Skellig
Authors: David Almond
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1998 by David Almond
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Yearling, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, in 1999.
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The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition of this work as follows:
Almond, David.
Skellig / David Almond.
p. cm.
Summary: Unhappy about his baby sister’s illness and the chaos of moving into a dilapidated old house, Michael retreats to the garage and finds a mysterious stranger who is something like a bird and something like an angel.
[1. Strangers—Fiction. 2. Angels—Fiction. 3. Moving, Household—Fiction. 4. Family life—Fiction.
5. England—Fiction] I. Title.
PZ7.A448 Sk 1999
[Fic]—dc21
98023121
eISBN: 978-0-385-72988-8
New Yearling Edition
Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.
v3.1_r1
FOR
F
REYA
G
RACE
I FOUND HIM IN THE GARAGE ON A
Sunday afternoon. It was the day after we moved into Falconer Road. The winter was ending. Mum had said we’d be moving just in time for the spring. Nobody else was there. Just me. The others were inside the house with Dr. Death, worrying about the baby.
He was lying there in the darkness behind the tea chests, in the dust and dirt. It was as if he’d been there forever. He was filthy and pale and dried out and I thought he was dead. I couldn’t have been more wrong. I’d soon begin to see the truth about him, that there’d never been another creature like him in the world.
We called it the garage because that’s what the real estate agent, Mr. Stone, called it. It was more like a demolition site or a rubbish dump or like one of those ancient warehouses they keep pulling down at the wharf. Stone led us down the garden, tugged the door open, and shined his little flashlight into the
gloom. We shoved our heads in at the doorway with him.
“You have to see it with your mind’s eye,” he said. “See it cleaned, with new doors and the roof repaired. See it as a wonderful two-car garage.”
He looked at me with a stupid grin on his face.
“Or something for you, lad—a hideaway for you and your pals. What about that, eh?”
I looked away. I didn’t want anything to do with him. All the way round the house it had been the same. Just see it in your mind’s eye. Just imagine what could be done. All the way round I kept thinking of the old man, Ernie Myers, that had lived here on his own for years. He’d been dead nearly a week before they found him under the table in the kitchen. That’s what I saw when Stone told us about seeing with the mind’s eye. He even said it when we got to the dining room and there was an old cracked toilet sitting there in the corner behind a plywood screen. I just wanted him to shut up, but he whispered that toward the end Ernie couldn’t manage the stairs. His bed was brought in here and a toilet was put in so everything was easy for him. Stone looked at me like he didn’t think I should know about such things. I wanted to get out, to get back to our old house again, but Mum and Dad took it all in. They went on like it was going to be some big adventure. They bought the house. They started cleaning it and scrubbing it and painting it. Then the baby came too early. And here we were.
I NEARLY GOT INTO THE GARAGE
that Sunday morning. I took my own flashlight and shined it in. The outside doors to the back lane must have fallen off years ago and there were dozens of massive planks nailed across the entrance. The timbers holding the roof were rotten and the roof was sagging in. The bits of the floor you could see between the rubbish were full of cracks and holes. The people that took the rubbish out of the house were supposed to take it out of the garage as well, but they took one look at the place and said they wouldn’t go in it even for extra money. There were old chests of drawers and broken washbasins and bags of cement, ancient doors leaning against the walls, deck chairs with the cloth seats rotted away. Great rolls of rope and cable hung from nails. Heaps of water pipes and great boxes of rusty nails were scattered on the floor. Everything was covered in dust and spiders’ webs. There was mortar that had
fallen from the walls. There was a little window in one of the walls but it was filthy and there were rolls of cracked linoleum standing in front of it. The place stank of rot and dust. Even the bricks were crumbling like they couldn’t bear the weight anymore. It was like the whole thing was sick of itself and would collapse in a heap and have to get bulldozed away.
I heard something scratching in one of the corners, and something scuttling about; then it all stopped and it was just dead quiet in there.
I stood daring myself to go in.