Skellig

by David Almond

  ‘You’re beautiful!’

  I peeped out across the wilderness towards the house, saw nobody at the window.

  ‘Keep moving.’

  I opened the gate, drew him by the hand. He leaned on Mina, shuffled out after me into the lane.

  I closed the gate.

  Already traffic could be heard in the city, on nearby Crimdon Road. The birds in the gardens and on the rooftops yelled their songs. Whisper appeared at our side.

  ‘We’ll carry him,’ I said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Mina.

  I stood behind him and he leaned back into my arms. Mina took his feet.

  We caught our breath at our ability to do this thing, at the extraordinary lightness of our load. I closed my eyes for a moment. I imagined that this was a dream. I told myself that anything was possible in a dream. I felt the great bulges at his back bundled up against my arms. We started to move.

  We walked through the back lane, turned into another back lane, hurried to the green gate of the boarded house. Mina opened it with her key. We went through. We hurried to the door with the red sign: DANGER. Mina opened it with her key. We moved through into the darkness, then into the first room and we laid him on the floor.

  We trembled and gasped. He whimpered with pain. We touched him gently.

  ‘You’re safe,’ said Mina.

  She took off her cardigan. She folded it and lay it beneath his head.

  ‘We’ll bring you more things to make you comfortable,’ she said.

  ‘We’ll make you well. Is there anything you would like?’

  I smiled.

  ‘27 and 53,’ I said.

  ‘27 and 53,’ he whimpered.

  ‘I’ll have to go back,’ I said. ‘My Dad’ll wake up soon.’

  ‘Me, too,’ said Mina.

  We smiled at each other. We looked at him, lying beside us.

  ‘We won’t be long,’ I said.

  Mina kissed his pale cracked cheek. She stretched her arms once more around his back. Her eyes burned with astonishment and joy.

  ‘Who are you?’ she whispered.

  He winced with pain.

  ‘My name is Skellig,’ he said.

  Twenty-three

  Mrs Dando called that morning just after breakfast. She came on her bike on her way to school. She said my mates were looking forward to getting me back again.

  ‘They say you’re the best tackler in the school,’ she said. Dad showed her all the work we’d done on the house. We showed her the wilderness. She said everything would be bright and new for when the baby came home. She took her bag off her back. She took out a little cuddly black bear for Dad to give to the baby.

  ‘And there’s this for you,’ she laughed. ‘Sorry!’

  It was a folder of homework from Rasputin and Monkey: worksheets with gaps to fill in and questions to answer. There was a note from Miss Clarts: No real homework. Write a story. Get well soon! There were sheets of maths problems and a book called Julius And The Wilderness with a red sticker on the back.

  Dad laughed as we watched her cycle away.

  ‘No rest for the wicked, eh, son?’ he said. ‘I’ll do the decorating. You get on with your work.’

  I got a biro and took the work along the street to Mina’s front garden. She was sitting with her mum on the blanket undemeath the tree. Her mum was reading, Mina was scribbling fast in a black book. She grinned, and beckoned me over the wall when she saw me standing there.

  Mina looked at the worksheets.

  It is thought that Man is d________ from the apes.

  This is the Theory E________.

  This theory was developed by Charles D________.

  There was sentence after sentence like that.

  Mina read the sentences out loud.

  She said, ‘Blank blank blank,’ in a singsong voice when she came to the dashes.

  She stopped after the first three sentences and just looked at me.

  ‘Is this really the kind of thing you do all day?’ she said.

  ‘Mina,’ said her mum.

  Mina giggled. She flicked through the book. It was about a boy who tells magical tales that turn out to be true.

  ‘Yeah, looks good,’ she said. ‘But what’s the red sticker for?’

  ‘It’s for confident readers,’ I said. ‘It’s to do with reading age.’

  ‘And what if other readers want to read it?’

  ‘Mina,’ said her mum.

  ‘And where would William Blake fit in?’ said Mina.

  ‘ “Tyger! Tyger! burning bright/In the forests of the night”. Is that for the best readers or the worst readers? Does that need a good reading age?

  I stared back at her. I didn’t know what to say. I wanted to get back over the wall and go home again.

  ‘And if it was for the worst readers would the best readers not bother with it because it would be too stupid for them? she said.

  ‘Mina,’ said her mum. She was smiling gently at me. ‘Take no notice,’ she said. ‘She’s a madam sometimes.’

  ‘Well,’ said Mina.

  She went back to scribbling in the black book again.

  She looked up at me.

  ‘Go on, then,’ she said. ‘Do your homework, like a good schoolboy.’

  Her mum smiled again.

  ‘I’ll get on inside,’ she said. ‘You tell her to shut up if she starts getting at you again. OK?

  ‘OK,’ I said.

  After she’d gone we said nothing for ages. I pretended to read Julius And The Wilderness, but it was like the words were dead and meaningless.

  ‘What you writing? I said at last.

  ‘My diary. About me and you and Skellig,’ she said.

  She didn’t look up.

  ‘What if somebody reads it? I said.

  ‘Why would they read it? They know it’s mine and it’s private.’

  She scribbled again.

  I thought about our diaries at school. We filled them in every week. Every so often, Miss Clarts checked that they were neat and the punctuation was right and the spellings were right. She gave us marks for them, just like we got marks for attendance and punctuality and attitude and everything else we did. I said nothing about this to Mina. I went on pretending to read the book. I felt tears in my eyes. That made me think about the baby and doing that just made the tears worse.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Mina. ‘I really am. One of the things we hate about schools is the sarcasm that’s in them. And I’m being sarcastic.’

  She squeezed my hand.

  ‘It’s so exciting,’ she whispered. ‘You, me, Skellig. We’ll have to go to him. He’ll be waiting for us. What shall we take for him?’

  Twenty-four

  ‘What is this place?’ I asked her as she opened the gate and we stepped into the long back garden. We ducked down and hurried to the DANGER door.

  ‘It was my grandfather’s,’ she said. ‘He died last year. He left it t0 me in his will. It’ll be mine when I’m eighteen.’ She turned the key in the lock. ‘We’re having it repaired soon. Then we’ll rent it out.’

  We stepped inside, carrying our parcels. Whisper slipped in at our heels.

  ‘Don’t worry, though,’ she whispered. ‘There’s weeks before the builders come.’

  I switched my torch on. We went into the room where we’d left him. He wasn’t there. The room was silent and empty, as if he’d never been there at all. Then we saw Mina’s cardigan behind the door, and dead bluebottles on the floor boards, and heard Whisper mewing from the stairs. We went into the hallway, saw the shape of Skellig lying halfway up the first flight.

  ‘Knackered,’ he squeaked as we crouched beside him.

  ‘Sick to death. Aspirin.’

  I fiddled in his pocket, took two of the tablets out, popped them in his mouth.

  ‘You moved,’ I said. ‘All on your own, you moved.’

  He winced with pain.

  ‘You want to go higher,’ said Mina.

  ‘Yes. Somewher
e higher,’ he whispered.

  We left our parcels there, lifted him together and carried him to the first landing.

  He groaned and twisted in agony.

  ‘Put me down,’ he squeaked.

  We took him into a bedroom with high white ceilings and pale wallpapered walls. We rested him against the wall. Thin beams of light pierced the cracks in the boards on the windows and shone on to his pale, dry face.

  I hurried back down for the parcels. We unrolled the blankets we had brought. We laid them out with a pillow on the floor. We put down a little plastic dish for his aspirins and cod liver oil. I put an opened bottle of beer beside it. There was a cheese sandwich and half a bar of chocolate.

  ‘All for you,’ Mina whispered.

  ‘Let us help you,’ I said.

  He shook his head. He turned over, on to all fours, started to crawl the short distance towards the blankets. We saw his tears dropping through the beams of light, splashing on to the floor. He knelt by the blankets, panting. Mina went to him, knelt facing him.

  ‘I’ll make you more comfortable,’ she whispered.

  She unfastened the buttons on his jacket. She began to pull his jacket down over his shoulders.

  ‘No,’ he squeaked.

  ‘Trust me,’ she whispered.

  He didn’t move. She slid the sleeves down over his arms, took the jacket right off him. We saw what both of us had dreamed we might see. Beneath his jacket were wings that grew out through rips in his shirt. When they were released, the wings began to unfurl from his shoulder blades. They were twisted and uneven, they were covered in cracked and crooked feathers. They clicked and trembled as they opened. They were wider than his shoulders, higher than his head. Skellig hung his head towards the floor. His tears continued to fall. He whimpered with pain. Mina reached out to him, stroked his brow. She reached further and touched the feathers with her fingertips.

  ‘You’re beautiful,’ she whispered.

  ‘Let me sleep,’ squeaked Skellig. ‘Let me go home.’

  He lay face down and his wings continued to quiver into shape above him. We drew the blankets up beneath them, felt his feathers against the skin on the backs of our hands. Soon Skellig’s breathing settled and he slept. Whisper rested against him, purring.

  We stared at each other. My hand trembled as I reached out towards Skellig’s wings. I touched them with my fingertips. I rested my palms on them. I felt the feathers, and beneath them the bones and sinews and muscles that supported them. I felt the crackle of Skellig’s breathing.

  I tiptoed to the shutters and stared out through the narrow chinks.

  ‘What you doing? she whispered.

  ‘Making sure the world’s still really there,’ I said.

  Twenty-five

  The wires and the tubes were in her again. The glass case was shut. She didn’t move. She was wrapped in white. Her hair was fluffy, dead straight and dark. I wanted to touch it, and to touch her skin, feel it soft against my fingertips. Her little hands were clenched tight on either side of her head. We said nothing. I listened to the drone of the city outside, to the clatter of the hospital. I heard my own breathing, the scared quick breathing of my parents at my side. I heard them sniffing back their tears. I went on listening. I listened through all these noises, until I heard the baby, the gentle squeaking of her breath, tiny and distant as if it came from a different world. I closed my eyes and went on listening and listening. I listened deeper, until I believed I heard her beating heart. I told myself that if I listened hard enough her breathing and the beating of her heart would never be able to stop.

  Dad held my hand as we walked through the corridors towards the car park. We passed a lift shaft and the woman with the zimmer frame from upstairs tottered out. She gasped and rested on her frame and grinned at me.

  ‘Three times round every landing and three times up and down in the lift,’ she said. ‘Knackered. Absolutely knackered.’

  Dad blinked, and nodded kindly at her.

  ‘Blinking getting there!’ she said. She bobbed about inside the frame. ‘Be dancing soon, you see!’

  She patted my arm with her crooked hand.

  ‘You’re so sad today. Been to see that friend of yours?’

  I nodded, and she smiled.

  ‘I’m going home soon. He will, too. Keep moving, that’s the thing. Stay cheerful.’

  She hobbled away, singing ‘Lord of the Dance’ to herself

  ‘Who did she mean, your friend?’ said Dad.

  ‘Nobody.’

  He was too distracted to ask again.

  In the car I saw the tears running down his face.

  I closed my eyes. I remembered the sound of the baby’s breathing, her beating heart. I held them in my mind, went on listening to them. I touched my heart and I felt the baby’s heart beating beside my own. Traffic roared past, Dad sniffed back his tears. I stayed dead silent, and concentrated on keeping the baby safe.

  Twenty-six

  ‘There it is,’ said Mina. ‘Archaeopteryx. The dinosaur that flew.’

  She laid the heavy encyclopedia on the grass beneath the tree. We looked down at the clumsy creature. It was perched on a thorny branch. Beyond it, volcanoes belched flames and smoke. The great land-bound creatures — diplodocus, stegosaurus — lurched across a stony plain.

  ‘We believe that dinosaurs became extinct,’ said Mina. ‘But there’s another theory, that their descendants are with us still. They nest in our trees and our attics. The air is filled with their songs. The little archaeopteryx survived, and began the line of evolution that led to birds.’

  She touched the short, stunted wings.

  ‘Wings and feathers, see? But the creature was a heavy, bony thing. Look at the clumsy, leaden tail. It was capable of nothing but short, sudden flights. From tree to tree, stone to stone. It couldn’t rise and spiral and dance like birds can now. No pneumatisation.’

  I looked at her.

  ‘Do you remember nothing?’ she said. ‘Pneumatisation. The presence of air cavities in the bones of birds. It is this which allows them free flight.’

  The blackbird flew from the tree above us and dashed into the sky.

  ‘If you held the archaeopteryx,’ she said, ‘it would be almost as heavy as stone in your hand. It would be almost as heavy as the clay models I make.’

  I looked into Mina’s dark eyes. They were wide open, expectant, like she wanted me to see something or say something. I thought of the baby in my lap, of Skellig slung between Mina and me. I thought of his wings and of the baby’s fluttering heart.

  ‘There’s no end to evolution,’ said Mina.

  She shuffled closer to me.

  ‘We have to be ready to move forward,’ she said. ‘Maybe this is not how we are meant to be for ever.’

  She took my hand.

  ‘We are extraordinary,’ she whispered.

  She looked deep into me.

  ‘Skellig!’ she whispered. ‘Skellig! Skellig!’

  I stared back. I didn’t blink. It was like she was calling Skellig out from somewhere deep inside me. It was like we were looking into the place where each other’s dreams came from.

  And then there was sniggering and giggling. We looked up, and there were Leakey and Coot, standing on the other side of the wall, looking down at us.

  Twenty-seven

  ‘What’s wrong with you?’ they kept asking. ‘What’s bloody wrong with you?’

  I was hopeless. I couldn’t tackle. I missed the ball by a mile when I jumped up to head it. When I had the ball at my feet I stumbled all over the place. I fell over it once and skinned my elbow on the kerb. I felt shaky and wobbly and I didn’t want to be doing this, playing football in our front street with Leakey and Coot while Mina sat in the tree with a book in her lap and stared and stared.

  ‘It’s cos he’s been ill,’ said Leakey.

  ‘Bollocks,’ said Coot. ‘He’s not been ill. He’s just been upset.’

  He watched me trying to flick the b
all up on to my head.

  It bounced off my knee and bobbed into the gutter.

  ‘I’m just out of practice,’ I said.

  ‘Bollocks,’ he said. ‘It’s just been a week since you could beat anybody in the school.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Leakey.

  ‘It’s her,’ said Coot. ‘Her in the tree. That lass he was with.’

  Leakey grinned.

  ‘That’s right,’ he said.

  I shook my head.

  ‘Bollocks,’ I whispered.

  My voice was as shaky as my feet had been.

  They stood there sniggering.

  ‘It’s that lass,’ said Leakey.

  ‘That lass that climbs in a tree like a monkey,’ said Coot. ‘Her that sits in a tree like a crow.’

  ‘Bollocks,’ I said.

  I looked Leakey in the eye. He’d been my best friend for years. I couldn’t believe he’d go on with this if I looked him in the eye and wanted him to stop.

  He grinned.

  ‘He holds hands with her,’ he said.

  ‘She says he’s extraordinary,’ said Coot.

  ‘Get stuffed,’ I said.

  I turned away from them, went past our house to the end of the street, turned down towards the back lane. I heard them coming after me. I sat down in the lane with my back against the boarded-up garage. I just wanted them to go away. I wanted them to stay. I wanted to be able to play like I used to. I wanted things to be just the way they used to be.