by Cristy Burne
CRTSTY BURNE
ILLUSTRATED BY STKU
is the winner of the inaugural 2009 Frances Lincoln Diverse Voices Children's Book Award
The Frances Lincoln Diverse Voices Children's Book Award was founded jointly by Frances Lincoln Limited and Seven Stories, in memory of Frances Lincoln (1945-2001) to encourage and promote diversity in children's fiction.
The Award is for a manuscript that celebrates cultural diversity in the widest possible sense, either in terms of its story or the ethnic and cultural origins of its author.
The prize of £1500, plus the option for Frances Lincoln Children's Books to publish the novel, is awarded to the best work of unpublished fiction for 8-12-year-olds by a writer aged 16 years or over, who has not previously published a novel for children. The winner of the Award is chosen by an independent panel of judges.
Please see the Frances Lincoln or Seven Stories website for further details.
The running and administration of the Frances Lincoln Diverse Voices Children's Book Award is led by Seven Stories, in Newcastle upon Tyne. Seven Stories is Britain's children's literature museum. It brings the wonderful world of children's books to life through lively exhibitions and inspiring learning and events programmes. Seven Stories is saving Britain's children's literature by building a unique archive that shows how authors and illustrators turn their thoughts and ideas into finished books of stories, poems and pictures.
Seven Stories believes that children should be able to choose books that reflect the lives of children from different cultures in the world today. Frances Lincoln, in whose memory the Award was founded, had an unswerving commitment to finding talented writers who brought new voices, characters, places and plots to children's books.
Arts &Business
Frances Lincoln Limited and Seven Stories gratefully acknowledge the support of Arts & Business for the Frances Lincoln Diverse Voices Children's Book Award.
Are you afraid of ghosts and evil spirits, or the black space under your bed? If you are, then put this book down right away and choose another. If I were you, I would choose a book about teddy bears and bunny rabbits, because then there's a good chance that you won't be reading about floating heads or evil spirits or any of the other things you'll find inside this book. If I were you, I'd do that. But for me, it's already too late.
I was born in a small town near Osaka, in Japan. My family moved to England just over a year ago, after my grandmother died. But our troubles started long before that. Looking back, I should have realised earlier.
My father worked long hours for his office job, so he didn't realise either. He was never at home to see what was happening. My brother Kazu was too little even to notice; he was still a baby back then. And my mother was always busy with Kazu or her English class, plus she didn't really believe. That just left my grandmother, Baba. She understood better than all of them.
Baba knew all there was to know about spirits and demons, good and evil, and she took care to protect our family from them. She kept a cedar leaf over our front door to ward off evil, she always left toys and games out for our house ghost, she even kept a pair of shiisa lion-dogs on the mantelpiece, bought during a beach holiday to Okinawa when my dad was just a boy. She never got sick or forgetful or even caught a cold, not in the whole time I'd known her, which was all my life. But towards the end, when she got really old, she walked with a stick and her hands shook like leaves whenever she used her chopsticks. She died when I was only eleven.
I cried and cried at her funeral, I didn't care who saw me. People from all over Kawanishi sent in envelopes of money and wreaths of flowers. The entire room was filled with light, and the priest was ringing his bell to keep out the bad spirits and bid farewell to my grandmother on her journey to her new place. Afterwards my family served a feast of noodles and tempura upstairs, but nobody ate. Instead the rows of guests, all dressed in black, just knelt on the tatami mats and made smalltalk about the seasons. The noodles went cold and the tempura went soggy. Baba would have thought it an awful waste.
But what does all this have to do with floating heads and evil spirits? I didn't know myself, not back then. But Baba knew. So just remember: it's not too late to close this book and read about something safe instead, like teddy bears and bunny rabbits. Don't say I didn't warn you.
Until we moved to London I'd lived in the same house all my life, the same house Baba had lived in when she was just a girl. It was the oldest house in our street, wooden and two stories high. Its floors were polished smooth from generations of feet, and you could skid the entire length of the hallway if you got up enough speed in your socks. It creaked in the wind and was cold in the night, but it hid a thousand secrets, most of which my Baba knew. The biggest secret was our sakabashira pillar. That was the reason we had a house ghost watching over us, the reason that nothing horrible had ever happened to our family. Not yet.
A sakabashira pillar is basically a mix-up. Ours happened more than a hundred years ago, when the men who were building our living room accidentally stuck the top end of a huge wooden column into the ground, so that its bottom end was pointing at the roof. It didn't change the shape of our house, and we couldn't tell that the pillar was upside-down, but none of that mattered. The damage was done. Our house was doomed to be haunted.
You can never tell what sort of ghost a sakabashira pillar will attract. Luckily, my Baba's Baba was as wise as my Baba; she managed to attract the attention of a zashiki-warashi, a childghost. Ours was a little girl, about five years old, and Baba called her Zashiko. I never saw her, but sometimes I'd wake in the night to find my pillow down by my feet instead of under my head. Other times I'd wake to see the light above me swaying in the ceiling, silent and watching, gently rocking, like a swing. But I was never scared. Being haunted by Zashiko was the best thing that could have happened to our family. She played tricks, but she also brought good luck and kept us safe from the other spirits and demons, the ones Baba always warned me about.
When we left our house, we left Zashiko behind. With Baba gone and Zashiko back in Japan, we were truly alone when we arrived in England. I thought we'd be safe, that the spirits wouldn't find us. I was wrong.
The woman knocked on our apartment door just before dinner on Monday night.
"Miku, can you get that?" Mum called from the kitchen.
I don't know why she even asked. Dad wasn't home yet and it wasn't as if Kazu could get it. He couldn't even reach the door handle.
I should have been studying for a maths test, but all those numbers and equations were doing my head in. I was glad for any interruption. Perhaps it was Dad, back early but forgotten his keys. Or it might be our neighbour, the cute one with the noisy scooter that Mum always complained about.
"Miku?" Mum called again.
"I'm going," I said, getting up from the table and heading down the hall.
I was only a few paces from the door when a strange feeling came over me. Baba had always taught me to be careful about opening our front door, and this time especially, I knew she was right.
"Who is it?" I asked, speaking through the wood.
"Red Cross," a woman's sweet voice replied.
It wasn't Dad or our cute neighbour. It was a stranger. She sounded OK. Certainly no maniac kidnapper, like Mum was always warning about. But how did she get into the building?
I rested my hand on the door handle, ready to open the door. But then I stopped. Something wasn't right. I could feel it.
"Red Cross," the woman's voice repeated, a little muffled through the door. "Would you like to make a donation?"
I'd seen Mum make donations before, for the Salvation Army and the RSPCA, but something about this woman's voice was making me feel strange. I wished I could see throug
h the little peephole in our door, but it was too high up, and I'd left it too late to drag over a chair.
"Red Cross," the woman's voice said. "Red Cross. Would you like to make a donation?"
Still I hesitated. Was something wrong here?
I didn't know what to do.
The door sounded again.
Knock... Knock... Knock...
"Red Cross," the woman droned. "Would you like to make a donation?"
She was beginning to freak me out. I took a step away from the door.
"Miku," Mum called from the kitchen, sounding annoyed. "Could you please get the door?"
But I didn't yell back an answer. I was already backing away from the door. My stomach was starting to fold in on itself. Something was very wrong.
"Red Cross," the voice said. "Would you like to make a donation?"
Knock... Knock...
"Red Cross. Would you like to make a donation?"
I kept backing away from the voice, keeping my eyes on the door handle, watching for a sign.
Suddenly I bumped into something behind me. I gasped, nearly swallowing my tongue.
"Miku."
"Mum..."
"Nani shiteruno, Miku? What are you doing?" she complained. "Couldn't you at least get the door?" She had a tea towel over one shoulder and Kazu on one hip. She did not look happy. Kazu didn't seem to notice. He was smiling and trying to stick a partly chewed carrot stick in her ear.
"But Mum..."
I had to explain. Stop her. Do something.
"Who is it?" Mum asked through the door.
"Red Cross," the woman's voice replied. "Would you like to make a donation?"
"But Mum..."
I tried to get between her and the door, to tell her that something was very wrong with whatever was waiting outside.
But Mum just looked at me and sighed, then she turned the handle.
I was too late.
The door swung open. A gust of frozen air came sweeping into the house. It felt like a wind straight from the arctic. Kazu's soft black hair flared up as if someone had blown a hairdryer in his face. But there was no one in the hallway. The entire area was empty.
"Hello?" Mum asked, poking her head out of the door to check the vacant hallway.
There was nobody there.
"Really, Miku," Mum grumbled, pulling the door shut with a bang. "That poor woman. She probably got tired of waiting and now she's outside in the cold. Kondo wa ne. Next time..." She didn't need to finish her sentence. She just looked at me as if I was a failed cooking project. Kazu seemed to agree. He threw his carrot stick on the floor, whimpering.
Mum turned the door lock into place. Her silence meant disapproval. But how could I explain? I grabbed Kazu's slimy carrot stick from the floor.
"Mum," I began. "I think that woman was..." What? An evil spirit? A demon? Mum didn't believe all the stuff Baba had taught me. She didn't even believe in placing a cedar leaf over the door.
The cedar leaf! My heart sank. Surely not.
"Mum, did you move the cedar leaf?"
Mum looked away. "Not now, Miku," she said, moving back down the hall to the kitchen, Kazu still on one hip. He coughed a little and then started crying.
I followed them into the kitchen, dumping the slimed carrot in the bin. This was urgent. "The cedar leaf. The one over the front door. Did you move it?"
Kazu coughed again and then started screaming like the fire alarm at school. Mum ignored my question, jiggling him up and down on her hip, then sitting down with him on a kitchen chair.
"Shhhh," she crooned, still bouncing him on her lap. "You're OK, Kazu-chan, you're all right."
But I had an awful feeling my brother wasn't OK at all.
I raced back to the front door, dragging a chair over so I could search the top of the door frame with my fingertips. I had a whole shoebox of cedar leaves under my bed. I'd brought them all the way from Kawanishi to London, pretending it was a shoebox of calligraphy paper so Mum wouldn't take them off me. For nearly a year I'd worked to keep a cedar leaf stuck over our front door at all times, replacing the leaves that Mum would sweep or dust away. But this time my fingers came up bare. I hadn't replaced this one fast enough. And now it was too late.
I'd never seen an amazake-baba. I'd heard my own Baba speak of them many times. They were old women, with honey-sweet voices. She said they came knocking on your door late at night, bringing illness and disease to all who answered. But there was, of course, one easy way to keep amazake-baba away. A cedar leaf, stuck over the front door. But we hadn't had a leaf stuck there tonight.
From the kitchen I could hear Kazu still coughing. Coughing. Crying. I kept remembering the cold wind that had blown into our house when Mum had opened the door. The way Kazu's hair had shifted in the breeze. All that my Baba had told me. I stuck a new cedar leaf over our door, but I knew the damage had already been done.
Kazu coughed all night, keeping Mum awake with worry so her eyes looked tired and bruised the next morning. And he coughed all through breakfast, his little face red with the effort.
"I'm taking him to the doctor," Mum announced, not touching her morning rice. "He's not getting any better."
Dad nodded, slurping coffee as he looked through his paper. "So da ne - I agree," he said, looking up briefly. "You better try for an early appointment. The forecast's not good. They're predicting snow."
It was the first sign that bad things were coming our way. The spirits had discovered us. And they'd found a way in.
I nearly froze as soon as I stepped outside our door on Tuesday morning. The wind was blowing and it was starting to sleet. By the time I got to school my shoes and socks were soaked through. My feet and fingers felt like blocks of ice. And worse, when I walked into class, everyone turned to stare at me. I probably looked like a drowned cat. But I soon figured out they weren't staring at that.
Alex opened his big mouth first, pointing from me to the front of the class. Instead of Mr Lloyd, there was a tall, dark-haired woman writing on the board. The whole class stank of sickly sweet jasmine, as if she'd had some sort of accident with her perfume bottle.
"Is she your mum?" Alex asked.
The woman was dressed up as if she was about to read the news on TV. She was wearing a shiny caramel skirt with a white blouse and matching caramel jacket. Her hair was long and black and just as shiny as her skirt, and she wore it tied around her head like an elaborate piece of origami. She had her back to the class and was writing something on the board with purple chalk. It was hard to read, but I could just make out the letters:
"Well, is she?" Alex asked again.
I walked past him to the desk that Cait and I shared. Her seat was still empty and there was no sign of her bag. Unlucky. I could usually count on Cait to back me up when Alex was being an idiot.
"No," I answered. "Is she your mum?"
I pulled my pencil case and books out of my favourite bag and began setting up my desk for the day.
"She looks like your mum," Alex hissed. He had turned around in his seat so he could talk to me more easily.
"She's not my mum," I said. I focused on my books, wishing Alex would shut up. It was as if he'd never seen someone from Japan before. I wasn't the only Japanese person in the world.
"She your aunt then?"
Great. This was going to be tedious. But just as Alex was getting started, the strange toffee-suited teacher spoke.
"Good morning, class," she began.
Alex turned to face the front almost immediately, leaving me blissfully alone. This woman, whoever she was, had saved me! For a moment I thought I might even like her, despite her awful outfit and smelly perfume and enormous hair. But I was wrong.
"My name is Mrs Okuda. Mr Lloyd has fallen ill and I will be teaching your class while he is away." The woman smiled, revealing two rows of sparkling white teeth surrounded by glowing purple lipstick.
A ripple passed across the class. I guess they were staring at the same thing as me. He
r lipstick and stinky perfume were bad enough, but the rest of her was worse. Her whole face was caked in pale make-up and the white collar of her blouse rode high across her neck, like something from those old-fashioned movies where the women all wear petticoats and need maids to help them dress. She also wore several strings of tight white pearls, crammed across her throat. It looked as if her head might fall off at any moment, cut off at the neck from lack of oxygen. It was the worst outfit I'd ever seen on a teacher.
Someone giggled and I saw Alex whisper to his neighbour. We all knew what a supply teacher meant, especially a woman teacher, and especially one dressed as badly as this. It meant watching videos, no maths test, heaps of free time, and the chance to make her really, really angry without getting into too much trouble. I bounced my freezing feet under the desk, wondering what Alex would do to get it started.
"So," Mrs Okuda continued, oblivious to the whispers and nudges of the class. "Let's get to know each other better, shall we?" She smiled again, baring her teeth like a fox, this time directly at me. I looked down at once, examining the grooves in the wood of my desk. Just because we had the same coloured hair and the same kind of skin it didn't mean I needed special attention. I'd kind of hoped she wouldn't notice I was Japanese. She'd be better off keeping her eye on Alex.
"Shall we start by calling the roll?" she asked, but she didn't wait for an answer. She pulled out a brown folder of papers and took the lid off a black pen. "Oscar? Jean? Imran?"
A high-pitched screech echoed from outside, in the corridor. With a squeal of web rubber, Cait came bursting in through the door, her umbrella dripping with ice and her hair still rammed in a woolly hat. "Sorry, Mr Llo..." she began, then stopped in her tracks, staring at Mrs Okuda.
Mrs Okuda stopped her roll call to glance at Cait, who must have been making a large puddle in the doorway. "You can leave your umbrella outside," she said. "And you are?"
"Gait O'Neill," said Cait, and she glanced across the class, smiling a quick hello at me.
