Kit's Wilderness

I went to his side and took his elbow.

  “Aye, Kit,” he said. “It’s good to be back home again.”

  He leaned on me for a moment, and we gazed together across the wilderness toward the river, where the sun shimmered on ice and water and the air trembled and skinny children played.

  I felt his sigh.

  “It’s a magic place, this world,” Grandpa whispered. “Always remember that.”

  I smiled and helped him in. He was frail and small. His jacket hung loosely from his shoulders. He sat in front of the Christmas programs on television and sipped tea and nibbled Christmas cake. A carol service came on and he sang along in his trembling voice.

  “In the bleak midwinter

  Frosty wind made moan,

  Earth stood hard as iron,

  Water like a stone;

  Snow had fallen, snow on snow,

  Snow on snow,

  In the bleak midwinter,

  long ago.”

  Mum and I sat with him. Each time he looked at us it was as if he had to remember us again. Then his eyes would clear and he would smile with joy. He had a glass of sherry and he fell asleep, with his head resting on the wing of the chair and his eyes shifting beneath their lids.

  Mum reached out and stroked his hair.

  “Lovely man,” she whispered.

  She stroked my hair, just the same.

  “Stay with him, Kit.”

  She turned the television down, and left the room, went on preparing for Christmas Day.

  I sat with a notepad, scribbling down the final part of Lak’s story, the part I’d told to Askew in the drift mine. As I wrote the final sentences, Grandpa woke and watched me.

  “Okay?” I whispered.

  He narrowed his eyes, squinted, trying to see me clear, trying to remember me.

  “It’s Kit,” I said.

  “That’s right. Course it is.” We laughed gently together.

  “Off with the fairies, eh?” I said.

  He closed his eyes and smiled. “Head full of caves and tunnels, son. Keep getting lost in them.”

  I scribbled on. He kept staring at me. He sang softly. “When I was young and in me pri-ime . . .

  “I know what it was,” he said.

  “Eh?”

  “Eh? Eh? It was you, wasn’t it? It was me and Silky and you. A few nights back. That’s right, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, Grandpa, that’s right.”

  He sang again.

  “Strange what you remember,” he said. “Never know these days what’s dreams and what’s real.”

  He nibbled at the Christmas cake, closed his eyes again, fell asleep again.

  Then Allie came with the newspaper and he called through to us, “I know who that is!”

  She had tea and Christmas cake with him. He grinned and told her, “You’re the one that drove me missus round the bend and up the pole!”

  “That’s right!” She giggled. “That’s right, Mr. Watson.”

  “Bad lass,” he said. “Good bad lovely lass. Give us a song, then, hinny.”

  She stood in front of him. She danced as she sang and reached down and held his hands and swung them as if he was dancing too. They sang together:

  “Wisht, lads, had yer gobs

  An I’ll tell yez all an aaful story,

  Wisht, lads, had yer gobs

  An I’ll tell ye aboot the worm . . .”

  Allie sang more softly as the song went on, knelt down and rested his hands in his lap, guiding him as he closed his smiling eyes and drifted back to sleep.

  Christmas Day. I woke to his knocking at my door, his little voice. Very early, dawn just breaking. I called him in. He stood there smiling in his dressing gown.

  “Happy Christmas, Kit,” he said.

  “Happy Christmas, Grandpa.”

  He pressed a finger to his lips.

  “Come and see,” he whispered. “Eh?”

  “Something for you. Come and see. Tiptoes, mind.”

  We slipped into his room. He switched the light on. The tinsel and baubles glittered at the window. He gave me a sheet of white paper with silvery red writing:

  To Kit

  Happy Christmas

  With Love

  Grandpa

  “This is for you,” he said.

  I looked around for a present, saw his souvenirs on the shelves, fossils and little carvings, ancient photographs of his pit mates, the wardrobe with the cuff of a white shirt caught in the door, slippers on the floor, the wedding photograph, his bed with the impression of his frail body on it.

  “What is?” I said.

  He grinned. “Everything is. Everything is yours.”

  I didn’t know what to say.

  “Have to hang on to a few of the things a while longer,” he said. “But afterward they come to you, to keep or chuck as you wish. Everything.”

  I gazed around the room again as the light grew and shone in upon these gifts. His eyes were shining.

  “What I’d like to give you most of all is what’s inside. The tales and memories and dreams that keep the world alive.” He squeezed my arm.

  I touched the photographs, the fossil tree, the shirt cuff, felt how they burned with Grandpa’s life, and with those tales and memories and dreams.

  “Okay?” he whispered.

  “Yes.” I put my arms around him, held him as we’d held each other in the darkest tunnels of our dreams. “Thank you, Grandpa.”

  He sighed.

  “One day,” he whispered, “I won’t be here anymore. You know that, Kit. But I’ll live on inside you and then inside your own children and grandchildren. We’ll go on forever, you and me and all the ones that’s gone and all the ones that’s still to come.”

  And the light intensified around us, bringing Grandpa’s final Christmas Day.

  The morning was presents from under the tree, mince pies, sausage rolls and sherry, Dad getting tipsy, parading in his new checked shirt and stinking of aftershave, Mum showing off dangly silver earrings, carols blasting from the CD, the house warm and filled with steam and the smells of turkey and sausage stuffing and spicy pudding. Allie came in red and green with snowflakes melting in her hair and with little gifts for all of us. She sang “Good King Wenceslas” with Grandpa and ate chocolate coins from the tree, and talked too fast and giggled and said she loved Christmas, just loved it. When she left, I stood with her beside the fence. We watched the kids with their new bikes and skates, with Walkmans plugged into their ears. We watched them slithering and sliding and giggling with the joy of it all.

  “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” she said. “The place we live.”

  “I thought you just wanted to get out of it.”

  “I will. But wherever I go, I’ll take it with me.”

  She kissed me on the cheek and blushed.

  “I’m glad you came to Stoneygate, Mr. Watson,” she whispered, and she slipped way.

  It was almost lunchtime when John Askew came.

  I was setting the table—knives, forks, wineglasses, place mats—when he knocked at the door.

  “I’ll get it,” called Mum.

  There was silence when she opened it.

  I looked through and saw him standing there, thickset, dark-haired, dark-eyed. I hurried to the door and slipped past Mum onto the step.

  “John,” I said.

  And I laughed, because he opened his coat and showed his baby sister in a sling at his chest. She wore a furry hood, and she grinned out at us.

  I saw the suspicion in Mum’s eyes, the sudden anger, but saw how it softened as she saw the baby.

  “I just brought this,” said Askew.

  He held out an envelope. I took the card out. He’d drawn the wilderness with a huge Christmas tree at the center, with angels hovering around its tip and children playing at its foot. Inside, he’d written simply “Happy Christmas. John Askew.”

  “Your sister’s lovely,” said Mum.

  He grinned. There was new brightness in his eyes
.

  “Aye,” he said. “She’s grand.”

  I looked at Mum.

  “Come on in,” I said.

  John shook his head. “Got to get back,” he said. “Just came with the card.”

  “Yes, come on,” said Mum. “She’ll catch her death out here.”

  He came in shyly, awkwardly. He stood in the living room, clumsily shifting his feet. Dad came in and watched him there.

  “John brought this,” I said to Dad, and showed him the card.

  Askew looked at the tree, at the television, at Grandpa sleeping.

  Then he met Mum’s eye.

  “Sorry about the bother, Mrs. Watson, Mr. Watson,” he said. “Won’t happen again.”

  “Good,” said Mum.

  “Kids’ games,” said Dad. “Kids’ games, eh? They’re over now.” He reached out and took Askew’s hand. “Happy Christmas, John,” he said. “And to your family.”

  “Aye,” said Askew. “Thank you. Happy Christmas.” He drew his coat across the baby as if to leave.

  “John Askew,” said Grandpa, opening his eyes.

  “That’s right,” I said.

  Grandpa stared at him.

  “Aye,” he said. “That’s right. Knew your grandfather, son. A good brave man.”

  The baby whimpered. Askew opened his coat again and she giggled out at us and Grandpa gasped with delight.

  “Peepo,” said Grandpa. “Peepo, little hinny.”

  He grinned. “Give us a hold, eh?”

  “Yes,” said Mum. “Go on, John.”

  Askew lifted the baby from her sling and put her down on Grandpa’s lap. Grandpa held her, made a face for her, giggled with her.

  “What’s her name?” he said.

  “Lucy.”

  “Peepo, little Lucy. Peepo, bonny lass.”

  Then he was silent, and we stood together and watched as the old man and the baby gazed with joy into each other’s eyes.

  Mum touched John’s arm.

  “How’s your mum?” she asked.

  “Okay. She’s going to be okay.”

  “Look after her now, son.”

  He nodded. “Yes, I will.”

  The baby giggled.

  “Better take her home,” said Askew.

  He leaned down to take her.

  Grandpa kissed her cheek.

  “Bye-bye, little Lucy,” he whispered.

  Askew closed his coat and I took him out.

  “See you, Kit,” he said.

  “See you, John. Happy Christmas.”

  Back inside the house, we went on preparing for the meal. I lit the candles on the table. Grandpa drifted in and out of sleep. Mum watched me.

  “So,” she said. “What do we make of that, then?”

  I shrugged.

  “He’s all right, you know,” I said. “He really is all right.”

  Then Dad brought the massive steaming turkey in.

  “Come on!” he said. “Action stations! Happy Christmas, everyone!”

  Grandpa woke with a start.

  “Bye-bye,” he said. “Bye-bye, lovely Lucy.”

  Grandpa died in mid-January. The thaw was starting. Pools of water on the wilderness, snow turning to slush in the lanes, snowdrops peeking through in the gardens and beneath the hawthorn hedges. I was in school. Dobbs was on about the movements of the earth again. He said that if we could move forward a million years, everything we saw before us would have changed: no Stoneygate, no flowing river, no wilderness, no us.

  “The earth endlessly reforms itself,” he said. “The continents shift, the surface cracks, fire bursts out from below. The hills are simply blown away. The sea swells and shrinks. The world tilts on its axis and brings us fiery heat or icy cold. Deserts or the ice cap creep across us. All we see and all we know is engulfed, swallowed up, regurgitated.”

  He smiled.

  “We are puny little things,” he said. “The beast called Time is our great predator, and there is no escape from it.” He smiled again. “However. That is not to say there is no need to do our homework.”

  And he dished out sets of worksheets.

  It was a little fifth-grader who came to the door.

  “Please, sir,” she said shyly. “Christopher Watson is to go to the office, please.”

  Mum was waiting there, and she didn’t need to say a word.

  He was buried beside Grandma in St. Thomas’ churchyard. The place where the grave lies can be seen in my grandparents’ wedding photograph. The monument with my name on it is nearby. Many people came to his funeral: his remaining pit mates, the descendants of the old families. Allie stood beside me in red and green. John Askew stood further back with his mother and father. There were many tears, but afterward the house rang with laughter as the reminiscences and stories started.

  That night I lay in the dark and listened to the silence through the wall.

  “Good night, Grandpa,” I whispered.

  I felt his hand in mine.

  “Good night, son. Good night.”

  John Askew comes to school again now. They allow him two afternoons a week, when there are art lessons. They’ve said he can be full-time again, if he can keep the lout in himself under control. He has done the drawings for Lak’s story, and they hang in the corridor with my words. They are beautifully detailed things: the family in the cave, the bear, the world of ice, Lak with the baby in the bearskin, Lak’s mother in her animal skins with her arms outstretched to welcome him. Burning Bush says how right I was to choose him as the artist.

  “They’re wonderful,” she says. “It’s as if he really sees the things he draws. They match your words so beautifully. They’re like the heart and soul of the same story.”

  “Yes,” I answer. “Like they’re joined in blood.”

  “Yes,” she says.

  Askew’s father has stopped drinking. We no longer see him reeling in the lane. He is stooped and shrunken but Askew’s been told that if he looks after himself he’ll become a new man. The house in the potholed cul-de-sac is orderly. The curtains are open at the window, the garden is clean. The baby toddles, holding her mother’s hand. She sits giggling on a blanket with her brother. Beyond her are the pit-riddled hills, reaching up toward the distant moors. Up there, they have cleaned out our drift mine. New pit props keep it safe. The tunnel floors are cleared of rubble. There are electric lights. There is a metal gate at the entrance. There are maps pinned there, and explanations of our history. Dobbs has begun to take classes up there. They put on helmets and giggle and bite their lips in fright. An old pitman opens the gate, leads them in, explains the wonders and dangers of the past. Sometimes he switches off the lights and the mine is filled with screaming.

  I have brought Grandpa’s souvenirs into my room. I sit at my desk and hold them and feel the stories that wait inside them to be told. Often my friends come, and we walk out together into the wilderness, Allie, Askew and me. The wild dog Jax paces behind. Sometimes we hear children whispering that we are the ones who were thought to be dead. The wilderness around us is filled with children playing, with neighbors walking. When we narrow our eyes and squint we see that it is filled with those who have walked and played before. On the brightest days, when the sun pours down and dances on the river and the air begins to tremble, I see Grandpa and Grandma before me. I follow them. I walk beside the river with my friends. I know that as long as there are others to see us, we will walk here together forever.

  A Michael L. Printz Award Winner

  KIT’S WILDERNESS

  David Almond

  A Readers Guide

  “A thrilling and spine-tingling ride . . . awe-inspiring.”

  —Publishers Weekly, Starred

  Reading Group

  QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

  The questions that follow are intended to guide readers as they begin to analyze the larger emotional, sociological, and literary elements of this extraordinary novel.

  1. When Kit and his friends play the game they
call Death, they claim they can see the ghosts of children killed in the mine. Are the ghosts that Kit and his friends see real?

  2. What do you think makes John Askew, Kit, and Kit’s grandfather able to see ghosts?

  3. David Almond calls this book Kit’s Wilderness. Why? What would you say is Kit’s “wilderness”?

  4. While studying the Ice Age in school, Kit and his classmates are asked to write a story about a young caveman called Lak. How is Kit’s own life similar to the story he writes about Lak? How is it different?

  5. What is “the pit”? What do you think it represents?

  6. The author sets the story in winter. How do the physical landscape and season reflect the characters’ emotional landscapes and states of mind?

  7. Despite his fading memory, Kit’s grandfather is always able to recognize Allie. Why? What might she represent for him? What might she represent in the story?

  8. When Kit’s grandfather gives him treasures from the mine—fossils from the ancient past—Kit slips the ammonite into his pocket and tells himself, “I’d keep it with me always now. A treasure from my grandfather. A gift from the deep, dark past.” What other “gifts” does his grandfather bestow upon Kit?

  9. John Askew is perceived as a no-good troublemaker by the townspeople. Is he really as bad as everyone thinks he is? In what ways is he darker? In what ways is he lighter?

  10. What is the role of storytelling in Kit’s Wilderness? How is storytelling used throughout the novel?

  A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

  I grew up in a big family in a small steep town overlooking the River Tyne. It was a place of ancient coal mines, dark terraced streets, strange shops, new estates, and wild heather hills. Our lives were filled with mysterious and unexpected events, and the place and its people have given me many of my stories. I always wanted to be a writer, though I told very few people until I was “grown up.” I’ve published lots of fiction for adults, and I’ve won a number of prizes. I’ve been a postman, a brush salesman, an editor, and a teacher. I’ve lived by the North Sea, in inner Manchester, and in a Suffolk farmhouse, and I wrote my first stories in a remote and dilapidated Norfolk mansion.