Skellig

Chapter 36

I WENT OUT INTO THE FRONT GARDEN with Mina. We sat on the front wall waiting for Dad’s car to turn into the street. The door was open behind us, letting a wedge of light out into the dark. Whisper came, slinking through the shadows below the wall. He sat below us, curled against our feet.

“What does it mean,” I said, “if Skellig eats living things and makes pellets like the owls?”

She shrugged.

“We can’t know,” she said.

“What is he?” I said.

“We can’t know. Sometimes we just have to accept there are things we can’t know. Why is your sister ill? Why did my father die?” She held my hand. “Sometimes we think we should be able to know everything. But we can’t. We have to allow ourselves to see what there is to see, and we have to imagine.”

We talked about the fledglings in the nest above us. We tried together to hear their breathing. We wondered what blackbird babies dreamed about.

“Sometimes they’ll be very scared,” said Mina. “They’ll dream about cats climbing toward them. They’ll dream about dangerous crows with ugly beaks. They’ll dream about vicious children plundering the nest. They’ll dream of death all around them. But there’ll be happy dreams as well. Dreams of life. They’ll dream of flying like their parents do. They’ll dream of finding their own tree one day, building their own nest, having their own chicks.”

I held my hand to my heart. What would I feel when they opened the baby’s fragile chest, when they cut into her tiny heart? Mina’s fingers were cold and dry and small. I felt the tiny pulse of blood in them. I felt how my own hand trembled very quickly, very gently.

“We’re still like chicks,” she said. “Happy half the time, half the time dead scared.”

I closed my eyes and tried to discover where the happy half was hiding. I felt the tears trickling through my tightly closed eyelids. I felt Whisper’s claws tugging at my jeans. I wanted to be all alone in an attic like Skellig, with just the owls and the moonlight and an oblivious heart.

“You’re so brave,” said Mina.

And then Dad’s car came, with its blaring engine and its glaring lights, and the fear just increased and increased and increased.