The Ocean at the End of the Lane: A Novel

never seem to see anymore: elderly women used to carry them to the shops, big woven bags that were almost baskets, raffia-work outside and lined with cloth, with rope handles. This basket was almost full. Her cheek had been scratched, and had bled, although the blood had dried. She looked miserable.
    “Hello,” I said.
    “Well,” she said. “Let me tell you, if you think that was fun, that wasn’t any fun, not one bit. Mandrakes are so loud when you pull them up, and I didn’t have earplugs, and once I’d got it I had to swap it for a shadow-bottle, an old-fashioned one with lots of shadows dissolved in vinegar…” She buttered some toast, then crushed a lump of golden honeycomb onto it and started munching. “And that was just to get me to the bazaar, and they aren’t even meant to be open yet. But I got most of what I needed there.”
    “Can I look?”
    “If you want to.”
    I looked into the basket. It was filled with broken toys: dolls’ eyes and heads and hands, cars with no wheels, chipped cat’s-eye glass marbles. Lettie reached up and took down the jam jar from the window ledge. Inside it, the silvery-translucent wormhole shifted and twisted and spiraled and turned. Lettie dropped the jam jar into the shopping bag, with the broken toys. The kitten slept, and ignored us entirely.
    Lettie said, “You don’t have to come with, for this bit. You can stay here while I go and talk to her.”
    I thought about it. “I’d feel safer with you,” I told her.
    She did not look happy at this. She said, “Let’s go down to the ocean.” The kitten opened its too-green and blue eyes and stared at us disinterestedly as we left.
    There was a pair of black leather boots, like riding boots, waiting for me, by the back door. They looked old, but well cared for, and were just my size. I put them on, although I felt more comfortable in sandals. Together, Lettie and I walked down to her ocean, by which I mean, the pond.
    We sat on the old bench, and looked at the placid brown surface of the pond, and the lily pads, and the scum of duckweed by the water’s edge.
    “You Hempstocks aren’t people,” I said.
    “Are too.”
    I shook my head. “I bet you don’t actually even look like that,” I said. “Not really.”
    Lettie shrugged. “Nobody actually looks like what they really are on the inside. You don’t. I don’t. People are much more complicated than that. It’s true of everybody.”
    I said, “Are you a monster? Like Ursula Monkton?”
    Lettie threw a pebble into the pond. “I don’t think so,” she said. “Monsters come in all shapes and sizes. Some of them are things people are scared of. Some of them are things that look like things people used to be scared of a long time ago. Sometimes monsters are things people should be scared of, but they aren’t.”
    I said, “People should be scared of Ursula Monkton.”
    “P’raps. What do you think Ursula Monkton is scared of?”
    “Dunno. Why do you think she’s scared of anything? She’s a grown-up, isn’t she? Grown-ups and monsters aren’t scared of things.”
    “Oh, monsters are scared,” said Lettie. “That’s why they’re monsters. And as for grown-ups…” She stopped talking, rubbed her freckled nose with a finger. Then, “I’m going to tell you something important. Grown-ups don’t look like grown-ups on the inside either. Outside, they’re big and thoughtless and they always know what they’re doing. Inside, they look just like they always have. Like they did when they were your age. The truth is, there aren’t any grown-ups. Not one, in the whole wide world.” She thought for a moment. Then she smiled. “Except for Granny, of course.”
    We sat there, side by side, on the old wooden bench, not saying anything. I thought about adults. I wondered if that was true: if they were all really children wrapped in adult bodies, like children’s books hidden in the middle of dull, long adult books, the kind with no pictures or conversations.
    “I love my ocean,” Lettie said, and I knew our time by the pond was done.
    “It’s just pretending, though,” I told her, feeling like I was letting childhood down by admitting it. “Your pond. It’s not an ocean. It can’t be. Oceans are bigger than seas. Your pond is just a pond.”
    “It’s as big as it needs to be,” said Lettie Hempstock, nettled. She sighed. “We’d better get on with sending Ursula whatsername back where she came from.” Then she said, “I