And with that thought
the chemical action of radiant energy
strips us of delusions,
destroys those thoughts that would hold us back,
would have us turn back, forever.
Thus, illuminated, we are free,
and turning to your friend you say:
It is enough to know that not to know is enough.
It is enough not to know.
And what you could not hope for, you found.
Wet grass under your hands and knees,
sunlight falling through the apple tree,
and protection.
And then, in the stillness
between breaths;
redemption, safety, and love.
1597
She is the one who goes ahead,
when others stay behind.
She is the one who goes to the water’s edge,
though the sky is dark and cut through with a falling star.
The others watch from the trees,
while she, the one who goes ahead,
the one who makes marks in the sand with sticks,
and who paints on walls
with the red stone and black charcoal,
watches the fall of a star.
The star shoots at the water,
pounding the great lake with a mighty fist,
so that the earth shakes
and a terrible wave washes over them all.
Yet still, clinging to the trees,
she stands, while the others run in fear.
She waits, watching the water,
which settles.
And then, the water starts to move again,
but gently this time,
as just a stone’s throw away,
a monster appears.
It is vast and slow, and lumbers from the lake,
with a shining skin and a glistening face.
There is a mark on its face;
like the marks she makes in the caves,
like the turn of the snail, and the fall of the falcon,
but then,
the monster removes its skin,
and its shining head,
and out steps not a monster but a man.
The man steps forward.
In his mind is a gate,
an apple tree, and a thought:
to be remembered in the heart of a loved one is to live forever.
The man laughs at the wonder in the young woman’s eyes.
Yes, he says.
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ALSO BY MARCUS SEDGWICK:
Revolver
White Crow
Midwinterblood
She Is Not Invisible
Text copyright © 2014 by Marcus Sedgwick
Published by Roaring Brook Press
Roaring Brook Press is a division of Holtzbrinck Publishing Holdings Limited Partnership
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10010
macteenbooks.com
First published in the United Kingdom in 2014 by Orion Children’s Books, London
All Rights Reserved
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The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Sedgwick, Marcus.
Ghosts of heaven / Marcus Sedgwick. — First American edition.
pages cm
“First published in the United Kingdom in 2014 by Orion Children’s Books, London.”
Summary: Four linked stories of discovery and survival begin with a Paleolithic-era girl who makes the first written signs, continue with Anna, who people call a witch, then a mad twentieth-century poet who watches the ocean knowing the horrors it hides, and concluding with an astronaut on the first spaceship from Earth sent to colonize another world.
ISBN 978-1-62672-125-8 (hardback) — ISBN 978-1-62672-126-5 (e-book) — ISBN 978-1-250-07367-9 (trade paperback) [1. Space and time—Fiction. 2. Science fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.S4484Gho 2015
[Fic]—dc23
2014040471
eISBN 9781626721265
First hardcover edition, 2015
eBook edition, January 2015
Marcus Sedgwick, The Ghosts of Heaven
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