David Almond - My Name Is Mina

Remind yourself that you are dust.

Remind yourself that you are a star.

Stand beneath a streetlamp.

Dance and glitter in a shaft of light.

EXTRAORDINARY ACTIVITY

Listen for the frail and powerful thing at your heart.

Later, just before I go to bed, I look out of the window. There are lights on in the house I still call Mr. Myers’s house. Shadowy figures move behind the windows. I think of the baby and hope that she’s sleeping peacefully. I keep the curtains open. The moon rises and its maddening light falls on me. I tremble. Does everybody feel this excitement, this astonishment, as they grow? I close my eyes and stare into the universe inside myself. I feel as if I’m poised on the threshold of something marvelous. I drift to sleep at last.

I dream. Such a weird dream! I see the night sky filled with beasts and extraordinary beings, all the beasts and beings imagined throughout history. As I stare up to watch them, they start to fall towards me.

And I wake. And it’s dawn. And I’m still so close to the dream that I can nearly hear the snorting and the stamping and the rustling of wings, I can nearly feel the heat of the beasts by my bed. Then the after-dream disappears and there’s just me and the room and silence. But not true silence. There’s the drone of the city. There’s the beat of my heart. There’s Mum breathing gently in the room next door.

I go downstairs. Make chocolate milk and toast. Delicious. Go to the front door and stand there. The street’s empty, just cars lined up against the curbs. The sky’s empty, just a few clouds and passing birds. The dream repeats in my memory and the sky is filled again for a moment with falling beasts. I sip the lovely chocolate. I listen to the birds, to the dawn chorus, to what might be the voice of God.

I move to the tree, and I stand beneath it, against the trunk. The blackbirds squawk, but they know it’s only me and they soon calm down. I close my eyes and listen closer, deeper. And I hear the sound I want to hear, tiny and distant, as if it’s from another world. It’s coming from the nest. It’s the sound of tiny cheeping chicks. I smile. And then there’s another sound, just as tiny, just as far away, just as urgent.

The baby crying.

Suddenly, the miserable-looking doctor drives into the street in his miserable-looking car. He pulls up at the house just as he did when it was Mr. Myers’s house. He scans the street with his miserable-looking eyes, then the door’s opened to him and he goes inside. Then a nurse appears, walking quickly, much too quickly, from the end of the street, and goes into the house, too.

I listen. No sound. Just my heart, just the chicks, just the city.

Then Mum’s at my back.

“Mr. Myers’s doctor’s come,” I tell her.

“Mr. Myers’s doctor?”

“Yes. For the baby.”

“You can’t know it’s for the baby.”

“A nurse came, too.”

“A nurse? It’s just routine, I’m sure it is.”

“I heard the chicks,” I tell her. “Then I heard the baby crying.”

As we stand, another car pulls up. Another nurse goes in. I chew my lip. I tremble slightly. It’s so weird. I feel like I’ve just been born myself, as if I’m at the edge of a huge adventure. But the doctor’s face. And the nurse’s. And the lines of worry on Mum’s brow.

“It’s probably nothing,” she says. “Little baby, a few days old.”

The blackbirds squawk. I see Whisper prowling in the shadows below the garden hedge. I hiss. I wave him off. He slinks backwards, further into the dark. But his eyes continue to shine from there.

Mum draws me back inside. We eat toast and drink tea. I keep going to the front window. An hour passes. More. Then the first nurse comes out and walks away. I tell Mum. She comes and we watch again. Then the other nurse comes out. She looks at her watch, rubs her eyes, gets into her car, drives away.

But no doctor. Nobody else.

“If we were outside we’d be able to listen for the baby,” I say. “We’d be able to hear if she’s OK.”

“It will be OK. Sometimes getting into the world safely can be difficult, that’s all.”

I see Whisper slinking out from the shadows, turning his ear towards the nest. I tap on the window. I bare my teeth. He looks at me, decides to ignore me, and slinks forwards again.

Then at last the doctor comes out. He stands with the dad at the door and they shake hands. He casts his miserable gaze along the street and drives away.

“Thank Heaven,” says Mum. She sighs with relief. “It must have been nothing.”

“Nothing,” I echo.

I hiss at Whisper.

“No!” I tell him. “No!”

She looks at her watch.

“I’ll go along later, see if I can help.”

I sit by the window and take a pencil for a walk across a page.

Hours pass. Mum walks along the street toward the house, but I see her quickly turn back again.

“What’s wrong?” I say.

She shrugs.

“They sound rather … agitated. Not surprising, I suppose. I’ll try again later.”

The boy comes into the street. Clenched fists. Hard eyes. He has his football. He kicks it against the wall. He goes back in again.

“He’ll need a friend, you know,” she says.

“Will he?”

“Wouldn’t you?”

She leaves me.

I take my pencil for another walk across the page. I tell myself the page is the street, the pencil is me, walking closer to Mr. Myers’s door.

I feel so stupid, so nervous, so young. I’ve never once gone out and tried to make a friend before.

I take deep breaths.

I write.

Mina McKee walked along the street and knocked on the door and the boy came and Mina said, “Hello. My name is Mina. What’s yours?”

Do I dare? I imagine him in the house, gloomy and surly. I imagine him coming to the door and glaring at me and telling me to go away. What would a boy with a football under his arm want with somebody like me?

But writing it makes me bolder.

Mina got up and went out of her front door and walked along the street. Mina got up and went out of her front door and walked along the street.