Читать книгу A DREAM OF LIGHTS - Kerry Drewery, Kerry Drewery - Страница 14

I woke to the same noises as always, and I peered out of the window at the same scene that greeted me every morning. As I ate my porridge, I glanced around at the faces of my family: my grandfather with his wonderful smile and his marvellous stories; my grandmother, quiet and drawn nowadays; my mother who worked so hard to feed us all; and my father, my dear father, who could take away my nightmares and make sense of my dreams.

All their kindness for me.

I remembered the warning words from Grandmother just a few months ago, and I replayed my conversation with Sook from the night before. Over and over I heard my voice echoing and shouting through my head, telling him secrets, betraying my father, my family. Words we could be arrested for. Words we could die for.

I wanted to cry, wanted to tell them what I’d done and for them to make it all better again. They could do that, couldn’t they? Take me in their arms, sway me back and forth, whisper in my ear while they stroked my hair, tell me everything would be all right, really it would.

And I would explain that I hadn’t meant to tell Sook, it just came out, and came out wrong. Because Father wasn’t planning an escape because that city was Pyongyang, and Sook must’ve been mistaken. But Sook had lived there for fifteen years, and he had sounded so certain. And why would he lie?

I swallowed a spoonful of porridge, lifted my eyes back to my family and opened my mouth to speak. I felt sick again.

“Are you all right, Yoora?” my father asked.

“I feel a bit dizzy,” I whispered, bringing my shaking hands to my head, watching his eyes, full of concern, looking at me; his thoughts, his most secret thoughts that he’d shared with me that night in confidence, hanging between us, the secret I should’ve kept.

Escape? I thought. Really, Father? Is that really what you’re planning? Is that really what you think of our Dear Leader?

Escaping, or even plotting to escape, even thinking about it, was a crime against the state, against our Dear Leader. A crime punishable by prison or death. And not just for Father – badness runs in the blood for three generations, and so does the punishment.

I had seen it before, maybe five years ago: a radio, broken away from its preset government station, tuned in to a Chinese one instead. No malice intended, no reactionary thoughts or plans, just curiosity about what else existed, and an appetite for music with guitars. But his intentions were irrelevant – his actions went against our country’s teachings.

He was older than me, the boy who did it, but I remember standing close to him at school, hearing his feet pattering out a rhythm I didn’t recognise, the involuntary hum of a song in his throat. I wasn’t the only one who heard it, and I probably wasn’t the only one to report him.

They arrived early one morning and the radio was found; that was all that was needed.

I remembered his family – his mother and father, his uncle, his grandfather, his sister; seeing them thrown on to the back of a truck. I remembered the boy’s eyes staring down at the watching villagers, eyes full of fear and desperation and guilt and disappointment.

I wondered if he still remembered the song. I wondered if he hated it now.

“Get some fresh air,” Father said, his eyes looking up at the smoke from the fire that had settled in a layer under the ceiling.

On trembling legs I stood and wandered to the door, stepping out into the biting cold, my body shivering as claws of ice reached round me. I closed my eyes and sucked in a deep, rasping breath. I exhaled long and slow, my shoulders sagging and my face relaxing, and I opened my eyes.

And there it was. Staring at me with its beady black eyes and cocking its head to one side, like it was trying to tell me something. A crow. No more than a few metres away.

He’ll be looking for food, I thought to myself. He’ll start digging through the earth with his beak. You won’t find worms there, I wanted to tell him. They’ll be too far down in winter. And the insects will be huddled together in dark places under rocks, or crevices behind loose pieces of bark, waiting for spring to come and wake them properly.

“You’d make a good meal yourself,” I whispered. “My grandmother would strip the feathers from you and put you in a pot. And you’d taste good. And I could stick your feathers inside my clothes to keep warm.”

But he just carried on staring – a black stain, a threat, an omen.

He hopped sideways, stretching out his wings, the feathers glistening oily blue and green, and he flapped upwards, veering towards me and cawing, a raw, harsh, grating noise that stripped through the air and screamed in my ears. His wings were so close to me that I could hear their beating and feel the change in the air as they blotted and flickered out the light, my eyes squinting against the flashing, my arms raised to protect my face.

I crouched down, tucking my face into my chest and stretching my arms over my head. For a moment I thought I felt his claws on my head, pulling at my hair, and I imagined him lifting off into the sky and taking me with him. And for a moment I didn’t feel threatened by him or scared of him. I felt something entirely different. Like an understanding, or a need, a sense of urgency.

But as suddenly as he had arrived, he was leaving again, and I stood up, stared into the blue sky scattered with dark clouds, watched his black form and his flapping wings ease away from me, his voice cawing out all the while, like he was screaming at me.