The Raven’s Eye Rebellion by CLAIRE MABEY is a gripping adventure, perfect for young readers who love being transported into a realm of fantasy and magic.
Read on for an extract.
ABOUT THE BOOK
When Getwin, Lea and Buckle – with the help of Sharp the raven – unearth the trickster Book of Blacke, they embark on a quest to undo the controls on their world, seeking justice for the Scribes who are forced to work and for those who have never been allowed to read or write.
The city of Wyle comes alive with danger and intrigue as our heroes contend with the secrets of the Scholar’s Library, a magical boat, curious creatures, a secret reading and writing society, sleeping trees and the twists and turns of the ancient city.
Can the friends stay safe? Will they be able to free the Scribes? Will they make enough trouble to shake the foundations of their world?
This unmissable sequel to award-winning The Raven’s Eye Runaways is rich with wonder and a thirst for justice.
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EXTRACT
PROLOGUE
Three children and a one-eyed raven are running away. Again.
Thick, helpful cloud smothers the moon’s glare as they sprint away from safety and into the heart of the City of Wyle. The shortest child, Getwin, is in front. Panicked thoughts dash through her mind as she leads the way – she has no idea where she’s going, or where they’ll sleep, or whether they’ll make it even a day without Trip and Spill, the friends they’ve just fled from. But it wasn’t fair, she tells herself. It wasn’t fair not to give us any choice! We can’t just disappear out to the islands and hide from the Stationers! There are Scribes to be freed, and secrets to be learned. Why can’t Mum and Lolly and Trip and Spill understand that? A quieter, more honest, voice added: Plus, I have to find my father.
Lea is in the middle of the group, concentrating hard on not tripping over the meddlesome stones underfoot. Buckle is behind – his lungs are heaving and his heart is declaring itself properly scared with every thump.
Dogs bark and rooks caw as the children pound through the alleyways. The stink of the canals wafts up in the still night and Getwin moves towards the water, hoping to find some friendly abandoned sheds to hide them until she can admit she doesn’t have a clue what to do. Light spills from the windows of the long boats that hug the canals. All three children feel a fresh pang of guilt imagining Trip and Spill waking up on their own lovely boat only to find the children’s beds empty and promises broken.
A dark dark fills Getwin’s troublesome right eye – her raven must be gazing into a hole, a tunnel, a nothing. For what the raven sees, so does she.
‘Sharp!’ she yells. ‘Where are you? I’ve lost you!’ ‘Husssshhhh!’ says Buckle. ‘What are you playing at?’ ‘Boooat!’ comes a raven’s unearthly croak and for a moment the children think they’ve been caught.
‘There you are,’ breathes Getwin, as her bird swoops down and settles heavily on her shoulder. He fixes his one good eye on the distance, over the water, at an object moving slowly towards them.
‘Is it a boat? Or a floating ruin?’ says Buckle.
Out of the gloom a boat – more of an assemblage of ancient rotting boards – is getting closer. It stops now and then, pausing at the edge of a mooring, as if sniffing at a post like a dog.
‘It seems rather sweet,’ says Lea. ‘And Strange.’ She shivers as her skin starts to prickle and pictures of sails and ropes and anchors and mermaids start to form on her arms.
The children hold their breath as the boat pauses right in front of them. Its windows are smudges. No faces appear. Getwin can just make out a patch of faded letters on its side: The Lacuna. It bobs on the gentle waters, looking at them. Then it sidles up to the edge of the canal so that its long edge is hard against the water-worn stone, and waits.
Sharp flies aboard first. He gives a reassuring ‘Craarck!’ from deep inside, and the rest of them follow, clambering and nervous but each with the oddest sensation that a long-lost companion has found them.
‘Remind me why we’ve just abandoned the opportunity to lounge around on a distant island far from the jurisdiction of the Stationers?’ says Buckle as his foot sinks through a rotten floorboard, and an enormous spider descends from a murky corner to survey them.
‘Justice,’ says Lea, resting happily on the damp and smelly ground.
‘And to find a long-lost, possibly even mythical book,’ adds Getwin.
‘Righto,’ says Buckle. ‘Good luck to us.’
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Weeks later, the children and the raven are stealing through the outskirts of Wyle. Again.
It is night and it is cold. Their breath makes ghostly clouds as they hurry down backstreets and alleyways.
Getwin is in front. This time she knows exactly where she’s going. She’s following a procession of foxes and voles, hares and rats. Each animal carries a dead creature in its jaws: mice and dragonflies and frogs. Getwin has watched the animals with her Strange raven’s eye. As she follows them through the City her belly squirms with anticipation.
Lea is searching the shadows and gutters as she goes. She’s always looking for former Scribes, those once-young girls whose Keepers used them up and then discarded them, as if they were torn pages. She keeps food in her pockets for them, and sparrow’s quills and folds of paper, too. In her footsteps green shoots grow.
Buckle is at the back, keeping watch for Strange-mongers, who would be rewarded with bags of silver coins if they caught the children and turned them in to the Stationers. It would be a shame if we’re ’Mongered now, he thinks. Not when we’re so close to finding the book. And maybe when we do, we can finally go home.
In front of the children’s eyes, the animals start to disappear. One by one the creatures slip through a gap between two huge, smooth stones – remnants of a magnificent building that once existed at the edges of Wyle.
The children go after them: they squeeze their bodies through the gap and find themselves in a tunnel lined with bones. Human bones. The children baulk. But the raven urges them on.
The animals beat a path through the sloppy mud underfoot. It is warmer down here, under the City, in the dark of the catacombs.
Animals and children walk and walk and walk, until finally they stop in front of a recess in a dank, bone-covered wall. The children wait and watch as the animals drop their offerings on top of a mound of tiny half-rotted corpses. The creatures lift their whiskered snouts towards a shelf that juts out of the recess in the wall before turning around and trotting back the way they’ve come.
The children stare up at the shelf and know the animals have shown them where to find what they’ve been looking for these long weeks.
Lea and Buckle lift Getwin above their shoulders so she can take what is there.
In her hands the lost treasure hums. It is a book; a dangerous object at the best of times. And this is a time of fear.
The children turn – back through the grimy, bony tunnels and out through the gap between the stones. Getwin holds the book tightly to her chest. The Book of Blacke twitches against her like it is trying to catch the beat of her heart.
The City is beginning to wake as the children slip back through it, unseen but not undetected. The layers and layers of dirt and dust, ghosts and greenings know that the trouble is just about to begin.
CHAPTER ONE
Getwin
Lea and Buckle pressed close as Getwin laid The Book of Blacke open on the tabletop. The paper was thick and crinkled as if it had been steeped in water. A foul smell came from it – like seaweed rotting on a beach.
Sharp, the raven, gripped Getwin’s shoulder so tightly she was tempted to push him off. But she didn’t. These might be their last moments together as girl and bird.
‘Nothing’s happening. Maybe it doesn’t work the same way as The Book of Greene,’ said Buckle, his nose wrinkling.
‘Give it a chance to settle in.’ Lea looked upon it hungrily.
They all watched the Strange book, waiting for it to reveal itself.
Sure enough, a blot of dark green ink bubbled up from the bindings.
‘Really stinks, doesn’t it?’ said Buckle, pinching his nostrils.
‘Shhhh!’ hissed Getwin, her stomach in knots. The Book of Blacke was notoriously tricky. Even The Woodess didn’t trust it and she was the Strangest and most powerful creature, goddess, wood woman, thing, that Getwin had ever met. What if even the thought of asking the book to return her father was a huge mistake?
‘It’s writing!’ said Lea, pointing to the blot of ink, which was now sliding about the page forming letters.
Getwin held her breath as Lea read the words aloud:
Who are you? Have I been snatched? Stolen? WOKEN?
Getwin’s eyes widened. Her heart gave a sickening triple beat. She wanted to reply immediately, but she forced herself to take a breath. Her worst fault was dire impatience, and this was not the time to be herself. The quill trembled in her hands as she dabbed it in the ink pot and gingerly set the tip on the page beneath Blacke’s writing. She spoke her words aloud as she wrote them:
We saved you from the bone tunels! I’m Getwin, former Bookbinder, dorter of John Wolfe who I think you know. I’m here with Lea, former Scribe and Stranger. And also Buckle who is . . . well his muther was a Stranger too but he isn’t. So I guess you could say he’s a mutherless child and sort of Bookbinder. We saved you so that I could ask you to pleese change Sharp back into a human because I’d really apreshiate meating my father. Pleese.
The atmosphere inside The Lacuna thrummed as every person and every animal held its breath.
‘I don’t like this,’ muttered Buckle. ‘Not one bit.’
At the back of her mind, Getwin agreed. The raven on her shoulder squeezed and clicked nervously.
‘It’s writing back!’ Lea moved nearer, breathing hot in Getwin’s ear.
‘I can’t look,’ said Getwin, closing her eyes. ‘Read it for me.’
Lea read aloud:
John Wolfe’s daughter, she says? Saved me, she says! I DID NOT ASK TO BE SAVED. Kept an eye, did he not? Stuck close, did he not? Fancy the daughter coming to trouble me now! Not happy with the sight, is she not? Not content with his flight, is he not? Asking to change back? What cheek! What RUDENESS! And how do they know? Raven is useful! Fog is insightful! Indecisive rots! This way, that way, wrong way, right way! I should think a spell in a corvus cloak will be MOST instructive!
Getwin opened her eyes a crack. Blacke’s words blazed red and then burned out, leaving only a smoky stain. Getwin snatched the book up, shook it a little, hoping to jog it into explanation. But the Strange book snapped itself shut and as it did, the most curious sensation stole across Getwin’s body. Her shoulder blades scrunched closer, her knees crumpled, her arms jerked and Blacke fell from her fingers, only just caught by Buckle, who dove for it like it was made of glass. All around Getwin, The Lacuna waved in and out and she rubbed at her eyes and a voice yelled, ‘What’s happening?’ and even though it came from her throat it didn’t sound like her at all.
‘No!’ said Lea, with a look of horror. Getwin tried to reply but found she couldn’t speak. Nor could she walk. When she tried to move her arms they hinged madly Strange and they were covered in black feathers.
Everything was so big! And colourful! A violent purple. Puce! A green so bright she wanted to fly into it! Loud! The world was so loud!
Stop yelling! She tried to say to Buckle and Lea, who were peering down at her all massive and bellowing horribly.
But the only thing she could hear above their racket was a raven’s screech. And it didn’t come from Sharp.
It came from her.
CHAPTER TWO
Lea
‘Crickets,’ whispered Buckle, holding out his right hand and trying to coax Getwin the raven to walk onto it. ‘I knew a notorious book written by a sea hag wasn’t going to be a piece of cake, but all Getwin did was ask!’
‘You’re still holding it,’ said Lea, crouching next to him. Buckle’s left hand was gripping Blacke so tightly that his fingers were mottled red and white. Lea looked at Getwin the raven, who was standing silently on the floor and staring at Sharp, who was opposite her. ‘Sharp’s quite a lot bigger, isn’t he? Do you think they can talk to each other? In raven?’
Buckle shook his head slowly. ‘No idea. But we have to talk to the book again. Try and convince it to change her back.’ He thrust Blacke at her. ‘Your turn.’
Blacke was cold. Freezing. Lea carried it to the table and placed it down carefully, as though the impact might bruise it. She settled herself in a chair and chose a fine, long goose quill from a pot. She paused, her entire body at once desperate to talk to the book and begging her not to.
Buckle settled himself beside her. Both the ravens joined them. Sharp first, flapping himself to the table. Getwin waddled along the floor, pausing every few steps to look up at them with shining eyes, beak half-open as if in shock. Buckle helped her with the last stretch. He crouched and gently coaxed Getwin onto his hand and carried her the rest of the way.
Once they were settled, Lea dipped the quill into the pot of green ink and began to write. She formed each letter with precise and graceful strokes. Buckle leaned closer to her and read aloud as she wrote.
Dear Blacke,
Please forgive us for stealing you and for waking you up. We did not mean to disturb you. Only our friend Getwin, who you have just turned into a raven, wanted to ask if you might give her father back. She has gone her whole life thinking he was just a raven until she asked The Book of Greene about it. Greene said that you turned Getwin’s father into a raven. Which really does make sense now because you’ve just turned our friend into a raven, too. If it’s not too much trouble we would really like both of them back. Please.
Yours most sincerely,
Lea (the one that used to be a Scribe and is now just a Stranger)
Lea realised she’d been holding her breath: now it rushed out and she leaned back, panting, as she put down the quill and shook her hand. Buckle clapped her on the back. ‘Lovely. Your handwriting is so lovely and you’re so polite, surely she won’t say no.’ But the savage way he started to tear at the fingernails of his right hand with his teeth told her he was probably just trying to be nice. Neither spoke while they waited for Blacke’s response. It didn’t take long. A storm of ink ate Lea’s words. Obliterated them.
GREENE! THAT BLATHERING, VERBOSE TELL-TALE!
Lea stood up, a spike of bile in her throat. ‘I said something wrong!’
‘No. This book’s wrong.’ Buckle slammed its cover shut and gripped her by both shoulders. The last thing Lea saw was the panic on his face as she felt every cell in her body shrink and churn and a great vortex suck her down, until the ceiling of The Lacuna was as far away as the sky.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Claire Mabey is the author of The Raven’s Eye Runaways, winner of Best First Book at the 2025 New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults. She is the founder of Verb Wellington, LitCrawl Wellington and Lōemis. She is also books editor at The Spinoff, book critic at RNZ and a regular guest on ABC’s The Bookshelf podcast.
Follow Claire Mabey on Instagram
Read more about the book on the Allen and Unwin website here.
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