Read Online Counting Stars by David Almond - Free Book Online
Authors: David Almond
Tags: Fiction
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me, breathes smoke into the air.
“It was in there, that’s the main thing, even if it’s unreadable now.”
I see many watching me, the boy who traveled in the Time Machine.
Outside, there is the man wrapped in chains with a hatful of money before him on the grass. He struggles and squirms before his little crowd.
Beneath the hawthorn we look up toward the cheeping chicks and I recall the shape of God.
Dad watches me and grins as we walk on.
“You enjoyed that, then?”
He laughs.
“Keep the secret, eh? Don’t forget.”
Next morning Dad takes the girls to Felling Shore. I linger at home. I rearrange the eggs in my shoeboxes. I open the boxes of eggs that Dad has kept since his own youth. I match the eggs of the past with the eggs of the present: starling with starling, blackbird with blackbird, larky with larky, wren with wren. I can find no differences between them. My mother watches me and asks about my sadness. The light pours down upon us. I want to ask her about the loss of one who was formed in her own body. I want to ask her about the emptiness and angels that are all around us. I want to ask her why eggs are taken from clutches of more than three.
We gaze at each other through the brilliant seething dust. She touches my cheek and smiles. We do not know that this is the year before my father dies.
They return midafternoon. They laugh about the House of Death with its ghosts and bats, the little camel that they rode across the shore on. They shudder at the man who pushed skewers through his cheeks. They say that Little Kitten knows the ages of us all. We nibble coconut flesh and sip its milk. Colin sits with us in his yellow shirt. He tells us that last night he rode the Waltzer far into the dark. He taps a fast rhythm on the table, recalling a frantic song.
Later I lie in the garden, in the glare. Dad works at the trellis and the borders and keeps watching me. Blackbirds fly into the hedges with food. I finger the dry soil, dream of a whole world slowly becoming dust, and shudder as the day begins to close.
At dusk I am by the garden gate. I want to be carried through time, back into the hawthorn tree, back to the first ever time I nested. I want to be carried to the distant nest when the dying is done and we all are reassembled. Dad stands beside me. His hand is at the small of my back, pressing me gently forward. He smiles as he sends me out on the errand that he knows is necessary but will be in vain. I move down through the gathering dark. I hear the distant grinding of gears and engines. By the time I come to the shore I know that the convoy has traveled on, that Morlock, Corinna and the Time Machine have gone. I stand beneath the hawthorn. I see other figures at the fringes of the field, and understand that I am just one of several disappointed shades gathered on Felling Shore this night.
Barbara’s Photographs
T HERE NEVER HAD BEEN MANY PHOTOGRAPHS of our sister Barbara. After she died, some well-meaning soul took away every photograph of her that existed. They have not been returned. Perhaps they have been destroyed.
I seem to remember one picture of her sitting in a wicker cradle on the dunes at Alnmouth. There is sand and marram grass around her, the sea beyond. Our mother’s legs, in shiny stockings and strong shoes, enter from the edge of the photograph, and we see the fringe of the blanket she is sitting on. Barbara stretches out from the cradle and laughs toward the photographer, who is probably our father. This image, however, is confused in my mind with a similar photograph of Mary, the sister who came after Barbara, in what is probably the same wicker cradle on the green beside the sea at South Shields. And even as I write these words, I begin to wonder whether this second photograph is also misremembered, and that it is Margaret, the youngest of us all, and not Mary, who reaches out from the cradle.
It was so long ago. We were all so young. Some of us were not even born.
“It was in there, that’s the main thing, even if it’s unreadable now.”
I see many watching me, the boy who traveled in the Time Machine.
Outside, there is the man wrapped in chains with a hatful of money before him on the grass. He struggles and squirms before his little crowd.
Beneath the hawthorn we look up toward the cheeping chicks and I recall the shape of God.
Dad watches me and grins as we walk on.
“You enjoyed that, then?”
He laughs.
“Keep the secret, eh? Don’t forget.”
Next morning Dad takes the girls to Felling Shore. I linger at home. I rearrange the eggs in my shoeboxes. I open the boxes of eggs that Dad has kept since his own youth. I match the eggs of the past with the eggs of the present: starling with starling, blackbird with blackbird, larky with larky, wren with wren. I can find no differences between them. My mother watches me and asks about my sadness. The light pours down upon us. I want to ask her about the loss of one who was formed in her own body. I want to ask her about the emptiness and angels that are all around us. I want to ask her why eggs are taken from clutches of more than three.
We gaze at each other through the brilliant seething dust. She touches my cheek and smiles. We do not know that this is the year before my father dies.
They return midafternoon. They laugh about the House of Death with its ghosts and bats, the little camel that they rode across the shore on. They shudder at the man who pushed skewers through his cheeks. They say that Little Kitten knows the ages of us all. We nibble coconut flesh and sip its milk. Colin sits with us in his yellow shirt. He tells us that last night he rode the Waltzer far into the dark. He taps a fast rhythm on the table, recalling a frantic song.
Later I lie in the garden, in the glare. Dad works at the trellis and the borders and keeps watching me. Blackbirds fly into the hedges with food. I finger the dry soil, dream of a whole world slowly becoming dust, and shudder as the day begins to close.
At dusk I am by the garden gate. I want to be carried through time, back into the hawthorn tree, back to the first ever time I nested. I want to be carried to the distant nest when the dying is done and we all are reassembled. Dad stands beside me. His hand is at the small of my back, pressing me gently forward. He smiles as he sends me out on the errand that he knows is necessary but will be in vain. I move down through the gathering dark. I hear the distant grinding of gears and engines. By the time I come to the shore I know that the convoy has traveled on, that Morlock, Corinna and the Time Machine have gone. I stand beneath the hawthorn. I see other figures at the fringes of the field, and understand that I am just one of several disappointed shades gathered on Felling Shore this night.
Barbara’s Photographs
T HERE NEVER HAD BEEN MANY PHOTOGRAPHS of our sister Barbara. After she died, some well-meaning soul took away every photograph of her that existed. They have not been returned. Perhaps they have been destroyed.
I seem to remember one picture of her sitting in a wicker cradle on the dunes at Alnmouth. There is sand and marram grass around her, the sea beyond. Our mother’s legs, in shiny stockings and strong shoes, enter from the edge of the photograph, and we see the fringe of the blanket she is sitting on. Barbara stretches out from the cradle and laughs toward the photographer, who is probably our father. This image, however, is confused in my mind with a similar photograph of Mary, the sister who came after Barbara, in what is probably the same wicker cradle on the green beside the sea at South Shields. And even as I write these words, I begin to wonder whether this second photograph is also misremembered, and that it is Margaret, the youngest of us all, and not Mary, who reaches out from the cradle.
It was so long ago. We were all so young. Some of us were not even born.
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