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

said nothing, and Lettie
Hempstock began to say words in a language I did not know. Sometimes she was
talking, and sometimes it was more like singing, in a tongue that was nothing I
had ever heard, or would ever encounter later in life. I knew the tune, though.
It was a child’s song, the tune to which we sang the nursery rhyme “Girls and
Boys Come Out to Play.” That was the tune, but her words were older words. I was
certain of that.
    And as she sang, things happened, beneath the
orange sky.
    The earth writhed and churned with worms, long gray
worms that pushed up from the ground beneath our feet.
    Something came hurtling at us from the center mass
of flapping canvas. It was a little bigger than a football. At school, during
games, mostly I dropped things I was meant to catch, or closed my hand on them a
moment too late, letting them hit me in the face or the stomach. But this thing
was coming straight at me and Lettie Hempstock, and I did not think, I only did.
    I put both my hands out and I caught the thing, a
flapping, writhing mass of cobwebs and rotting cloth. And as I caught it in my
hands I felt something hurt me: a stabbing pain in the sole of my foot,
momentary and then gone, as if I had trodden upon a pin.
    Lettie knocked the thing I was holding out of my
hands, and it fell to the ground, where it collapsed into itself. She grabbed my
right hand, held it firmly once more. And through all this, she continued to
sing.
    I have dreamed of that song, of the strange words
to that simple rhyme-song, and on several occasions I have understood what she
was saying, in my dreams. In those dreams I spoke that language too, the first
language, and I had dominion over the nature of all that was real. In my dream,
it was the tongue of what is, and anything spoken in it becomes real, because
nothing said in that language can be a lie. It is the most basic building brick
of everything. In my dreams I have used that language to heal the sick and to
fly; once I dreamed I kept a perfect little bed-and-breakfast by the seaside,
and to everyone who came to stay with me I would say, in that tongue, “Be
whole,” and they would become whole, not be broken people, not any longer,
because I had spoken the language of shaping.
    And, because Lettie was speaking the language of
shaping, even if I did not understand what she was saying, I understood what was
being said. The thing in the clearing was being bound to that place for always,
trapped, forbidden to exercise its influence on anything beyond its own
domain.
    Lettie Hempstock finished her song.
    In my mind, I thought I could hear the creature
screaming, protesting, railing, but the place beneath that orange sky was quiet.
Only the flapping of canvas and the rattle of twigs in the wind broke the
silence.
    The wind died down.
    A thousand pieces of torn gray cloth settled on the
black earth like dead things, or like so much abandoned laundry. Nothing
moved.
    Lettie said, “That should hold it.” She squeezed my
hand. I thought she was trying to sound bright, but she didn’t. She sounded
grim. “Let’s take you home.”
    We walked, hand in hand, through a wood of
blue-tinged evergreens, and we crossed a lacquered red and yellow bridge over an
ornamental pond; we walked along the edge of a field in which young corn was
coming up, like green grass planted in rows; we climbed a wooden stile, hand in
hand, and reached another field, planted with what looked like small reeds or
furry snakes, black and white and brown and orange and gray and striped, all of
them waving gently, curling and uncurling in the sun.
    â€œWhat are they?” I asked.
    â€œYou can pull one up and see, if you like,” said
Lettie.
    I looked down: the furry tendril by my feet was
perfectly black. I bent, grasped it at the base, firmly, with my left hand, and
I pulled.
    Something came up from the earth, and swung around
angrily. My hand felt like a dozen tiny needles had