Skellig

by David Almond

When I slept, I dreamed that my bed was all twigs and leaves and feathers, just like a nest.

‘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.’

A pale bird rose from some corner of the room and flew silently to the window. It stood there, looking out. Then another came, wheeling once around the room, its wings beating within inches of our faces before it, too, settled before the window. I didn’t breathe. Mina gripped my hand. I watched the birds, the way their broad round faces turned to each other, the way their claws gripped the window frame. Then they went, flying silently out into the red dusk. ‘Owls,’ whispered Mina. ‘Tawny owls!’

And she looked right into me again and laughed.

I looked into the sky over the gardens and saw the owls heading homeward on great silent wings.

Our fingers touched behind his back. We explored the growths upon his shoulder blades. We felt them folded up like arms. We felt their soft coverings. We stared into each other’s eyes and didn’t dare to tell each other what we thought we felt.

‘Who are you?’ she whispered. He winced with pain. ‘My name is Skellig,’ he said.

We saw what both of us had dreamed we might see. Beneath his jacket were wings that grew out through rips in his shirt. When they were released, the wings began to unfurl from his shoulder blades. They were twisted and uneven, they were covered in cracked and crooked feathers. They clicked and trembled as they opened. They were wider than his shoulders, higher than his head.

Pneumatisation. The presence of air cavities in the bones of birds. It is this which allows them free flight.’

I looked up at her silvery face, her ink-black eyes. I knew that in a dream I would see her as the moon with Skellig flying silently across her.

‘The owls and the angels,’ he whispered.

‘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.’

His face as white and dry as chalk. And there was such tenderness in his eyes.

‘Can love help a person to get better?’ I asked.

‘What are you?’ I whispered. He shrugged again. ‘Something,’ he said. ‘Something like you, something like a beast, something like a bird, something like an angel.’ He laughed. ‘Something like that.’

We turned and turned until the ghostly wings rose from Mina’s back and mine, until we felt ourselves being raised, until we seemed to turn and dance in the empty air.