Skellig (12 page)

“Michael! Michael!”

As we stood there, we saw him come out from the backyard 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.”

DR. 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?”

Dr. 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.

Dr. 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 shined a tiny bright light into my eyes and peered into me. He shined 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.

Dr. 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 Dr. 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 Dr. 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 yard.

“Why did you ask those things about Ernie?” he said.

“Don’t know,” I said. “Crazy 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.”

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 pneumatized,” 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 cutaway 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-gray 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 strangled.

“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 guys on my team surrounded me as we headed back inside. They said it was the best I’d ever played. They told me I 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 practicing 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 toward 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.

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 fingers were bright with daubs of color. 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 toward 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.”