“The mice tell me that all is good,” he said. “They say that you are our savior, Caroline.”
“It’s Coraline, Mister Bobo,” said Coraline. “Not Caroline. Coraline.”
“Coraline,” said Mr. Bobo, repeating her name to himself with wonderment and respect. “Very good, Coraline. The mice say that I must tell you that as soon as they are ready to perform in public, you will come up and watch them as the first audience of all. They will play tumpty umpty and toodle oodle, and they will dance, and do a thousand tricks. That is what is they say.”
“I would like that very much,” said Coraline. “When they’re ready.”
She knocked at Miss Spink and Miss Forcible’s door. Miss Spink let her in and Coraline went into their parlor. She put her box of dolls down on the floor. Then she put her hand into her pocket and pulled out the stone with the hole in it.
“Here you go,” she said. “I don’t need it anymore. I’m very grateful. I think it may have saved my life, and saved some other people’s death.”
She gave them both tight hugs, although her arms barely stretched around Miss Spink, and Miss Forcible smelled like the raw garlic she had been cutting. Then Coraline picked up her box of dolls and went out.
“What an extraordinary child,” said Miss Spink. No one had hugged her like that since she had retired from the theater.
That night Coraline lay in bed, all bathed, teeth cleaned, with her eyes open, staring up at the ceiling.
It was warm enough that, now that the hand was gone, she had opened her bedroom window wide. She had insisted to her father that the curtains not be entirely closed.
Her new school clothes were laid out carefully on her chair for her to put on when she woke.
Normally, on the night before the first day of term, Coraline was apprehensive and nervous. But, she realized, there was nothing left about school that could scare her anymore.
She fancied she could hear sweet music on the night air: the kind of music that can only be played on the tiniest silver trombones and trumpets and bassoons, on piccolos and tubas so delicate and small that their keys could only be pressed by the tiny pink fingers of white mice.
Coraline imagined that she was back again in her dream, with the two girls and the boy under the oak tree in the meadow, and she smiled.
As the first stars came out Coraline finally allowed herself to drift into sleep, while the gentle upstairs music of the mouse circus spilled out onto the warm evening air, telling the world that the summer was almost done.
Special Material
Exclusive to
THE LIMITED EDITION OF
INCLUDING:
Introduction by Neil Gaiman
Additional Illustrations by Dave McKean
Why I Wrote Coraline by Neil Gaiman
Questions and Answers about Coraline by Neil Gaiman
Facsimile Pages of Neil Gaiman’s Notebook
A Note on Working with Dave McKean by Neil Gaiman
These materials were commissioned by and published exclusively in print by Diamond Comic Distributors, Inc., in a limited hardcover edition of Coraline. Visit Diamond Comic Distributors, Inc. online at www.diamondcomics.com.
INTRODUCTION
IT WOULD HAVE BEEN easy to put together an “unseen material” section on American Gods, my last novel. Once the book was done, there were about ten thousand words ready to be cut. There was a whole short story that didn’t seem to belong in the book, so I wound up sending it out as a very wordy Christmas card. That wasn’t going to happen with Coraline. I wrote it very slowly, a word at a time, making, unintentionally, something that left no room for cuts and elisions.
I only removed one bit from the whole thing; many years ago I showed it to a very eminent and brilliant author, who wanted to publish it in her line of books, but who felt that it needed something at the beginning to tell you what sort of a book it was.
This is the story of Coraline, I wrote, who was small for her age, and found herself in darkest danger.
Before it was all over Coraline had seen what lay behind mirrors, and had a close call with a bad hand, and had come face to face with her other mother; she had rescued her true parents from a fate worse than death and triumphed against overwhelming odds.
This is the story of Coraline, who lost her parents, and found them again, and (more or less) escaped (more or less) unscathed.
But the author’s career as a publisher was pretty much over, and when, some years after that, I sat down to write the last two-thirds of the book (in August 1992 I’d got up to “Hullo,” said Coraline. “How did you get in?” The cat didn’t say anything. Coraline got out of bed and then stopped, without ending the sentence, for six years), the first thing I did was to remove that opening.