Skellig

by David Almond

  ‘It will happen again,’ said Mina. ‘Won’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  We hurried homeward. At the entrance to the back lane, we paused again to catch our breath. It was then that we heard Dad’s voice, calling.

  ‘Michael! Michael!’

  As we stood there, we saw him come out from the wilderness into the lane. His voice was filled with fear.

  ‘Michael! Oh, Michael!’

  Then he saw us standing there, hand in hand.

  ‘Michael! Oh, Michael!’

  He ran and grabbed me in his arms.

  ‘We were sleepwalking,’ said Mina.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, as he held me tight to keep me safe. ‘I didn’t know what I was doing. I was dreaming. I was sleepwalking.’

  Thirty-two

  Doctor Death faced me across the kitchen table. He touched my hand with his long curved fingers. I caught the scent of tobacco that surrounded him. I saw the black spots on his skin. Dad was telling him the story: my disappearance in the night, my sleepwalking. I heard in his voice how scared he still was, how he thought he’d lost me. I wanted to tell him again that I was all right, everything was all right.

  ‘I woke up and knew he was gone. Straight away I knew he was gone. When you love somebody you know these things. It’s right, Dan. Isn’t it?’

  Doctor Death tried to smile but his eyes stayed stupid and cold.

  ‘And there was this girl with you?’ he said.

  ‘Mina,’ said Dad. ‘She saw him from her window, sleepwalking in the night. She went to help him. That’s true, isn’t it, Michael?’

  I nodded.

  Doctor Death licked his lips.

  ‘Mina. She isn’t one of mine,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t know her.’

  He tried to smile again.

  ‘Sleepwalking?’ he said. He raised his eyebrows. ‘And this is true?’

  I stared at him.

  ‘Yes. This is true.’

  He watched me. He was cold, dry, pale as death. Wings would never rise at his back.

  ‘Let me look at you.’

  I stood in front of him. He shone a tiny bright torch into my eyes and peered into me. He shone it into my ears. I felt his breath and his scent all over me. He lifted my shirt and pressed his stethoscope against my chest and listened to me. I felt his clammy hands on my skin.

  ‘What day is it?’ he asked me. ‘What month is it? What’s the name of the Prime Minister?

  Dad chewed his lips as he watched and listened.

  ‘Good lad,’ he murmured as I answered.

  Doctor Death touched my cheek.

  ‘Is there anything you’d like to tell me?’ he asked.

  I shook my head.

  ‘Don’t be shy,’ he said. ‘Me and your Dad have been through everything you’re going through.’

  I shook my head again.

  ‘He’s a fit and healthy lad,’ he said. Just keep an eye on him.’ His mouth grinned as he looked at me. ‘And make sure he stays in bed at night.’

  He kept me close to him.

  ‘It’s a difficult time,’ he said. ‘Everything inside you’s changing. The world can seem a wild and weird place. But you’ll get through it.’

  ‘Did you treat Ernie? I asked.

  He raised his eyebrows.

  ‘Ernie Myers. The man who lived here before.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Doctor Death. ‘Yes, Mr Myers was one of mine.’

  ‘Did he talk about seeing things?

  ‘Things?’

  ‘Strange things. In the garden, in the house.’

  From the corner of my eye I saw Dad chewing his lips again.

  ‘Mr Myers was very ill,’ said Doctor Death. ‘He was dying.’

  ‘I know that.’

  ‘And as the mind approaches death it changes. It becomes less… orderly.’

  ‘So he did?’

  ‘He did speak of certain images that came to him. But so do many of my people.’

  He held me again with his long fingers.

  ‘I think you need to play football with your friends,’ he said. ‘I think you need to go to school again.’ He looked at Dad. ‘Yes, I think he should go to school again. Too much inside the house.’ He tapped my head. ‘Too much thinking and wondering and worrying going on in there.’

  He stood up and Dad went with him to the door. I heard them muttering together in the hallway.

  ‘School for you tomorrow,’ said Dad as he came back in. He was trying to be all brisk and efficient but he pressed his lips together and looked at me and I saw the scared look in his eyes.

  ‘I’m sorry, Dad,’ I whispered.

  We held each other tight, then we looked out at the wilderness.

  ‘Why did you ask those things about Ernie?’ he said.

  ‘Don’t know,’ I said. ‘Daft notions.’

  ‘It’s true, what you told us? That you were sleepwalking?

  For a moment I wanted to tell him everything: Skellig, the owls, what Mina and I got up to in the night. Then I knew how weird it would seem.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It’s true, Dad.’

  Thirty-three

  I did go to school next day. Rasputin started his lesson by welcoming me back. He said I’d missed a lot, but he hoped I’d be able to catch up. I told him I’d been studying evolution, and that I’d found out about the archaeopteryx.

  He raised his eyebrows.

  ‘Do you think there are things like the archaeopteryx in the human world?’ I asked him.

  He peered at me.

  ‘Humans that are turning into creatures that can fly?’ I said.

  I heard Coot sniggering behind me.

  ‘Tell him about the monkey girl,’ he said.

  ‘What’s that?’ said Rasputin.

  ‘The monkey girl,’ said Coot.

  I heard Leakey telling him to shut up.

  ‘Maybe there’s beings that’s left over from the apes,’ said Coot. ‘Monkey girls and monkey boys.’

  I ignored him.

  ‘Our bones would need to become pneumatised,’ I said.

  Rasputin came to me and tousled my hair.

  ‘Wings might help, as well,’ he said. ‘But I can see you’ve been reading widely. Well done, Michael. And stop interrupting, Coot. We all know who the monkey boy is here.’

  Coot giggled. He grunted like an ape as Rasputin turned and went back to the front. He said we were past evolution now. We’d moved on to studying our own insides: the muscles, the heart and lungs, the digestive system, the nervous system, the brain.

  ‘Keep coming to school, Michael,’ he said. ‘You don’t want to miss anything more.’

  ‘No, sir,’ I said.

  He unrolled a long poster of a cut-away man, bright-red lungs and heart exposed in his chest, stomach and intestines, networks of blood vessels and nerves, maroon muscles and white bones, blue-grey brain. He stared out at us through cavernous eyes. A few of the others shuddered in disgust.

  ‘This is you,’ said Rasputin.

  Coot giggled.

  Rasputin called him to the front. He acted out stripping Coot’s skin away, tearing open his chest.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Inside we’re all the same, no matter how horrible the outside may seem to be. This is what we would see were we to open up our Mr Coot.’

  He smiled.

  ‘Of course, there may be a little more mess than appears in the picture.’

  Coot scuttled back to his desk.

  ‘Now,’ said Rasputin. ‘I’d like you to place your hand on the left side on your chest like this. Feel the beating of your heart…’

  We felt our hearts. I knew how stupid it would be to tell Rasputin that I could feel two hearts: the baby’s and my own.

  ‘This is our engine,’ said Rasputin. ‘Beating day and night, when we’re awake and when we’re sleeping. We don’t have to think about it. Mostly we’re hardly aware that it’s even there. But if it stopped…’

  Coot squawked, as if he’d been strangl
ed.

  ‘Correct, Mr Coot.’

  Rasputin squawked too, and flopped across his desk.

  I looked around. Half the class lay sprawled across their desks, pretending to be dead.

  Leakey was watching me. I could tell he wanted to be friends again.

  In the yard that lunchtime, I played football as hard as I could. I did sliding tackles and diving headers. I dribbled and dummied and went for wild overhead kicks. I scored four goals, made three more and my team won by miles. At the end there was a long rip down the side of my jeans. The knuckles of my left hand were scratched and scraped. There was blood trickling from a little cut over my eye.

  The lads on my team surrounded me as we headed back inside. They said it was the best I’d ever played. They told me l should stop staying off. They needed me.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Leakey. ‘He’s really back this time, aren’t you, Michael?’

  We had Miss Clarts in the afternoon. I wrote a story about a boy exploring some abandoned warehouses by the river. He finds an old stinking tramp who turns out to have wings growing under his ancient coat. The boy feeds the man with sandwiches and chocolate and the man becomes strong again. The boy has a friend called Kara. The man teaches the boy and Kara how it feels to fly, and then he disappears, flapping away across the water.

  I saw the tears in Miss Clarts’ eyes as she sat beside me and read the story.

  ‘It’s lovely, Michael,’ she said. ‘Your style is really coming on. You’ve been practising at home?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Good,’ she said. ‘You have a true gift. Look after it.’

  It was just after this that the secretary, Mrs Moore, came in and whispered something to Miss Clarts. They both looked at me. Mrs Moore asked me to go with her for a moment. I was trembling as I went to her. I put my hand on my chest and felt my heart. She led me through the long corridors towards her office. My dad was on the phone, she said. He wanted a word with me.

  I chewed my lips as I lifted the handset.

  I heard him breathing, sighing.

  ‘It’s the baby,’ I said.

  ‘Yes. Something’s not right. I need to go in, to sort things out.’

  ‘Something?’

  ‘A lot of things, son. They want to talk to me and your mum together.’

  ‘Not me?’

  ‘I talked to Mina’s mum. You can have tea there. You can wait there till I come home. I’ll not be long. You’ll hardly know I’ve been away.’

  ‘Will the baby be all right?

  ‘They think so. They hope so. Anyway, nothing will happen tonight. It’s tomorrow they’ll be doing it.’

  ‘I should have stayed at home. I should have kept thinking about her.’

  ‘I’ll give her a kiss from you.’

  ‘And Mum.’

  ‘And Mum. You’re very brave, Michael.’

  No, I’m not, I thought as I felt myself trembling. No, I’m blinking not.

  Thirty-four

  I sat at the kitchen table with Mina. Her mother was above us, cutting up lettuce and tomatoes and bread. The table was spread with paper and paints. Mina had been painting all afternoon. There were little streaks of paint on her face. Her lingers were bright with daubs of colour. There was a large drawing of Skellig, standing erect with his wings high above his shoulders. He gazed out at us, smiling.

  ‘What if she sees?’ I whispered.

  ‘It could be anyone,’ said Mina. ‘Or anything.’

  Her mother turned towards us.

  ‘Good, isn’t it, Michael?’ she said.

  I nodded.

  ‘The kind of thing William Blake saw. He said we were surrounded by angels and spirits. We must just open our eyes a little wider, look a little harder.’

  She pulled a book from a shelf,’ showed me Blake’s pictures of the winged beings he saw in his little home in London.

  ‘Maybe we could all see such beings, if only we knew how to,’ she said.

  She touched my cheek.

  ‘But it’s enough for me to have you two angels at my table.’

  She stared hard at us, making her eyes wide and unblinking.

  ‘Yes,’ she smiled. ‘Isn’t it amazing? I see you clearly, two angels at my table.’

  I thought of the baby. I wondered what she would see, with her innocent eyes. I wondered what she would see, if she were near to death.

  I turned my mind away from her. I pulled a sheet of paper towards me. I found myself drawing Coot, giving him twisted arms and legs and bright red hair. I drew hair sprouting from his back, his chest, his legs.

  ‘That’s your friend,’ said Mina. ‘A proper little demon.’

  I looked at her, looked just past her, wanting to see her ghostly wings again. Her mother started singing:

  ‘I dreamt a dream! What can it mean?

  And that I was a maiden Queen…’

  ‘I went back to him today,’ Mina whispered.

  I drew horns growing from Coot’s skull.

  ‘I came for you first,’ she said. ‘Your dad said you’d gone to school. Shouldn’t I be working? he asked. Shouldn’t I be at my lessons?’

  She leaned over and drew a skinny black tongue protruding from Coot’s mouth.

  ‘Guarded by an Angel mild

  Witless woe, was ne’er beguil’d!’

  ‘Skellig said, ‘‘Where’s Michael?” ’ whispered Mina. ‘ “At school,” I said. “School!” he said. “He abandons me for school!” I said you hadn’t abandoned him. I said you loved him.’

  ‘I do,’ I whispered.

  ‘I said how terrified you were that the baby might die.’

  ‘She won’t,’ I said. ‘She mustn’t.’

  ‘He says you must keep coming to see him.’

  She chewed her lip, leaned closer.

  ‘He says he’s going away soon, MichaeI.’

  ‘So he took his wings and fled:

  Then the morn blush’d rosy red.’

  ‘Going away?’ I said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Where to?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘He wouldn’t say.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Soon.’

  My hands were trembling. I grabbed some more paper. I drew Skellig, flapping across a pale sky.

  ‘Soon my Angel came again;

  I was arm’d, he came in vain…’

  Her mother leaned over us, began clearing a space to put down our plates.

  ‘ “For the time of youth was fled,” ’ she sang, ‘ “And grey hairs were on my head.” ’

  ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Bunk up. Food’s ready. That’s a lovely picture, Michael.’

  Thirty-five

  We waited at the table as the light faded, and Dad didn’t come. I kept going to the front room, looking out into the street, seeing nothing. Mina’s mother kept comforting me.

  ‘Don’t worry, Michael. He’ll come soon. Don’t worry, Michael. I’m sure everything’s all right.’

  We drew and drew. I drew my family gathered around the baby. I drew Mina with her pale face, her dark eyes, the black fringe of her hair cut dead straight across her brow. I drew Skellig lying dry and dusty and useless on the garage floor, then I drew him standing proudly by the arched window with the owls flying around him. I stared at the changed Skellig. How had this happened to him? Was it just Chinese food and cod liver oil and aspirin and brown ale and dead things left by owls? I drew Ernie Myers in striped pyjamas looking out into the wilderness. I felt how the more I drew, the more my hand and arm became free. I saw how what appeared on the page looked more and more like what I saw or what I thought of in my head. I felt how by drawing my mind became concentrated, even while one part of it still thought about and worried about the baby. I drew the baby time and again, sometimes focusing on her wide, bold eyes, sometimes on her tiny hands, sometimes on the way her whole body arched when she rested on your knee. I drew the world as the baby might see it: the long hospital ward filled with lu
mbering adults, the networks of wires and tubes and bleeping instruments filling the foreground, the faces of nurses smiling down. I drew the world twisted into weird shapes by the curved glass case that covered her. In the end, I drew Skellig at the door to the ward. I felt the burst of excitement she would feel to see this, the quickening of her heart, the flickering of her life.

  Mina looked at my drawings, one after the other. She made a pile of them before her. She gripped my hand.

  ‘You couldn’t have done these before,’ she said. ‘You’re getting braver and bolder.’

  I shrugged.

  ‘You get better at playing football by playing football,’ I said. ‘You get better at drawing by drawing.’

  We waited and waited. The light fell. The blackbirds sang in the trees and hedges outside. Mina’s mother switched a lamp on. The phone rang but it wasn’t Dad. Mina’s mother gave us little squares of chocolate that I allowed to melt slowly and gently on my tongue. She kept singing songs from time to time. Some of them were songs of Blake’s, some were ancient folk songs. Mina joined in sometimes, with her bold high voice.

  ‘The sun descending in the west.

  The evening star does shine.

  The birds are silent in their nest,

  And I must seek for mine…’

  Mina smiled at my silence.

  ‘Soon we’ll have you singing, too,’ she said.

  The day darkened and darkened.

  ‘I want to show you something,’ said Mina.

  She filled a little bowl with warm water and put it on the table. She reached up on to the shelf and took down a ball of skin and bone and fur, like the one she had taken from the garage floor. She dropped it into the warm water. She rubbed it with her fingers. It separated into fragments of dark fur and ripped skin. She pulled out tiny bones. There was a skull, the skull of a tiny animal.

  Her mother watched and smiled.

  ‘Another owl pellet,’ she said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Mina. She looked at me. ‘Owls eat their victims whole, Michael,’ she said. ‘They digest the flesh. Then they regurgitate the parts that can’t be digested. Skin and bone and fur. You can see what the owl has been eating by inspecting the pellet. This owl, like most owls, has eaten small creatures, like mice or voles.’