Neil Gaiman Young Readers' Collection

by Neil Gaiman

  One pale, plump figure waited in front of the open gate, and she smiled up at him as he came towards her, and there were tears in her eyes in the moonlight.

  “Hullo, Mother,” said Bod.

  Mistress Owens rubbed her eyes with a knuckle, then dabbed at them with her apron, and she shook her head. “Do you know what you’re going to do now?” she asked.

  “See the world,” said Bod. “Get into trouble. Get out of trouble again. Visit jungles and volcanoes and deserts and islands. And people. I want to meet an awful lot of people.”

  Mistress Owens made no immediate reply. She stared up at him, and then she began to sing a song that Bod remembered, a song she used to sing him when he was a tiny thing, a song that she had used to lull him to sleep when he was small.

  “Sleep my little babby-oh

  Sleep until you waken

  When you wake you’ll see the world

  If I’m not mistaken…”

  “You’re not,” whispered Bod. “And I shall.”

  “Kiss a lover

  Dance a measure,

  Find your name

  And buried treasure…”

  Then the last lines of the song came back to Mistress Owens, and she sang them to her son.

  “Face your life

  Its pain, its pleasure,

  Leave no path untaken”

  “Leave no path untaken,” repeated Bod. “A difficult challenge, but I can try my best.”

  He tried to put his arms around his mother then, as he had when he was a child, although he might as well have been trying to hold mist, for he was alone on the path.

  He took a step forward, through the gate that took him out of the graveyard. He thought a voice said, “I am so proud of you, my son,” but he might, perhaps, have imagined it.

  The midsummer sky was already beginning to lighten in the east, and that was the way that Bod began to walk: down the hill, towards the living people, and the city, and the dawn.

  There was a passport in his bag, money in his pocket. There was a smile dancing on his lips, although it was a wary smile, for the world is a bigger place than a little graveyard on a hill; and there would be dangers in it and mysteries, new friends to make, old friends to rediscover, mistakes to be made and many paths to be walked before he would, finally, return to the graveyard or ride with the Lady on the broad back of her great grey stallion.

  But between now and then, there was Life; and Bod walked into it with his eyes and his heart wide open.

  Acknowledgments

  First, foremost, and forever: I owe an enormous debt, conscious and, I have no doubt, unconscious, to Rudyard Kipling and the two volumes of his remarkable work The Jungle Book. I read them as a child, excited and impressed, and I’ve read and reread them many times since. If you are only familiar with the Disney cartoon, you should read the stories.

  My son Michael inspired this book. He was only two years old, riding his little tricycle between gravestones in the summer, and I had a book in my head. Then it just took me twenty-something years to write it.

  When I started writing the book (I started with Chapter Four), only my daughter Maddy’s request to know what happened next kept me writing beyond the first couple of pages.

  Gardner Dozois and Jack Dann were the first people to publish “The Witch’s Headstone.” Professor Georgia Grilli talked about what this book was without having read it, and listening to her talk helped throw the themes into focus.

  Kendra Stout was there when I saw the first ghoul gate, and was kind enough to walk through several graveyards with me. She was the first audience for the first chapters, and her love for Silas was awesome.

  Artist and author Audrey Niffenegger is also a graveyard guide, and she showed me around the ivy-covered marvel that is Highgate Cemetery West. A lot of what she told me crept into Chapters Six and Seven.

  Many friends read this book as it was being written, and all of them offered wise suggestions—Dan Johnson, Gary K. Wolfe, John Crowley, Moby, Farah Mendlesohn, and Joe Sanders, among others. They spotted things I needed to fix. Still, I missed John M. Ford (1957–2006), who was my best critic of all.

  Isabel Ford, Elise Howard, Sarah Odedina, and Clarissa Hutton were the book’s editors on both sides of the Atlantic. They made me look good. Michael Conroy directed the audio-book version with aplomb. Mr. McKean and Mr. Riddell both drew wonderfully, and differently. Merrilee Heifetz is the best agent in the world, and Dorie Simmonds made it happen excellently in the UK.

  I wrote this book in many places: among other places, Jonathan and Jane’s Florida house, a cottage in Cornwall, a hotel room in New Orleans; and I failed to write in Tori’s house in Ireland because I had flu there instead. But she helped and inspired me, nonetheless.

  And as I finish these thanks, the only thing I’m certain of is that I have forgotten not just one very important person but dozens of them. Sorry. But thank you all anyway.

  —Neil Gaiman

  I said

  she’s gone

  but I’m alive, I’m alive

  I’m coming in the graveyard

  to sing you to sleep now

  —Tori Amos, “GRAVEYARD”

  Credits

  Cover art © 2008 by Dave McKean

  Copyright

  THE GRAVEYARD BOOK. Text Copyright © 2008 by Neil Gaiman. Illustrations Copyright © 2008 by Dave McKean. “Graveyard” lyrics by Tori Amos, copyright © 2001, used by permission, courtesy of Sword & Stone, Inc (ASCAP). All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text 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 hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  EPub Edition © October 2009 ISBN 9780061972652

  Version 09062013

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Dedication

  For my late father, David, who would have told the tale with delight, and for my son, Michael, who would never have believed a word of it.

  With love.

  —N.G.

  For my dad, who was a teller of stories and a maker of laughs. I miss you like crazy.

  —S.Y.

  Contents

  Dedication

  Begin Reading

  About the Illustrator

  Credits

  Copyright

  Begin Reading

  There was only orange juice in the fridge. Nothing else that you could put on cereal, unless you think that ketchup or mayonnaise or pickle juice would be nice on your Toastios, which I do not, and neither did my little sister, although she has eaten some pretty weird things in her day, like mushrooms in chocolate.*

  “No milk,” said my sister.

  “Nope,” I said, looking behind the jam in the fridge, just in case. “None at all.”

  Our mum had gone off to a conference. She was presenting a paper on lizards. Before she went, she reminded us of the important things that had to happen while she was away.

  My dad was reading the paper. I do not think he pays a lot of attention to the world while he is reading his paper.

  “Did you hear me?” asked my mum, who is suspicious. “What did I say?”

  “Do not forget to take the kids to Orchestra Practice on Saturday; it’s Violin on Wednesday night; you’ve frozen a dinner for each night you’re away and labeled them; the spare house-key is with the Nicolsons; the plumber will be here on Monday morning and do not use or flush the upstairs toilet until he’s been; feed the goldfish; you love us and you’ll be back on Thursday,” said my father.

  I think my mum was surprised. “Yes, that’s right,” she said. She kissed us all. Then she said, “Oh, and we’re almost out of milk. You
’ll need to pick some up.”

  After she went away, my dad had a cup of tea. There was still some milk left.

  We defrosted Meal Number One, but we made a bit of a mess of things, so we went to the Indian restaurant. Before we went to sleep, Dad made us mugs of hot chocolate to make up for the whole Missing of Mum.

  That was last night.

  Now Dad came in. “Eat your cereal,” he said. “Remember, it’s Orchestra Practice this afternoon.”

  “We can’t eat our cereal,” said my sister, sadly.

  “I don’t see why not,” said my father. “We’ve got plenty of cereal. There’s Toastios and there’s muesli. We have bowls. We have spoons. Spoons are excellent. Sort of like forks, only not as stabby.”

  “No milk,” I said.

  “No milk,” said my sister.

  I watched my dad think about this. He looked like he was going to suggest that we have something for breakfast that you do not need milk for, like sausages, but then he looked like he remembered that, without milk, he couldn’t have his tea. He had his “no tea” face.

  “You poor children,” he said. “I will walk down to the shop on the corner. I will get milk.”

  “Thank you,” said my sister.

  “Not the fat-free kind,” I told him. “That stuff tastes like water.”

  “Right,” said my dad. “Not the fat-free kind.”

  He went out.

  I poured some Toastios into a bowl. I stared at them.

  I waited.

  “How long has he been?” asked my sister.

  “Ages,” I said.

  “I thought so,” said my little sister.

  We drank orange juice. My sister practiced her violin. I suggested that she stop playing her violin, and she did.

  My sister made faces at me.

  “How long has it been now?” she asked.

  “Ages and ages,” I told her.

  “What happens if he never comes back?” she asked.

  “I suppose we eat the pickles,” I said.

  “You can’t eat pickles for breakfast,” said my sister. “And I don’t like pickles at any time. What if something awful has happened to him? Mum would blame us.”

  “I expect he just ran into one of his friends at the corner shop,” I said, “and they got talking and he lost track of time.”

  I ate a dry Toastio as an experiment. It was sort of okay, but not as good as in milk.

  There was a thump and a bang at the front door, and my father came in.

  “Where have you been all this time?” asked my sister.

  “Ah,” said my father. “Um. Yes. Well, funny you should ask me that.”

  “You ran into someone you knew,” I said, “and you lost track of time.”

  “I bought the milk,” said my father. “And I did indeed say a brief hello to Mister Ronson from over the road, who was buying a paper. I walked out of the corner shop, and heard something odd that seemed to be coming from above me. It was a noise like this: thummthumm. I looked up and saw a huge silver disc hovering in the air above Marshall Road.”

  “Hullo,” I said to myself. “That’s not something you see every day. And then something odd happened.”

  “That wasn’t odd?” I asked.

  “Well, something ODDER,” said my father. “The odd thing was the beam of light that came out of the disc—a glittery, shimmery beam of light that was visible even in the daylight. And the next thing I knew, I was being sucked up into the disc. Fortunately, I had put the milk into my coat pocket.

  “The deck of the disc was metal. It was as big as a playing field, or BIGGER.”

  “We have come to your planet from a world very far away,” said the people in the disc.

  I call them people, but they were a bit green and rather globby and they looked very grumpy indeed.

  “Now, as a representative of your species, we demand that you give us ownership of the whole planet. We are going to remodel it.”

  “I jolly well won’t,” I said.

  “Then,” it said, “we will bring all your enemies here and have them make you miserable until you agree to sign the planet over to us.”

  I was going to point out to them that I didn’t have any enemies when I noticed a large metal door with

  EMERGENCY EXIT

  DO NOT OPEN FOR ANY REASON

  THIS MEANS YOU!

  on it. I opened the door.

  “Don’t do that,” said a green, globby person. “You’ll let the space-time continuum in.”

  But it was too late; I had already pushed open the door.

  I JUMPED.

  I was FALLING.

  Fortunately, I had kept tight hold of the milk, so when I splashed into the sea I didn’t lose it.

  “What was that?” said a woman’s voice. “A big fish? A mermaid? Or was it a spy?”

  I wanted to say that I wasn’t any of those things, but my mouth was full of seawater. I felt myself being hauled up onto the deck of a little ship. There were a number of men and a woman on the deck, and they all looked very cross.

  “Who be ye, landlubber?” said the woman, who had a big hat on her head and a parrot on her shoulder.

  “He’s a spy! A walrus in a coat! A new kind of mermaid with legs!” said the men.

  “What are you doing here?” asked the woman.

  “Well,” I said. “I just set out to the corner shop for some milk for my children’s breakfast and for my tea, and the next thing I knew—”

  “He’s lying, Your Majesty!”

  She pulled out her cutlass. “You dare lie to the Queen of the Pirates?”

  Fortunately, I had kept tight hold of the milk, and now I pointed to it.

  “If I did not go to the corner shop to fetch the milk,” I asked them, “then where did this milk come from?”

  At this, the pirates were completely speechless. “Now,” I said, “if you could let me off somewhere near to my destination, I would be much obliged to you.”

  “And where would that happen to be?” said the Queen of the Pirates.

  “On the corner of Marshall Road and Fletcher Lane,” I said. “My children are waiting there for their breakfast.”

  “You’re on a pirate ship now, my fine bucko,” said the Pirate Queen. “And you don’t get dropped off anywhere. There are only two choices—you can join my pirate crew, or refuse to join and we will slit your cowardly throat and you will go to the bottom of the sea, where you will feed the fishes.”

  “What about walking the plank?” I asked.

  “NEVER heard of it!” said the pirates.

  “Walking the plank!” I said. “It’s what proper pirates do! Look, I’ll show you. Do you have a plank anywhere?”

  It took some looking, but we found a plank, and I showed the pirates where to put it. We discussed nailing it down, but the Pirate Queen decided it was safer just to have the two fattest pirates sit on the end of it.

  “Why exactly do you want to walk the plank?” asked the Pirate Queen.

  I edged out onto the plank. The blue Caribbean water splashed gently beneath me.

  “Well,” I said, “I’ve seen lots of stories with pirates in them, and it seems to me that if I’m going to be rescued—”

  At this, the pirates started to laugh so hard their stomachs wobbled, and the parrot took off into the air in amazement. “Rescue?” they said. “There’s no rescue out here. We’re in the middle of the sea.”

  “Nevertheless,” I told them. “If you are going to be rescued, it will always be while walking the plank.”

  “Which we don’t do,” said the Pirate Queen. “Here. Have a SPANISH DOUBLOON and come and join us in our piratical adventures. It’s the eighteenth century,” she added, “and there’s always room for a bright, enthusiastic pirate.”

  I caught the doubloon. “I almost wish that I could,” I told her. “But I have children. And they need their breakfast.”

  “Then you must die!

  Walk the plank!”


  I edged out to the end of the plank. Sharks were circling. So were piranhas—

  And this was where

  I interrupted my dad for

  THE FIRST TIME.

  “Hang on,” I said. “Piranhas are a freshwater fish. What were they doing in the sea?”

  “You’re right,” said my father. “The piranhas were later. Right. So . . .”

  I was out at the end of the plank, facing certain death, when a rope ladder hit my shoulder and a deep, booming voice shouted,

  “QUICKLY! CLIMB UP THE ROPE LADDER!”

  I needed no more encouragement than this, and I grabbed the rope ladder with both hands. Fortunately, the milk was pushed deep into the pocket of my coat. The pirates hurled insults at me, and even discharged pistols, but neither insults nor pistol-shot found their targets and I soon made it to the top of the rope ladder.

  I’d never been in the basket of a hot air balloon before. It was very peaceful up there.

  The person in the balloon basket said, “I hope you don’t mind me helping, but it looked like you were having problems down there.”

  I said, “You’re a stegosaurus!”

  “I am an inventor,” he said. “I have invented the thing we are traveling in, which I call Professor Steg’s Floaty-Ball-Person-Carrier.”

  “I call it a balloon,” I said.

  “Professor Steg’s Floaty-Ball-Person-Carrier is the original name,” he said. “And right now we are one hundred and fifty million years in the future.”