Counting Stars by David Almond Read Free Book Online

down at him, touched him, his skin so smooth, so tender. I folded the cloth over him.
    “There you are,” I whispered, and placed him in the earth.
    I pushed the soil back and pressed the turf back into place and prayed again that my deeds on Earth might influence events in Heaven. I threw the jar and the box into the wilderness.
    I hurried back down through the dusk.
    In my room, I put my schoolwork aside. I still felt the weight and shape of the baby on my skin. As it faded, I began again to write the story of the nurse, the soldier and the baby in the jar.

The Angel of Chilside Road
    T HIS ROAD IS NARROW and tall trees grow from its verges. It leads upward from Heworth and Watermill Lane. It comes to a broad sloping field which in those days led to the colliery and then the Heather Hills and then the open sky.
    The week after our sister Barbara died she was seen walking hand in hand with Mam on this road toward the field. She was dressed in white and both she and Mam walked with a fluency which neither had in their lives, for Barbara had been an invalid child and Mam was already badly damaged by arthritis. It was late winter. They were beneath the trees. A light was burning from our sister and both of them were smiling.
    At that time we lived at the dark foot of Felling in a new neighborhood of gray pebble-dashed houses, called The Grange. We had moved there from our parents’ first home in Felling Square, a cold upstairs flat overrun with mice, which had been condemned. Our house was in a cul-de-sac, Thirlmere, which was entered from a long looped road called Coniston. This neighborhood was separated from the body of the town by the new bypass. From the garden at Thirlmere it was possible to stand on tiptoe and peer over the rooftops to the distant center of the town, the streets and parks, the playing fields, the Heather Hills, but there was no easy access to those places. It was in the house at Thirlmere that Barbara died.
    After she died, we soon began to move upward again. We returned to Felling Square, to the new flats that replaced those that had been demolished. Then higher, to Coldwell Park, where we stayed, close to Chilside Road. If our father had not died, it’s probable we would have ascended again, perhaps to the new houses built beyond the fields once the colliery had gone.
    Perhaps in our dreams we will always move closer to the sky, following the angel that was seen on Chilside Road that day.
    The angel was seen by Mary Byrne, mother of Michael, and resident of Watermill Lane. She gave her account to our mother, to whom it brought much comfort, who told our sister Catherine, who told it to us all.

The Time Machine
    F ELLING S HORE, EARLY M AY, the year before my father dies. The first time I’ve nested in years. I’m in an ancient hawthorn, with a hedge sparrow’s egg in my mouth. I hear birdsong, the endless din of the distant city, then a grinding of gears and engines, the crunch of wheels on damaged roads. I step higher onto a thin bough, and pull aside the tangled leaves. I see caravans and lorries coming down through the terraced streets, mounting the broken curbs onto the waste ground, entering this broad field above the Tyne. The tree that holds me quivers as I grip it tighter. Its thorns pierce my skin. I see the Waltzer and the House of Death. A sheep, a goat and a little camel lie in the same cage. I slip, the egg bursts on my tongue. I gag and spit. Salt and slime in my mouth. The shell ineffably fine. The ruined egg dangles from my lips. I grip a new branch, rebalance, stare out again. Through the hawthorn blossom I see the Time Machine return to Felling Shore.
    I climb down, squat in the shade of the tree. The convoy comes to rest. Children and dogs leap from its doors to the field. I spit and spit, wipe my mouth with my sleeve. Blood trickles from my hands. A group of the children come. A little girl in a short frock with an Alsatian at her side points at me, then at the old shoebox