A Song for Ella Grey Read online

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2014 by David Almond

  Cover photograph copyright © 2015 by Ilina Simeonova/Trevillion Images

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York. Originally published in hardcover by Hodder Children’s Books, London, in 2014.

  Delacorte Press is a registered trademark and the colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Almond, David.

  A song for Ella Grey / David Almond. — First American edition.

  pages cm.

  “Originally published in hardcover by Hodder Children’s Books, London, in 2014.”

  Summary: Claire witnesses a love so dramatic it is as if Ella Grey has been captured and taken from her, but the loss of her best friend to the arms of Orpheus is nothing compared to the loss she feels when Ella is taken from the world in this modern take on the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice set in Northern England.

  ISBN 978-0-553-53359-0 (hardcover) — ISBN 978-0-553-53360-6 (library binding) — ISBN 978-0-553-53361-3 (ebook)

  1. Eurydice (Greek mythological character)—Juvenile fiction. 2. Orpheus (Greek mythological character)—Juvenile fiction. [1. Eurydice (Greek mythological character)—Fiction. 2. Orpheus (Greek mythological character)—Fiction. 3. Mythology, Greek—Fiction. 4. Love—Fiction. 5. Friendship—Fiction. 6. England—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.A448Son 2015

  [Fic]—dc23

  2014040181

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

  v4.1

  a

  ALSO BY DAVID ALMOND

  Skellig

  My Name Is Mina

  Kit’s Wilderness

  Heaven Eyes

  Counting Stars

  Secret Heart

  The Fire-Eaters

  Clay

  Two Plays

  Raven Summer

  Dear Reader,

  This is a new novel, but it tells an ancient tale. It’s set in the northern part of the world in which I live today but draws on the Greece of thousands of years ago. Its characters are modern teenagers, but two of them live the lives of doomed lovers from the distant past.

  I’ve always loved the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. It’s a story of love and death, darkness and light, hope and despair. It’s a tragedy that is filled with joy.

  Orpheus is the greatest singer and poet the world has ever known. When he plays his lyre, the birds come down from the sky to hear him, wild animals are tame, even the trees bow their heads to be near him. He wanders the world, enchanting all who hear him. Among his listeners is beautiful Eurydice. They fall in love with each other; they marry. But a snake bites her as she walks in the garden and she dies. Orpheus is distraught. His music becomes filled with a new dark beauty, with longing for his lost love. He determines that he will find the entrance to the Underworld, that he will go there, the one living thing among all the dead, and bring her back. He does find the entrance. He sings his way into the darkness. He enchants the guardians of the Underworld. He enchants its rulers. He enchants Death itself. Eurydice is called from the depths. Yes, he can lead her back to the upper world. There is just one condition: he must not turn to look at her until they are both in the light again. So he sings his way out of the darkness. Eurydice follows. But just as they are about to reach the world of life and light, he turns, and his Eurydice is taken back.

  It’s a tale that says much about human love and yearning, about the purpose and beauty of poetry, music and song. It tells of our longing to transcend death, to bring our lost loved ones back to us. And it’s a tale of young people, of first passion, first love.

  Ella Grey is our Eurydice. Her tragedy is told by Ella’s best friend, Claire. She sees Orpheus and Ella grow intoxicated by the love they feel for each other; she records the overwhelming joy and the profound despair they experience. She sees that there seems no way to halt their destined fate.

  It was such a powerful book to write. I felt that I’d touched on some very ancient forces. At times, I really did feel that the words I wrote were being sung for me. I hope you enjoy it.

  FOR FREYA AND HER FRIENDS

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Also by David Almond

  Dedication

  Part One

  Part Two

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Part Three

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Part Four

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Part Five

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Part Six

  About the Author

  I’m the one who’s left behind. I’m the one to tell the tale. I knew them both, knew how they lived and how they died. It didn’t happen long ago. I’m young, like them. Like them? Can that be possible? Can you be both young and dead? I don’t have time to think of that. I need to cast the story out and live my life. I’ll tell it fast and true to get it gone, right now, while darkness deepens over the icy North and the bitter stars shine down. I’ll finish it by morning. I’ll bring my friend into the world for one last night then let her go forever. Follow me, one word then another, one sentence then another, one death then another. Don’t hesitate. Keep moving forward with me through the night. It won’t take long. Don’t look back.

  I’ll start in the middle of it when the wheels were already turning, when the end was still to come. It was a late spring early morning, two weeks into the new term, and we were in bed, the two of us together, as we were so often then. It’s how our sleepovers had developed. We started out as five-year-olds cuddled up with teddy bears and fleecy jimjams. Now here we were at seventeen, still spending nights together. They’d been stopped by her parents for a while. They’d said she was too old for this. They’d said she was going astray, not working hard enough at school. But she’d knuckled down as they’d told her to. She’d wrapped them around her finger as only she could. And here we were again, sleeping tucked against each other in my safe warm bed, breathing together, dreaming together. Ella and Claire. Claire and Ella, just as it had always been. So lovely. So young and bright and free and…And our futures lay beyond us, waiting. And…Ha!

  Light filtered through the thin ye
llow curtains. My dangling wind chime sounded in the draught and the shabby dreamcatcher swayed. A river bell rang on the turning tide and a foghorn groaned far out at sea.

  I thought Ella was still asleep. I had my cheek against her back and listened to the steady rhythmic beating of her heart, to the hum of life deep down in her.

  “Claire,” she softly said. “Are you awake?”

  “I thought you were asleep.”

  “No.” She didn’t move. “It’s love, Claire. I know it’s love.”

  My heart quickened.

  “What d’you mean, love?”

  I heard the smile on her breath, her sigh of joy.

  “I’ve been awake all night,” she said, “just thinking of him.”

  “Him?” I demanded. “Who do you mean, him?”

  I removed myself from her. I rolled onto my back.

  I knew her answer, of course.

  “Orpheus!” she whispered. “Orpheus! Who else could it be?”

  She giggled. She turned to me and she was shining.

  “Claire! I am in love with him.”

  “But you haven’t even met him. He hardly even knows you bliddy exist.”

  She went on giggling.

  “And you’ve only spoken to him on the bliddy…”

  She pressed her finger to my lips.

  “None of that matters. I keep on hearing his song. It’s like I’ve been waiting to find him, and for him to find me. It’s like I’ve known him forever. And he’s known me.”

  “Oh, Ella.”

  “It’s destined. I love him and he’ll love me. There’ll be no other way.”

  Then my mother’s voice, calling us down.

  “Coming!” called Ella.

  She held my face, gazed into my eyes.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “For what?”

  “For bringing us together.”

  “What?”

  “If you hadn’t called me that day and told me to listen, and if he hadn’t sung to me…” She kissed me on the lips. “None of this would have happened, would it?”

  Mum called again.

  “Claire! Ella!”

  I pulled my clothes on.

  “No,” I said.

  She just kept on smiling.

  She kissed me again.

  “You’ll see,” she said. “You’ll understand. It won’t be long now.”

  “What won’t be long?”

  “Until he comes for me. I know he’ll come for me.”

  She kissed me again.

  Thud, went my heart. Thud.

  • • •

  We walked to school along the riverbank, past where the shipyards used to be. We crossed the bridge over the burn where we once sailed paper boats and bathed our dolls. The high arches of the Newcastle bridges shimmered in the distance. We passed some men fishing. Part of the pathway had collapsed into itself, probably into one of the multiple cavities left by ancient mining works.

  I took her hand and guided her across.

  I took her face in my hands and held it gently.

  “You’re such a total innocent,” I told her. “You’ve never even had a proper lad before, and now…”

  She giggled, the way she did.

  “It’s how it happens, isn’t it? One day everything’s just ordinary. And then kapow, out of the blue, you fall…”

  “It can’t be love,” I said. “It’s madness.”

  “Then let me be mad!”

  She kissed me in delight and stepped away and we hurried on. Others were around us now, all making their way to Holy Trinity. We called out greetings to our friends.

  She hesitated before the gates and spoke softly, conspiratorially.

  “I know you’re jealous,” she said.

  She came in close again, lowered her eyes and whispered soft and low.

  “I know you love me, Claire.”

  “Of course I do. Proper love, not this…”

  “I’ll still be here for you,” she said. “I’ll still be your…”

  “Oh, Ella, stop it. Stop it now.”

  I tried to hold her, but she broke away, didn’t look back.

  In English that morning, Krakatoa’s droning on and on and on and on. Paradise damn Lost again. I’m watching Ella staring from the window. Always such a dreamer. Sometimes it’s like she’s hardly there at all. Sometimes it’s like she’s half-dead and I’m the one doing her living for her.

  Sometimes you just want to kick her arse and shake her up and snap,

  “Wake up!”

  “Claire?” comes Krakatoa’s voice.

  He’s right by my desk.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “What do you think?”

  “About what, sir?”

  He rolls his eyes, but he can’t go on, because suddenly Ella’s out of her seat and stuffing her things into her bag.

  “Ella?” he says.

  She doesn’t even look at him. She grins at me. She makes a fist of joy.

  “See?” she whispers. “Didn’t I tell you, Claire?”

  And she laughs and she’s out the door and gone.

  Then we see him, out in the shimmering at the edge of the yard. Just standing there, with the coat and the hair and the lyre strapped to his back, gazing towards us with that Orpheus look. And now there’s Ella, hurrying over the concrete to him.

  Krakatoa yanks the window open.

  “Ella!” he calls. “Ella Grey!”

  She doesn’t turn. There’s a moment when she and Orpheus just stare at each other, seeing each other for the very first time. Then they take each other’s hands and off they go.

  Krakatoa gives one more yell, then shoves the window shut again.

  “Doesn’t say boo to a goose and then up she comes with this?” he says. “Who’ll ever understand you kids?”

  “It was true, then,” whispers Angeline at my side.

  “Aye,” I whisper back.

  “She said he’d come, and so he did.”

  “He did.”

  “She’s the dark one. Who’d have thought it?”

  We stare at the space they’ve left behind.

  “Her and him,” says Angeline. “Her and him.”

  There’s lots of others at the window.

  “Who is he?” says Bianca.

  “He’s sex on a bliddy stick!” laughs Crystal Carr.

  None of the boys says anything.

  “Back to your seats,” says Krakatoa. “If she wants to throw away her chances then so be it. She’s her own person.”

  “Is she?” I grunt.

  “Who is he?” says Bianca. “Who?”

  “So let’s go on,” says Krakatoa. “Evil, be thou my good. What exactly does Milton mean by this?”

  “Who?” says Crystal.

  “He’s called Orpheus,” I say. “Bliddy Orpheus.”

  ONE

  Maybe he was always with us. Maybe he was there when we were thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, when we were forming our beautiful friendship group. We used to meet up on the grassy slope beside The Cluny, that old whisky warehouse converted into artists’ workshops. It’s down by the Ouseburn, the stream that comes out from under the city then flows through its gates down into the Tyne. There’s a café, a bar, a little theatre, a room where bands play. Close by is Seven Stories, the children’s book place. When we were little, we used to go there with our parents and teachers to listen to writers and artists. We’d make masks and put on costumes and act out stories of our own. We’d speak through our masks and say, I’m not me. I’ve gone. I’ve turned into Dracula, or Cinderella, Hansel, Gretel, Guinevere. And then we’d tell our tales and write them down. And as I write this down, I think that he was with us even then, speaking through us, making us sing, making us dance.

  We always said there was magic in the air down by the Ouseburn. We’d sip wine, listen to the river, stare up at the stars, share our dreams of being artists, musicians, poets, wanderers, anything different, anything new. We scoff
ed at the kids who weren’t like us, the ones who already talked about careers, or bliddy mortgages and pensions. Kids wanting to be old before they were young. Kids wanting to be dead before they’d lived. They were digging their own graves, building the walls of their own damn jails. Us, we hung on to our youth. We were footloose, fancy free. We said we’d never grow boring and old. We plundered charity shops for vintage clothes. We bought battered Levis and gorgeous faded velvet stuff from Attica in High Bridge. We wore coloured boots, hemp scarves from Gaia. We read Baudelaire and Byron. We read our poems to each other. We wrote songs and posted them on YouTube. We formed bands. We talked of the amazing journeys we’d take together once school was done. Sometimes we paired off, made couples that lasted for a little while, but the group was us. We hung together. We could say anything to each other. We loved each other.

  There was one Saturday dusk when Orpheus was surely in the air. Early spring, but already the temperature had started to rise. Above the city, the sky was pink and gold. The grass we sat on still held some heat from that day’s sun. From the quayside, further in towards the city, came the laughter and screams of early drunks. Somebody had brought a bottle of Tesco Valpolicella and we were passing it round, mouth to mouth, tasting each other as we tasted the wine.

  We all gasped at the dark silhouette of a single swan that swooped towards us from the metro bridge high above. It swerved just a few feet over our heads, and rushed towards the river. We cursed with joy. We applauded, laughed, smiled, sighed our way into the stillness afterwards.

  I was leaning back with my legs stretched. Ella was leaning back on me. It was she who heard it first.

  “What the hell is that?” she suddenly said.

  “Is what?”

  “Is that?”

  She sat up straight.

  “That. Listen.”

  What was it? We listened. We heard nothing, then we did.

  “There is something,” said Sam Hinds.

  “That kind of singing or something?” said Angeline.

  “Aye,” said Ella. “That.”

  Aye, like singing. But also like a mixup of the river sounds, the drunks, the air on our faces, bits of birdsong and traffic, like all of those familiar things but with a new note in them that turned it all to some kind of weird song.

  We listened hard.