Skellig by David Almond Page A

move.
    “Under the hedge,” she said. “And under the rose tree by the wall.”
    I started to ask what I was looking for, but then I saw the first of them, a little brown feathered ball with its beak gaping in the darkness beneath the hedge.
    “This is how they start their life outside the nest,” she said. “They can’t fly. Their parents still have to feed them. But they’re nearly all alone. All they can do is walk and hide in the shadows and wait for their food.”
    The parents came closer, the brown mother to the lowest branch of the tree, the jet-black father to the top of the hedge. Worms dangled from their beaks. They called softly to each other and the fledglings with little clicks and coughs.
    “First day out,” whispered Mina. “Think Whisper’s had at least one of them already.”
    The parents waited, wary of us; then at last they dropped into the garden. A fledgling tottered out from beneath the rosebush, let its mother drop the worms into its beak, tottered back again. The father fed the one beneath the hedge. The parents flew away again.
    “They’ll be doing this all day,” said Mina. “Flyingand feeding all the way till dusk. And the same thing tomorrow and tomorrow till the chicks can fly.”
    We stayed watching.
    “Cats’ll get them,” she said. “Or crows, or stupid dogs.”
    Dad came out of our house. He came into Mina’s garden. Mina pressed a finger to her lips and widened her eyes in warning. He tiptoed to us.
    “The fledglings are out of the nest,” she whispered.
    She showed him where to look.
    “Yes,” he whispered. “Yes. Yes.”
    He crouched beside us, dead still.
    “Aren’t they lovely?” he said.
    He cupped my cheek in his hand and we looked deep into each other’s eyes. Then he had to go.
    “You just keep believing,” he said. “And everything will be fine.”
    He went to the car and drove from the street as quietly as he could. Mina and I watched and waited as the brown mother and the jet-black father flew in and out of the garden, feeding their young.

MIDMORNING. MINA’S MOTHER BROUGHT cups of tea for us. She sat beside us on the step. She talked about the fledglings, the flowers that were bursting into bloom, the air that every day became warmer, the sun that every day was a little higher and a little warmer. She talked about the way spring made the world burst into life after months of apparent death. She told us about the goddess called Persephone, who was forced to spend half a year in the darkness deep underground. Winter happened when she was trapped inside the earth. The days shrank, they became cold and short and dark. Living things hid themselves away. Spring came when she was released and made her slow way up to the world again. The world became brighter and bolder in order to welcome her back. It began to be filled with warmth and light. The animals dared to wake, they dared to have their young. Plants dared to send out buds and shoots. Life dared to come back.
    “An old myth,” I said.
    “Yes,” she said. “But maybe it’s a myth that’s nearly true. Look around you, Michael. Fledglings and blooms and bright sunshine. Maybe what we see around us is the whole world welcoming Persephone home.”
    She rested her hand on my arm.
    “They can do marvelous things, Michael. Maybe you’ll soon be welcoming your own Persephone home.”
    We thought of Persephone for a while in silence. I imagined her struggling her way toward us. She squeezed through black tunnels. She took wrong turns, banged her head against the rocks. Sometimes she gave up in despair and she just lay weeping in the pitch darkness. But she struggled on. She waded through icy underground streams. She fought through bedrock and clay and iron ore and coal, through fossils of ancient creatures, the skeletons of dinosaurs, the buried remains of ancient cities. She burrowed past the tangled roots of great trees. She was torn and bleeding but she kept telling herself to move onward and