My Name Is Mina (8 page)

Night again. Spring is strange. The year’s supposed to be moving towards summer, but sometimes it seems to be turning right back to winter again. The sky was the color of steel all day. There was frost in the morning and it stayed all day under the trees and on the shady side of the garden wall.

I went out and climbed into the tree but the bark was icy and the breeze was bitter and even with two fleeces on I was freezing cold. The blackbirds didn’t seem to care. They went on flying in and out of the tree, singing and squawking. But what if this year the spring didn’t come at all? What if something dreadful had happened to the seasons for some awful reason?

I jumped down to the ground. Not a soul to be seen. I knelt on the grass and banged the ground with my fist and said,

“Come on, Persephone! Don’t give up, Persephone!”

Persephone, who I thought I might meet during my journey to the Underworld, spends the winter in Hades with Pluto, the King of the Underworld. When it’s time for spring she makes her
way back up to the earth again. Spring doesn’t start until she’s back. In ancient Greece, they had music and dancing and singing to call her back, to make sure that spring arrived again.

“Come on!” I said, more loudly. I punched the ground again. I imagined her coming up through the earth’s endless complicated tunnels. “Keep going! Don’t get lost! Don’t give up!”

I looked up and there was a woman, staring down at me. I think I recognized her from somewhere nearby. She had a checked green coat on, a woolly scarf, a yellow hat, white hair, and very kind eyes. She had a shopping bag on wheels with her.

“Are you all right, my dear?” she said.

“Yes, thank you.”

“You’ll catch your death down there,” she said.

“I’ll be all right. I’m just calling for Persephone.”

She made a little laughing sound.

“The goddess of the spring!” she said.

“You know about her!”

“Of course I do, dear. Doesn’t everybody?” She cupped a shaky hand around her mouth and whispered, “Come on, Persephone! Come back up to the world again! We’re freezing cold up here!” She giggled. She looked around. “Folk’ll think we’re daft.” She looked at me. “Do you think we’re daft?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Good. What’s a world without daftness in it?”

“What’s your name?” she said.

“My name’s Mina.”

“Hello, Mina. My name’s Grace.”

“Hello, Grace.”

She smiled and reached across the garden wall and took my hands in hers. Her hands were bony, dry and cold.

She winked at me.

“I’ve seen you in your tree, Mina. You look quite at home up there.”

“I am.”

“I used to love climbing, when I was a girl. I used to dream of climbing trees all day, stepping and swinging from one to the next, never once coming down to ground.”

“Did you ever do it?”

“Not enough trees, Mina. But I made a lovely little circuit in my garden. From the corner of the outhouse, onto the apple tree, onto the top of a wobbly stepladder, then back to the outhouse again.” She lifted her foot and giggled and groaned. “And these days I can hardly get up the blooming stairs.”

An icy gust of wind blew along the street. She winced.

“Sometimes you look sad up there in your tree,” she said.

“Do I?”

“Yes. But sad’s all right. Sad’s just part of everything.”

She winked.

“Persephone!” she hissed. “Come on!” She said it again as if she was singing a little song, and I joined in with her.

“Come on, Persephone!

Come on, Persephone!”

She moved her hips like she was dancing and I joined in with her. She groaned softly and gritted her teeth and closed her eyes. Then she grinned.

“Bad bones,” she said. “But never mind. They’ll be fixed up soon and then …”

Suddenly she put her hand to her mouth.

“Goodness gracious!” she said.

“What is it?”

“I just remembered, all of a sudden. I dreamed about you last night.”

“About me?”

She laughed.

“Yes. You were in your tree and you said, Come on up here, Grace! So I climbed up beside you. You had tiny little feathers on you, just like a baby bird. Like a fledgling! Goodness gracious, we both did!”

She laughed again.

“That was all. I think.”

I smiled back at her. It was lovely to think of being in Grace’s dream.

“Isn’t it funny,” she said. “I’d forgotten all about it, and suddenly it all flooded back. Ah, well. That’s how dreams go.”

She squeezed my hands again. She took a deep breath and winced.

“She will come back again, Mina,” she said. “She always does.”

She tugged her scarf tighter on her throat.

“Got to keep moving,” she said. “Bye-bye, Mina.” She winked. “Maybe I’ll dream about you again, eh?”

“That would be nice. Bye-bye, Grace.”

She hesitated before she turned away

“Remember – she wants to be with us as much as we want to be with her. Keep calling her.”

“I will.”

She left the street. I thought about being in her dream. It was very strange. Maybe we’re all in somebody’s dream. Maybe everything’s a
dream, and nothing else.

I thought about that for a while, then I looked down at the ground again. I stamped on the ground.

“Persephone!” I hissed. “Come on back, Persephone!”

Then a loud banging noise started. I looked up and there was a man standing on the wall at Mr. Myers’s house. He had a massive hammer in his hand and he was thumping a post down into the garden.

Thump! he went. Wallop! Thump! Smash!

Excellent, I thought. Persephone’s bound to hear that. Thump it harder, mister.

He must have heard me. He thumped again.

Then he gripped the post and shook it. Steady as a rock …

He nailed a sign to it:

He jumped down and stamped the ground hard around the foot of the post. Then he briskly rubbed his hands together and grinned and walked away.

I punched the earth one more time, I stamped one more time.

“Come on, Persephone!” I said.

I imagined her, working her way past fossils and the remains of ancient cities. I looked up at the steel-gray sky. Not a chink of sunlight. I looked down again.

“Pay attention, please!” I said to her. “The world is in need of you!”

Then I came inside.

Mum was busy, writing an article for a magazine. That’s what she does, articles for newspapers and magazines. She’s even written about me sometimes, and about homeschooling. She says there are many good things about schools (which I do not agree with, of course!) but she also says that some schools, like some people, simply don’t understand some simple facts about children.