BooksBarbecue
Back Things that Fall from the Sky Save as PDF

Things that Fall from the Sky

Selja Ahava
Chapters (55)
  1. Cover
  2. Title
  3. A Walled-In Girl
  4. 1
  5. 2
  6. 3
  7. 4
  8. 5
  9. 6
  10. 7
  11. 8
  12. 9
  13. 10
  14. 11
  15. 12
  16. 13
  17. 14
  18. 15
  19. 16
  20. 17
  21. 18
  22. 19
  23. 20
  24. 21
  25. 22
  26. 23
  27. 24
  28. 25
  29. 26
  30. The Five Lightning Strikes of Hamish Mackay
  31. The Five Lightning Strikes of Hamish Mackay
  32. A Mermaid Splashing
  33. 1
  34. 2
  35. 3
  36. 4
  37. 5
  38. 6
  39. 7
  40. 8
  41. 9
  42. And That was The End of That
  43. 1
  44. 2
  45. 3
  46. 4
  47. 5
  48. 6
  49. 7
  50. 8
  51. 9
  52. 10
  53. 11
  54. 12
  55. 13

Cover

image

Things
that Fall from
the Sky

Title

Things
that Fall from
the Sky

Selja Ahava

Translated from the Finnish by
EMILY JEREMIAH AND FLEUR JEREMIAH

image

A BEGINNING is something that does not itself follow from something else, but after which another event or process naturally occurs.

A MIDDLE both follows a preceding event and itself has further consequences.

AN END, by contrast, is that which naturally occurs, whether necessarily or usually, after a preceding event, but need not be followed by anything else.

Aristotle, The Poetics

A Walled-In Girl

A WALLED-IN GIRL

1

1

‘What’s on your mind back there?’ Dad asks, glancing in the rear-view mirror.

Our eyes meet.

‘Nothing,’ I reply.

We turn off at the petrol station. You go right here for Extra Great Manor, left for Sawdust House. These days we mostly turn right.

Adults are always asking what children are thinking. But they’d be worried if they got a straight answer. If you’re three and it’s a windy day, it’s not a good idea to stare at the horizon and say, ‘I’m just wondering where wind comes from.’ You’re better off claiming you’re pretending to be a helicopter. And when you’re five, don’t ask too many questions about death or fossils, because grown-ups don’t want to think about dying, or characters in fairy tales getting old, or how Jesus died on the cross. When I was little, I thought Mum’s grandma was a fossil, because she died a long time ago. But these days I know you can get fossils with ferns, snails or dinosaurs in them, but not grandma ones. Or human ones, for that matter.

A grown-up will see a child sitting in the back of a car and think she’s counting trucks or the letters on road signs, or pretending her fingers are princesses, but, actually, she might be thinking about the outline of a grown-up, or time.

I’ve considered time a great deal. I have grey cells in my brain. I use them to think about how time marches forward and heals. Grown-ups say time heals and that means that when time passes, what’s happened changes into a memory and you remember it less and less clearly. When you can hardly remember it at all, you’ve been healed.

But I don’t want not to remember Mum. I want to remember Mum properly, without the aeroplane, without the shards of ice, without the hole in the porch. The way Mum was normally.