Free Counting Stars by David Almond

boy lifted his pullover, pointed to a scar that slanted through the right side of his stomach to his waist.
    “She do this with she knife.” He glared. “Understand?”
    I nodded. “Yes.”
    “She mighty wild. You touch her and you finished. Where you come from?”
    I pointed back up the hill toward Felling.
    “Where your people?”
    I pointed again.
    They grinned at each other.
    “Him all all alone.”
    The girl ran her thumb on the blade of her knife.
    We watched each other.
    They were blond, blue-eyed, a little older than me. Tangled hair. Filthy faces. They wore jeans, broken shoes, ripped pullovers. A cooking pot and a kettle were on the blackened earth around their fire. Stuffed rucksacks and rolled-up blankets rested on the stones. Beyond them, sparks cascaded over the hull of a half-built ship. The crackle of welding rods and the voices of workmen calling to each other echoed on the water. Beneath everything was the endless low din of engines and machines, the sour scent of the river.
    I stood there and felt no fear.
    “Is this Jonadab?” I said again.
    I took the cheese from my pocket and nibbled it.
    “Him bring food,” said the boy. He beckoned me with his spear. “Ungowa! Ungowa!”
    I pulled the haversack from my shoulders and moved toward them. I showed them the bread, the cheese, the fruit. I squatted in front of them.
    “You live here?” I said.
    They laughed. The boy stamped on the earth.
    “This sacred ground,” he said, and he stuck his spear into it.
    He reached out and took some of the food. He broke some cheese and gave it to the girl. He pointed to me, to the food, invited me to join them. The girl giggled.
    “Mighty good,” he said. He pointed to a rock. “You sit, boy.”
    I ate the bread and the cheese. I opened a pomegranate with my penknife and gave each of them a section.
    “You’re brother and sister,” I said.
    She giggled again.
    “Last of our people,” he said. “Why you come here?”
    I shrugged.
    “Just to look.”
    “This sacred ground.”
    “And you live here?”
    “Many suns. Many moons. She and me. She mighty wild. Beware.”
    He turned his face away. The girl delicately picked out the pomegranate seeds with her fingertips. She raised her eyes and stuck her tongue out at me.
    “Mighty danger here,” he said. “Bad people come. At night we see ghosts that dance on water. Sometimes the dog kids come and watch us in the dark.”
    “Dog kids?”
    “Children got from woman and dog together. Paws for hands and feet and hair on backs and howls like babies crying. Fire keep them away from us. And the spirits of our people come watch over us.” He lifted his spear. “This dangerous place for you, boy. Mebbe time go home.”
    She raised her eyes. She nodded. I looked at my map.
    “It is Jonadab,” I said.
    I sketched the place in my notebook: the field, the stones, the broken buildings. I copied the graffiti that was carved into the stones around me: names and dates going back centuries. I thought of Miss Lynch and I built a settlement in my head: houses, a mill, a farm, stone walls enclosing a field of sheep, a little jetty joining Jonadab to the water.
    “Where do you come from?” I said.
    He contemplated.
    “Too many questions,” he said. He swept his arm toward the horizon. “Far far way, boy.”
    “Have you been here long?”
    He scowled, took a crumpled cigarette end from behind his ear, lit it in the fire and smoked. He passed it to the girl.
    “Bad people come, want to take her way from me. We leave in the night. We bring horses. We ride many days to this holy place.”
    He turned his face away. They laughed.
    “We kill many,” he said. “Much blood has run from our knives. We mighty wild.”
    I was about to ask more, when he raised his shirt again, showed me the scar again.
    “Appendicitis,” I whispered.
    He stood over me with his knife in his fist.
    “So what you got, boy? What blood you had? What pain you had?”
    I contemplated my