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face. He picked up his bag and said, “You will be in good hands with Miss
He stopped. Then, “…Cats?” he offered, uncertainly. “You are ignorant, boy,” said Miss Lupescu. “This is bad. And you are content to be ignorant, which is worse.
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pigwiggins
Abanazer Bolger had seen some odd types in his time; if you owned a shop like Abanazer’s, you’d see them too. The shop, in the warren of streets in the Old Town—a little bit antiques shop, a little bit junk shop, a little bit pawnbroker’s (and not even Abanazer himself was entirely certain which bit was which) brought odd types and strange people, some of them wanting to buy, some of them needing to sell. Abanazer Bolger traded over the counter, buying and selling, and he did a better trade behind the counter and in the back room, accepting objects that may not have been acquired entirely honestly, and then quietly shifting them on. His business was an iceberg. Only the dusty little shop was visible on the surface. The rest of it was underneath, and that was just how Abanazer Bolger wanted it.
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A business like Abanazer Bolger’s brought in strange people, but the boy who came in that morning was one of the strangest Abanazer could remember in a lifetime of cheating strange people out of their valuables. He looked to be about seven years old, and dressed in his grandfather’s clothes. He smelled like a shed. His hair was long and shaggy, and he seemed extremely grave. His hands were deep in the pockets of a dusty brown jacket, but even with the hands out of sight, Abanazer could see that something was clutched
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“Snakestone?”
somewhere, didn’t you?” “No,” said Bod flatly.
“No,” said Bod flatly. “Are you going to buy it, or shall I go and find somebody who will?”
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believe, still looking for you, still intends to kill you.” Bod
Bod shrugged. “So?” he said. “It’s only death. I mean, all of my best friends are dead.” “Yes.” Silas hesitated. “They are. And they are, for the most part, done with the world. You are not. You’re alive, Bod.
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You can do anything, make anything, dream anything. If you change the world, the world will change. Potential. Once you’re dead, it’s gone. Over. You’ve made what you’ve made, dreamed your dream, written your name. You may be buried here, you may even walk. But that potential is finished.” Bod thought about this. It seemed almost true, although he could think of exceptions—his parents adopting him, for example. But the dead and the living were
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Silas seemed unimpressed. “Out of the question. Here we can keep you safe. How could we keep you safe, out there? Outside, anything could happen.” “Yes,” agreed Bod. “That’s the potential thing you were talking about.” He fell silent. Then, “Someone killed my mother and my father and my sister.” “Yes. Someone did.” “A man?” “A man.” “Which means,” said Bod, “you’re asking the wrong question.” Silas raised an eyebrow. “How so?” “Well,” said Bod. “If I go outside in the world, the question isn’t ‘who will keep me safe from him?’” “No?” “No. It’s ‘who will keep him safe from me?’” Twigs scratched against the high windows, as if they needed to be let in. Silas flicked an imaginary speck of dust from his sleeve with a fingernail as sharp as a blade. He said, “We will need to find you a school.”
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“He’s out here, somewhere, and he wants you dead,” she said. “Him as killed your family. Us in the graveyard, we wants you to stay alive. We wants you to surprise us and disappoint us and impress us and amaze us. Come home, Bod.” “I think…I said things to Silas. He’ll be angry.” “If he didn’t care about you, you couldn’t upset him,” was all she said. The fallen autumn leaves were slick beneath Bod’s feet, and the mists blurred the edges of the world. Nothing was as clean-cut as he had thought it, a few minutes before.
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She walked over, sat down on the bench, and swung her legs as if she was still a little girl. “Hullo. Um, hullo?” said a voice from behind her. “Awful cheek of me, I know, but would you help me hold down this, er, just really need another pair of hands, if it’s not too much trouble.” Scarlett looked around, and saw a man in a fawn-colored raincoat squatting in front of a gravestone. He was holding a large sheet of paper which was blowing about in the wind. She hurried over to him. “You hold on to it here,” said the man. “One hand here, one hand there, that’s it. Frightful imposition, I know. Ridiculously grateful.” He had a biscuit tin next to him, and from the tin he pulled what looked like a crayon the size of a small candle. He began rubbing it back and forth across the stone with easy, practiced movements.
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driver’s seat. He wound down his window. “Come on,” he said. “Where exactly am I taking you?” Scarlett stood there, the rain running down her neck. “I don’t take rides from strangers,” she said. “Quite right too,” said the man. “But one good turn deserves, and, um, all that. Here, put the stuff in the back before it gets soaked.” He pulled open the passenger door, and Scarlett leaned inside and put his graverubbing equipment down on the backseat as best she could. “Tell you what,” he said. “Why don’t you phone your mother—you can use my phone—and tell her my car’s number plate? You can do it from inside the car. You’re getting soaked out there.” Scarlett hesitated. Rain was beginning to plaster her hair down. It was cold.
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“I’m sure that you were nothing of the, um,” said Mr. Frost. “You are raising a fine girl here, Noona. Well, lovely cup of tea. Always a joy to make new friends. I’ll be toddling off now. Got to make myself a little dinner, then I’ve got a meeting of the Local History Society.” “You’re making your own dinner?” said Mrs. Perkins. “Yes, making it. Well, defrosting it really. I’m also a master of the boil-in-the-bag. Eating for one. Living on my own. Bit of a crusty old bachelor. Actually, in the papers, that always means
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implore her. You must call her your Terpsichore, your Echo, your Clytemnestra.
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said, “Ah, list to me, young Leander, young Hero, young Alexander. If you dare nothing, then when the day is over, nothing is all you will have gained.”
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“You won’t go through me,” he told her, and she threw her arms around him and squeezed him so tightly he could hardly breathe. He said, “That hurts.” Scarlett let go. “Sorry.” “No. It was nice. I mean. You just squeezed more than I was expecting.”
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In Krakow, on Wawel Hill, there are caves called the Dragon’s Den, named after a long dead dragon. These are the caves that the tourists know about. There are caves beneath those caves that the tourists do not know and do not ever get to visit. They go down a long way, and they are inhabited.
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Late on Sunday afternoon the telephone rang. Scarlett was sitting downstairs, laboriously copying faces from the manga she had been reading onto scrap paper. Her mother picked up the phone. “Funny, we were just talking about you,” said her mother, although they hadn’t been. “It was wonderful,” her mother continued. “I had the best time. Honestly, it was no trouble. The chocolates? They were perfect. Just perfect. I told Scarlett to tell you, any time you want a good dinner, you just let me know.” And then, “Scarlett? Yes, she’s here. I’ll put her on. Scarlett?” “I’m just here, Mum,” said Scarlett. “You don’t have to shout.” She took the phone. “Mister Frost?” “Scarlett?” He sounded excited. “The. Um. The thing we were talking about. The thing that happened in my house. You can tell this friend of yours that I found out—um, listen, when you said ‘a friend of yours’ did you mean it in the sense of ‘we’re actually talking about you,’ or is there a real person, if it’s not a personal
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“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.”
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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. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS First, foremost, and forever: I owe an enormous debt, conscious and, I have no doubt, unconscious, to Rudyard Kipling

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