“Veronica!”
And beleev this as I rite for it is trew. She moves. She stirs.
He goes on calling goes on breething into her.
She moves. She stirs.
I can not beleev that it is trew but it is trew.
She opens her eyes.
Mr McCaufrey helps her to rise from the flore.
He helps her towards me.
“O Billy,” she says. “I thort Id lost you!”
Sharpen the pensil. Finish it qwik. Tel what we did.
We lift Dad from the flor & lay him on the dusty mowsnibbld bed. Missus Malone asks us to leav her with him so that she can prepare him. We wait for a time then she cums to us and says that its done.
And Mam and I go in. Me with his blood on me. She with the brooses of his fingers at her throat.
Ther are candels burning arownd the room. He lies with the purple silk all exposd. The blood is washd from him & his fase is carm & he seems at peese. His hands are crossd upon his chest. We kiss his cheek. Mam cowms his hair. He is alredy turnin cold so cold. The smell of him is stil on him and the memrys rise from him.
Mam neels by the bedside & I think she prays.
I lay the aynshent masterpees besyd him. I put mor childhood things ther too. A plastic gorilla, an old pensil, a pitcher of Mam I drew wen I was smarl, a pictur of myself, an aynshent fayded paje of unreedabl riting. Mam put sum small things ther too. An earring. A lock of her hair. A choob of hair cream.
I go to the kitchen and I start to bring the statews to him. I dont no what she wil think of this. She watches & wunders & then says, “Yes. It shud be so.”
And she helps to carry them. We stand the statews arownd the bed, Saynt Francis Saynt Sebastyan Saynt Catherin Saynt Patrik The Virjin Mary and all the rest. We leen them on the warls and on eech other and on the bed so that they wont fall. We work carfuly & tayk our time for meny of the statews need to be repared wen theyve bene moovd. We hang an aynjel from the lite cord. We lay fragments of aynjels wings arownd him on the bed.
I carry The Infant Jesus in & stand him closest of all.
Mam takes a broken fether for herself & won of Jesus hands.
Mr McCaufrey helps us to drag Jack & Joe in ther and lie them at the bed foot.
We turn off the lite.
A shaft of moonlite & glittering dust fall upon his fase.
“He looks byutiful,” says Mr McCaufrey.
“He dus” says Mam.
I hear the scratch of mise beside the warls. An owl hoots. A dog barks.
“Is it finishd?” says Mr McCaufrey.
“Yes,” says Mam.
Then we kiss my father 1 last time and we back away.
The butcher has a box of tools. He screws the inner dore bak onto its hinjes. He nales a bord acros it. He paynts words on it.
He screws shut the second dore as wel.
He paynts the words a second time.
Despite the screws & the warnins we all see how exposd he stil is. We start to drag things like chares & cubords & boxes & stand them befor the dore. We heap up many bits & peeses.
Alredy day is braking. Alredy the dawn corus has begun.
I go out into the garden & bring handfuls of rubbl & put them onto the growing heap. We all do this. We bring stones & briks & fragments of ruwind Blinkbonny.
Mr McCaufrey groans.
He slams his butchers ax into the kitchen seelin. He slams agen & the plaster starts to fall around us.
He looks at my mother.
“Its OK, Mr McCaufrey,” she says.
He cums to her with the ax hanging from his hand. He takes her in his arms & they stand together like a singl creecher grown owt of the Blinkbonny smithereens. He holds her for meny minuts. He wispers meny indesiferabl words.
Then he steps back from her & cums to me.
“You are the treasure,” he murmurs. “You are the miracl Billy Dean.”
He slams the ax into the seelin agen.
“Let thees days be over,” he says. “Let all the destrucshon be done!”
He slams agen as the liyt intensifys. The plaster falls in bigger bits. He hacks at the timber beyond the plaster. He yanks at it with the ax blade. He stands on the growing heap and yanks with his grate hands and arms. The kitchen begins to collaps around us to fall on the heep to deepen it to thicken it. Soon we are coverd in plaster and dust and blood from the wounds it gives us as it falls.
For a moment I imajin just standing ther and standing ther until we ar knocked to erth and coverd over and becum just 1 mor part of the devastayshon and of the coming wilderness.
But Mam pulls me back. We move away. We go owtside.
Mr McCaufrey hacks & pulls & yanks with greater violens. He kicks the dore from its hinjes. He hacks at the frame & kicks that away too. He kicks at the bricks with his massiv feet his massiv boots. He shoves with his grate sholders and pummels with his fists. We see how frale the walls are how the plaster that binds the bricks is like dust. He curses the bilders of Blinkbonny that cudnt even bild a wall to resist a butchers fists never mind a bom. He thumps & kicks & groans & yells.
Then gros mor silent as the screechin & the groanin of the house gro lowder. And stands dead stil a moment to gaze owt at us throu the ruwind doreway & the shattad windo. Mam calls his name but its too late. The roof and walls fall down upon him & whats left is just a heep of broken stuff heepd up upon Mr McCaufrey & arownd the room containin Dad.
Folowers rush with us to clear the ruwins from the butcher but of cors he is alredy dead and gon. Alredy the tinyest creechers will be entering him. Alredy he is turnin bak to dust.
I stand ther weeping with my mother. Elizabeth cums to my side & takes my hand.
Missus Malone lenes forward and taps Mr McCaufrey jently with her stik.
“Goodbye good butcher,” she says.
Meny others stand in silens arownd us.
A singl crow appears. It comes to the tiny windo in the roof. It perches a moment on the frame & tips its head so that a singl eye is tilted down towards the unsmashd glass & towards the dimness underneeth. Then it leaps to the sky agen callin its rawcus call. It heds westwards towards the disapearing nite. We watch it go until its just a tiny dot of black then nothin at all.
And the sun rises over Blinkbonny as it must each day & the sky is blue & pink & gold & all the other birds are calling all the larks & blackbirds thrushes spuggys rens & finches singing songs that cum from the furthest reaches of the world & from the depths of time & from the deepest distant casms of ourselves.
Time has passd & much has chaynjed & this is what we did and wher we are.
We cleard the rubble from Mr McCaufrey. We washd the dust & blood & fragments of Blinkbonny from him. We lifted him onto the dor that he had kickd away & then a groop of us carryd him down to the plase wer he had buryd Yankovya. We fownd seller beneeth seller & sellar beneeth seller & reechd a final casm deep down in Blinkbonnys depths.
We lade him ther in the erth by an undergrownd stream.
And then Mam Elizabeth & me prepard to leav Blinkbonny for ever mor.
Missus Malone said she was too crippld to limp away across the world to who nos wer. She wud stay with the gosts & the bereaved. She wud protect the nowledj of the dead father just as she had protected the nowlej of the living son.
She tappd me with her stik.
“You have done wel,” she said.
She gave me a cold kiss on the cheek.
“Thank you, William,” she wisperd.
Folowers tryd to cum with us but I turnd them back. They shud heal eech other if they cud. They shud let the dead be dead. If they cudnt do thees things then mebbe they shud seek another harfwild boy or harfwild girl in another plase of devastashon.
“Forgiv me,” I said. “Forget me. Just let me go.”
Wons we began it was so simpl. We warkd 2 days 2 nites beside the river. Warkd throu the wilderness to get around the sity then returnd to the river agen. Arrivd at the sea shore when the tide was hiy & the sea was still.
And ther it was as it had always been in pitchers & dremes. It seemd to flote between the sea & sky. Ther was the cassl on its rok the rooftops of the town the grassy dunes.
The waters fell & we warkd across.
So easy.
The iland is a simpl plase. Sea sky sand grass. The wind & the rain & the everchaynjing lite. Other rocky ilands across the sea. A handful of houses a cupl of hotels a cafe or 2. The cassel. Ther are fishermen & fishing botes in the littl harbor. A church & a ruwind church & a feeld full of graves. A center for pilgrims because it is a holy plase. Sometyms the pilgrims stand deep in the water & sing hims together & pray for peese. Sometyms they stand crosses in the sand & weep.
We ar surrounded by the birds of the sea. Bonny puffins dash by in littl flocks. Ther are seals which swim close sometyms & show ther wiskerd heads abov the water. We hav seen dolfins dash by just beyond the harbor walls. And wons won splendid day ther were wales rolling in the swell not too far away.
We live here in an upturnd bote. It was dilapidayted at the time of our arival. We are given leev to liv in it as long as we restor it. So we fill the gaps in its timbers & we paynt black pitch on it & we nayl the broken bits of it rather like we did with the statews. It is hiy enuf to stand in at the senter. The keel poynts to the sky. The flore is sand. Soon it wil be like won of those I saw in pictures so long ago.
At nite we all dream of floteing upside down across the stars.
At nite a lite from a litehouse turns and turns and darkness becums lite and liteness becums dark agen agen agen agen.
The stars ar astounding here. As is the sea. As is the sand. As is the land that streches away beyond the shore towards the mountans. As is evrything. Everything.
Mam has customers for her hairdressing. She goes from house to house with her littl red bag & her hairdressing things. She goes to gests in the hotels & to the pilgrims. She is much admired & much loved.
She goes alone without her sissor carryer.
Elizabeth draws pitchers of anshent saynts & of beests & birds & sells them to pilgrims. She draws pitchers in the sand of how things used to be & lets the water wash them all away.
I catch fish with a line. I cut them open with my nife. I cook them on a fire. They become part of us & us of them.
I rite. I rite here on the iland wer monks wons wrote with fethers on the skin of beests. The plases wer they rote hav long been blown away by wind & tym.
I write with a pensil. I sharpen it with my knife.
Today I write in the sunshine. I sit on the sand rest the paper on my lap lean bak agenst the boat.
The writing is almost at an end.
Its said that the wars ar coming to an end as well. Its said that the world is tired that its had enuf that ther will be peese. Perhaps its true. Ther ar fewer enjins of destrucshon roreing throu the sky & making the waters shudder in ther wake. Perhaps there are fewer bomers fewer boms fewer Blinkbonnys fewer deaths fewer pepl screeming arownd the world. I dont kno. The days of my poseshun ended long ago. I am no longer engulfed by the horrors & the afterlife. This pleeses me. I hav had enouf of death. I turn my eyes towards the lite.
And we hav a son, Elizabeth & me. He is alredy 1 year old.
We hav naymd him John a simpl name. He is trying to wark. His mother holds his hand and he splashes in the water with littl naked feet. He laffs & laffs. He turns & waves to me and yells out Daddy! He tumbls down into the water giggls and his mother lifts him up agen.
Perhaps 1 day he wil read what I have wrote.
Elizabeth will read it very soon. She has red non of it yet. She has encourajd me to start it and to go on with it. She has told me that the way to discover how to write it is to write it. She has helped with spellings when I have askd her. She has helped as Mam has with the gathering of memrys with the assembling of truth.
Truth. Is it truth? Maybe everything did not happen exactly as I remember it and exactly as I have told it. There is so much confushon. Facts and dreams and peopl and gosts get all mixd up. The tales of 1 person mingl with the accounts of others and what we dred and what we wish are all mixed up with what we kno. The living & the dead are all mixd up. But that is how this world is. That is how the mind of Billy Dean is. So that is how this tale must be. And yes. Everything is true.
Perhaps beyond Elizabeth & my Mam there will be no readers. Perhaps the wars have gone on and all the world is turnd to ruin and to wilderness. Perhaps the rubble is inhabited only by the dead. Perhaps this book lies in the dust and these pages turn in the wind and turn to dust themselves. Perhaps like Missus Malone said, that is whats been intended from the very start. If that is so, then so be it. Let all the destruction be done at last. Let us be gone. Let all the words be dust. Let there be peace.
I let the sunlite and the breeze and the sound of the sea move over me and throu me. I hear my son.
“Daddy! Daddy!”
I sharpen the pencil for a final time as he dances in the sea and as the rainbows flash around him. He splashes and laghs and calls like the bird that dances in the air abov his head.
Like the sand the stars the sea he is astounding.
I watch him. I write him. And Elizabeth draws him.
He is in our words and in our pictures but he is also far beyond them.
My final writing is a simple hope in simple words in a simple place.
Let the wars be done. Let us continue. Let my child grow.
I wave to him.
I call his name.
“John!”
He turns and waves to me.
He calls me.
I put down the paper the pencil and the knife.
I go to play in the water with my son.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or, if real, are used fictitiously.
Copyright © 2011 by David Almond
Cover photographs: copyright © 2014 by DK Images (mouse body); copyright © 2014 by iStockphoto (wings); Hand lettering by www.the-parish.com
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in an information retrieval system in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, taping, and recording, without prior written permission from the publisher.
First U.S. electronic edition 2014
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 2012954332
ISBN 978-0-7636-6309-4 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-0-7636-6725-2 (electronic)
Candlewick Press
99 Dover Street
Somerville, Massachusetts 02144
visit us at www.candlewick.com
David Almond, The True Tale of the Monster Billy Dean: Telt by Himself
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