The Ghosts of Heaven

  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

  eBooks may be purchased for business or promotional use. For information on bulk purchases, please contact Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department by writing to [email protected].

  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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