Free Skellig by David Almond Page A

they’re going to teach me some things.”
    “Like?”
    “Like modeling with clay. And about William Blake.”
    “Who’s he?” said Coot. “That guy that’s got the butcher’s shop in town?”
    “He said school drives all joy away,” I said. “He was a painter and a poet.”
    They looked at each other and grinned. Leakey couldn’t look me in the eye. I could feel my face burning and burning.
    “Look,” I said. “I can’t tell you anything. But the world’s full of amazing things.”
    Coot sighed and shook his head and bounced the ball between his knees.
    “I’ve seen them,” I said.
    Leakey stared at me.
    I imagined taking him through the DANGER door, taking him to Skellig, showing him. For a moment I was dying to tell him what I’d seen and what I’d touched.
    “There she is,” said Coot.
    We turned together, and there was Mina climbing into the tree again.
    “The monkey girl,” said Leakey.
    Coot giggled.
    “Hey!” he said. “Maybe Rasputin’s right about that evolution stuff. He could come and look at her and see there’s monkeys all around us still.”

HER EYES WERE COLD AS SHE STARED down at me from the tree.
    Her voice was sarcastic and singsong:
    “Thank God I was never sent to school,
    To be flog’d into following the style of a Fool.”
    “You know nothing about it,” I said. “We don’t get flogged and my friends aren’t fools.”
    “Ha!”
    “That’s it,” I said. “You know nothing about it. You think you’re special but you’re just as ignorant as anybody. You might know about William Blake but you know nothing about what ordinary people do.”
    “Ha!”
    “Yes. Ha!”
    I stared at my feet. I picked my fingernails. I kicked the garden wall.
    “They hate me,” she said. “I could see it in their eyes. They think I’m taking you away from them. They’re stupid.”
    “They’re not stupid!”
    “Stupid. Kicking balls and jumping at each other and screeching like hyenas. Stupid. Yes, hyenas. You as well.”
    “Hyenas? They think you’re a monkey, then.”
    Her eyes glared and her face burned.
    “See? See what I mean? They know nothing about me but they hate me.”
    “And of course you know everything about them.”
    “I know enough. There’s nothing to know. Kicking, screeching, being stupid.”
    “Ha!”
    “Yes, ha! And that little red-haired one …”
    “Blake was little and red-haired.”
    “How do you know that?”
    “See? You think nobody but you can know anything!”
    “No, I don’t!”
    “Ha!”
    Her lips were pressed tight together. She pressed her head back against the trunk of the tree.
    “Go home,” she said. “Go and play stupid football or something. Leave me alone.”
    I gave the wall a last kick; then I left her. I wentinto my front garden. I went through the open front door. Dad shouted hello from somewhere upstairs. I went straight through into the backyard and squatted there and squeezed my eyes tight to try and stop the tears.

THE OWLS WOKE ME. OR A CALL that was like that of the owls. I looked out into the night. The moon hung over the city, a great orange ball with the silhouettes of steeples and chimney stacks upon it. The sky was blue around it, deepening to blackness high above, where only the most brilliant stars shined. Down below, the backyard was filled with the pitch-black shadow of the garage and a wedge of cold silvery light.
    I watched for the birds and saw nothing.
    “Skellig,” I whispered. “Skellig. Skellig.”
    I cursed myself, because in order to go to him now I had to rely on Mina.
    I lay in bed again. I moved between sleeping and waking. I dreamed that Skellig entered the hospital ward, that he lifted the baby from her glass case. He pulled the tubes and wires from her. She reached up and touched his pale dry skin with her little fingersand she giggled. He took her away, flew with her in his arms through the darkest part of the sky. He landed with her in the backyard and stood there calling to