The secular angel in contemporary children's literature: David ...

of by doctors, Michael tries to help Skellig in return. Although he now has to worry about two
people in his life, Michael seems to be treating the two as one and the same. He believes that
if he and Mina can somehow save Skellig, the baby is also going to be saved.
Skellig, like Michael, goes through a considerable transformation, and what is most
noteworthy about his change is that it is achieved solely with the help of Mina and Michael
and not with the help of magic. There is a certain inversion in Skellig’s case, because although
the two children’s transformation is partly due to Skellig’s supernatural aspect, Skellig’s is
entirely due to the humanity and kindness of the two children. Although the reader is not told
how Skellig came to be so broken and fragile in this dilapidated garage, or what his life was
like before, the author offers an explanation as to why he didn’t receive any help before.
Michael asks Skellig how he knew what 27 and 53 on the Chinese food menu was, and he
replies that it was Ernie’s favourite food. Michael, who wonders whether Skellig is real, asks
him: “ ‘Did he see you? Did he know you were there?’ ‘Never could tell. Used to look at me,
but look right through me like I wasn’t there. […] Maybe thought I was a figment’” (Almond,
2007, 51-52). This elucidation brings three matters to the surface. The certainty of Skellig’s
existence is a question that is never truly and definitively answered; he is either a figment of
the children’s imagination or a creature that appears only to them but in a certain dream state
where the boundaries of reality are blurred. Even though Skellig’s description of Ernie is a
piece of information of an event that preceded Michael —therefore an event the boy could
know nothing about— the fact that Ernie either did not actually see Skellig, believing him to
be an illusion or a fabrication, returns the reader to their original confusion and ultimate
question: is Skellig real? This becomes even more significant if the reader sees Skellig as a
reflection of Ernie.
One of the most moving scenes in the novel, and where the notion of dreaming
together and accepting the very uncertainty of it is illuminated, is when the children decide to
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