Skellig

Chapter 34

I SAT AT THE KITCHEN TABLE WITH Mina. Her mother was above us, cutting up lettuce and tomatoes and bread. The table was spread with paper and paints. Mina had been painting all afternoon. There were little streaks of paint on her face. Her fingers were bright with daubs of color. There was a large drawing of Skellig, standing erect with his wings high above his shoulders. He gazed out at us, smiling.

“What if she sees?” I whispered.

“It could be anyone,” said Mina. “Or anything.”

Her mother turned toward us.

“Good, isn’t it, Michael?” she said.

I nodded.

“The kind of thing William Blake saw. He said we were surrounded by angels and spirits. We must just open our eyes a little wider, look a little harder.”

She pulled a book from a shelf, showed me Blake’s pictures of the winged beings he saw in his little home in London.

“Maybe we could all see such beings, if only we knew how to,” she said.

She touched my cheek.

“But it’s enough for me to have you two angels at my table.”

She stared hard at us, making her eyes wide and unblinking.

“Yes,” she smiled. “Isn’t it amazing? I see you clearly, two angels at my table.”

I thought of the baby. I wondered what she would see, with her innocent eyes. I wondered what she would see, if she were near to death.

I turned my mind away from her. I pulled a sheet of paper toward me. I found myself drawing Coot, giving him twisted arms and legs and bright red hair. I drew hair sprouting from his back, his chest, his legs.

“That’s your friend,” said Mina. “A proper little demon.”

I looked at her, looked just past her, wanting to see her ghostly wings again. Her mother started singing:

“I went back to him today,” Mina whispered.

I drew horns growing from Coot’s skull.

“I came for you first,” she said. “Your dad said you’d gone to school. Shouldn’t I be working? he asked. Shouldn’t I be at my lessons?”

She leaned over and drew a skinny black tongue protruding from Coot’s mouth.

“Skellig said, ‘Where’s Michael?’ ” whispered Mina. “ ‘At school,’ I said. ‘School!’ he said. ‘He abandons me for school!’ I said you hadn’t abandoned him. I said you loved him.”

“I do,” I whispered.

“I said how terrified you were that the baby might die.”

“She won’t,” I said. “She mustn’t.”

“He says you must keep coming to see him.”

She chewed her lip, leaned closer.

“He says he’s going away soon, Michael.”

“Going away?” I said.

“Yes.”

“Where to?”

She shook her head.

“He wouldn’t say.”

“When?”

“Soon.”

My hands were trembling. I grabbed some more paper. I drew Skellig, flapping across a pale sky.

Her mother leaned over us, began clearing a space to put down our plates.

“ ‘For the time of youth was fled,’ ” she sang, “ ‘And gray hairs were on my head.’

“Come on,” she said. “Food’s ready. That’s a lovely picture, Michael.”