by David Almond
“Except Anna.”
“Except Anna.”
“Washed into the river on the tide, washed onto the Black Middens, found by Grampa.”
“We’ll tell her what we know of her story.”
“But slowly.”
“Yes. Very slowly.”
Our minds drifted, drifted, drifted.
I thought it was just the candles, the way their light flickered across his skin. I squeezed my eyes. I thought it was exhaustion. I thought it was the effect of seeing Grampa die, the effect of all the events of the last few days. I squeezed my eyes. I shook my head. The movement was tiny, almost invisible, a gentle flexing of his fingers, a gentle arching of his back. Then nothing. It must have been the candles, my exhaustion. Then it came again, both hands flexing, that gentle arching of his back. The saint slowly raised his knees and lowered them again.
“Jan,” I breathed. “January.”
“No,” he whispered.
“Yes,” I breathed.
He was so beautiful, the way he turned on the floor, the way he raised himself and crouched there in front of us. He glowed, reflecting candlelight and moonlight. He made no sound. His eyes didn’t open. His lips still formed the straight calm line. He stood up, and he was slender and graceful. He paused, like he was waiting.
We heard Heaven’s cry from inside the office:
“Grampa! Mine Grampa!”
What was it that came out of the office? It wasn’t Grampa’s body. That stayed there, resting across the book and the desk. Mouse told us later that something in the exact shape of Grampa moved out of the body and went to the door. Heaven said it was Grampa’s goodness, Grampa’s heart. What Jan and I saw was a shape as tall as Grampa, but it was blurred and translucent. It flowed rather than walked across the printing floor. The saint waited, then led the shape from the printing works into the alleyways and toward the quay. We followed. Heaven held my hand. We came to the broken ground above the Middens. The saint went down first, then Grampa’s shape. We leaned over the edge. They walked side by side across the Black Middens. There was no slithering of feet, no sinking. They moved over the Middens’ edge, where the water and the land mingle, and they entered the river. By the light of the moon, we saw them going down, side by side, until the water had covered them and there were just eddies and sparkling ripples and the tide running down toward the sea.
HEAVEN EYES KISSED HIS CHEEK. She whispered that she loved him and he would stay forever in her heart. She shed some tears.
“Bye-bye, Grampa,” she said. “Bye-bye, my lovely Grampa.” January, Mouse and I touched him gently. I rested my hand on his book and turned to Heaven. She helped me to slide it from beneath him. We packed it with his other books and her treasures in one of the boxes. We packed the backpacks and made our way across the printing floor. We collected letters as we walked, enough letters for all our names and the names of all our stories, and put them in our pockets. We ate Hob Nobs and orange creams. We walked through the alleyways to the bright sunlight that poured down onto the quay. We sat there on the edge. We watched the tide flowing in, inching its way over the black Black Middens.
Traffic glittered on the bridges. Cyclists and walkers moved across the opposite bank. Seagulls screamed.
“We could do anything, you know,” said January. “We could go anywhere. We don’t have to go back.”
We smelled the distant sea. The distant moors were dark against the sky. The sky was brilliant blue, going on forever.
“I know that,” I said.
“But mebbe we should get Heaven sorted first. Then we can all clear off again.”
We laughed.
“Let’s walk next time,” I said.
“Aye. Let’s walk next time.”
Mouse let Squeak tumble through his fingers.
“Can I come?” Mouse whispered.
“No!” snapped January. He laughed again. “Aye,” he said. “How’ll we ever manage now without the Little Helper?”
The water reached the raft and began to lift it.
“I is feared,” said Heaven Eyes.
“Me too,” I said. “We are always in fear. But we are also brave.”
“Brave as brave,” she said.
“Yes. Brave as brave.”
We went over the edge, carried the sacks and treasures down, put them in the middle of the raft. We took down new oars made of snapped timber. Behind us, there was a great roaring and clanking of machines. We saw men in brightly colored hard hats in the alleyways. We heard voices calling. Jan held the rope as we leapt across the running water onto the raft. Then he untied the rope and jumped aboard, and the tide helped carry us free of the Middens, and we pressed our way back upstream.
There were cyclists and walkers on the tracks across the river. They didn’t see us. They didn’t turn to us.
“Nice day for a paddle!” shouted January.
“Hopeless,” he said, when they just continued on their way.
“Maybe they can’t see us,” I said.
“Can’t?”
I thought of what Wilson Cairns had said: You have to keep watching, closely, closely, or you’ll miss it.
“Maybe they’re just not watching closely enough.”
“Ha!” He waved his arms. “Hey, you lot! Nice day for a paddle!”
But they just ran and cycled on.
We left behind Middens Quay. We passed the other derelict quays on the city’s outskirts, the demolition sites and building sites. We passed the great billboards showing how the world would be. The raft tilted and swayed. It was caught by eddies and swerving currents. The dark water slopped across the doors and soaked us. Heaven Eyes held me with her webbed fingers. She gasped as we passed the pubs and clubs and restaurants in Norton. People did watch us now. It was like we’d come back into view. Couples, hand in hand. Family groups. Bunches of lads and bunches of girls. Heaven kept ducking her head down, hiding behind me.
“All them ghosts,” she said. “All them ghosts!”
The river moved slowly as we reached the limit of the tide. We passed beneath the beautiful steel high-arched bridge. It led to great office blocks, the city’s castle, the cathedral with its steeple, the tangle of buildings, new and ancient, stone and timber, concrete and glass squeezed in close together. The city roared and grumbled all around us like a living thing.
Heaven kept pressing her hands to her ears and eyes. She kept taking them away again, to look and listen.
“Feared?” I whispered.
“Feared,” she said.
But her eyes grew wide and fascinated. She began to lift her head, to stretch back, to gaze in wonder at the bridge, at the sky, at the world. And all the time, she gasped and murmured:
“Lovely. Lovely, Erin. Lovely. Lovely. Lovely.”
BACK TO WHERE WE STARTED FROM. We paddled through eddies and whirling currents. We steered through floating debris. The sun poured down on us. The river carried us above its deep dark bed and below the endless sky. It carried our stories home with us. It carried our sister home with us. Heaven Eyes. Heaven Eyes. This girl who should have drowned at sea, this girl rescued from the mud, this fishy froggy girl who stared and smiled and saw Heaven at the heart of everything. She gripped my hand. “Erin,” she said. “Erin. You will look after me, my best friend?” I smiled and smiled. The raft rocked and spun as we approached the quay. Dark water slopped over us. I kept my eyes on her as we paddled closer. I kept my eyes on her as we reached out and grabbed the timbers and dragged ourselves back to land again. She didn’t move, she didn’t fade, she didn’t disappear. She still held me tight with those webbed fingers. She still smiled into me with those watery eyes. January fastened us with the tethering rope. Mouse climbed up first. Then me. I balanced halfway. Jan passed the sacks and the boxes of Heaven’s treasures: I passed them up to Mouse until the raft was empty. January had one foot on the raft, one foot on the timbers. He hauled on the rope. He waited for Heaven Eyes to step across.
She looked u
p at me. No one spoke. We waited and watched. The raft rocked and gently creaked. My head reeled. I saw Heaven Eyes taken back by the water. I saw the wave that rose and washed her from the raft and washed her back to sea. It was a dream, a vision. When I came out of it, Heaven Eyes crouched there on the doors, on the gilt lettering, on January’s curse. She chewed her lips. She trembled. She closed her eyes. Water splashed across her knees.
“Come on,” I said.
“Come on,” said Mouse.
“Be brave, Heaven Eyes,” I said.
“Brave as brave,” said Jan.
The smile crept across her face, across her lips and cheeks. She opened her eyes again, reached up and took my hand. She stepped from the raft and climbed with me.
“Phew!” she said. “Phew!”
We rested on the ancient quay. January laughed. He leaned over the edge, untied the rope, stood with its end in his fist, restraining the rocking raft.
“What a joke,” he said. “It was supposed to take us miles away. And we were hardly even out of sight.”
It was true. All the time, we’d been so close to where we’d started from. We could see the jibs of the cranes above the broken rooftops of Black Middens Quay. Maybe men in hard hats already walked across the printing floor. Maybe at this very moment they were opening the office door to find Grampa there. Maybe they were already wondering, whispering, starting to tell the tales.
The raft tugged at January, yearning to be set free.
“Let it go,” I said.
“Just let it go?” said January.
His eyes grew wide at the thought of it.
“Just like that?” he said.
“Aye. Just like that.”
He tugged at the rope and grinned.
“Then somebody else’ll find it, eh? And set off on their own adventure.”
“Yes,” I said. “So let it go.”
He handed me the rope.
“Hold on,” he said.
He climbed back down, crouched on the raft, took out his knife, started scratching words in the varnish.
“What you doing?” I shouted.
“If anybody does use it, they need to be prepared,” he said. “These are their instructions.” He called out the words as he wrote. “You must take knives, flashlight, food, a change of clothes. You must be brave and strong. You …”
He turned and looked up at me.
“You can’t go alone!” I shouted, and he quickly scratched the words.
He turned again.
“You have to take a true friend!” I shouted, and he scratched the words.
“What else?” he said.
I looked down at him. The raft tugged at my hand and yearned to be free.
“Somebody you’d trust your life with,” I said. “Somebody you’d go as far as death with.”
He smiled and carved these last words deep into the grain.
Then he climbed again and took the rope from my hand.
“Okay,” he said, and he let the raft go.
It spun out into the center of the river and hesitated there, rocking gently, before the flow of the river carried it away. We watched as it became smaller, smaller, smaller. We caught glimpses of the red curse, of the sliding doors, but soon it left our sight. We continued to watch, and in our minds forever after we would see our lovely raft carried past the Ouseburn, over the Black Middens, through the great curve in the river and out into the distant shining sea.
WE MOVED QUICKLY THROUGH THE RUINS, over fences, between great heaps of rubble, past the smoldering remains of bonfires. I was already thinking of the next escape. We’d run away, the four of us together. We’d head for hidden, secret, forbidden places. No need to go far. The most marvelous of things could be found a few yards away, a river’s-width away. The most extraordinary things existed in our ordinary world and just waited for us to find them. I held tight to Heaven Eyes. Seagulls swooped over us with outstretched wings. They soared into our hearts and screamed of freedom. We moved uphill, away from the river, through the wasteland where all the terraces had been knocked down. This was where Mouse had practiced his digging, where he had prepared for his great discovery in the black Black Middens. We entered St. Gabriel’s. We moved past the house where Mum and I had lived. This was where I had grown inside her, where I had been born into our Paradise, where there had been a Salvation Army crib and fairies on the wall, bright flowers and fattening gooseberries in the garden, where there had been love and happiness that continued still and would continue ever more. Deep inside me, Mum sighed, whispered my name, shivered with delight. We hurried on. Brick and pebbledashed walls, red roofs, lampposts, street names, road signs, square gardens. Sunlight sparkled on the house windows. It bleached the pavements. It shimmered on the black roadway and turned it to a black and shining liquid thing leading us to Whitegates.
“That’s where we’re heading,” I told Heaven Eyes. “That building there with three floors and the metal fence around it and the faces at the window.”
Wilson Cairns was at the window, as if he’d been watching ever since we left. Skinny Stu was in the garden with a cigarette in his mouth and his ribs exposed to the sun, just as when we left.
“Oh, aye?” he said, as we stepped through the iron gate.
“Aye,” we answered.
“Nice picnic, then?”
“Lovely, Stu,” we said.
“And who might this be that you’re bringing in?”
“Heaven Eyes,” I said. “A sister.”
“Oh, aye?”
He spat and coughed and crushed his cigarette beneath his shoe and peered into the sky.
We stepped into Whitegates. Maureen was on the stairs. She gasped when she saw us. She clapped her hand across her mouth.
“Erin!” she said. “January, Sean! We’ve been so worried.”
Fingers Wyatt and Maxie Ross watched from the door of the poolroom. Fingers grinned at us, held up her hands in joy.
Maureen came down toward us. She reached out and I stepped back. She hugged Mouse. She watched me over his shoulder.
“So worried,” she said. “Did you not think about that?”
“Yes.”
“But not deeply enough. Anything could have happened to you. Anything. What are we going to do with you?”
“Don’t know.”
She moved away from Mouse. She stared at us.
“And who is this?”
“We brought her back with us. She’s got no family, no home.”
She regarded Heaven Eyes.
“And what is your name?”
“Go on,” I whispered.
Heaven turned her face toward my arm. She peeped out at Maureen.
“My name is Heaven Eyes. Or Anna.”
“And where are your mother and your father, Anna?”
Heaven drew in her breath in fright. She licked her lips.
“Go on,” I said.
“They is in my sleep thoughts and in my treasures. They is in my thoughts as bright as day.”
Maureen glanced at me.
“And where have you been living, Anna?”
“With my grampa cross the runny water.”
“And where is your grandfather now?”
Heaven Eyes blinked back tears, couldn’t answer.
Maureen moved closer to me.
“Who is she?”
“We don’t know.”
She took my hand.
“I dreamed of such awful things, Erin. Why do you feel you need to run from us?”
I looked into her eyes. I saw that she was yearning for an answer. She was yearning to hold me, to welcome me back as a daughter.
“I want to understand,” she said.
“We run for freedom,” I said. “Just for freedom.”
I turned away and left her standing there.
FINGERS HUGGED ME AS WE WENT into the poolroom. She jabbered our names. She said she’d been so scared that we were at the bottom of the river or the bottom of the sea.
“Yes!” we said together.
Fingers chewed her lips. Maxie watched in deep excitement. Others gathered around us and giggled. Fat Kev watched from a corner and scratched his belly.
“I knew,” said Fingers. “I’ve been dreaming you. Every night I’ve seen you rushing down the river. I’ve seen you miles and miles out at sea.”
She kept laughing, hugging us.
“What was it like?” she kept saying. “What was it like?”
She kept pausing, staring at Heaven Eyes, wondering.
“Fantastic,” I said. “The most exciting thing you’d ever know.”
“I knew,” she said. “I knew. I told you, Maxie, didn’t I?”
“She did,” said Maxie. “A raft. The river. The sea.”
“And how far did you go?” said Fingers.
We hesitated. It seemed nothing to simply say it: across the river, onto the Black Middens, up to Black Middens Quay, into the printing works, then home again.
I caught her arm. I gripped her tight.
“Into another world!” I whispered.
She caught her breath.
“No!”
“Yes. We only went across the river but it really was like being in another world.”
Fat Kev clicked his tongue. He sniggered.
I put my arm around Heaven Eyes. I held her at my side.
“And this is our friend who’s come back with us. Her name is Heaven Eyes or Anna. She has come to live with us. Heaven, this is Fingers. This is Maxie. These are all your friends.”
She raised her eyes shyly. She smiled shyly. She raised her hand shyly and the light from the windows poured through the webs and made them beautiful. Fingers stretched out and caught her hand.
“You’re beautiful,” she said.
“You also is beautiful,” said Heaven Eyes.
She touched the old scalds and burn marks on Fingers’ throat.
“You is been hurt,” she said. “But you is beautiful.”
She gazed more confidently around the room.
“Oh, Erin, my sister,” she said. “Oh, Erin Law, my sister.”
