The Graveyard Book

Bod walked over to the pointed stone—tall, carved with upside-down torches, and he waited, but saw no one. He called to Alonso Jones, even knocked on the side of the stone, but there was no response. Bod leaned down, to push his head into the grave and call his friend, but instead of his head slipping though the solid matter like a shadow passing through a deeper shadow, his head met the ground with a hard and painful thump. He called again, but saw nothing and no one, and, carefully, he made his way out of the tangle of greenery and of grey stones and back to the path. Three magpies perched in a hawthorn tree took wing as he passed them.

He did not see another soul until he reached the graveyard’s southwestern slope, where the familiar shape of Mother Slaughter, tiny in her high bonnet and her cloak, could be seen, walking between the gravestones, head bent, looking at wildflowers.

“Here, boy!” she called. “There’s nasturshalums growing wild over here. Why don’t you pick some for me, and put them over by my stone.”

So Bod picked the red and yellow nasturtiums, and he carried them over to Mother Slaughter’s headstone, so cracked and worn and weathered that all it said now was,

LAUGH

which had puzzled the local historians for over a hundred years. He put down the flowers in front of the stone, respectfully.

Mother Slaughter smiled at him. “You’re a good lad. I don’t know what we’ll do without you.”

“Thank you,” said Bod. Then, “Where is everyone? You’re the first person I’ve seen tonight.”

Mother Slaughter peered at him sharply. “What did you do to your forehead?” she asked.

“I bumped it, on Mr. Jones’s grave. It was solid. I…”

But Mother Slaughter was pursing her lips and tilting her head. Bright old eyes scrutinized Bod from beneath her bonnet. “I called you boy, didn’t I? But time passes in the blink of an eye, and it’s a young man you are now, isn’t it? How old are you?”

“About fifteen, I think. Though I still feel the same as I always did,” Bod said, but Mother Slaughter interrupted, “And I still feels like I done when I was a tiny slip of a thing, making daisy chains in the old pasture. You’re always you, and that don’t change, and you’re always changing, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

She sat down on her broken stone, and said, “I remember you the night you came here, boy. I says, ‘We can’t let the little fellow leave,’ and your mother agrees, and all of them starts argufying and what-not until the Lady on the Grey rides up. ‘People of the Graveyard,’ she says, ‘Listen to Mother Slaughter. Have you not got any charity in your bones?’ and then all of them agreed with me.” She trailed off, shook her little head, “There’s not much happens here to make one day unlike the next. The seasons change. The ivy grows. Stones fall over. But you coming here…well, I’m glad you did, that’s all.”

She stood up and pulled a grubby piece of linen from her sleeve, spat on it, and reached up as high as she could and scrubbed the blood from Bod’s forehead. “There, that ought to make you look presentable,” she said, severely. “Seeing as I don’t know when next I’ll see you, anyway. Keep safe.”

Feeling discomfited in a way he could not remember having felt before, Bod made his way back to the Owenses’ tomb, and was pleased to see both of his parents waiting for him beside it. As he got closer, his pleasure turned into concern: why did Mr. and Mrs. Owens stand like that, arranged on each side of the tomb like characters from a stained-glass window? He could not read their faces.

His father took a step forward and said, “Evening, Bod. I trust you are keeping well.”

“Tolerably well,” said Bod, which was what Mr. Owens always said to his friends when they asked him the same question.

Mr. Owens said, “Mistress Owens and I spent our lives wishing that we had a child. I do not believe that we could have ever had a better young man than you, Bod.” He looked up at his son with pride.

Bod said, “Well, yes, thank you, but…” He turned to his mother, certain he could get her to tell him what was happening, but she was no longer there. “Where did she go?”

“Oh. Yes.” Mr. Owens seemed ill at ease. “Ah, you know Betsy. There’s things, times. When, well, you don’t know what to say. You know?”

“No,” said Bod.

“I expect Silas is waiting for you,” said his father, and then he was gone.

It was past midnight. Bod began to walk toward the old chapel. The tree that grew out of the gutter on the spire had fallen in the last storm, taking a handful of the slate-black roof tiles with it.

Bod waited on the grey wooden bench, but there was no sign of Silas.

The wind gusted. It was late on a summer’s night, when the twilight lasts forever, and it was warm, but still, Bod felt goose-pimples rising on his arms.

A voice by his ear said, “Say you’ll miss me, you lump-kin.”

“Liza?” said Bod. He had not seen or heard from the witch-girl for over a year—not since the night of the Jacks of All Trades. “Where have you been?”