Kit's Wilderness Read Free

following my ancestors into the pit.”
    He used to draw me close to him, touch my cheek, run his fingers through my hair.
    “But there was more than just the fear, Kit. We were also driven to it. We understood our fate. There was the strangest joy in dropping down together into the darkness that we feared. And most of all there was the joy of coming out again together into the lovely world. Bright spring mornings, brilliant sunshine, birdsong, walking together through the lovely hawthorn lanes toward our homes.
    Grandpa used to swing his arms and sing out loud and turn his face toward the sun. He used to grip my shoulders and smile and smile and I felt his body trembling with the love he held for me.
    “This is our world,” he used to say. “Aye, there’s more than enough of darkness in it. But over everything there’s all this joy, Kit. There’s all this lovely lovely light.”
    One Saturday morning I woke early and heard him singing. I went to his room.
    “Grandpa,” I said. “What’s the monument?”
    He laughed.
    “Aye,” he said. “That’s another thing on my list to show you.”
    And we crept out of the silent house and he took me to St. Thomas’ graveyard. A pretty place: old stone church, old trees, leaning headstones.
    “Through here,” he said.
    We followed the narrow pathway between the graves. We came to a larger grave, a high narrow pyramid. It was a monument to the Stoneygate pit disaster. It happened in 1821. A hundred and seventeen were killed. The stone was worn by rain and wind and age, but the long list of names remained. Nine-year-olds, ten-year-olds, eleven-year-olds, twelve-year-olds. The sun poured down through the ancient trees on us, dappling the stone, the earth and us with the shadows of trembling leaves.
    “Imagine it, eh?” he said.
    I reached up and ran my finger across the names. I caught my breath. Right at the top was the name I knew.
    “John Askew,”
I said.
“Aged thirteen.”
    “Aye. There’s lots of names you know on this old list, son.” He smiled. “You ready?”
    “Eh?”
    “Watch.”
    He took my hand, gently drew my finger to the foot of the stone. The names there were becoming unreadable, worn away by trickling water and rising damp. Bright green moss grew over the letters.
    He scraped away the moss with his fingernails. I read the final name, caught my breath again, felt the thudding of my heart.
    “Aye, Kit.”
    He smiled. “A great-great-great-great-uncle? Yours was always one of the family names.”
    I traced it with my finger:
Christopher Watson, aged thirteen.
    He put his arm around me. “Don’t let it trouble you, Kit. It’s long ago.”
    I picked more moss away from the base of the stone.
    Neither can they die any more, for they are equal unto the angels.
    Grandpa smiled.
    “All it shows is how you’re in your rightful place now: back at home in Stoneygate.”
    He looked into my eyes.
    “Okay?” he whispered.
    I gazed back into his dark and tender eyes. “Okay,” I said.
    I stared at our two names. John Askew, Christopher Watson, with the long list of the dead between us, joining us. I kept turning as Grandpa led me away, until the mark of my name had blended once again with moss and stone.
    “Used to get a laugh here long ago,” he said. “Used to come at night as kids. Used to dance in a ring around the monument and chant the ‘Our Father,’ backward. Used to say we’d see the faces of those old pit kids blooming in the dark.” He giggled. “Bloody terrifying. Used to belt home laughing and screaming, scared half to death. Kids’ games, eh? What they like?”
    He put his arm around me as we walked home.
    “It’s great that you’ve come here,” he said. “I’ve wanted this, wanted to show you where you’ve come from, where we’ve all come from.” He patted my shoulder. “Don’t let it trouble you. The world’s so different now.
    He pointed out across the wilderness.
    “We used to say we saw the ancient pit kids