Neil Gaiman - The Graveyard Book

“What kind of borders?”

Silas said nothing.

“You mean like stopping the man Jack and his people?”

Silas said, “We do what we have to.” He sounded weary.

“But you did the right thing. I mean, stopping the Jacks. They were terrible. They were monsters.”

Silas took a step closer to Bod, which made the youth tilt back his head to look up at the tall man’s pale face. Silas said, “I have not always done the right thing. When I was younger…I did worse things than Jack. Worse than any of them. I was the monster, then, Bod, and worse than any monster.”

It did not even cross Bod’s mind to wonder if his guardian was lying or joking. He knew that he was being told the truth. He said, “But you aren’t that any longer, are you?”

Silas said, “People can change,” and then fell silent. Bod wondered if his guardian—if Silas—was remembering. Then, “It was an honor to be your guardian, young man.” His hand vanished inside his cloak, reappeared holding a battered old wallet. “This is for you. Take it.”

Bod took the wallet, but did not open it.

“It contains money. Enough to give you a start in the world, but nothing more.”

Bod said, “I went to see Alonso Jones today but he wasn’t there, or if he was I couldn’t see him. I wanted him to tell me about distant places he’d visited. Islands and porpoises and glaciers and mountains. Places where people dress and eat in the strangest ways.” Bod hesitated. Then, “Those places. They’re still there. I mean, there’s a whole world out there. Can I see it? Can I go there?”

Silas nodded. “There is a whole world out there, yes. You have a passport in the inner pocket of your suitcase. It’s made out in the name of Nobody Owens. And was not easy to obtain.”

Bod said, “If I change my mind can I come back here?” And then he answered his own question. “If I come back, it will be a place, but it won’t be home any longer.”

Silas said, “Would you like me to walk you to the front gate?”

Bod shook his head. “Best if I do it on my own. Um. Silas. If you’re ever in trouble, call me. I’ll come and help.”

“I,” said Silas, “do not get into trouble.”

“No. I don’t suppose you do. But still.”

It was dark in the crypt, and it smelled of mildew and damp and old stones, and it seemed, for the first time, very small.

Bod said, “I want to see life. I want to hold it in my hands. I want to leave a footprint on the sand of a desert island. I want to play football with people. I want,” he said, and then he paused and he thought. “I want everything.”

“Good,” said Silas. Then he put up his hand as if he were brushing away the hair from his eyes—a most uncharacteristic gesture. He said, “If ever it transpires that I am in trouble, I shall indeed send for you.”

“Even though you don’t get into trouble?”

“As you say.”

There was something at the edge of Silas’s lips that might have been a smile, and might have been regret, and might just have been a trick of the shadows.

“Good-bye, then, Silas.” Bod held out his hand, as he had when he was a small boy, and Silas took it, in a cold hand the color of old ivory, and shook it gravely.

“Good-bye, Nobody Owens.”

Bod picked up the little suitcase. He opened the door to let himself out of the crypt, walked back up the gentle slope to the path without looking back.

It was well after the gates were locked. He wondered as he reached them if the gates would still let him walk through them, or if he would have to go back into the chapel to get a key, but when he got to the entrance he found the small pedestrian gate was unlocked and wide open, as if it was waiting for him, as if the graveyard itself was bidding him good-bye.

One pale, plump figure waited in front of the open gate, and she smiled up at him as he came towards her, and there were tears in her eyes in the moonlight.

“Hullo, Mother,” said Bod.

Mistress Owens rubbed her eyes with a knuckle, then dabbed at them with her apron, and she shook her head. “Do you know what you’re going to do now?” she asked.

“See the world,” said Bod. “Get into trouble. Get out of trouble again. Visit jungles and volcanoes and deserts and islands. And people. I want to meet an awful lot of people.”

Mistress Owens made no immediate reply. She stared up at him, and then she began to sing a song that Bod remembered, a song she used to sing him when he was a tiny thing, a song that she had used to lull him to sleep when he was small.

“You’re not,” whispered Bod. “And I shall.”

Then the last lines of the song came back to Mistress Owens, and she sang them to her son.

“Leave no path untaken,” repeated Bod. “A difficult challenge, but I can try my best.”

He tried to put his arms around his mother then, as he had when he was a child, although he might as well have been trying to hold mist, for he was alone on the path.

He took a step forward, through the gate that took him out of the graveyard. He thought a voice said, “I am so proud of you, my son,” but he might, perhaps, have imagined it.

The midsummer sky was already beginning to lighten in the east, and that was the way that Bod began to walk: down the hill, towards the living people, and the city, and the dawn.

There was a passport in his bag, money in his pocket. There was a smile dancing on his lips, although it was a wary smile, for the world is a bigger place than a little graveyard on a hill; and there would be dangers in it and mysteries, new friends to make, old friends to rediscover, mistakes to be made and many paths to be walked before he would, finally, return to the graveyard or ride with the Lady on the broad back of her great grey stallion.

But between now and then, there was Life; and Bod walked into it with his eyes and his heart wide open.

First, foremost, and forever: I owe an enormous debt, conscious and, I have no doubt, unconscious, to Rudyard Kipling and the two volumes of his remarkable work The Jungle Book. I read them as a child, excited and impressed, and I’ve read and reread them many times since. If you are only familiar with the Disney cartoon, you should read the stories.

My son Michael inspired this book. He was only two years old, riding his little tricycle between gravestones in the summer, and I had a book in my head. Then it just took me twenty-something years to write it.

When I started writing the book (I started with Chapter Four), only my daughter Maddy’s request to know what happened next kept me writing beyond the first couple of pages.

Gardner Dozois and Jack Dann were the first people to publish “The Witch’s Headstone.” Professor Georgia Grilli talked about what this book was without having read it, and listening to her talk helped throw the themes into focus.

Kendra Stout was there when I saw the first ghoul gate, and was kind enough to walk through several graveyards with me. She was the first audience for the first chapters, and her love for Silas was awesome.

Artist and author Audrey Niffenegger is also a graveyard guide, and she showed me around the ivy-covered marvel that is Highgate Cemetery West. A lot of what she told me crept into Chapters Six and Seven.