The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman Read Free Book Online

we came here. The farm came with us, and brought things
with it when it came. Gran calls them fleas.”
    I did not know where we were, but I could not
believe we were still on the Hempstocks’ land, no more than I believed we were
in the world I had grown up in. The sky of this place was the dull orange of a
warning light; the plants, which were spiky, like huge, ragged aloes, were a
dark silvery green, and looked as if they had been beaten from gunmetal.
    The coin, in my left hand, which had warmed to the
heat of my body, began to cool down again, until it was as cold as an ice cube.
My right hand held Lettie Hempstock’s hand as tightly as I could.
    She said, “We’re here.”
    I thought I was looking at a building at first:
that it was some kind of tent, as high as a country church, made of gray and
pink canvas that flapped in the gusts of storm wind, in that orange sky: a
lopsided canvas structure aged by weather and ripped by time.
    And then it turned and I saw its face, and I heard
something make a whimpering sound, like a dog that had been kicked, and I
realized that the thing that was whimpering was me.
    Its face was ragged, and its eyes were deep holes
in the fabric. There was nothing behind it, just a gray canvas mask, huger than
I could have imagined, all ripped and torn, blowing in the gusts of storm
wind.
    Something shifted, and the ragged thing looked down
at us.
    Lettie Hempstock said, “Name yourself.”
    There was a pause. Empty eyes stared down at us.
Then a voice as featureless as the wind said, “I am the lady of this place. I
have been here for such a long time. Since before the little people sacrificed
each other on the rocks. My name is my own, child. Not yours. Now leave me be,
before I blow you all away.” It gestured with a limb like a broken mainsail, and
I felt myself shivering.
    Lettie Hempstock squeezed my hand and I felt
braver. She said, “Asked you to name yourself, I did. I en’t heard more’n empty
boasts of age and time. Now, you tell me your name and I en’t asking you a third
time.” She sounded more like a country girl than she ever had before. Perhaps it
was the anger in her voice: her words came out differently when she was
angry.
    â€œNo,” whispered the gray thing, flatly. “Little
girl, little girl . . . who’s your friend?”
    Lettie whispered, “Don’t say nothing.” I nodded,
pressed my lips tightly together.
    â€œI am growing tired of this,” said the gray thing,
with a petulant shake of its ragged-cloth arms. “Something came to me, and
pleaded for love and help. It told me how I could make all the things like it
happy. That they are simple creatures, and all any of them want is money, just
money, and nothing more. Little tokens-of-work. If it had asked, I would have
given them wisdom, or peace, perfect peace . . .”
    â€œNone of that,” said Lettie Hempstock. “You’ve got
nothing to give them that they want. Let them be.”
    The wind gusted and the gargantuan figure flapped
with it, huge sails swinging, and when the wind was done the creature had
changed position. Now it seemed to have crouched lower to the ground, and it was
examining us like an enormous canvas scientist looking at two white mice.
    Two very scared white mice, holding hands.
    Lettie’s hand was sweating, now. She squeezed my
hand, whether to reassure me or herself I did not know, and I squeezed her hand
back.
    The ripped face, the place where the face should
have been, twisted. I thought it was smiling. Perhaps it was smiling. I felt as
if it was examining me, taking me apart. As if it knew everything about
me—things I did not even know about myself.
    The girl holding my hand said, “If you en’t telling
me your name, I’ll bind you as a nameless thing. And you’ll still be bounden,
tied and sealed like a polter or a shuck.”
    She waited, but the thing