Kipp The Kid Read Free Page A

two of
them sipped quietly away, sharing the rock as a seat, which only
had just enough room for the two of them. Kipp’s bum got sore from
sitting nearly on the sharp edge, because he didn’t want his bum to
come into contact with hers. Jane, on the other hand, seemed not at
all fussed about it and actually leant in a little, every time Kipp
adjusted his position to move. But despite his discomfort, he
wasn’t about to give up his rock, even for a girl he only barely
tolerated, let alone liked.
     
    Kipp never dreamed. At least, not dreams he
remembered. Only once had a dream been so real that he woke up
expecting to see his Mum standing there and was genuinely surprised
when she wasn’t. But on this cool night something inside him had
stirred and he had a dream so vivid, so strange and so real that
the vision of it stayed with him long into the next week.
     
    He’d been down to the mines, as he always had. It was
a warm night and there were bugs everywhere. The campsite was just
as he had left it the last time he was there. But there was an
eeriness, an unease that seemed to penetrate the place. The stars
shone down brightly, sparkling like heaven’s jewelry in the black
box of space. Even the fire he made took on a ghostly glow and cast
strange beams of light out into the mist that had somehow rolled in
from above the chasm. Odd, he had thought, wrong time of year for
fog.
     
    But just as Kipp was wondering about the strange
mist, a voice suddenly cried out in the dark and a white figure
appeared at the end of the chasm. It called out his name and the
sound echoed off the stone walls, making it sound much louder than
it would normally. Then, the strange figure, who he did not
recognize, held out both arms and let out a howl.
     
    Kipp woke to his dog Nip howling at the Moon, whose
crest had only just started to appear above the chasm. It did not
occur to Kipp straight away that Nip had rarely howled, not at the
Moon, not at thunder, not at anything except when the Rooster
crowed early on some mornings.
     
    It took Kipp some time to adjust to the still cool
air of the night. He checked his watch. It was not even three. He
looked over at Jane who had somehow managed to fall asleep, curled
up uncomfortably in his coat. Her feet poked out one end, her white
socks dirty from the red dust. The fire was almost out, only the
smallest glow of embers to warm the air. He decided to stoke it and
throw some more sticks on. He watched as the sticks slowly
smoldered until the fire finally flickered back to life.
     
    He sat there for a long time, watching the fire and
wondering about the dream. He tried to picture the figure, too
large to be a girl and too small to be his mother. But it was
definitely female. It wore a long white gown, old looking and
frayed. She had dark hair, that much Kipp remembered. But he dared
not look across the chasm into the dark cleft, lest something
sinister appear.
     
    Jane stretched out to reveal a screwed up face poking
out from in front of the nape of Kipp’s jacket, squinting in the
morning light. Her hair was all over her face. A cheeky eye gazed
at him.
     
    “Is it morning?” she asked matter-of-factly.
     
    Typical , thought Kipp. Always stating the
obvious . In his experience, girls always did that. His mother
had done it. His gran did it often. “Get some clothes on. It’s
freezing,” she would say, as if Kipp couldn’t feel cold until the
magic of her words made it cold.
     
    He would tease her sometimes about it. “Gee, is that
soup?” and “Wow, you have blue hair.” But his gran seemed to not
get the joke. “Well of course it’s soup,” she would answer, a
rebuking tone in her voice. The same tone she always used when
calling out to grumps. “Stan, you have to get the chickens in.
Stan, come in off the porch before you catch pneumonia. Stan, the
neighbor’s goats are loose again.” Then she would grumble to
herself because he hadn’t heard her.
     
    Kipp was tempted