Heaven Eyes

Heaven Eyes is a 2000 work of young adult fiction by David Almond. Adapted into a stage production in Edinburgh in 2005, it follows a trio of children who escape a sinister orphanage and are saved from peril by Heaven Eyes, an androgynous child with webbed hands and feet. Told from the perspective of one of the escaped children, Erin Law, she looks back at her experience with Heaven Eyes and the children’s attempt to see into their new friend’s opaque story. When Grampa, Heaven Eyes’ father figure, won’t tell them himself, they investigate on their own. They find that Heaven Eyes was once an ordinary child who was doomed to drown at sea, but was salvaged from a mud bank. As they spend time with the two figures, the children begin to perceive the existence of a parallel world full of “ghosts.” They must then choose whether to stay in the fantastical, spiritual world, or return to the mundane.

The novel begins with Erin Law introducing herself and her two friends from the orphanage, January Carr and Mouse Gullane. Law’s father, a sailor, disappeared with another woman when she was young. Her mother died, leaving her alone in the world. The orphanage is called Whitegates, and touts itself to be for “damaged children.” Its headmistress is a woman named Maureen, who means well but lacks insight into children’s real needs.

One day, January gets fed up with her cloistered environment and pointless therapies. She builds a raft to escape down the river. Law recalls getting on the raft with her after a formative moment in which a fellow orphan, Wilson Cairns, tries to prove to her that the clay figures he spends his days creating can come to life. Law and January jump on the raft, and are joined by Mouse, who carries his pet mouse, Squeak. He is younger than them, and tries to bribe them for safe passage with some money and random trinkets he has dug up from the dirt. They admit him despite being worried for his safety.



Almost immediately, the children’s lives are imperiled, as the fast-moving water threatens to sink the raft. It washes them into the Black Middens, a reservoir full of treacherous mud. When they get stuck, a strange girl named Heaven Eyes appears, asking whether the children are her siblings. She is accompanied by an old man named Grampa, who assures her that they are not related, and says they should be put back in the mud. Nonetheless, Heaven Eyes insists on bringing them home to a stone house near the river embellished with angel statues. There, Grampa remains distrustful of the trio. Law notices that he is constantly recording the events of the Black Middens in a notebook.

Heaven Eyes gives the children a tour of her home. As they walk, Erin goes into a deep cellar and experiences spiritual despair, ruminating on her lost mother. Heaven Eyes extracts her, warning her that holes exist in the world where one can disappear forever. Mouse begins to dig in the Middens with the permission of Grampa, who constantly tells the children “No shenanigans.” Mouse dredges up evidence that Heaven Eyes was once a normal child sailing in the sea with her family, and assumes that Grampa kidnapped her. January, who also distrusts Grampa, thinks the theory is confirmed when they dig up a body in the Black Middens. In response, Grampa becomes angry, and Heaven Eyes asserts that the body is a saint. Law and January exhume the body and realize it belonged to a maritime worker from many years ago. Heaven Eyes makes a bed for the corpse. Grampa dies after expressing love for the three children; his death causes great grief for Heaven Eyes. The body reanimates and guides his spirit out of the Black Middens into the sea.

Soon, an envoy of construction workers appear to destroy the old stone house to create businesses. Law and the other children salvage most of the treasures, including Grampa’s diary. They take Heaven Eyes back to Whitegates, where she heals Maureen’s spirit. Maureen is now able to give proper emotional and spiritual care to the children. Miraculously, January’s mother also appears to take him back. Wilson Cairns’ clay figures start to come alive.



At the novel’s end, Law and the other children resolve to investigate the immense catalogue of mysteries contained in Grampa’s book. Law ends by asserting that their story, like Grampa’s ongoing diary, has no end, and is only one of countless more stories in the world. Ultimately, Heaven Eyes uses a circular journey that starts and ends at an orphanage, traveling through a fantastical allegorical world of spiritual orphans, to conceive of orphanhood as a spiritual state that one can navigate out of through journeying and enriching one’s connection with others.