Because he was keeping so many of my paintings now, we found we were running out of good painting shells. So, early one morning we set off on an expedition to find some more. We scoured the beach, heads down, side by side, just a few feet apart. There was always an element of competition with our shell collecting — who would find the first, the biggest, the most perfect. We had not been at it long, and neither of us had yet found a single shell, when I became aware that he had stopped walking.
“Micasan,” he breathed, and he was pointing out to sea with his stick. There was something out there, something white, but too defined, too shaped, to be a cloud.
We had left the binoculars behind. With Stella yapping at me all the way, I raced back along the beach and up the track to the cave house, grabbed the binoculars, and made for the top of the hill. A sail! Two sails. Two white sails. I bounded down the hillside, back into the cave, and pulled out a lighted stick from the fire. By the time I reached the beacon, Kensuke was already there. He took the binoculars from me and looked for himself.
“Can I light it?” I asked. “Can I?”
“All right, Micasan,” he said. “All right.”
I thrust the lighted stick deep into the beacon, in amongst the dry leaves and twigs at its core. It lit almost instantly, and very soon flames were roaring up into the wood, licking out at us as the wind took them. We backed away at the sudden heat of it. I was disappointed there were so many flames. I wanted smoke, not flames: I wanted towering clouds of smoke.
“Do not worry, Micasan,” Kensuke said. “They see this for sure. You see.”
We took turns with the binoculars. Still, the yacht had not turned. They had not seen it. The smoke was beginning to billow up into the sky. Desperately I threw more and more wood onto the fire, until it was a roaring inferno of flame and dense smoke.
I had thrown on almost the very last of the wood we had collected, when Kensuke said suddenly, “Micasan, it is coming. I think the boat is coming.”
He handed me the binoculars. The yacht was turning. It was very definitely turning, but I couldn’t make out whether it was toward us or away from us. “I don’t know,” I said. “I’m not sure.”
He took the binoculars off me. “I tell you, Micasan, it come this way. They see us. I am very sure. It come to our island.”
Moments later, as the wind filled the sails, I knew he was right. We hugged each other there on the hilltop beside the blazing beacon. I leaped up and down like a wild thing, and Stella went mad with me. Every time I looked through the binoculars now, the yacht was coming in closer.
“She’s a big yacht,” I said. “I can’t see her flag. Dark blue hull, like the Peggy Sue.” Only then, as I said it out loud, did I begin to hope that it could possibly be her. Gradually hope turned to belief, and belief to certainty. I saw a blue cap, my mother’s cap. It was them! It was them! “Kensuke,” I cried, still looking through the binoculars. “Kensuke, it’s the Peggy Sue. It is. They’ve come back for me. They’ve come back.” But Kensuke did not reply. When I looked around, I discovered he was not there.
I found him sitting at the mouth of the cave house, with my soccer ball in his lap. He looked up at me, and I knew already from the look in his eyes what he was going to tell me.
He stood up, put his hands on my shoulders, and looked me deep in the eyes. “You listen to me very good now, Micasan,” he said. “I am too old for that new world you tell me about. It is very exciting world, but it is not my world. My world was Japan, long time ago. And now my world is here. I think about it for long time. If Kimi is alive, if Michiya is alive, then they think I am dead long time ago. I would be like ghost coming home. I am not same person. They not same, either. And, besides, I have family here, orangutan family. Maybe killer men come again. Who look after them then? No, I stay on my island. This is my place. This is Kensuke’s Kingdom. Emperor must stay in his kingdom, look after his people. Emperor does not run away. Not honorable thing to do.”
I could see there was no point in pleading or arguing or protesting. He put his forehead against mine and let me cry. “You go now,” he went on, “but before you go, you promise three things. First, you paint every day of your life, so one day you be great artist like Hokusai. Second, you think of me sometime, often maybe, when you are home in England. When you look up at full moon, you think of me, and I do same for you. That way we never forget each other. Last thing you promise and very important for me. Very important you say nothing of this, nothing of me. You come here alone. You alone here in this place, you understand? I not here. After ten years, you say what you like. All that left of me then is bones. It not matter anymore then. I want no one come looking for me. I stay here. I live life in peace. No people. People come, no peace. You understand? You keep secret for me, Mica? You promise?”
“I promise,” I said.
He smiled and gave me my soccer ball. “You take ball. You very good at soccer, but you very much better painter. You go now.” And with his arm around my shoulder he took me outside. “You go,” he said. I walked away only a little way and turned around. He was still standing at the mouth of the cave. “You go now, please.” And he bowed to me. I bowed back. “Sayonara, Micasan,” he said. “It has been honor to know you, great honor of my life.” I hadn’t the voice to reply.
Blinded with tears, I ran off down the track. Stella didn’t come at once, but by the time I reached the edge of the forest she had caught up with me. She raced out onto the beach barking at the Peggy Sue, but I stayed where I was, hidden in the shadow of the trees, and cried out all my tears. I watched the Peggy Sue come sailing in. It was indeed my mother and my father onboard. They had seen Stella by now and were calling to her. She was barking her silly head off. I saw the anchor go down.
“Good-bye, Kensuke,” I whispered. I took a deep breath and ran out onto the sand waving and yelling.
I splashed out into the shallows to meet them. My mother just cried and hugged me till I thought I’d break. She kept saying over and over again, “Didn’t I tell you we’d find him? Didn’t I tell you?”
The first words my father said were, “Hello, monkey face.”
* * *
For almost a year my mother and father had searched for me. No one would help them, for no one would believe I could still be alive — not a chance in a million, they said. My father, too — he later admitted — had given me up for dead. But never my mother. So far as she was concerned I was alive, I had to be alive. She simply knew it in her heart. So they had sailed from island to island, searching on until they had found me. Not a miracle, but faith.
Four years after this book was first published, I received this letter.
Dear Michael,
I write to tell you, in my bad English, that my name is Michiya Ogawa. I am the son of Dr. Kensuke Ogawa. Until I read your book I thought my father had died in the war. My mother died only three years ago still believing this. As you say in your book, we lived in Nagasaki, but we were very lucky. Before the bomb fell we went into the countryside to see my grandmother for a few days. So we lived.
I have no memories of my father, only some photographs and your book. It would be a pleasure to talk to someone who knew my father as you did. Maybe one day we could meet. I hope so.
WITH MY BEST WISHES,
MICHIYA OGAWA
A month after receiving this letter I went to Japan, and I met Michiya. He laughs just like his father did.
Michael Morpurgo, a former Children’s Laureate of Great Britain, is the distinguished author of numerous books for adults and children, including War Horse, now a major motion picture, and the companion book, Farm Boy. His other books include The Amazing Story of Adolphus Tips and Private Peaceful. Kensuke’s Kingdom was the winner of the Federation of Children’s Book Groups’ Book Award; it has also been adapted for the stage. Michael lives in Devon, England, with his wife, Clare.
Copyright © 1999 by Michael Morpurgo. All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Inc. SCHOLASTIC and
associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.
First published in the United Kingdom by Heinemann Young Books Ltd. First American printing, March 2003
Cover art by David Stimson
Cover design by Steve Scott
e-ISBN 978-0-545-30013-1
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.
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