘About eight hundred years, give or take. It was a big town, with thousands of people, dozens of streets, hundreds of houses, about ten churches.’
    ‘So what happened to it?’
    ‘The sea’s been eating away at the coast here for centuries. It started with a big storm in 1218; the harbour flooded over into the town and by the next day half the town had gone. It’s been much slower since then, but still it goes on, bit by bit. Even in my lifetime. I’ve seen three houses lost, abandoned to the sea, and then fall over the cliff bit by bit.’
    ‘That’s incredible.’
    ‘It’s great,’ I said. ‘I love it. The current rate of collapse is two metres a year, on average. Sometimes more, sometimes less.’
    ‘How do you know all this stuff?’ Rebecca asked.
    It wasn’t really worth answering that; I find it boring to explain, so I gave her an answer that suited me.
    ‘I just remember stuff easily.’
    That was the best way of putting it. Before she could speak again, I had an idea.
    ‘Listen, it will be dusk soon, but there’s still time. I could take you to the church. Then you’ll really get an idea of what’s happening in Winterfold.’
    She hesitated for a moment, but only a moment. I wondered what was happening in her head. What she was thinking, what she was thinking about me.
    ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘That would be good.’
    ‘Excellent,’ I said. ‘Actually, evening’s the best time to visit the church.’
    ‘Why’s that?’
    ‘You’ll see.’
    ‘I didn’t even know there was a church here.’
    ‘Like I said, there were lots. There’s only one left now, and it’s on the other side of these woods, further along the cliff. You’ll love it.’
    I stood up and put my hands out to pull Rebecca up from where she sat.
    She saw me holding out my hands. She stood up by herself, but she smiled.
    She was happy enough.
    ‘Come on then. Show me the church.’
    So we went, by the snaking path through the woods that clung to the edge of the cliff, through the trees, each tree waiting for its time to come, the time when it would meet the advancing sea, and fall into the water with a tumble of root and branch.

Monday, 26th July
    T he two girls make their way through the thickets of this scrubby wood - a twenty-minute walk, but only fifty strides wide, with farmland to the right and the cliff to the left, as they head south along the coast.
    More than once, Ferelith stops and points.
    ‘Look! See that way, there. That path used to go somewhere, and now it just falls off the edge. Into the sea. Splosh!’
    Ferelith chats about this and that, explaining the history of the village, like a textbook, Rebecca thinks. Ferelith is certainly unusual, and intelligent. Maybe very intelligent. Rebecca wonders about the DVD, and whether she should ask straight out if Ferelith put it in their house. She decides not to.
    Again Ferelith stops.
    ‘I want to show you something,’ she says, pushing off the path and into the undergrowth once more. ‘Come on!’
    Rebecca watches her go, and then pushes in after her. The branches snap back, whipping her cheeks.
    ‘Ow!’ she cries, but Ferelith doesn’t stop, head down, fighting a couple of brambles that have hooked her.
    She drops onto her hands and knees and Rebecca drops beside her.
    ‘Ow!’ she says again.
    ‘Yes,’ says Ferelith, ‘but look.’
    In front of them is a gravestone. Just one, overgrown by weeds, covered in moss. Behind it through the trees lurks the bright and sunny cliff edge, maybe three metres away.
    ‘This is the luckiest man in Winterfold. Well, in this churchyard anyway.’
    ‘What churchyard?’ Rebecca asks, feeling slow. ‘It’s just weeds and