Skellig (17 page)

“Aye,” said Gus. “You cannot beat a bit of knocky down.”

SHE CAME HOME ON A SUNDAY
. A beautiful bright warm day. It was really spring at last. Dad went off in the car and I stayed behind to finish cleaning the kitchen up. I wrapped last night’s take-out containers in newspaper and threw them in the bin. I put the kettle on for Mum. I got a can of beer and a glass ready for Dad.

I went upstairs and slipped the baby’s feather under her mattress. I smiled, because I knew she’d have the best of dreams.

I waited, looking out into the empty space left by Mr. Batley and his sons. Even the cracked concrete floor was gone now. There was a wooden fence instead of the back wall. I imagined the garden, filled it with all the shrubs and flowers and the grass that would soon be growing where the ragged yard had been.

I trembled when I heard the car. I couldn’t move. Then I took deep breaths, and thought of Skellig and
went to open the front door. Dad had the baby in his arms. Mum stood there beaming.

“Welcome home, Mum,” I whispered, using the words I’d practiced.

She smiled at how nervous I was. She took my hand and led me back into the house, into the kitchen. She sat me on a chair and put the baby in my arms.

“Look how beautiful your sister is,” she said. “Look how strong she is.”

I lifted the baby higher. She arched her back like she was about to dance or fly. She reached out and scratched with her tiny nails at the skin on my face. She tugged at my lips and touched my tongue. She tasted of milk and salt and of something mysterious, sweet and sour all at once. She whimpered and gurgled. I held her closer and her dark eyes looked right into me, right into the place where all my dreams were, and she smiled.

“She’ll have to keep going for checkups,” Mum said. “But they’re sure the danger’s gone, Michael. Your sister is really going to be all right.”

We laid the baby on the table and sat around her. We didn’t know what to say. Mum drank her tea. Dad let me have swigs of his beer. We just sat there looking at each other and touching each other and we laughed and laughed and we cried and cried.

Soon there was a gentle knock at the door. I went and found Mina standing there. She was shy and quiet, like I’d never seen her before. She started to
say something, but it was a mumble and she ended up just looking into my eyes.

“Come and see,” I said.

I took her hand and led her into the kitchen. She said good evening politely to my parents. She said she hoped they didn’t mind. Dad shifted aside to let her in beside the table. She looked down at the baby.

“She’s beautiful,” she gasped. “She’s extraordinary!”

And she looked around and laughed with us all.

She was really shy again when she said, “I brought a present. I hope you don’t mind.”

She unrolled a picture of Skellig, with his wings rising from his back and a tender smile on his white face.

Mum caught her breath.

She stared at me and she stared at Mina. For a moment, I thought she was going to ask us something. Then she simply smiled at both of us.

“Just something I made up,” said Mina. “I thought the baby might like it on her wall.”

“It’s really lovely, Mina,” Mum said, and she took it gently from Mina’s hands.

“Thank you,” said Mina. She stood there awkwardly. “I’ll leave you alone now.”

I led her back to the door.

We smiled at each other.

“See you tomorrow, Mina.”

“See you tomorrow, Michael.”

I watched her walk away in the late light. From
across the street, Whisper came to join her. When Mina stooped down to stroke the cat, I was sure I saw for a second the ghostly image of her wings.

Back in the kitchen, they were talking again about giving the baby a proper name.

“Persephone,” I said.

“Not that mouthful again,” said Dad.

We thought a little longer, and in the end we simply called her Joy.

I GREW UP IN A BIG FAMILY IN A
small steep town overlooking the River Tyne, in England. It was a place of ancient coal mines, dark terraced streets, strange shops, new real estate developments, and wild heather hills. Our lives were filled with mysterious and unexpected events, and the place and its people have given me many of my stories. I always wanted to be a writer, though I told very few people until I was “grown up.” I’ve published lots of fiction for adults, and I’ve won a number of prizes. I’ve been a mailman, a brush salesman, an editor, and a teacher. I’ve lived by the North Sea, in inner Manchester, and in a Suffolk farmhouse, and I wrote my first stories in a remote and dilapidated Norfolk mansion.

Writing can be difficult, but sometimes it really does feel like a kind of magic. I think that stories are living things—among the most important things in the world.

W
INNER OF THE
B
OSTON
G
LOBE
–H
ORN
B
OOK
A
WARD
W
INNER OF THE
W
HITBREAD
A
WARD
(
NOW CALLED THE
C
OSTA
A
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)
W
INNER OF THE
S
MARTIES
P
RIZE

It all starts on the day I met McNulty. I was with my mam. We left Dad at home beside the sea. We took the bus to Newcastle. We got out below the statue of the angel, then headed down toward the market by the river. A crowd had gathered beyond the market stalls but we couldn’t see what held so many people there. She led me closer. She stood on tiptoes. There were bodies all around me, blocking out the light.

His voice was muffled by the bodies, and at first it seemed so distant. “Pay!” he yelled. “You’ll not see nowt till
you pay!” I tugged her hand. “Are you not listening?” he yelled. I raised my eyes and tried to see. And she put her hands beneath my arms and lifted me and I teetered on my toes and there he was, at the center of us all. I looked into his eyes. He looked back into mine. And it was as if my heart stopped beating and the world stopped turning. That was when it started. That moment, that Sunday, late summer, 1962.

He was a small, wild-eyed, bare-chested man. His skin was covered in scars and bruises. There were rough and faded tattoos of beasts and women and dragons. He had a little canvas sack on a long stick. He kept shoving it at the crowd.

“Pay!” he yelled and snarled. “You’ll not get nowt till you pay.”

Some of the crowd turned away and pushed past us as we moved forward. They shook their heads and rolled their eyes. He was pathetic, they said. He was a fake. One of them leaned close to Mam. “Take the lad away,” he said. “Some of the tricks is just disgusting. Not for bairns to see. It shouldn’t be allowed.”

McNulty’s hair was black. He had pointed gold teeth at the front of his mouth and he wore tiny golden earrings. There were deep creases in his cheeks. Mam held me against her.

“Reach into my pocket,” she said. “Find him a coin.”

I reached down and took out some silver. When I looked up again his little sack was right before my eyes.

“Into the sack with it, bonny lad,” he said.

I dropped the coin in. He held my eye with his. He grinned.

“Good lad,” he snarled.

He took the sack away.

“Pay,” he yelled, shoving the sack at other faces. “Get your money out and pay!”

She pushed my shoulders, helping me forward. I squirmed through, right to the front of the crowd.

“Bonny lad!” he muttered when he saw me there. He looked through the crowd. “Bonny lady.”

A cart wheel lay on the cobbles beside him. He stood it on end, in front of him. It had heavy wooden spokes, a thick steel rim. It was as high as his chest.

“Could McNulty lift this?” he hissed.

He took it in his hands, spread his legs, bent his knees and lifted it to his thighs and let it rest there.

“Could he?” he said through gritted teeth. “Could he?”

There were tears of strain in his eyes.

He groaned, lifted again, a sudden jerk that took the cart wheel high. We gasped. We backed away. He leaned his head back and rested the wheel on his brow so that it stood above him, with the sun and the bridge caught in its ring. He shuffled on the cobbles, balancing himself with his elbows wide and his hands gripping the rim of steel. He grunted and hissed. Then he lifted the cart wheel free and let it fall with a crash and the whole earth seemed to shake.

He glared at us. He blinked, wiped his tears away.

“See? See what a man can do?”