Skellig

I slipped my hand under the covers and touched her. I could feel her heart beating fast. I could feel the thin rattle of her breath, and her chest rising and falling. I felt how hot it was in there, how soft her bones were, how tiny she was. There was a dribble of spit and milk on her neck. I wondered if she was going to die.

I dreamed that the baby was in the blackbird’s nest in Mina’s garden. The blackbird fed her on flies and spiders and she got stronger and stronger until she flew out of the tree and over the rooftops and onto the garage roof.

“They say that shoulder blades are where your wings were, when you were an angel,” she said. “They say they’re where your wings will grow again one day.”

“It’s just a story, though,” I said. “A fairy tale for little kids. Isn’t it?”

“Who knows? But maybe one day we all had wings and one day we’ll all have wings again.”

“D’you think the baby had wings?”

“Oh I’m sure that she had wings. Just take one look at her. Sometimes I think she’s never quite left Heaven and never quite made it all the way here to Earth.”

“I don’t know what to do,” I said. “The garage is going to bloody collapse. You’re ill with bloody arthritis. You don’t eat properly. I wake up and think of you and there’s other things I need to think about. The baby’s ill and we hope she won’t die but she might. She really might.”

I was with the baby. We were tucked up together in the blackbird’s nest. Her body was covered in feathers and she was soft and warm. The blackbird was on the house roof, flapping its wings, squawking. Dr. MacNabola and Dr. Death were beneath us in the garden. They had a table filled with knives and scissors and saws. Dr. Death had a great syringe in his fist.

“Bring her down!” he yelled. “We’ll make her good as new!”

The baby squeaked and squealed in fright. She stood at the edge of the nest, flapping her wings, trying for the first time to fly. I saw the great bare patches on her skin: She didn’t have enough feathers yet, her wings weren’t strong enough yet.

I closed my eyes. I remembered the sound of the baby’s breathing, her beating heart. I held them in my mind, went on listening to them. I touched my heart and felt the baby’s heart beating beside my own. […] I stayed dead silent, and concentrated on keeping the baby safe.

“But the [archaeopteryx] was a heavy, bony thing. Look at the clumsy, leaden tail. It was capable of nothing but short, sudden flights. From tree to tree, stone to stone. It couldn’t rise and spiral and dance like birds can now.”

[…]

I thought of the baby in my lap, of Skellig slung between Mina and me. I thought of his wings and the baby’s fluttering heart.

“There’s no end to evolution,” said Mina.

She shuffled closer to me.

“We have to be ready to move forward,” she said. “Maybe this is not how we are meant to be forever.”

[Mrs. McKee] talked about the way spring made the world burst into life after months of apparent death. She told us about the goddess called Persephone, who was forced to spend half a year in the darkness deep underground. Winter happened when she was trapped inside the earth. […] Spring came when she was released and made her slow way up to the world again.

[…]

“An old myth,” I said.

“Yes,” she said. “But maybe it’s a myth that’s nearly true. Look around you, Michael. Fledglings and blooms and bright sunshine. Maybe what we see around us is the whole world welcoming Persephone home.”

I closed my eyes. I wanted to imagine nothing. The baby was dead. Skellig was gone. The world that was left was ugly, cold, terrifying. The blackbirds squawked and squawked while Mrs. Dando told Mina’s mother about what a great footballer I was, about how I loved having a crazy time with the other boys.

“And then he reached right down with both hands and lifted her up. She was wide awake. They stared and stared into each other’s eyes. He started slowly to turn around…”

“Like they were dancing,” I said.

“That’s right, like they were dancing.

[…]

“And the strangest thing of all was, there were wings on the baby’s back. Not solid wings. Transparent, ghostly, hardly visible, but there they were.”

“Can love help a person get better?” I asked.

[Dr. MacNabola] raised his eyebrows, pursed his lips, tapped his chin. One of the students took a notebook and pencil from her pocket.

“You went to my sister,” I said. […] “You made her strong.”

“That one’s glittering with life,” [Skellig said]. “Heart like fire. It was her that gave the strength to me.”

[…]

“But worn out now,” he said. “Exhausted.”

Then he reached out and touched Mina’s face, then mine.

“But I’m getting strong, thanks to the angels and the owls.”