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

been sunk into it. I brushed
the earth from it, and apologized, and it stared at me, more with surprise and
puzzlement than with anger. It jumped from my hand to my shirt, I stroked it: a
kitten, black and sleek, with a pointed, inquisitive face, a white spot over one
ear, and eyes of a peculiarly vivid blue-green.
    â€œAt the farm, we get our cats the normal way,” said
Lettie.
    â€œWhat’s that?”
    â€œBig Oliver. He turned up at the farm back in pagan
times. All our farm cats trace back to him.”
    I looked at the kitten hanging on my shirt with
tiny kitten-claws.
    â€œCan I take it home?” I asked.
    â€œIt’s not an it. It’s a she. Not a good idea,
taking anything home from these parts,” said Lettie.
    I put the kitten down at the edge of the field. She
darted off after a butterfly, which floated up and out of her reach, then she
scampered away, without a look back.
    â€œMy kitten was run over,” I told Lettie. “It was
only little. The man who died told me about it, although he wasn’t driving. He
said they didn’t see it.”
    â€œI’m sorry,” said Lettie. We were walking beneath a
canopy of apple-blossom then, and the world smelled like honey. “That’s the
trouble with living things. Don’t last very long. Kittens one day, old cats the
next. And then just memories. And the memories fade and blend and smudge
together . . .”
    She opened a five-bar gate, and we went through it.
She let go of my hand. We were at the bottom of the lane, near the wooden shelf
by the road with the battered silver milk churns on it. The world smelled
normal.
    I said, “We’re really back, now?”
    â€œYes,” said Lettie Hempstock. “And we won’t be
seeing any more trouble from her.” She paused. “Big, wasn’t she? And nasty? I’ve
not seen one like that before. If I’d known she was going to be so old, and so
big, and so nasty, I wouldn’t’ve brung you with me.”
    I was glad that she had taken me with her.
    Then she said, “I wish you hadn’t let go of my
hand. But still, you’re all right, aren’t you? Nothing went wrong. No damage
done.”
    I said, “I’m fine. Not to worry. I’m a brave
soldier.” That was what my grandfather always said. Then I repeated what she had
said, “No damage done.”
    She smiled at me, a bright, relieved smile, and I
hoped I had said the right thing.

V.
    T hat
evening my sister sat on her bed, brushing her hair over and over. She brushed
it a hundred times every night, and counted each brush stroke. I did not know
why.
    â€œWhat are you doing?” she asked.
    â€œLooking at my foot,” I told her.
    I was staring at the sole of my right foot. There
was a pink line across the center of the sole, from the ball of the foot almost
to the heel, where I had stepped on a broken glass as a toddler. I remember
waking up in my cot, the morning after it happened, looking at the black
stitches that held the edges of the cut together. It was my earliest memory. I
was used to the pink scar. The little hole beside it, in the arch of my foot,
was new. It was where the sudden sharp pain had been, although it did not hurt.
It was just a hole.
    I prodded it with my forefinger, and it seemed to
me that something inside the hole retreated.
    My sister had stopped brushing her hair and was
watching me curiously. I got up, walked out of the bedroom, down the corridor,
to the bathroom at the end of the hall.
    I do not know why I did not ask an adult about it.
I do not remember asking adults about anything, except as a last resort. That
was the year I dug out a wart from my knee with a penknife, discovering how
deeply I could cut before it hurt, and what the roots of a wart looked like.
    In the bathroom cupboard, behind the mirror, was a
pair of stainless steel tweezers, the kind with pointed sharp tips, for pulling
out wooden