by David Almond
We walk on, heading for the gates, but she takes my hand and turns me away from the path.
We walk to the darkest part of the park, beyond the swings and the bowling green. A few lights mark the pathways behind us. Lights from Crow Road and Falconer Road and from the city twinkle through the trees. The night’s dead still. I think again of the Underworld, and I shudder, then I turn my thoughts away. I feel the solid earth under my feet. I feel the air on my skin. I lift my eyes to the sky, to the millions of stars.
Mum shows me Saturn and Venus. She points out the constellations: Virgo, Cancer, Leo. She shows me the cluster of the Pleiades. We try to look further, further, through the stars that are scattered like dust across eternity. We try to make out the beasts and weird winged beings that the Greeks described up there: bears and dogs and horses and crabs and Pegasus and Daedalus and Icarus. We imagine a sky filled with beasts and beings.
“We’re looking across billions and billions and billions of miles,” she says. “The light from some of the stars has taken millions of years to reach us.”
“We’re time travelers!” I say.
“Yes.”
“And we’re made of the same stuff. The stars and us.”
“Yes. No matter how far away we are from each other.”
We stand dead still and we listen to the night. The city drones. An owl hoots and a cat howls and a dog barks and a siren wails.
We let the stars shine into us.
I stare. Is there anyone else out there? There has to be. Are they like us? Is there another Mina and another Mum looking toward us through the darkness that goes on for billions and billions and billions of miles and billions and billions and billions of years? Are their joys and their pains the same as ours? Will we ever know the answers to things like that? And how did everything get here, anyway? And why? And will it go on forever? And what’s right out there at the very edge of the stars and the darkness? And what’s at the very heart of things?
Mum cups her hands around my head.
“Look,” she murmurs. “I can nearly hold your whole head in my hands, Mina. Your head holds all those stars, all that darkness, all these noises. It holds the universe.” She holds me against her. She rests her head against mine. “Two heads, two universes, interlinked.”
After a while, we make our way back towards home. She holds my hand as we walk and she’s happy at my side.
We hold each oth-er’s hand and walk back home
We walk back home and hold each oth-er’s hand
We …
We come to a lamp beside the pathway, and suddenly we stop our walking, and we start to dance, and we glitter in the shafts of light, like stars, like flies, like flakes of dust.
EXTRAORDINARY ACTIVITY
Take a line for a walk.
Find out what you’re drawing when you’ve drawn it.
Take some words for a walk.
Find out what you’re writing when you’ve written it.
Take yourself for a walk.
Find out where you’re going when you get there.
EXTRAORDINARY ACTIVITY
Stare at the stars. Travel through space and time.
Hold your head and know that you are extraordinary.
Remind yourself that you are dust.
Remind yourself that you are a star.
Stand beneath a streetlamp.
Dance and glitter in a shaft of light.
EXTRAORDINARY ACTIVITY
Listen for the frail and powerful thing at your heart.
Later, just before I go to bed, I look out of the window. There are lights on in the house I still call Mr. Myers’s house. Shadowy figures move behind the windows. I think of the baby and hope that she’s sleeping peacefully. I keep the curtains open. The moon rises and its maddening light falls on me. I tremble. Does everybody feel this excitement, this astonishment, as they grow? I close my eyes and stare into the universe inside myself. I feel as if I’m poised on the threshold of something marvelous. I drift to sleep at last.
I dream. Such a weird dream! I see the night sky filled with beasts and extraordinary beings, all the beasts and beings imagined throughout history. As I stare up to watch them, they start to fall towards me.
I DREAMED OF HORSES FALLING FROM THE SKY
I DREAMED OF SERPENTS FALLING FROM THE SKY
I DREAMED OF BEARS AND GOATS AND CRABS
AND LIZARDS FALLING FROM THE SKY.
I DREAMED OF CENTAURS, OF PEGASUS
OF DAEDALUS AND ICARUS
FALLING FROM THE SKY.
I DREAMED OF THE ARCHAEOPTERYX
FALLING FROM THE SKY.
I DREAMED OF OWLS AND LIONS
BATS AND BULLS AND FISH
AND RAMS AND ANGELS
FALLING FROM THE SKY.
AND ATT THE HORSES AND THE SERPENTS
THE BEARS, THE GOATS, THE CRABS AND LIZARDS
THE CENTAURS AND THE LIONS
AND PEGASUS AND DAEDALUS
AND ICARUS AND ARCHAEOPTERYX
AND OWLS AND BATS AND BULLS AND FISH AND
RAMS AND ANGELS
LANDED IN MY ROOM
AND GATHERED BY MY BED
AND WHISPERED IN MY EAR
WAKE UP, MINA. WAKE UP. IT’S TIME TO WAKE.
And I wake. And it’s dawn. And I’m still so close to the dream that I can nearly hear the snorting and the stamping and the rustling of wings, I can nearly feel the heat of the beasts by my bed. Then the after-dream disappears and there’s just me and the room and silence. But not true silence. There’s the drone of the city. There’s the beat of my heart. There’s Mum breathing gently in the room next door.
I go downstairs. Make chocolate milk and toast. Delicious. Go to the front door and stand there. The street’s empty, just cars lined up against the curbs. The sky’s empty, just a few clouds and passing birds. The dream repeats in my memory and the sky is filled again for a moment with falling beasts. I sip the lovely chocolate. I listen to the birds, to the dawn chorus, to what might be the voice of God.
I move to the tree, and I stand beneath it, against the trunk. The blackbirds squawk, but they know it’s only me and they soon calm down. I close my eyes and listen closer, deeper. And I hear the sound I want to hear, tiny and distant, as if it’s from another world. It’s coming from the nest. It’s the sound of tiny cheeping chicks. I smile. And then there’s another sound, just as tiny, just as far away, just as urgent.
The baby crying.
Suddenly, the miserable-looking doctor drives into the street in his miserable-looking car. He pulls up at the house just as he did when it was Mr. Myers’s house. He scans the street with his miserable-looking eyes, then the door’s opened to him and he goes inside. Then a nurse appears, walking quickly, much too quickly, from the end of the street, and goes into the house, too.
I listen. No sound. Just my heart, just the chicks, just the city.
Then Mum’s at my back.
“Mr. Myers’s doctor’s come,” I tell her.
“Mr. Myers’s doctor?”
“Yes. For the baby.”
“You can’t know it’s for the baby.”
“A nurse came, too.”
“A nurse? It’s just routine, I’m sure it is.”
“I heard the chicks,” I tell her. “Then I heard the baby crying.”
As we stand, another car pulls up. Another nurse goes in. I chew my lip. I tremble slightly. It’s so weird. I feel like I’ve just been born myself, as if I’m at the edge of a huge adventure. But the doctor’s face. And the nurse’s. And the lines of worry on Mum’s brow.
“It’s probably nothing,” she says. “Little baby, a few days old.”
The blackbirds squawk. I see Whisper prowling in the shadows below the garden hedge. I hiss. I wave him off. He slinks backwards, further into the dark. But his eyes continue to shine from there.
Mum draws me back inside. We eat toast and drink tea. I keep going to the front window. An hour passes. More. Then the first n
urse comes out and walks away. I tell Mum. She comes and we watch again. Then the other nurse comes out. She looks at her watch, rubs her eyes, gets into her car, drives away.
But no doctor. Nobody else.
“If we were outside we’d be able to listen for the baby,” I say. “We’d be able to hear if she’s OK.”
“It will be OK. Sometimes getting into the world safely can be difficult, that’s all.”
I see Whisper slinking out from the shadows, turning his ear towards the nest. I tap on the window. I bare my teeth. He looks at me, decides to ignore me, and slinks forwards again.
Then at last the doctor comes out. He stands with the dad at the door and they shake hands. He casts his miserable gaze along the street and drives away.
“Thank Heaven,” says Mum. She sighs with relief. “It must have been nothing.”
“Nothing,” I echo.
I hiss at Whisper.
“No!” I tell him. “No!”
She looks at her watch.
“I’ll go along later, see if I can help.”
I sit by the window and take a pencil for a walk across a page.
Hours pass. Mum walks along the street toward the house, but I see her quickly turn back again.
“What’s wrong?” I say.
She shrugs.
“They sound rather … agitated. Not surprising, I suppose. I’ll try again later.”
The boy comes into the street. Clenched fists. Hard eyes. He has his football. He kicks it against the wall. He goes back in again.
“He’ll need a friend, you know,” she says.
“Will he?”
“Wouldn’t you?”
She leaves me.
I take my pencil for another walk across the page. I tell myself the page is the street, the pencil is me, walking closer to Mr. Myers’s door.
I feel so stupid, so nervous, so young. I’ve never once gone out and tried to make a friend before.
I take deep breaths.
I write.
Mina McKee walked along the street and knocked on the door and the boy came and Mina said, “Hello. My name is Mina. What’s yours?”
Do I dare? I imagine him in the house, gloomy and surly. I imagine him coming to the door and glaring at me and telling me to go away. What would a boy with a football under his arm want with somebody like me?
But writing it makes me bolder.
Mina got up and went out of her front door and walked along the street. Mina got up and went out of her front door and walked along the street.
Maybe he wouldn’t be gloomy. Maybe he’d really be glad. Maybe he would want something to do with somebody like me.
I get up. I put the book and the pencil down. I go out of the door. I walk along the street. My heart’s thudding. The air’s dead still. I hear yelling, the kind of yelling Mum must have heard. It comes from the back of the house. A woman’s voice, angry and scared. I don’t turn back. I quickly walk to where the houses end, then turn into the lane that runs along the back of them. I come to the back of Mr. Myers’s house. There’s an ancient derelict garage there. The doors to the lane must have fallen off years ago and there are dozens of massive planks nailed across the entrance. Next to the garage there’s a six-foot-high wall. There’s a waste bin against the wall. I could easily get onto that and then to the top of the wall and look down into the garden and say, “Hello. My name is Mina.”
The woman yells again.
“Keep out! All right?”
I hear the boy muttering something. It just seems to make her angrier.
“Do you not think we’ve got more to worry about than stupid you?” she yells. “So keep out! All right? All right?”
She sounds so scared, at her wits’ end.
“Just keep out!” she yells again, then it’s silent.
I stand in the lane all alone. I tell myself I should go back home, but it feels like an adventure to be standing there, even though I’m so close to home, even though everything’s so still and so silent. My heart beats fast.
Soon I hear the boy kicking the ball. I lean against the garage and feel it trembling as the ball thumps against it. Thump! Whack! Thump! I hear the boy’s grunts of effort and frustration. Who is he? What’ll he be like if I’m brave enough – when I’m brave enough to speak to him?
After a while, there’s his mother’s voice again. Will he come in for lunch? No, he tells her. No! Then I hear their voices close together. She’s calmer now. I imagine her at his side, touching him, tousling his hair, reasoning with him, explaining her anger. It’s the garage she’s scared of. It must be. Please keep out of it, she must be telling him. Then I hear a doorbell, and her feet hurrying away. Now! I tell myself. Now!
But I don’t. Do it! I tell myself, but I don’t. And there’s the creaking of a door, then silence again. No football. And then his dad’s voice, yelling, too.
“Michael! Michael! Didn’t we tell you …”
Michael. That’s his name. But it’s too late.
He’s with his dad now, and his dad thumps a wall and the garage shudders and I hear them heading back towards the house.
Silly Mina! Lost your chance! Chicken!
I wait, but they’ve gone. And I trail back home. And I write again.
Chicken! I’m frightened. Don’t be frightened!
I try not to feel silly and forlorn. I write an extraordinary activity for myself, the most important of all extraordinary activities. I pin it up above my bed.
I read it and read it. I tell myself to be as brave as a chick making its first flight, as brave as Steepy with his tattoos, as brave as Sophie with her operation, as brave as Mum living without Dad, as brave as the baby leaping into the world. I write the words to help me.
Mina was brave and she tried again. She walked along the street and into the back lane. She stepped up onto the waste bin and then up onto the wall and she said, “Hello. My name is Mina. What’s yours?”
And I do it, just like that, the very next day.
I see him go off to school in the morning. I’m in the tree when he comes back in the afternoon. I don’t wait long. I take myself for a walk into the back lane. I hear the boy and his dad talking together. Then his dad goes away. And I wait. And there’s silence, just the creaking of a door, so he must be in there again.
As soon as he comes out! I tell myself.
I wait.
The creaking of the door.
Now! Do it!
I jump up onto the waste bin and look down from the top of the wall.
“Are you the new boy here?” I say.
He turns around, looks up, and at last I tell him in my brightest voice:
“My name is Mina!”