Heaven Eyes by David Almond Read Free Book Online Page B

I breathed. “Everything is true. She was a little woman with red hair that grew like fire around her face and with brilliant green eyes … I had a Salvation Army crib and pictures on the walls. We lived in that Paradise for ten short years….”
    He went on writing: tiny words straggling over the wide page while black dust crumbled and fell from his fingers and hair.
    “Mum,” I whispered. “Look, Mum.”
    I felt her hand on my shoulder, her breath on my face. She whispered my name. She whispered the black words of our story, reading it back to me as soon as I had told it.
    “Everything is true,” I whispered.
    “Evrythin is trew,” he wrote.
    Then his hand stopped and he turned his eyes to me. “What you digging and searching for?”
    “Nothing,” I said. “Nothing.”
    “Why you come here?”
    “We were washed up on the Middens.”
    “There is secrets,” he whispered.
    His voice was harsh and threatening. He took out a key from his pocket. He opened the desk drawer and took out a carving knife. He held the blade before his face and he stared at me.
    “Touch her and you is dead,” he hissed.
    “What?”
    “And you is dead.”
    Heaven Eyes called me from the floor. She was still sleeping. I lay down beside her. Grampa watched and his eyes softened again.
    “Erin,” she whispered in her sleep. “Erin. My bestest friend.”
    Grampa turned his eyes to the page again and was lost in his words again. Heaven whispered my name again. I looked across at Jan. He was asleep. He had heard nothing, seen nothing. I couldn’t keep my eyes open. I took Heaven’s hand in mine, held her as if for safety; then I fell deep into sleep.

H ER SKIN AND HAIR GLOWED . Sunlight streamed through the skylights, through the outspread wings, over the huge printing machines. Metal letters glinted in the litter at our feet. Pigeons and sparrows fluttered over us. Little animals scratched in the shadows.
    “Follow,” she kept saying. “Follow, Erin, Janry and Mouse.”
    She led us from the printing works, into the lanes between the ruined buildings. We came to the edge of the Ouseburn and we paused there, at the head of steep steps that led down into the narrow gulley where the water flowed.
    She reached out and clawed away dried mud from my throat with her webbed fingers.
    “We will wash the Middens from us here,” she said.
    She smiled.
    “We will be all beautied again.”
    On the opposite side of the Ouseburn was a huge warehouse wall. To our left the water flowed into the wide glistening river.
    “Keep little,” she whispered. “Keep looking out, or the ghosts will eye us.”
    “The ghosts?” I said.
    “There is ghosts everywhere,” she said. “We eye them past where the runny water runs. We eye them in little boats. We eye them running on machines. We eye them way way down there where the bridges is. We ear when they squeal and scream and fill the night with noise.”
    She met January’s eye.
    “What matters, Janry Carr?” she said.
    He glanced at me, glanced back at her. His hands were trembling.
    “What matters, Janry Carr?” she said.
    “We could just go,” he whispered to me. “We could bloody go. We could even just go back to bloody White-gates.”
    “Where’s your spirit of adventure?” I asked him.
    “Hell’s teeth, Erin,” he said.
    “Do not be feared, Janry,” said Heaven Eyes.
    “I’m not bloody frightened,” he said through his teeth.
    She touched him with her webbed hand. He stared in horror. He brushed the hand away.
    “I is nice,” said Heaven. “I will never never harm you.”
    We watched each other, the three of us. Mouse slipped past us, and went down the steps to the Ouseburn.
    “I’ll wash first,” he said.
    “Good Mouse,” said Heaven Eyes. “Wash away all that filthy filth.”
    She began to hum a slow sweet tune. January crouched, stared at the broken ground, stabbed his penknife into the rubble.
    I crouched beside him.
    “You
are
scared,” I said. “What is