My Name Is Mina

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.

And the silver cord that linked Mina-on-the-pyramid to Mina-on-the-bed suddenly tightened and away she went again, back into the west where it was still true night.

She traveled back over Europe, even more swiftly than she’d come. She paused, high high up, above the clouds that lay like scattered thin veils between herself and the earth. The cities of Europe were like distant star-clusters, like galaxies.

And she streaked down towards Rome. She saw the streetlights, the headlights of a few cars moving through the streets, and with a gasp of delight she saw the floodlit Colosseum and St. Peter’s Square and the Trevi Fountain, places she knew only from books until now. Then the cord tugged her harder, faster, and she flew again. The land below was just a blur.

Just one more place! she thought. Durham!

And she saw the cathedral and the castle, the river snaking around them, and to the east the dawn kept rising, rising, as if it was pursuing her. And she sighed and said, “OK! Back home to bed!” And suddenly she was above the park, and the silver cord vibrated and shimmered as it drew her home.

She woke as the early light shone through the window and birds chorused outside.

“Peru,” she murmured. “Alice Springs. Vladivostok. I’ll go to all those places, too.”

EXTRAORDINARY ACTIVITY

Go to sleep.

Sleep while you fly.

Fly while you sleep.