The Ocean at the End of the Lane: A Novel

rises, here: a phantom moment, a shaky reflection in the pool of remembrance. I know how it would have felt when the scavengers took my heart. How it felt as the hunger birds, all mouth, tore into my chest and snatched out my heart, still pumping, and devoured it to get at what was hidden inside it. I know how that feels, as if it was truly a part of my life, of my death. And then the memory snips and rips, neatly, and—)
    A voice said, “Idiot! Don’t move. Just don’t,” and the voice was Lettie Hempstock’s, and I could not have moved if I had wanted to. She was on top of me, and she was heavier than I was, and she was pushing me down, face-first, into the grass and the wet earth, and I could see nothing.
    I felt them, though.
    I felt them crash into her. She was holding me down, making herself a barrier between me and the world.
    I heard Lettie’s voice wail in pain.
    I felt her shudder and twitch.
    There were ugly cries of triumph and hunger, and I could hear my own voice whimpering and sobbing, so loud in my ears…
    A voice said, “This is unacceptable.”
    It was a familiar voice, but still, I could not place it, or move to see who was talking.
    Lettie was on top of me, still shaking, but as the voice spoke, she stopped moving. The voice continued, “On what authority do you harm my child?”
    A pause. Then,
    – She was between us and our lawful prey.
    “You’re scavengers. Eaters of offal, of rubbish, of garbage. You’re cleaners. Do you think that you can harm my family?”
    I knew who was talking. The voice sounded like Lettie’s gran, like Old Mrs. Hempstock. Like her, I knew, and yet so unlike. If Old Mrs. Hempstock had been an empress, she might have talked like that, her voice more stilted and formal and yet more musical than the old-lady voice I knew.
    Something wet and warm was soaking my back.
    – No… No, lady.
    That was the first time I heard fear or doubt in the voice of one of the hunger birds.
    “There are pacts, and there are laws and there are treaties, and you have violated all of them.”
    Silence then, and it was louder than words could have been. They had nothing to say.
    I felt Lettie’s body being rolled off mine, and I looked up to see Ginnie Hempstock’s sensible face. She sat on the ground on the edge of the road, and I buried my face in her bosom. She took me in one arm, and her daughter in the other.
    From the shadows, a hunger bird spoke, with a voice that was not a voice, and it said only,
    – We are sorry for your loss.
    “Sorry?” The word was spat, not said.
    Ginnie Hempstock swayed from side to side, crooning low and wordlessly to me and to her daughter. Her arms were around me. I lifted my head and I looked back at the person speaking, my vision blurred by tears.
    I stared at her.
    It was Old Mrs. Hempstock, I suppose. But it wasn’t. It was Lettie’s gran in the same way that…
    I mean…
    She shone silver. Her hair was still long, still white, but now she stood as tall and as straight as a teenager. My eyes had become too used to the darkness, and I could not look at her face to see if it was the face I was familiar with: it was too bright. Magnesium-flare bright. Fireworks Night bright. Midday-sun-reflecting-off-a-silver-coin bright.
    I looked at her as long as I could bear to look, and then I turned my head, screwing my eyes tightly shut, unable to see anything but a pulsating afterimage.
    The voice that was like Old Mrs. Hempstock’s said, “Shall I bind you creatures in the heart of a dark star, to feel your pain in a place where every fragment of a moment lasts a thousand years? Shall I invoke the compacts of Creation, and have you all removed from the list of created things, so there never will have been any hunger birds, and anything that wishes to traipse from world to world can do it with impunity?”
    I listened for a reply, but heard nothing. Only a whimper, a mewl of pain or of frustration.
    “I’m done with you. I will deal with you in my own time and in my own way. For now I must tend to the children.”
    – Yes, lady.
    – Thank you, lady.
    “Not so fast. Nobody’s going anywhere before you put all those things back like they was. There’s Boötes missing from the sky. There’s an oak tree gone, and a fox. You put them all back, the way they were.” And then the silvery empress voice added, in a voice that was now also unmistakably Old Mrs. Hempstock’s, “Varmints.”
    Somebody was humming a tune. I realized, as if from