Counting Stars
Page 14
So much more I wanted to say. So much more I wanted to cry out. But I became speechless. I could only hold her, feel her as happy and tiny as she always was, feel the life continuing to burn and sparkle in her.
“You see?” she said, and her voice was filled with delight. “You see? I’m all right. Everything’s all right.”
Then she was gone, suddenly, flying out into the light, and I knew there was no way to follow her.
“You see?” the angel whispered. “You see?”
“But how . . . ?” I said. “How?”
She pressed a finger to my lips.
“Come with me,” she said. “But never say a word.”
We moved forward, and the white fire burned even more brightly, so brightly that I had to close my eyes against it. When we stopped, she whispered, “Listen.”
I could hear nothing, only my own breathing and the beating of my heart.
“Listen.”
I started to ask what I should listen for, but then I heard it. Further into the fire, someone else was breathing. Long breaths in and long breaths out, filled with low groans, soft rattling and whistling sounds.
“Hear it?”
“Yes.”
She turned me away, and we went back, to where I could open my eyes again.
“What was it?” I asked.
“That was God, fast asleep. He’ll wake up soon. Hold on tight.”
Back we came through the pink and the black, and into my room’s darkness, where we came to rest. She giggled as Barbara had, and held me at arm’s length, preparing to leave.
“Don’t go,” I said.
“Everyone will wake up soon,” she said.
“When can I come back again?” I asked.
She touched my cheek and smiled and shook her head.
“One day,” she said. “When you have your wings again.”
And for the last time she stayed with me, and the white fire that did not burn spread far into me, making me understand how it feels to be angelic. Then she was gone, diminishing to a snowflake, disappearing into the dark. . . .
That day Mam did again what she so often did. She pulled my shoulders forward and kissed me.
“You’re the bright one this morning,” she said.
I laughed.
I let her slip her fingers beneath my shoulder blades.
“Where my wings were,” I said. “Where they’ll be again.”
She held me close.
“It’s true,” she said. “Even though you’re growing up so fast, you have to keep on knowing that it’s true.”
I reached up and for the first time slipped my fingers beneath her own shoulder blades.
“You as well,” I told her.
“Yes, me as well. All of us. Barbara, you, me, all of us. Everybody.”
And then we were silent, and we felt for a moment the fire within us burning, until Dad came in, and we giggled, imagining together the white feathers rising from his hairy back and beyond his balding head.
It was the first time I had asked Father O’Mahoney anything, and it was the first time he became angry.
“If we’re like this when we’re in God’s thoughts,” I said, “what are we like when we’re in His dreams?”
His hand struck the thin screen between us. He shouted at my blasphemy and gave me five decades of the rosary to say. I didn’t say them, though. I knew that God slept, that even angels weren’t always good, that I’d have my wings back one day, and that dreams were only dreams.
Acknowledgments
Some of these stories have been previously published or broadcast as follows:
“Behind the Billboards,” Northern Stories 7 (Arc Publications). “Buffalo Camel Llama Zebra Ass,” Edinburgh Review. “Chickens,” Sleepless Nights (Iron Press). “Counting the Stars,” Northern Stories 6 (Arc Publications); BBC Radio 4. “Jonadab,” Panurge. “Loosa Fine,” London Magazine. “My Mother’s Photographs,” The Echo Room Yearbook; BBC Radio Newcastle. “The Baby,” Critical Quarterly. “The Fusilier,” Iron. “The Middle of the World,” Pretext (EAS Publishing). “The Time Machine,” The Bridport Prize Anthology. “Where Your Wings Were,” BBC Radio 4; A Kind of Heaven (Iron Press).
The extracts on pages 101 and 102 from The Third Eye by T. Lobsang Rampa are used with kind permission from the estate of Sarah Anna Rampa.
Also by David Almond
SKELLIG
KIT’S WILDERNESS
HEAVEN EYES
Published by
Delacorte Press
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Random House Children’s Books
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New York, New York 10036
Text copyright © 2000 by David Almond
First American Edition 2002
First published in Great Britain by Hodder Children’s Books 2000
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Almond, David.
Counting stars / David Almond.—1st American ed.
p. cm.
Summary: In a series of interconnected stories, a boy describes his life
growing up in the English urban district of Felling
[1. City and town life—England—Felling. 2. Family life—England—Felling.
3. Felling (England)—Fiction. 4. England—fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.A448 Co 2002
[Fic]—dc21 2001032498
April 2002
eISBN: 978-0-375-89010-9
v3.0