Clay by David Almond Page A

day they’ll show themselves to you as well, Davie. Will you do it?”
    I laughed. I laughed at Stephen, at me, at dreams of monsters and angels and illusions of moving clay. Stupid, all of it. Crazy.
    “Will you, Davie?” he said.
    “Why not? Yes.”
    “Good,” he said. “They’ll be very pleased with you.”
    Then Mam’s voice called from our garden.
    “Davie! Davie!”
    “You can go now,” Stephen whispered, and he disappeared into the dark.

twelve
    Inside the house, Mam touched the wound on my cheek.
    “Fighting again!” she said.
    I tried to shake my head.
    She stared into my eyes.
    “It’ll end in something
awful,
” she said.
    She shook me again. She chewed her lips, she peered into my eyes.
    “You’re in a dream. You’re scared stiff.”
    “No, I’m not.”
    “Yes, you
are
. Who hit you? And how hard?”
    She was nearly in tears.
    “Nobody,” I said. “It’s nowt, Mam.”
    I tried to pull away but she wouldn’t let me go.
    “Nowt?”
    “Nowt.”
    She gave me some aspirin and some tea. She opened a bottle of Lourdes water and dabbed my head with it.
    “I’m taking you to the doctor,” she said.
    “No.”
    “Do you feel dizzy? Do you feel sick?”
    “No!”
    She watched me.
    “It’s got to stop,” she said.
    “It will.”
    “When?”
    “Now.”
    “You promise? You
promise
?”
    “Yes!”
    I drank my tea. Soon Dad came home. She told him about it.
    “Who was it?” he said.
    He knew I wouldn’t tell him. He put his arm around me. He turned me away from Mam.
    “Looks like things are going a bit too far,” he said. “Things can start off as a game, but pretty soon…”
    “I know that, Dad.”
    “Promise me you’ll try to put an end to it.”
    I said nothing.
    “Promise me, Davie.”
    “I promise.”
    All evening they watched me. Mam kept asking.
    “Do you feel dizzy? Do you feel sick?”
    “No.” I kept answering.
“No.”
    “I’ll put an end to it,” I lied.
    “I promise,” I lied.

thirteen
    I stole the body and blood of Christ at Mass that Sunday. I knelt below the priest on the altar. He had the round communion bread in his hands. He murmured the magic words,
    “This is my body.”
    He held the chalice of wine and murmured,
    “This is my blood.”
    The bread still looked like bread. The wine still looked like wine. But a miracle had happened. They’d turned into the body and blood of Christ. Christ himself was with us on the altar.
    The priest ate the body and drank the blood.
    Geordie and I opened our mouths and stuck out our tongues to receive our own communion bread.
    Then the congregation left their seats and headed for the altar rail. Maria was there, and Frances, and my mam and dad, and Crazy Mary, and loads of our family, friends, neighbors. They knelt at the altar rail. I got my little silver tray and went down with Father O’Mahoney to them. They closed their eyes, stuck their tongues out. The priest pressed a communion wafer onto every tongue. “The body of Christ,” he murmured. “Amen,” they said.
    I held the tray below each face, to catch the falling crumbs. They fell like tiny grains of dust. They lay there on the gleaming silver tray. A tiny fragment fell as Father O’Mahoney gave the bread to Crazy Mary. Another fell below the lips of Noreen Craggs. We moved from upturned face to upturned face. The voices murmured, the faces shone, the dust and fragments fell. Then it was done, and the last of the communicants went back to the seats.
    I followed the priest up the altar steps. I tilted the tray, I quickly took a pinch of the fragments and dust. I pressed it into the strip of Sellotape in my cassock pocket. I quickly took another pinch. At the altar, I handed the tray to the priest. He ran his own finger round the tray, and licked away the fragments of Christ’s body. He did it again till none was left. Then he slurped the last of the wine. He wiped the inside of the chalice with a pure white linen cloth and put it on the