Heaven Eyes

by David Almond

  “They is still as still,” she said. “And little Heaven Eyes is all alone and this world is big as big as big as big.”

  I held her tight as the secrets entered her, as the story deepened in her.

  “I am your sister,” I said. “These are your brothers. We love you. We love you.”

  She leaned against me.

  “Mouth no more, my brother,” she said. “Mouth no more till this night is bright as day.”

  WE SLEPT, THE FOUR OF US sitting there in the moonlight beneath the window. It seemed like a dream when Maureen tapped at the door and stepped shyly into the room. She stood in a long blue dressing gown. Her feet were bare. Her face was pale as the moon.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “Couldn’t sleep …”

  I stared at her. January stared at her. She hesitated in the doorway.

  “I worried about you all,” she said. “I … I thought you’d all gone off again. …”

  Her voice faltered. She flicked at her eyes with her fingers. She crouched in front of us. She reached out and took Heaven’s hand. Leave her alone! I wanted to say. But I saw Heaven’s hand close gently around Maureen’s.

  “We will find you,” Maureen whispered. “We’ll search the records of missing children and we’ll find someone like you.”

  She delicately touched the webs on Heaven’s fingers. Her breath quivered.

  “Who do you think you are?” she said.

  “My name is Anna May.”

  “Anna May?”

  “Anna May. There is other things, but they come slow as slow as slow.”

  “We know other things,” said January. “But they’re things for Heaven Eyes to know. Mebbe she’ll tell you one day. Okay?”

  He tilted his head to one side.

  “Okay?” he said.

  “Okay,” she said.

  Go on, I wanted to say. Go on. Get out!

  As if she had heard me, she said softly, “Erin. Please don’t.”

  She stayed there, crouching before Heaven Eyes, like she was wanting something, waiting for something.

  Heaven Eyes touched Maureen’s face.

  “Where is your little girl?” she asked.

  Maureen stared.

  “My little girl?”

  “Yes. The mum of Erin had a little girl. The mum of Heaven Eyes had a little girl. Where is the little girl that was in Maureen?”

  The tears shone in Maureen’s eyes and reflected the moon.

  “There is no little girl,” she said.

  Heaven pondered this.

  “Then Maureen is the little girl. So where is the mum of Maureen?”

  The tears dripped and shone.

  “There is no mum,” said Maureen.

  “Still as still?” said Heaven Eyes.

  “Still as still. Still as still.”

  The webbed fingers stroked Maureen’s cheeks, they wiped away the tears. I looked across at Jan. We rolled our eyes in scorn, then in wonder.

  “You is lovely,” said Heaven Eyes. “You is lovely, Maureen.”

  WE DRIFTED IN AND OUT OF SLEEP and dreams. I felt the lovely rocking of the river, the lovely spinning of the raft. In deepest sleep I went down into the blackness of the Middens and lay there with my mum and many saints. I swam with shoals of fish, with frogs. I kicked my arms and legs and heard Mum singing to me and felt her hands pressing in on me. I flew in and out of rooms with little curious birds and flew into the night again and headed for my nest. I spread my hands like Heaven Eyes and held their webs up to the sun and moon. I felt the hands of Wilson Cairns supporting me, felt his breath on me, felt him urging me to move, to walk across a little table while fascinated children gathered all around. I felt the heart beating in me, the spirit shivering with life and love in me. I heard my whispered name, “Erin. Erin. Erin.” Opened my eyes.

  “Erin,” Jan whispered.

  “What is it?”

  “Nothing. Just need to move. Need you to come with me.”

  “What is it, Jan?”

  “Please, Erin.”

  We left the room, tiptoed down through the house. It was soon after dawn. The sun was burning low in the east. We went out across the concrete, through the iron gate, into the streets. Sparrows dashed across the sky. There were pigeons and crows, seagulls wheeling and screaming high above. We passed the little house, the beaten garden, the scratched door. Came to the wasteland. Sunlight gleamed on the arch of the greatest bridge. The city’s low rumble as its day began. Its roofs, its spires, its curving steep streets and tumbling steps and alleyways, its brick and steel and stone. Its jagged silhouette. The distant moors bulging in the east. Sky brightening, brightening, brightening. The scents of petrol, seaweed, sea, fish, rot, flowers, dust. Mysterious river glowing like beaten metal above its deep dark bed and below the endless sky. River heaving through the city, over the black Black Middens, rushing down toward the sea. River rushing past new pubs and clubs and offices, past ancient warehouses, ruined quays, huge cranes, construction sites. Mysterious river rushing through the present and the past and surging to the future. We sat on a pile of bricks and rubble and gazed out at it all.

  “What is it, Jan?” I said.

  “Dreams. Just dreams. Cardboard boxes and hospitals and stormy nights. But stronger than before.”

  He shuddered.

  “Scary,” he said.

  “Scary.”

  For a moment I trembled with my own scary dreams.

  “Jan,” I said. “Is it awful being us?”

  “Dunno,” he said. “What’s it like being anybody? But aye, sometimes it’s awful. Sometimes it’s the worst thing in the world.”

  “Let’s run away,” I said. “Let’s go tomorrow. Today.”

  “Aye.”

  “Where to?”

  “The moors?”

  “Aye, the moors. Just imagine it, eh?”

  We stared at the moors and dreamed ourselves there, striding through bracken, skipping over little streams, lying beneath the sun on soft green turf, surrounded by the calls of curlews and the scent of peat.

  “Wow!” I said.

  “Wow! Wow!”

  We giggled.

  “Jan,” I said. “Think we’ll always run away?”

  “Dunno. Till we’re older, mebbe. Mebbe till there’s kids of our own we want to care for.”

  For an instant I saw it, me and Jan together years in the future with little kids beside us. Just for an instant, just a glimpse. I didn’t speak it, but I thought that maybe Jan had glimpsed it, too.

  “Might be awful,” I said. “But I love it just the same.”

  “Love what?”

  “Being alive, being me, in this world, here and now.”

  He grinned.

  “It’s bloody great, eh?” he said. “Bloody great.”

  We stood up and wandered across the wasteland toward St. Gabriel’s. The sun continued rising. Jan held my arm, stopped me. He turned and peered back to where we’d come from.

  “What’s up?” I said.

  “Dunno. Nothing.”

  We walked on and he kept turning, turning.

  “We’re not asleep?” he said.

  “We’re not asleep.”

  “So why do the dreams keep on coming, Erin?”

  WHITEGATES. The iron gate, the concrete garden. Wilson stared from the window, like he stared past us, through us, to something a million miles away. January kept on turning as we walked toward it, as we entered the gate, as we drifted to the door. He looked back like there was something following us, tracking us, seeking us. We went inside. Deep silence. We sat in the poolroom behind Wilson. Dust seethed and glittered in the sunlight that poured through the windows. January became dead calm. He held my hand.

  I peered into his eyes.

  “What is it?”

  “Just stay with me,” he said. “Stay beside me, Erin.”

  Then footsteps upstairs, above our heads. I turned and saw Heaven Eyes and Mouse coming down together. Heaven raised her
hand and beamed at me. Mouse yawned, rubbed his eyes. Maureen came behind them in her dressing gown and bare feet, her hair hanging loose and tangled. She stood in the doorway as Mouse and Heaven came to us. We watched each other. Our eyes were wary, suspicious, but I knew that we had begun to move closer to each other. I knew that our story had begun to change. I sighed and thought of Mum and I felt her smiling.

  “Janry Carr,” said Heaven Eyes. “My brother. You is far as far away?”

  He gazed at her from his dream.

  “Janry Carr is good as good,” she said. “Strong as strong.”

  She sat on the floor with Mouse. They played with Squeak. Deep inside, Mum sang to me.

  A deep sigh from Wilson Cairns. Then another. January went to the window and stood beside him. I went to his shoulder. He reached back and took my hand and drew me to his side.

  “Erin,” he breathed.

  We watched the pale houses, the shimmering roadways, the green gardens, the red rooftops, the birds flickering and wheeling across the great sky. We watched in silence and we waited.

  She must have come across the wasteland above the river, past the little house and garden. She came into sight, stood at the junction of two streets. She wore blue jeans and a black leather jacket and carried a big red backpack, as if she’d come back from some adventure. She looked about her until she saw Whitegates. She watched it for a time. Her fair hair lifted in the breeze and blew about her face. She looked back to where she’d come from and seemed about to go back again, but she came onward. She was still hesitant, still kept looking back, but then she straightened her shoulders and shook her head so that her hair swung and we saw her earrings glittering. She walked more quickly, more purposefully. The black road at her feet shone like liquid and her feet seemed to step in and out of liquid, over liquid. Closer to, as she approached the iron gate, we saw her red lipstick, pale lined face, troubled bright eyes. Her clothes were dusty. A ripped knee in her jeans. A tear in her jacket. We saw how scared she was, how worn she was, but we saw how right January had been. She was beautiful. She stepped into the concrete garden. She saw us at the window, and hesitated again in fear and trepidation.

  “Oh, Erin!” whispered Jan.

  “Keep watching,” murmured Wilson Cairns.

  No trembling in January’s hands, no quiver in his breath, just a deep deep silence in him as she came on again and entered Whitegates. I walked with him from the window. Heaven watched with her lovely eyes that saw through all the trouble in the world to the heaven that lies beneath. She touched January with her webbed fingers as he passed.

  She stood there, in the hallway.

  How did they know each other? Ancient dreams. Images from a stormy winter’s night. Love. They watched each other.

  “I knew you’d come,” said Jan.

  She raised her hands to her cheeks and stared across them.

  “I waited for you,” he whispered.

  I tried to leave him there but he held me tight.

  “It’s all right,” he said. “I know you’ve always loved me. I always knew you’d come back for me.”

  “What’s your name?”

  He caught his breath.

  “I don’t know.” He let me go. “Tell me what my name is.”

  They moved across the little hall toward each other and I turned away.

  I sat with Heaven Eyes and held her hand. Mouse sat at our side and played with Squeak. Wilson worked his clay. Soon Fingers and Maxie and the others would come down to us. Outside, the day intensified.

  “Was the mum of Janry Carr,” said Heaven Eyes.

  “Yes. That’s right. The mum of January Carr.”

  “Is a lovely mum.”

  “Yes.”

  We sighed and smiled. She wriggled against me. “Tell the tale of Janry Carr,” she whispered.

  “Oh, it’s a wintry stormy tale,” I said.

  “You’ll tell it?”

  “Yes, Heaven Eyes. One day I’ll tell you the tale.”

  ONCE UPON A TIME, when my story started, I was a tiny thing, an invisible thing, the tiniest thing in the whole wide world. I was hidden deep down in the dark inside my mum. We were in a cheap bed-and-breakfast place above the quay. My mum was beautiful, with brilliant green eyes and red hair that grew like fire around her lovely face. My dad was a sailor from a foreign trawler that had come upriver to shelter from a storm at sea. As she watched him sail away from us, my mum already felt me trembling with life inside her. She took me to a little house in St. Gabriel’s. I turned into the fishy froggy thing that kicked and swam inside her. She sang to me and whispered to me. She bought a Salvation Army crib and put pictures on the walls and prepared a Paradise for me. We lived in that Paradise for a few short years, and then she died. It could have been a sad sad tale. All stories could be sad sad tales: the stories of my friends, January Carr, Mouse Gullane, Anna May, Wilson Cairns, and of all the others. But they are not sad tales. We have each other, and our stories mix and mingle like the twisting currents of a river. We hold each other tight as we spin and lurch across our lives. There are moments of great joy and magic. The most astounding things can lie waiting as each day dawns, as each page turns. When I turned away from January that morning and went back into the poolroom, I knew that one story was ended. It was the story of what happened when we sailed away from Whitegates, of how we met Heaven Eyes on the black Black Middens and brought her home with us. There are endings of a kind: January Carr now lives with his mum in St. Gabriel’s and he is called Gabriel Jones; Maureen tells us we are beautiful and brave and she tries to believe it; Heaven Eyes lives here with us, and we call her Anna May. We slowly slowly tell her the few things that can be known about her life. We hold her hands and tell her about the lovely family lost at sea. We have begun to decipher Grampa’s books, to disentangle his strange tale from lists of discoveries in the Black Middens, from the drawings and maps and sketches that pack the margins. The black writing takes us back and back, back to a time when the printing works was filled with work and noise, when great ships steamed on the river and men in overalls packed the quays. Their story flows into the tale of Heaven Eyes, who was lifted by a caretaker from the Black Middens on a moony night, then into the tale of three creatures who might have been angels, might have been devils, but were probably something in between. Like all stories, it has no true end. It goes on and on and mingles with all the other stories in the world. This has just been our part of it. You might not believe it. But everything is true.

  DAVID ALMOND’S debut novel, Skellig, was a Printz Honor Book, an ALA Notable Book, and a New York Times, Publishers Weekly, Booklist, and School Library Journal Best Book of the Year. In England, it also was the Whitbread Children’s Book of the Year and won the Carnegie Medal. Kit’s Wilderness, his second novel, was a runner-up for the Carnegie Medal and won a Smarties Silver Award. Heaven Eyes is David Almond’s third novel for children.

  I grew up in a big family in a small steep town overlooking the River Tyne. It was a place of ancient coal mines, dark terraced streets, strange shops, new estates and wild heather hills. Our lives were filled with mysterious and unexpected events, and the place and its people have given me many of my stories. I always wanted to be a writer, though I told very few people until I was “grown up.” I write for adults as well as children. I’ve been a postman, a brush salesman, an editor and a teacher. I’ve lived by the North Sea, in inner Manchester, and in a Suffolk farmhouse, and I wrote my first stories in a remote and dilapidated Norfolk mansion.

  Writing can be difficult, but sometimes it really does feel like a kind of magic. I think that stories are like living things—among the most important things in the world.

  Though each of the children in Heaven Eyes is an orphan, Almond develops a strong sense of family throughout the novel. What role does family play in the story? According to the novel, what does it take to become a family?

  Names and the ability to be renamed are very important to the characters. Discuss
the significance of each character’s name for his or her role in the novel. What does it mean when someone is renamed? How does it change that person’s character? What happens when Heaven Eyes discovers her true name?

  Heaven Eyes constantly reveals her sleep thoughts to Erin and explains that they are separate from her waking thoughts. Is this true? How do the sleep thoughts of Heaven Eyes and the other characters relate to their waking lives? What happens when the two realms collide?

  Discuss the role of death in the novel. How does death affect each of the characters? How does the children’s perception of death change from the beginning of the novel to the end? What influence do Heaven Eyes and Grampa have on that perception?

  Erin and January set out in search of freedom and decide to bring Mouse along when they find him scavenging the earth for “real treasure.” Do you think January and Erin are looking only for freedom? How does their search change when they reach the Black Middens? What treasures do they find when they meet Heaven Eyes and Grampa? What do those treasures come to mean to them?

  Contrast the reactions of Erin and January when they first meet Heaven Eyes. Why do you think they react so differently to her?

  How are light and dark important in the novel? Who is associated with the light and who with the dark? Why do you think this is so?

  The two living adult characters in the novel have different ways of relating to the past. Grampa chooses to shroud the past in secrecy, while Maureen continually asks the children in her care to reveal their memories. How do the children respond to the adults’ ways of dealing with the past? What effect do the secrets and revelations have on the children? How do the children choose to deal with the past on their own? How does it affect their self-knowledge?

  As they set out to return to Whitegates, Erin notes, “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.” How is this statement reflected throughout the novel? How does this view of the world vary from one that Erin and January might have expressed at the beginning of the novel?