Skellig (9 page)

“You’re beautiful!”

I peeped out across the backyard toward 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 laid 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.

MRS. DANDO CALLED THAT MORNING
just after breakfast. She came on her bike on her way to school. She said my pals 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 backyard. 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 math 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 pen and took the work along the street to Mina’s front garden. She was sitting with her mum on the blanket underneath 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 of 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 bit uppity 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. Okay?”

“Okay,” 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?”

“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 to 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 flashlight on. We went into the room where we’d left him. He wasn’t there. The room was silent and empty, like he’d never been there at all. Then we saw Mina’s cardigan behind the door, and dead bluebottles on the floorboards, and
heard Whisper mewing from the stairs. We went into the hallway, saw the shape of Skellig lying halfway up the first flight.

“Exhausted,” 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. Somewhere 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 shined onto 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, onto all fours,
started to crawl the short distance toward the blankets. We saw his tears dropping through the beams of light, splashing onto 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 toward 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 facedown 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 toward 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.

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 like 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.