Coraline

Three of them ran along the ground, while the pale girl fluttered a little over their heads, swooping down on butterfly wings to grab the ball and swing up again into the sky before she tossed the ball to one of the other children.

And then, without a word about it being spoken, the game was done, and the four of them went back to the picnic cloth, where the lunch dishes had been cleared away, and there were four bowls waiting for them, three of ice cream, one of honeysuckle flowers piled high.

They ate with relish.

“Thank you for coming to my party,” said Coraline. “If it is mine.”

“The pleasure is ours, Coraline Jones,” said the winged girl, nibbling another honeysuckle blossom. “If there were but something we could do for you, to thank you and to reward you.”

“Aye,” said the boy with the red velvet britches and the dirty face. He put out his hand and held Coraline’s hand with his own. It was warm now.

“It’s a very fine thing you did for us, Miss,” said the tall girl. She now had a smear of chocolate ice cream all around her lips.

“I’m just pleased it’s all over,” said Coraline.

Was it her imagination, or did a shadow cross the faces of the other children at the picnic?

The winged girl, the circlet in her hair glittering like a star, rested her fingers for a moment on the back of Coraline’s hand. “It is over and done with for us,” she said. “This is our staging post. From here, we three will set out for uncharted lands, and what comes after no one alive can say. . . .” She stopped talking.

“There’s a but, isn’t there?” said Coraline. “I can feel it. Like a rain cloud.”

The boy on her left tried to smile bravely, but his lower lip began to tremble and he bit it with his upper teeth and said nothing. The girl in the brown bonnet shifted uncomfortably and said, “Yes, Miss.”

“But I got you three back,” said Coraline. “I got Mum and Dad back. I shut the door. I locked it. What more was I meant to do?”

The boy squeezed Coraline’s hand with his. She found herself remembering when it had been she, trying to reassure him, when he was little more than a cold memory in the darkness.

“Well, can’t you give me a clue?” asked Coraline. “Isn’t there something you can tell me?”

“The beldam swore by her good right hand,” said the tall girl, “but she lied.”

“M-my governess,” said the boy, “used to say that nobody is ever given more to shoulder than he or she can bear.” He shrugged as he said this, as if he had not yet made his own mind up whether or not it was true.

“We wish you luck,” said the winged girl. “Good fortune and wisdom and courage—although you have already shown that you have all three of these blessings, and in abundance.”

“She hates you,” blurted out the boy. “She hasn’t lost anything for so long. Be wise. Be brave. Be tricky.”

“But it’s not fair,” said Coraline, in her dream, angrily. “It’s just not fair. It should be over.”

The boy with the dirty face stood up and hugged Coraline tightly. “Take comfort in this,” he whispered. “Th’art alive. Thou livest.”

And in her dream Coraline saw that the sun had set and the stars were twinkling in the darkening sky.

Coraline stood in the meadow, and she watched as the three children (two of them walking, one flying) went away from her across the grass, silver in the light of the huge moon.

The three of them came to a small wooden bridge over a stream. They stopped there and turned and waved, and Coraline waved back.

And what came after was darkness.

Coraline woke in the early hours of the morning, convinced she had heard something moving, but unsure what it was.

She waited.

Something made a rustling noise outside her bedroom door. She wondered if it was a rat. The door rattled. Coraline clambered out of bed.

“Go away,” said Coraline sharply. “Go away or you’ll be sorry.”

There was a pause, then the whatever it was scuttled away down the hall. There was something odd and irregular about its footsteps, if they were footsteps. Coraline found herself wondering if it was perhaps a rat with an extra leg. . . .

“It isn’t over, is it?” she said to herself.

Then she opened the bedroom door. The gray, predawn light showed her the whole of the corridor, completely deserted.

She went toward the front door, sparing a hasty glance back at the wardrobe-door mirror hanging on the wall at the other end of the hallway, seeing nothing but her own pale face staring back at her, looking sleepy and serious. Gentle, reassuring snores came from her parents’ room, but the door was closed. All the doors off the corridor were closed. Whatever the scuttling thing was, it had to be here somewhere.

Coraline opened the front door and looked at the gray sky. She wondered how long it would be until the sun came up, wondered whether her dream had been a true thing while knowing in her heart that it had been. Something she had taken to be part of the shadows under the hall couch detached itself from beneath the couch and made a mad, scrabbling rush on its long white legs, heading for the front door.

Coraline’s mouth dropped open in horror and she stepped out of the way as the thing clicked and scuttled past her and out of the house, running crablike on its too-many tapping, clicking, scurrying feet.

She knew what it was, and she knew what it was after. She had seen it too many times in the last few days, reaching and clutching and snatching and popping blackbeetles obediently into the other mother’s mouth. Five-footed, crimson-nailed, the color of bone.

It was the other mother’s right hand.

It wanted the black key.

XIII.

CORALINE’S PARENTS NEVER SEEMED to remember anything about their time in the snow globe. At least, they never said anything about it, and Coraline never mentioned it to them.

Sometimes she wondered whether they had ever noticed that they had lost two days in the real world, and came to the eventual conclusion that they had not. Then again, there are some people who keep track of every day and every hour, and there are people who don’t, and Coraline’s parents were solidly in the second camp.

Coraline had placed the marbles beneath her pillow before she went to sleep that first night home in her own room once more. She went back to bed after she saw the other mother’s hand, although there was not much time left for sleeping, and she rested her head back on that pillow.