David Almond - My Name Is Mina

Mina smiled. It seemed so mysterious and so right. There were owls, creatures of dreams and the night, living in her house!

“I’m uncomfortable,” said Mum. “My knees are getting sore. What kind of silly woman does a thing like this when there’s so much that’s sensible to be done?”

“A silly woman like you,” said Mina. “It won’t be long.”

The shadows in the attic deepened. The sky outside turned orange, red, then inky blue, and then the silveriness of moonlight was in the sky. They lay dead still. They breathed more gently.

“They’re birds of wisdom,” whispered Mum. “They’re the symbol of seeing hidden, secret things.”

“So we should be pleased to have them in the house.”

“Yes, we should be pleased.”

They watched and watched, and then their hearts began to thunder. There was movement in the nest, a rustling of feathers, a sudden low sharp screech.

And Mina and her mother gasped. A bird stood in the hole in the wall: dark feathers, shining eyes. They saw the head turning. Then another bird appeared. Mum held the edge of the door, ready to slam it shut. There was another low screech and then the birds leapt into the air, and seemed massive as they flew a circle around the room. They perched together on the sill for a moment in the moonlight, then they leapt again, and flew out into the night.

They rose to their feet. They gasped and giggled at the thrill of what they’d seen.

“Extraordinary,” whispered Mina, and somewhere far away a hooting started.

Hoot. Hoot hoot hoot.

“We’ll leave the window as it is,” said Mum.

“No we won’t,” said Mina, and she lifted a piece of broken brick from the floor, went to the window and knocked away more of the glass above the sill, making the opening wider and safer for the birds. She gazed out. She imagined leaping, like the birds did, like Icarus did in the story from long ago. She imagined her wings spreading as she swooped over the city.

Then they left the attic. As they entered the stairwell, Mina felt a creature winding itself around her feet.

“Oh,” she gasped, and then she smiled.

“Who’s this?” said Mum.

“My familiar little friend,” said Mina. “I’ve called him Whisper.”

Later, in the house, at the kitchen table, Mina made models of the owls from heavy clay and laid them on the table. She opened up the owl pellet in a bowl of warm water. She loosened the scraps of skin and fur and bone. She laid the fragments of what had been a mouse or a vole on her table. It was still gorgeous, so mysterious. It had been alive, it had been killed by an owl, it had been inside the owl and now it was out again. It was in her fingers, on the palm of her hand, on her table beside a clay model of an owl. Later, in her dreams, she made owls as light as spirits, and she flew with them in the night.

It was always writing that got me into trouble with Mrs. Scullery. She said I just EXASPERATED her.

“You could be one of my very best pupils, Mina McKee – one of the very best I have ever had, in fact. But you are a constant disappointment! You let the school down, you let your poor mother down, and most of all you let YOURSELF down, time and time and time again. You are a silly and wayward and undisciplined child. Instead of concentrating on the task in hand, you spend your time playing about and drawing attention to yourself and your silly foibles!”

Draw attention to myself? That was just about the last thing I wanted. I wanted to disappear. I didn’t want to be there at all!

The day that brought it to a head was SATS day. SATS Day, the day she started out so calm and sweet, the day she ended screaming out loud in front of the whole class, the day she snarled that I was full of nothing but stupid crackpot notions, the day she put her hands on her hips, glared straight into my face and growled,

“Mina bloody McKee. You are full of sheer bloody daftness and you are an utter bloody disgrace!”

Bloody. She said it in front of the whole class. It was unheard-of! A teacher said bloody in front of the whole class! That showed how bad things had become!

It was nonsense that did it. And it was SATS day! SATS day! Aaagh! Everybody just had to stay calm! It was nothing special! But everybody was so stressed out! Everybody was so scared! Everybody was so focused on making sure that the school was up to standard. Everybody was so concerned that everybody would all turn out to be better than the average of children of our age throughout the country! Everybody was so concerned that we would get Level 4 and Level 5 and Level 99! We shouldn’t get worked up about it, though! We should just treat SATS day as another ordinary school day! It wasn’t really a test at all! It was just a way of checking that things were going OK at St. Bede’s! It wasn’t really a test of the kids! It was a test of the school! So nothing to do with the kids at all! So just stay calm! So just don’t worry! Just relax! JUST RELAX! SATS Day was just another ordinary day! But SATS Day was SATS Day! IT WAS SATS DAY!

It started quietly enough. There we were sitting in class, some of the kids white-knuckled as they gripped the edge of their tables, some of them, such as Sophie, chewing their lips, some of them slouched and not caring at all. Some were poised and well prepared and smiling in anticipation, like Samantha, with new pens and pencils laid out neatly on the tables in front of them.

Mrs. Scullery looked like she’d spent the night seeing ghosts. Her hair was sticking out. Her lipstick was slashed across her chops. Her dress was buttoned up all wrong. Her hands were trembling. She goggled red-eyed from her desk at us.

“Remember,” she said to us in a high-pitched wobbly voice. “You must simply do your best, children.” She gave especially appealing glances to the ones she thought were cleverest, like me. “Just do your best. Please do your best. Please …”

I felt sorry for her. I really did. I felt that somebody should get up and go to her and give her a big hug and say,

“Don’t worry, Mrs. Scullery. It will all be all right.”

But nobody did.

Then she gave the papers out. We had to keep them facedown until she gave the word. Then she said it.

“Turn your papers over and you may begin.”

Oh my God I couldn’t stand it. Why should I write what they told me to write just because they told me to write it? What was the point of that? Why should I write because the school and everybody in it was so stupendously and stupidly stressed out? Why should I write something so somebody could say I was well below average, below average, average, above average or well above average? What’s average? And what about the ones that find out they’re well below average? What’s the point of that and how’s that going to make them feel for the rest of their lives? And did William Blake do writing tasks just because somebody else told him to? And what Level would he have got anyway?