by David Almond
Minutes passed. Mrs. McKee arrived and was brought into the room by Doreen.
“Thank you for coming, Mrs. McKee,” said THE HEAD TEACHER.
“That’s all right,” said Mrs. McKee. She looked at her daughter. “But what on earth … ”
“Madam,” said THE HEAD TEACHER. “We have called you in on a matter of great importance.” He held up the page of writing. “May I ask you to read … this?”
The lovely Mrs. McKee took it from his hand. She read it through. She breathed out the sounds of the nicest words. She sighed. She smiled. She shook her head. She held the page like it was something rather precious.
“This,” said THE HEAD TEACHER, “is possibly the most important piece of writing that this young lady will be asked to do all year. It may well be the most important piece of writing that she will do during her time as a student at this school. And she presents us with this!”
Mrs. McKee sighed.
“Oh, Mina,” she said. “What are we going to do with you?”
“Don’t know, Mum,” I said.
And she cuddled me, right there in THE HEAD TEACHER’s office while THE HEAD TEACHER and Mrs. Scullery watched. And THE HEAD TEACHER said,
“Mrs. McKee …”
But she raised her hand to stop him.
“You don’t need to say anything more, Head Teacher,” she said.
“So you understand the gravity of the situation?” said THE HEAD TEACHER.
“Indeed I do,” said Mrs. McKee. “So I think I’ll take my daughter home now. And I don’t think she’ll be back for some time. Goodbye.”
And we walked out of the office and along the corridor and past the classroom and out of the main door and across the schoolyard and out through the gates into the world.
We walked slowly homeward through the sunlight. We stopped in the park on the way home. We ate ice cream and we sighed at its deliciousness. We sat on a bench by a bush with lovely bright red roses growing on it. We watched people dressed in white playing bowls on the beautiful green lawn. The brown bowls clicked and clunked as they struck each other. The people in white chatted and laughed. Somebody somewhere sang a lovely song. Close by, a little boy rolled down a hill, giggled, got up, ran to his mum and kissed her, then ran up the hill again and rolled down again. It was lovely and warm in the sunshine. The sky was heavenly blue. Bees buzzed. Butterflies flitted by. A dog chased a ball. A flight of honking geese flew over us. The tops of the trees were swaying in the gentle breeze.
“This is very diggibunish,” said Mum.
“It is,” I said. “And very pringersticks, as well.”
When we got home, Mum pinned up GLIBBERTYSNARK in the kitchen. We looked at it together. It was indeed one of the most important pieces of writing I had done all year. I was now a Homeschooled Girl, which made me Very Very Very Very Very Very Pleased. Very.
Mum put her arm around me, and we smiled, and we were filled with claminosity.
EXTRAORDINARY ACTIVITY
Write a page of UTTER NONSENSE.
This will produce some very fine
NEW WORDS.
It could also lead to some very
SENSIBLE RESULTS.
Eggs, Chicks, a Belly, Babies & Poems
I am in the tree and the birds have had their eggs! Three of them. They are bluey-green with brownish spots and they are absolutely beautiful! I knew something was up. The birds were silent. The air was still. I climbed higher in the tree, to where I could look down into the nest, and there they were, three of them, lying so prettily in the pretty nest. Bluey-green with brownish spots and they are beautiful. Bluey-green and speckled brown and beautiful. I almost cheered, but I stopped myself. I wanted to hold the birds in my hands and praise them, but of course why should they take notice of me? Why should they care what I might think? But I say it now anyway, deep inside myself: “WELL DONE BLACKBIRDS! YOU ARE EXTRAORDINARY! YOU HAVE CREATED THE MOST AMAZING THINGS IN THE WORLD! YOU HAVE CREATED NEW UNIVERSES!”
Maybe they did hear me somehow, and they certainly saw me, because they squawked their warning calls, so I slithered to my lower branch, where they are used to seeing me and where I can safely be ignored. I sigh with joy. The chicks are on their way.
And then I see the family outside Mr. Myers’s house. The poor boy is as fed up as ever. He’s kicking the ground again like he wants to do it harm. Poor lad. Looks like he’d be a perfect candidate for the pills they wanted to give me, or for the Corinthian Avenue Pupil Referral Unit. Cheer up, I want to yell! You’ve got a mum and dad beside you! You’ve got a brother or a sister on the way!
The mum and dad are smiling. She holds her belly and I see with that it is egg-shaped. I have to stop myself from jumping out of the tree and running along the street to her and telling her that she is extraordinary.
“YES!” I yell inside myself. “IT’S TIME FOR THINGS TO BE BORN AROUND HERE! BUY THE HOUSE, AND A BABY AND A CLUTCH OF CHICKS WILL BE BORN IN FALCONER ROAD THIS SPRING!”
Maybe she hears me somehow. She turns her head but I’m sure she can’t see me because of the foliage around me. O she looks very nice. They all look very nice. They have a key. They open the door, they go inside. I imagine them moving through the dust. I imagine their skin mingling with the skin of Mr. Myers, their breath mingling with his breath, their lives mingling with his life, with his death. I lean back against the tree. I close my eyes. I think about the woman with the egg-shaped belly. And I wonder – if Dad hadn’t died, might Mum have had an egg-shaped belly, too?
Then I draw: birds and leaves and trees, and I am lost in this, too. Then a goldfinch appears, flickering through the upper branches. Then another, its partner. And I think of last autumn. There were days when a small flock flew through here. They will again when their time comes. I told my mum about them and she then told me that a flock of goldfinches is known as a charm. A charm of goldfinches! How beautiful is that?
I look at today’s goldfinch. There it is: black, gold, red, brown, white flickering quickly among the green leaves. There it goes, flying freely away into the blue. Does the goldfinch know how gorgeous it is? Does any bird? Does it know how beautiful its song is? If it did know, then maybe it would try to stop being so gorgeous. It would try not to charm. Once upon a time, goldfinches were the favorites of bird trappers. If the goldfinches knew this, they would have bathed in mud until they were mucky brown. They would have squawked or screeched or they would have stayed silent instead of singing out loud. They would have hidden themselves away in dark and isolated places. They wouldn’t have flickered and flashed through people’s gardens. They wouldn’t have sung their beautiful songs. But goldfinches don’t know anything about wickedness or stupidity And so they flew and sang, and they were trapped in nets, and put into cages, and sold for cash, and they were hung from ceilings or put on sideboards or bookshelves or on windowsills and they sang. And their songs must have been filled with yearning and pain. And their songs lifted over the stupid boring conversations of their stupid boring prison guards. Imagine them! Imagine the stupid boring people who trap birds, who put them into cages! How boring they must be! How stupid they must be! We don’t put the goldfinches into cages now. But there are still lots of bird trappers in the world – people who trap the spirit, people who cage the soul. What’s a gang of bird trappers called?
They flew away, the charm of goldfinches. Fly, goldfinches! Sing and fly!
Now I sit in the tree and wait. I sit in the blue-green dappled light. I rest my notebook on my knees. I watch Mr. Myers’s house. No movement there. I move my pen across the page.
I play about with my name and my pen and I come up with a concrete poem that shows that Mrs. Scullery was right. Mina McKee truly is hard as iron!
I keep on playing with words and my pen. I look at an empty page and it’s like an empty sky waiting for a bird to fly across it. I imagine a charm of goldfinches flying freely across it. I imagine them disappearing from sight and the sky, and the page is empty again.
Then I think of another bird, a skylark. I imagine it flying upwards on the page. I recall the extraordinary fact that the skylark, unlike any other bird, sings as it rises from the earth, sings as it hovers high in the sky and sings as it drops to ground again. The skylark really does seem to be carried on its song!
As I write the skylark high above I see Whisper down below. There he is, prowling in the shadows. The cat is on the hunt. For mice, perhaps. For victims.
BLACK BEAST BLACK BEAST
CREATURE OF THE DARK
CREATURE OF THE UNDERWORLD
CREATURE OF THE HOUSES OF THE DEAD
CREATURE VELVET AS THE VELVET NIGHT
BLACK BEAST PROWLING
THROUGH MY WEIRD DREAMS
BLACK BEAST PURRING
IN MY RED RED HEART
BLACK BEAST YOWLING
IN MY YEARNING SOUL
BLACK BEAST BLACK BEAST
YOUR BLOOD IS MY BLOOD
YOUR CLAWS ARE MY CLAWS
YOUR FUR IS MY FUR
YOUR HEART IS MY HEART
YOU CAME TO ME FROM DARKNESS
YOU ARE MY BLACK BLACK BEAST OF DEEPEST DARK
AND YOU ARE WHISPER.
I write for what seems like hours in the blue-green dappled light. And my mind and my hand move smoothly together and I am lost in my thoughts and lost in my words and the minutes pass and the minutes pass, and at the secret hidden center of the blue-green eggs the secret hidden creatures grow.
And then I blink and look up and the family is in the street again. I am hidden from them, and my songs are silent so they don’t know that I’m here. I look out through the leaves.
The boy is sullen as always.
The parents are pleased.
They leave in the little blue car.
I watch them leave the street and leave my page.
I think of the mysterious connections between words and the world, and my pen soon moves again, as if I can’t stop writing, perched up here beside the blue-green eggs in the blue-green afternoon.
I SIT IN MY TREE WITH A BOOK AND A PEN AND I WRITE. FOR INSTANCE:
“THERE IS A BOY AND A WOMAN AND A MAN IN THE STREET AND THEY ENTER A HOUSE WHICH ONCE WAS THE HOUSE OF A MAN CALLED ERNIE MYERS.”
FOR INSTANCE:
“THERE IS A CAT NAMED WHISPER WHICH SLINKS PAST THE HOUSE TO THE OVERGROWN GARDEN AT THE BACK OF THE HOUSE.”
FOR INSTANCE:
“THE BLACKBIRDS HAVE MADE THEIR NEST AND THERE ARE THREE BLUE-GREEN BROWN-SPECKLED EGGS IN IT.”
AND SO THEY ALL APPEAR IN MY BOOK:
THE BOY, THE WOMAN, THE MAN, THE CAT,
THE HOUSE, THE GARDEN,
THE BLACKBIRDS, THE TREE, THE EGGS, THE NEST.
AND SOMETIMES I HESITATE.
AND SOMETIMES I WONDER,
IS THERE SOMEONE WHO WRITES,
“THERE IS A GIRL CALLED MINA SITTING IN A TREE.”
IS THERE SOMEONE WHO WRITES,
“SOMETIMES SHE HESITATES AND SOMETIMES SHE WONDERS.”
AND IF THERE IS, WHO IS IT?
WHO WRITES MINA?
WHO WRITES ME?
Spaghetti Pomodoro & a Dream
I could have gone on writing until darkness came, but Mum called me in. I climbed out of the tree. It felt so weird, like I was coming out from a dream. Or like I was coming out from a poem or a story, or like I was a poem or a story myself. Or like I was coming out from an egg! Spaghetti pomodoro helped me to feel ordinary again. Spaghetti pomodoro! I curled it around my fork and plunged it into my mouth. I slurped the dangling threads of pasta. I licked the sauce that dribbled down my chin. I chewed and rolled it all around my mouth. Delicious! So delicious! One of the most delicious things in the known universe!
Mum says that one day we’ll go to Italy together and eat spaghetti pomodoro in the land of its birth. We’ll have Parmesan cheese and Parma ham and sun-dried tomatoes and polenta and risotto and olives and garlic and fettuccini and ice cream and tiramisu and zabaglione in the land of their birth, where they taste far better than anywhere else. I haven’t traveled much yet but Mum says I will, when we can afford it.
When we finish the spaghetti, and the lovely tomatoey garlicky taste is still on our tongues, we sit on the sofa and eat ice cream as the sun goes down outside the window.
I tell her about the blackbirds’ eggs and the goldfinches and the family at Mr. Myers’s house who look as if they will soon move in.
Then we’re quiet, and we watch the sky darkening and reddening as the sun goes down. We see birds flapping nestward. We see an airplane far far away and oh so high. I think of the astounding journeys that birds make across the world. And I think of the journeys I could make one day.
“Bologna,” I say softly.
She smiles. Sometimes we do this, just list the names of the places we’ll go to one day.
“Andalucia.”
“Luxor.”
“Trinidad.”
“Seaton Sluice.”
The reason that we have so little money is that she cut down on the work she did when I left school so that she could care for me properly and have the time to teach me. But she never mentions it. She only says that until the day we set off together, I will have to travel in my mind.
“And in my dreams,” I say.
“Yes. You can travel in your dreams.”
“To Ashby-de-la-Zouch,” I say.
“Or Vladivostok.”
“Corryvreckan, Trinidad, Peru.”
The sky outside is almost black.
“I found out such an interesting thing today,” she says.
“Did you?”
“Yes. It seems that some birds fly right through the night, and sleep as they fly.”
“They sleep as they fly?”
“Yes.”
“What kind of birds?”
“Swifts, it seems.”
I smile at the thought.
“John O’ Groats.”
“County Kerry.”
“Ayers Rock.”
“Lhasa.”
Later, when I go to bed, I pin some words above my bed and hope to dream.
At the start, it wasn’t really like a dream at all. It was quite like waking up. Mina found herself in her own bedroom, and it was exactly like her own bedroom. Then she realized that there were two Minas. One lay fast asleep in bed, and one was standing at the bedside looking down at the Mina who lay fast asleep in bed.
That’s strange, she thought. I’m looking at myself. How can that be?
As she thought this thought, she started to rise towards the ceiling. The Mina in bed did not stir. Mina-who-was-rising saw that there was a kind of shining silver cord that stretched between herself and Mina-on-the-bed. The cord joined the two Minas together, even though they were apart. The Mina who was rising wondered if she should feel scared about what was happening, but really there seemed to be nothing scary about it at all. She looked down at herself, at the pale sleeping face, the closed sleeping eyes, the pitch-black hair. She saw the duvet rising and falling gently as Mina breathed. It all seemed so calm and so comfortable. She smiled, and rose even higher, through the ceiling, into the dark attic space above. She saw the boxes of her old toys that were stacked up there, boxes of her mum’s papers, boxes of Christmas decorations and old books. The shining silver cord stretched through the attic floor towards the now-hidden Mina-on-the-bed. And she kept on rising, through the roof itself, and now she was above the house, in the night, with the moon and stars above, and the house and Falconer Road below, and with the silver cord stretching through the roof slates towards Mina-on-the-bed. She gasped, and for a moment the cord seemed to tighten, as if it was about to pull her right back to where she’d come from, but she whispered to herself, “Don’t be scared, Mina. Don’t stop it now.”
And she and the cord relaxed and she rose high above the house, and the street, and she saw the strings of streetlights, and the darkness of the park, and the whole city, and the glimmering river running through it, and the
spiral of the motorway, and the roads that ran out toward the moors, and she saw the huge dark sea with the reflections of the moon and stars on it, and a spinning lighthouse light, and the lights of a lonely ship far out upon the seas.
And she laughed.
“I’m traveling!” she said. “I shall go to … Seaton Sluice!”
And as she said the name of the little seaside town she descended again and found herself hovering above the town she’d been to several times in her waking life. There they all were, the long beach and the turning waves, the white pub on the headland, little tethered fishing boats, the narrow river running into the sea.
The silver cord vibrated and shimmered. It stretched away from her towards where she’d come from, linking Mina-at-Seaton-Sluice to Mina-on-the-bed.
She hovered. She wondered.
“Cairo!” she whispered.
And she rose again, and off she went towards the east, across the North Sea, across the whole of Europe with its great cities and its snow-capped mountains, and she looked down and thought to herself, That must be Amsterdam! The Alps! Milan! Belgrade! Athens!! And she traveled across the Mediterranean Sea towards the northern shores of Africa, where the sky was beginning to lighten with the dawn.
She saw the great great dusty city of Cairo and heard its din and roar, and saw the pyramids beyond its edge, rising over the desert. She traveled closer. She hovered over the tip of the greatest pyramid. She eased herself gently downward until she stood there, right on the point of the Great Pyramid of Giza, with the other pyramids and the great sphinx and the desert on one horizon and the city of Cairo on the other. And she shivered with the joy of it.