Authors: David Almond
My Name Is Mina (5 page)
“My name is Mina. I am very brave
.My name is …”
Something brushed against her leg. She leapt away and screamed in horror and looked down and it was a black cat, weaving its way around her legs.
“A cat!” she gasped. “A cat!”
She couldn’t stop shuddering as she leaned down to it. She stroked its dense dark fur and felt the heat of its body and she began
to be soothed and calmed.
“My name is Mina,” she whispered, and the cat mewed and purred in reply, and Mina knew she’d found a friend down here in the dark.
She moved on with the cat at her side. In places the walls of the tunnel had broken. Stones and bricks lay in untidy heaps. She imagined the world above, and the thickening layer of earth, stones, soil, bones, roots between herself and it. She imagined the whole tunnel collapsing onto her, as the tunnels could collapse onto pitmen long ago.
And then there was a ditch, crossing the route of the tunnels. By the frail light of the dangling bulb, she saw the stream rushing through the ditch. Mina caught her breath. She stroked the cat. This must be the river that Orpheus had to cross, the river between the world of the living and the dead. Suddenly, the cat drew back. There was a growling, and on the other side of the stream two eyes had begun to shine. This, thought Mina, is the monster, the guardian of the Underworld, that Orpheus had to tame.
It came closer, and showed itself to be a shaggy, thickset dog that snarled at them across the ditch.
Mina crouched down. She held out a friendly hand towards the dog, and in a trembling voice she started to sing, just like Orpheus did so long ago.
“Lie doon, my dear, and in your ear
,To help you close your eye
,I’ll sing a song, a slumber song
,A miner’s lullaby
.
“Coorie doon, Coorie doon, Coorie doon, my darling
,Coorie doon the day.”
The dog growled more softly. The cat came back to Mina’s side. Mina went on singing and the dog lay down, as if it was asleep. Mina looked along the tunnel, which seemed to slope away endlessly. She was about to cross when there came a bellowing.
“Jasper!”
The dog stood up. Its ears twitched. It growled.
“Jasper! Where the hell you got to?”
There was a shadow far down in the tunnel, a deep dark shadow in the shape of a man.
“Jasper!”
The dog turned, and headed down towards the shadow.
“Who’s that?” the shadow called. A deep cruel-sounding voice that boomed and echoed off the tunnel walls. “Is somebody there? Show yourself if you’re there!”
Mina crouched low. She slithered back up the tunnel, keeping low, trying to keep her feet silent. Beyond a pile of fallen stones she stood up and ran.
“Who the hell is it?” yelled the shadow’s voice. “What are you? What do you want down here?”
Mina kept on running, stumbling, reaching out to steady herself on the walls. The dog barked, the shadow called. In Mina’s mind these
were the voices of the dead and of a guardian monster. She could hear heavy thudding footsteps coming after her. She came to the foot of the ancient crumbling steps. She climbed them swiftly, slid through the steel gate into the sunlight again. She pushed it shut. The black cat disappeared through the rhododendrons. She went through them herself. The men still lay on the grass verge, still ate sandwiches and read newspapers, as if she’d been gone from the world just a few short moments. Again, they hardly looked at her as she passed close by. Her heart thundered as she tried to stay calm, to stay ordinary, to stop herself from bolting in fright.
And then there came first the screeching voice of Mrs. Malone, followed by Mrs. Malone herself striding through the park gate.
“Mina McKee! Mina McKee! Get yourself here this instant!”
Mr. Henderson was behind her. He was much more calm.
“Come back, Mina,” he said. “Come back and we can all talk about it.”
Mina’s mum was called in, of course. They all stood in Mrs. Malone’s office. It was the kids in the class, said Mina. It was the way they looked at her and the way they spoke to her. What was all the dirt on her? Why were her shoes so scuffed? She didn’t know, she said. She told them that she had just been walking in the park, that she had climbed a tree. How could she tell them that she had gone like Orpheus in search of the Underworld? How could she tell them that she had charmed the guardian of the Underworld with her singing just like he did? How could she tell them that she had failed to bring back her loved one just like he did? How could she tell them that the gates to the Underworld could be found in Heston Park?
In the end she just said,
“All I did was to run away for a few minutes! All I wanted was to be free!”
Her mum took her home that afternoon.
“Maybe there’s another way,” Mum murmured as they sat together on the sofa. Mum stroked her head. They listened to the
birds singing outside.
Mina thought of telling her mum exactly what she’d done. She knew her mum would understand, or would be able to imagine. But she knew that what she’d done was very scary. And she didn’t want to frighten her mum, to make her think that Mina would do something so dangerous.
Afterwards, Mina tried to think of ways to tell the tale. Then she thought that maybe it’d be best to write it down, which is what she did.
EXTRAORDINARY ACTIVITY
(THIRD-PERSON VERSION)
Write a story about yourself as if you’re writing about somebody else.
(FIRST-PERSON VERSION)
Write a story about somebody else as if you’re writing about yourself.
Did I really believe that the tunnel would lead to the Underworld? Did I really think that I could bring Dad home again? I’m the one who did it and even I don’t know. I was a little girl. Awful things had happened and I was confused. Sometimes I wish I could go back there as if I was a big sister, and hug myself and say, “Don’t worry, Mina. I promise that things will get better and you will feel stronger.”
The tunnel still hasn’t been opened to the public. Mum said that they discovered it would cost a fortune to make it safe. In places the tunnel had collapsed into unknown caverns. There were side tunnels that ended in rock falls or seemed to go nowhere. I never tried to go back again, of course. I never found out who the shadow in the shape of a man was, or what the dog was. I tried to tell myself that they were just part of the team trying to fix up the tunnel. But why would there be a dog? I tried to think that maybe it was just an ordinary man walking an ordinary dog and they’d gone into the tunnel just to see what it was like. But that
seemed pretty unlikely. They haunted my dreams for weeks afterward. I still look out for them whenever we go to the park. Sometimes I think that Heston, the place where we live, is like ancient Greece, and that the Underworld is in the earth beneath us. I think of the King of the Underworld, Pluto, sitting on his throne deep down below. I think of his queen, the kind Persephone. Sometimes I think that I really did see something down there, something deep and ancient, and I wonder what would have happened if I’d kept on going, if I’d crossed the stream, if I’d walked toward the shadow in the shape of a man, if I’d said,
“My name is Mina McKee and I’m searching for my dad.”
The best thing to come out of it all is the cat. I see him everywhere. His fur is even blacker than my hair. I call him Whisper. He is lovely. He is Whisper.
*
This makes me think about how some people say that “modern” art can’t be much good because it doesn’t much look like anything in the world. But maybe it’s not trying to look like the world. Maybe it’s trying to be like the world. Or maybe trying to do a kind of impossible thing – to look like something that’s in the world but can’t really be seen at all
.
Ever since I made that model of the archaeopteryx, I’ve been holding it and swinging it through the air like it’s flying. And I think about how it was the dinosaur that survived the disaster that wiped out all the other dinosaurs. And it didn’t just survive. It evolved and became more elegant and skillful and powerful. It started the line of evolution that led to birds! And I look how the birds fly and soar over everything. I think of how they manage to inhabit the whole world, from the frozen poles to the steamy equator. And I’ve been thinking: if the human race manages to destroy itself, as it often seems to want to do, or if some great disaster comes, as it did for the dinosaurs, then the birds will still manage to survive. When our gardens and fields and farms and woods have turned wild, when the park at the end of Falconer Road has turned into a wilderness, when our cities are in ruins, the birds will go on flying and singing and making their nests and laying their eggs and raising their young. It could be that the birds will exist forever and forever until the earth itself comes to an end, no matter what might happen to the other
creatures. They’ll sing until the end of time. So here’s my thought: If there is a God, could it be that he’s chosen the birds to speak for him? Could it be true?
I’m in the tree again. The buds of the leaves open more each day. The light that falls on me is dappled, and has a greenish tinge to it. The sky beyond is very blue. The blackbirds are very quiet. I wonder if the eggs are laid. I start to climb but the male bird suddenly flaps in the top branches and squawks and squawks.
“OK,” I whisper. “I’ll stay still.”
I used to write on this tree, like it was some kind of secret notebook. I used to carve the letters into the bark with a little penknife and make sure that they couldn’t be seen from below. Then I decided it was wrong to deface a wonderful thing like a tree, so I stopped. But I can still see them and touch them. My name, “Mina” (many times), and “Mum” and “Dad” (many times). “I hate EVERYTHING!” is carved onto one branch. “I LOVE everything!” is on another. “The World Is a Place of Wonder” is in elegant letters high up on the trunk. “Mina is lonely” is on a narrow branch, in very very tiny writing. The words are healing over now as time passes and the spring comes back. In a few years’ time they won’t be able to be seen at all.
I used to write on my arms as well, but I stopped that, too, except when I want to make a quick note to myself about something I’ve seen or heard.