eBook
Related collections and offers
Overview
Download the first 15 chapters of THE GHOSTS OF HEAVEN by award winning author, Marcus Sedgwick for FREE!
Timeless, beautiful, and haunting, spirals connect the four episodes of this mesmerizing novel from Printz Award winner Marcus Sedgwick. They are there in prehistory, when a girl picks up a charred stick and makes the first written signs; there tens of centuries later, hiding in the treacherous waters of Golden Beck that take Anna, who people call a witch; there in the halls of a Long Island hospital at the beginning of the 20th century, where a mad poet watches the oceans and knows the horrors it hides; and there in the far future, as an astronaut faces his destiny on the first spaceship sent from earth to colonize another world. Each of the characters in these mysterious linked stories embarks on a journey of discovery and survival; carried forward through the spiral of time, none will return to the same place.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781466885233 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Roaring Brook Press |
| Publication date: | 11/04/2014 |
| Sold by: | Macmillan |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 32 |
| Sales rank: | 304,396 |
| File size: | 361 KB |
| Age Range: | 12 - 18 Years |
About the Author
Marcus Sedgwick was born and raised in Kent in South East England, but now lives in the French Alps. His books have won and been shortlisted for many awards; most notably, he has been shortlisted for Britain’s Carnegie Medal six times, has received two Printz Honors, for Revolver and Ghosts of Heaven, and in 2013 won the Printz Award for Midwinterblood.
Read an Excerpt
The Ghosts of Heaven
By Marcus Sedgwick
Roaring Brook Press
Copyright © 2014 Marcus SedgwickAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4668-8523-3
CHAPTER 1
I
SHE IS THE ONE WHO GOES ON,
when others remain behind.
The one who walks into darkness,
when others cling to the light.
She is the one who will step alone into the cave,
with fire in her hand,
and with fire in her head.
She walks with the people,
climbs up beside the waterfall.
Up, as the water thunders down.
Up, through the cool green leaves,
the summer's light lilting
through the leaves and the air.
They have come so far,
and ache with the pain
of their feet and their backs,
but they cannot stop,
because the beasts do not stop.
From where they climb,
they cannot see the beasts with their eyes,
but they know they are there.
In their mind, they see the deer:
their hooves, their hair, their hearts.
The antlers on the harts,
among the hinds who have the young.
They take the long path into the valley,
moving slowly, day by day,
while the people climb the waterfall
to meet them
with arrows and spears.
II
Just once, she slips,
her cold foot wet on green moss rock,
and close to the spray,
the water wets her neck.
Her face close to the drop,
her gaze falls on the frond of a fern.
A young plant, pushing its way out from rocks,
the tip curled tight.
Curled in,
in close-coiled secrecy
round and round, tighter and tighter,
smaller and smaller,
forever, it seems.
She stares, forever, it seems,
then a hand holds hers,
and pulls her to her feet.
The waterfall thunders;
and they are deaf.
Muted by its power,
they climb in silence
to the year's final camp,
in the trees, under the cliff,
under the high caves,
the high hanging dark
where magic will be made.
Where magic must be made.
III
Her thoughts are deep in the caves,
though her body is with the people,
at the leaf-fall camp.
Through the trees; the great lake.
The lake that spills itself down the waterfall.
The great lake: that will be crossed
to meet the beasts at dawn.
They are silent, for the most part.
They speak with their hands
as much as with their tongues.
A gesture; do this.
Do that, go there; the pointing hand.
Come. Sit. Faces talk as much as mouths.
Besides. They know what to do.
All of them. The old and the young,
each works hard.
Man and woman, boy and girl.
Only the very young do nothing;
and there are no very old.
She, who has been bleeding for two summers,
will soon give more young to the people.
It has not happened yet,
though she has been with some of the men,
and some of the boys have tried,
it has not happened yet.
She knows it will,
just as the deer they hunt have come to mate,
out there on the plains beyond the lake,
so the people too make new.
The one who will go to the caves walks,
and speaks
to the one who will lead the hunt.
The one who will lead the hunt approaches her.
He looks at her and tells her food,
and food it is she goes to find,
while others make fire, and others
fetch wood and others sharpen spears,
and others put huts together from the skeletons of old ones
and others find the boats they left before.
A few of the people set out from camp, foraging.
She leaves them to go their way,
while she goes hers. Leaf-fall is here,
yet the evening is warm.
She leaves her furs behind
and walks naked with the moist green air on her skin.
Through the trees of the wood, which stretches along the whole
lake shore,
beneath the cliffs, beneath the caves,
beneath the high, hanging caves.
She has a basket, folded from reeds,
and she fills it with what she can find.
There are nuts, which will be good on the fire.
Berries. She finds a root she knows,
and then she lifts
the spiraling fronds of ferns, and finds snails.
Large snails. Good eating.
She places them in her basket,
one by one.
One hovers in the air on her fingertips,
as she traces its shell with her eyes,
round and round, tighter and tighter,
smaller and smaller.
Forever.
Or so it seems.
The snail tries to slip up her fingers, to escape her grasp,
and she puts it in the basket.
Time to eat.
At the camp, the fire is fierce,
And they have returned.
Some have left their furs,
others stay in theirs.
She feels the cold as the sun dips from the trees,
and slips her fur over her back.
They eat.
There is dried meat.
Fish from the great lake.
There are berries and the nuts she found,
which toast on the rocks by the fire.
When the eating is done,
the telling begins, and the one who does the telling
tells of the hunt that will come.
And then he tells
the old tells of the beasts,
and the tell of the fight between the Sun and the Moon.
He tells the tell of the journey to the caves,
and the one who will make the journey stares into the flames,
and he sees darkness.
But she doesn't listen to the stories.
She holds the shell of one of her snails,
its body in her belly, its back in her hands.
And by firelight she stares at it.
There is something about the shell,
the shape of the shell.
Like the shape of the uncurling,
unfurling ferns.
It is speaking to her,
she's sure, but she doesn't know what it says,
because it speaks in a language she doesn't know.
She picks up a stick,
a small dry stick, and puts its end in the dust at her feet.
She moves the end of the stick, and a mark is made in the dust.
A short, curved line.
Her eyes are fixed on the shell;
on its colors, on its curving line,
the slight white line in the center of the curving body,
wrapping in,
wrapping in.
Tighter and tighter, round and round, smaller and smaller.
Or, looked at another way;
out and out, larger and larger.
A shape like that could go on forever,
or so it seems,
and still it speaks to her,
and still she doesn't know what it says.
But she knows she has seen it,
when her eyes were shut.
She shifts her foot and the line in the dust is gone.
IV
As the firelight dies, they make ready.
There will be no sleep.
Spears are resharpened, hardened in the fire ash.
Spear throwers checked; here, a new one is made.
Pitch and cord bind stone to shafts,
a splinter of flint with fresh-cut edge:
an arrow.
Gut is pulled across a new bow's back,
it takes strong shoulders to bend it,
but then, the people are strong.
And the strongest will cross the water,
the night-dark water, with half-moon
light to light their way, across the great lake
to the plains. Where, at dawn, the deer will be
waiting, unaware that they are waiting to die.
And then there he is: the one who will go to the caves.
He is old. Almost the oldest of them all.
So it will be his last time in the caves,
and he must take another,
who will become
what he has been.
It is his choice. The one who goes to the cave.
It is his choice to choose the new, and she,
She wants it to be her.
She thinks she knows what he does.
She knows why he does it,
that is something they all know;
the magic made as the hunt begins.
From the high cave mouth,
the plains are across the great lake,
From the high cave mouth,
the beasts can be seen.
And as the hunt begins,
the one who goes to the cave
must enter the dark, and make the magic on the walls.
The magic that makes the arrow fly farther,
the spear thrust deeper.
and the beasts die, quicker.
And she wants it to be her,
she knows it should be her, so she waits
while she should be working, and
watching him, watching him,
hoping he will turn to her.
Come to her and say,
You! Girl!
Come!
Come with me to the high, dark cave,
and I will show you how to make the magic.
She waits, the stick in her hand,
the small dry stick, and now she makes another mark in the dust.
A hump, a long curve, a flick at the front for antlers.
A beast, a deer: a stag.
In three lines.
She has seen what he does,
how he draws the shapes in the sand,
when no one is looking, how he does it
again and again, till the line is good and the beast is real.
There is a sound behind her and the one who will lead the hunt
is there.
He sees what she's done, and kicks at the sand.
He lifts his fist and she hides her head,
but he does not strike.
He does not need to, for she knows it is wrong.
The marks are not for the sand,
the marks are for the dark,
and only he who goes to the cave should make magic.
The one who will lead the hunt is angry,
but he has more to do than punish girls
who are not yet giving children.
He leaves, and in his place comes the one who does the telling.
The one who does the telling points at the dust,
where her lines lay.
He nods.
She smiles.
He sits beside her.
He tells her a tell,
a strong old tell,
about the making of magic and how it is done,
and must be done well, up there, high up there in the
hanging dark.
How the magic is made to make them fall when the arrow strikes.
For now it's the time for hunting.
At dawn, on the plain.
She listens.
She listens and she understands.
She understands the tell, but she knows
why the one who does the telling has that name,
and that his name means weaver of words;
weaver of words,
sentinel of speech,
retreating in awe at the world,
speaking with the divine.
Speaking with the blinding saving light-divine-magic in the dark.
That is what his name means.
He puts the stick back in her hands,
pushes the end onto the dust by the firelight.
Make, he says.
So, with one eye on he who leads the hunt,
she makes.
V
It is time to go.
The leaf-fall night is nearly done,
and the lake must be crossed,
and the cliffs must be climbed, before the dawn of the sun.
He who leads the hunt points at he who goes to the cave.
Choose, he says.
So she stands with the others
as the one who goes to the cave looks
from face to face, trying to see, trying to find something.
He walks slowly round the fire, almost gone now,
and he stops by a boy, then moves on.
He stops and looks hard into the eyes of a girl,
a girl who is not her ...
moves on and he is in front of her.
He looks into her eyes.
Her heart beats hard.
She opens her mouth.
She wants to say,
"Take me with you ...
take me to the high, dark caves
and I will make magic like you."
He takes one last look,
then turns away, and goes back to the boy.
His hand touches his shoulder,
and the one who goes to the cave has made his choice.
Her head hangs, and her heart is angry, and then,
the one who goes to the cave comes back,
shoves her shoulder so she stoops before him.
He reaches to the fire's edge and takes burned wood.
Puts it in her hand.
Carry, he says, and she knows she has been chosen.
Chosen, not to make magic, not to go into the caves,
not to go into the dark and make magic.
She has been chosen to carry.
There will be paint. And reeds.
And torches for fire. And a bow for protection from beasts.
And she will carry, while they climb free.
VI
Those who will cross the water have left,
leaving her, the boy, and the one who goes to the cave.
They don't seem to notice her.
They have forgotten she exists,
now that she is ready, with a basket.
And in the basket:
reeds, hollow,
the rock that burns to red,
charcoal from the fire ash,
the things to make fire.
He who leads the hunt
has given her a bow,
with more than one arrow,
long feathered shafts,
which she will use before the dark is done.
VII
At the water's edge, the great lake waits,
lapping lazily against the shore,
against the shins of the people as they climb aboard the
canoes.
These boats are old,
but they have made this journey many times,
and the people believe in their boats.
They push out.
Climb aboard.
Four to a canoe.
One in front to see.
Two in the middle to paddle,
one to carry the weapons that they will need to kill the beasts.
The half-moon light
guides their way.
The night air is wet and cool,
and they shiver from the air on their skin.
Their furs lie on the ground, far behind them;
wet fur is heavy and colder than nothing at all,
but they shiver as the air strokes their skin.
Soon, the two who paddle will be warm
from their work,
while the others
will feel the cold all the way to the far shore.
The far shore; half a night away.
Paddles dip, silently,
unseen,
each stroke leaves twin spirals
spinning in the water behind.
In, push, out.
Twin spinning spirals in the night-dark water.
VIII
She watches.
The one who goes to the cave pulls off his fur.
He points at the boy, who does the same.
They turn and look at her, just once.
He who goes to the caves gestures now,
and her furs fall to the ground.
He who goes to the caves nods, grunts, satisfied.
He points to the things she will carry, turns,
and walks into the night forest,
under the cliffs, that hang high above them
and the people,
and the boats and the beasts,
and the lake,
and everything.
He who goes to the cave leads the way,
with the blue-gray light by which to see,
but he knows the way because he has made it his own.
It has become his.
Till now, when he hands it on to the boy he has chosen.
The boy's mind is full of fear,
the old man's mind feels only the years.
As she walks behind, the basket digs
into her bare skin.
The bow is slung across her shoulders,
the arrows in her hand.
The torches sit,
unlit, in the basket on her back.
Grasses whip against her legs, but her feet are tough.
And in the unseen green by her feet,
nesting and alarmed,
a snake coils, ready to strike.
Its body pulls in on itself, around and around,
and it tenses, holds.
But they pass and it uncoils,
curling around its eggs once more.
So she doesn't see the snake,
and yet, she's thinking.
She's thinking about the mark she made
in the fireside sand.
Something is trying to speak to her.
But it goes as soon as it tries to appear in her thoughts.
Then she's thinking about something else.
Three things:
the fronds of ferns,
the shell of the snail, and then,
a falcon.
She saw the bird on the walk before the waterfall.
Saw it stooping from the sky
Saw how it dropped, not in a line,
but in the shape of the shell,
the form of the fern tip.
Round and down,
round and down, far below to the ground.
The falcon, the ferns, the shell.
They are all trying to tell her something,
but she does not know what it is.
She cannot know what it is. Not yet.
IX
The cave.
The cave has waited for almost all of time,
waited for the people to come and make their marks.
The cave has waited since the rocks were young,
just after the face of the world cooled,
when the volcanoes grew still,
when the cliffs were pushed up to the sky.
It was a long wait,
during which,
nothing lived.
Stars burned out in the heavens while it waited,
until finally some tiny filament found a way to copy itself.
Some long strand, of twisting complexity,
which made itself anew, and then there were two.
Ages ached through the heaving dark,
and burning light, as the filaments grew,
slowly organized, preparing for the invasion,
the eruption, of life.
And then the cave waited no more,
as ferns grew at its feet, spread, and changed,
and then there were plants, primal and bare
the first flowers and brutal trees
that reached into the air
with the energy of the young,
with the infectious power of the young information inside them,
and the cave was no longer alone.
Then came the beasts, the first small creatures,
things that crawled without eyes,
things that slithered,
things that heard by smell
and saw with sound,
things with hard shells,
things without bones.
Next there were legs,
fur and teeth, fangs
and horns and now, at last,
the people,
come to the high hanging cave
to make marks in the dark.
For lifetimes of men,
they have come to the cave,
and as the hunters hurl their spears,
they draw the beasts on the wall.
But before they can draw the beasts,
before they can draw a horse or deer or bull,
they must announce themselves to the dark,
with the print of their hand at the mouth of the cave.
It is their way; each and every one who has gone to the caves
has left the outline of their hand on the wall.
Ochre blown through a reed,
red powder blown over the hand held against the rock,
and the negative print of the hand is made.
Then, each one who goes to the cave
must make it his mark and his alone,
with some sign inside the outline:
two dots, perhaps; three lines.
Crossed lines.
Forking lines.
Five dots.
Each one different, and he who goes to the cave now
has made his mark over forty times, so old is he.
Forty times the same mark: two lines.
Two lines.
Two lines he will make again,
on this, his final trip.
It is two lines he has in his mind,
as he walks with the boy,
and the girl who bleeds but who does not give children.
X
Through the wet, dark forest
she walks,
behind the boy, behind the one who goes to the caves,
who leads the way by owl light;
that half shine of the moon, which will operate on them tonight.
The basket is hurting her back.
She stops for a moment
while the ferns wind around her feet,
and lifts the weight from her.
Waits.
Then walks on after the boy and the man
while the ferns cry out after her
saying, understand us! Know us! Be us!
She doesn't hear them,
because her eyes are on the back of the boy
who is to become what she wants to be.
She sees
his weak arms,
his skinny legs,
and knows his bad eyes need him to keep close to the old man
ahead.
She hurries, closes the gap
and almost slams into the boy.
The face of the cliff:
the way leads up into the dark
He who goes to the cave doesn't stop,
doesn't look
as he whispers one word: climb.
So they climb.
Through trailing plants, they make their way
hand over hand, toehold by toehold.
In the mind of he who goes to the cave
is a single thought; dawn is close.
As they reach the height of the tallest tree,
a breeze hits them, fresh dawn air,
and he doesn't need to look over his shoulder,
to see that the light is coming soon.
They need to hurry.
He increases the pace of his climb,
and the boy is left behind,
and behind him, lower down,
she knows why she was brought to carry,
because the boy is not strong enough to
climb with the basket on his back.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Ghosts of Heaven by Marcus Sedgwick. Copyright © 2014 Marcus Sedgwick. Excerpted by permission of Roaring Brook Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
Title Page,Copyright Notice,
Dedication,
Introduction,
Quarter One: Whispers in the Dark,
Also by Marcus Sedgwick,
Copyright,
