The Raven Saga Part I: Raven, Suzy Turner [phonics reader txt] 📗

then that I felt an overwhelming sense of guilt for doing something I was never permitted to do. I peered over my shoulder guiltily before getting up and walking into the kitchen.
“Oh hello, dear. You're just in time for dinner. Come in. Don't just hover by the door. I hope you had a good day at school. I've made us a Shepherd's Pie. I hope you like that,” said Dorothy as she gently pushed her white blonde curls behind her ears before spooning the food onto a plate for me.
I had no idea what a Shepherd's Pie was, but I nodded enthusiastically nonetheless. It was easily the most delicious meal I had ever had. At home, everything came straight from a tin. Tinned spaghetti, tinned beans, tinned peas, tinned mince, tinned potatoes, tinned soup, and so on. And most of it was given to me cold. Stone cold. I only knew it was all tinned food because of the time I had sneaked in when she wasn't looking and had opened the cupboards to find a lifetime's supply of the stuff.
I had never been allowed to spend any length of time in our kitchen, other than to quickly eat, so I had no idea how to prepare food. I guess back then I had assumed that everybody ate that kind of stuff.
“Did this come out of a tin, Dorothy?” I asked.
“Oh my dear!” she said, “Of course not. We cook everything fresh in this house. Did your mother never prepare you a home cooked meal?”
I shook my head and told her about the kinds of things I had eaten and she looked shocked, as did June.
“I take it that means she never taught you to how to cook?”
I shook my head again and told them I wasn't allowed in the kitchen other than to quickly eat.
“Well, while you're staying with us, we'll just have to change that, won't we? We'll show you everything you need to know. But first, eat up and enjoy dear. We'll start to teach the basics tomorrow after school,” Dorothy smiled kindly as she patted my hand.
As I enjoyed those wonderful mashed potatoes with the tasty meat beneath, I felt another pang of guilt. Guilt that my parents had vanished and there I was, stuffing myself like some sort of famished orphan. But then, perhaps that's what I had become. An orphan. And I was hungry. Very hungry.
That evening, the guilt continued to consume me. So much so that I felt the need to do something about it. Something drastic. And there was only one thing that I could do. I secretly borrowed a pair of scissors from the kitchen and sneaked into the bathroom. After locking the door, I stood looking at my reflection in the mirror and before I could talk myself out of it, I took those scissors to my hair and hacked it all off. As I stared at myself, I wished for that guilt to disappear. It didn't. I needed to do more. Searching through the sisters' belongings in the cupboard, I came across a box with a picture of a woman with the same coloured hair as Dorothy. Without giving it a second thought, I opened the box, emptied the contents on the floor and sat on the bath mat as I read everything on the leaflet inside the box. As instructed, I mixed the contents of the bottles together and began covering my hair with the cream. The strong odour made my eyes water as I slowly began to bleach out the black from my hair.
Over an hour later, I stood staring at my reflection, a mountain of long black hair covered the floor by my feet. I inched closer to the mirror and stared into my eyes. Their usual shade of vivid green seemed flat and lifeless. Murky. I wished the guilt would disappear. I wished for tears to come. I wished for the return of my parents. But it was no good. There was no one to make my wishes come true.
I crept back into the spare bedroom and pulled out all of my awful yellow clothes. Spreading them on the soft pink carpet, I used the same pair of scissors to cut them and rip them so that they didn't hang loosely from my body any more. Just for a moment, I forgot my circumstances and enjoyed the creativity. What I was left with, however, wasn't what I had intended. They were still a mess, and they were all still yellow. I didn't want to wear yellow any more. I didn't want to be the Mellow Yellow girl.
I walked into the living room where Dorothy and June sat glued to the television, and I stopped in the doorway to watch the screen for a few moments. I listened as a middle-aged man talked about a recent spate of mysterious attacks on horses that had taken place within the London area.
A minute later, the cat jumped off the sofa and started making a fuss of me. The two women noticed and turned to see what she was so interested in. Dorothy let out a cry when she saw me. June gave me a hug. She just seemed to understand why I had done it. I sat down in between them both on the sofa and told them what I had done to all my clothes. Their look of sadness didn't go unnoticed by me and I felt bad for making them feel that way.
As the cat rubbed itself against my bare legs, Dorothy suddenly stood up and smiled with a twinkle in her.
“I have an idea,” she said, “come on.”
June stood up too and laughed, “Of course.”
“We always wondered why your mother dressed you in yellow, dear. It's really not a flattering colour for you at all. I know we're just a couple of old spinsters, but we've still got our clothes from when we were younger. We just might have some things that will fit you. Let's go and have a look,” added June.
I followed the sisters into a fourth bedroom, a room without a bed, instead filled with hangers and hangers of clothes. I had never seen so many bright and beautiful things. It wasn't just the colours that were so beautiful to me, it was the feel of the clothes, soft and silky. So unlike the hard and scratchy fabrics I had always worn.
However, as much as they tried to give me colourful skirts and blouses, I found myself drawn to black. With my newly-dyed white hair, I told them I just wanted to wear black. Deep down, I felt unworthy somehow of wearing anything else. Eventually they conceded and pulled out everything they had in black. There wasn't much but it was a far cry from Mellow Yellow. That night, the sisters' sewing machine went into overdrive – making all my new clothes to fit my small frame.
Walking through the school gates the following day I held my head up high and let them point and stare. There were whispers but there were also wolf whistles from the heartless boys that didn't care for my emotions. But I couldn't care less. Nobody called me Mellow Yellow after that. I was finally just Lilly.
“Your hair!” were the first words from December's mouth. “As much as I loved the black hair, I do love the white, although I'm not so keen on the hacked look,” she giggled. December was always good at making me feel better with a well-timed, and much-needed joke. She didn't mention my missing parents or the lack of yellow. She didn't need to. She was just there and that was all that mattered.
As the weeks went by without any sign of my parents, true to their word, Dorothy and June began to demonstrate how to cook all kinds of simple recipes. They tried to keep me busy. The police concluded that the blood they had found was my father's, but they neglected to tell me what was in the other vial. However, as they had made no further discoveries, it looked as though the case may well be shelved, unsolved. An X file. I didn't know what to think. A vial of my father's blood? Did that mean he was injured? Or worse? I tried not to let my imagination run wild.
From conversations with the Social Services, the authorities and Dorothy and June, I knew I would have to move to Canada. My grand-father telephoned me and told me that all the arrangements had been made. We didn't have much to say to each other. Not just because I didn't know the man, but also because I simply wasn't used to talking on the telephone.
In just a few short weeks, I would no longer live in England. A sense of sadness overcame me but still the tears did not come. I was upset that I was leaving my parents behind... wherever they were. But it was the fact that my life had actually improved since they'd disappeared that made me feel guilty. The guilt turned to sadness and the sadness turned to guilt, like an unstoppable swinging pendulum.

CHAPTER FOUR

One night as I lay on my bed drifting off to sleep, there was a tapping sound on the window. Opening my eyes, I saw two black birds sitting on the windowsill staring solemnly in at me. Having never taken any notice of local birds before, I wanted to know what they were, so I trundled out of bed and tiptoed into the living room where the sisters kept all their books. There I found an encyclopaedia from which I managed to identify them as ravens. After watching them for a few more minutes, they flew away. Exhaustion soon set in and it didn't take long for me to forget all about them and fall asleep.
But the following night, they re-appeared. There was a tap on the window and as I looked up from the book I was reading, I saw them both sitting in the same spot looking in at me again.
This happened every night until my move to Canada. Why they visited me there I had no idea. But there they were, every night, sitting on my windowsill, as if protecting me from something.
The way they perched there and repeatedly cocked their heads from one side to the other made me giggle, but they also frightened me somewhat and so I soon stopped. I dared not open the window. I never closed the curtains because, although I was fearful, I was also comforted by them. They became a constant in my strange, lonesome life.
I almost wished they could go with me to Canada, a country that I had few expectations of. I hadn't always known that my grand-father Gabriel was Canadian. In fact I hadn't even known of his existence until my thirteenth birthday, nearly a year earlier. I had bumped into the postman at the bottom of the stairs and so I had taken our mail directly from him, instead of letting him place it in our post box as usual. I hadn't intended to look through it but a Canadian postmark had caught my attention and it was addressed... to me.
So I sat down on the edge of the step and had almost torn the envelope apart to get to the letter. I started to read it...

My dearest Lillian
It is thirteen years since you were born and you are missed terribly.
I have written to you before but I can only imagine the letters have not reached you. I wish I could see you again, Lillian. I am your paternal grand-father after all....

But before I had the chance to read on, the letter was cruelly