The Dark Wild

by Piers Torday

  She made me feel less scared of things.

  Although if you think not being scared of things makes you braver, you’d be wrong. Everything we did, that everyone calls being brave, didn’t feel like being brave at the time. It felt like the only thing to do, and at the same time I can’t imagine myself doing anything like that again. Not now I’m lying here in my room full of toys and piles of comics on the floor.

  ‘Can’t or won’t?’ Mum used to say. I don’t know. Reaching for the green watch she gave me, just repaired by Dad, I press the side button and squint at the brightly glowing screen.

  It’s getting-up time.

  But after what happened last night, I don’t want to. I feel a knot in my stomach and turn over for the hundredth time to stare at the wall, wishing it all had been a bad dream. The helicopter, the men inside – the squirrel I couldn’t save from them. And the flowers they left behind.

  They being Facto.

  Factorium, the biggest company in the world. The company that made all the food until the red-eye virus killed nearly all the animals, and then tried to cull all the survivors to ‘stop the virus spreading to humans’. But they lied about that. They lied too about there being no cure – when Dad first developed one they locked him up, sent me away and destroyed all his work.

  All so that Mr Stone can get rich making us eat his disgusting fake Formul-A food, which only ever tastes of prawn-cocktail crisps.

  He is not a man who makes threats for fun.

  I’m not surprised he’s cross with us. We broke every law in the land bringing diseased animals into the city, which is meant to be an infection-free zone. We defeated his chief culler Captain Skuldiss in a battle on the street right outside my window.

  Skuldiss.

  When we were first captured by Captain Skuldiss, Facto’s head culler, he told us that Polly’s parents had been arrested for trying to get formula (what everyone normally calls it) in the northern city of Mons. Perhaps she is just trying to be brave for them, like she was for me.

  But I’m tired of us all having to be brave.

  We were just starting to be a family again back at home: everyone making breakfast together, Dad working downstairs in his pyjamas, Polly and me looking after the animals in our garden.

  This is my home and they are my family. And no one is ever going to take them away from me.

  Suddenly there is so much to be scared of that I don’t want to think any more. I pull the duvet over my head and sink down underneath it.

  Just as I finally start to doze off again, my door swings open and the duvet is dragged on to the floor. Polly is standing there, arms folded and head cocked, her fierce eyes studying me. She doesn’t look scared or tired, and she definitely isn’t crying.

  In fact, she looks at the room like it said something to annoy her. She flicks on the light, sweeps the comics from my bedside table aside and puts in their place a vase holding one of the flowers Stone gave her last night.

  There is a croak, and I look down to see the toad staring up at me from her feet.

  ‘Come on, Kidnapper,’ Polly says, rubbing her hands together. ‘The Professor wants to see us. In his lab.’

  As if nothing had happened.

  I blink in the light, confused –

  ‘It wasn’t an invitation,’ she says, disappearing back out of the door with a toss of her hair, the toad hopping quickly after. ‘It was an order.’

  Downstairs in Dad’s lab, under its glass roof, I can hear the chatter of the city from across the river, the water lapping at the edge of the lawn. The lab is full of the black flowers that Selwyn Stone gave to Polly. They are laid out in rows across every surface. On the white worktops Dad has dissected their leaves, their stems, their heads – and in true Dad-style, everything has gone everywhere. There are leaves stuck to the soles of our feet and, just from touching my face, my finger comes away with a floating petal on it, like a drop of black paint.

  I look at Polly, who picks her toad up and places him carefully on Dad’s chair. She goes to the plants piled high next to a large microscope, turning over the thin flowers in her hands. She’s gone very pale.

  I don’t get it. They’re only flowers.

  If Dad notices, he doesn’t show it. Instead he leans against the big window wall of the lab, folding his arms. ‘So, young lady … you’re the expert … what can you tell me about Mr Stone’s gift?’

  ‘I don’t know what he meant, Professor, I don’t have anything that belongs to him. You have to believe me.’

  Dad shakes his head. ‘I do. Just tell me what you know about the, you know … flowers.’

  Polly understands her plants. Her parents were natural historians; they taught her everything she knows. Still white as a bone, she pulls herself together, staring hard at the flowers.

  ‘Well … they’re irises. These are special black ones, I think, only they’re not really black if you look close up, just a very deep purple.’

  The colour of everything Facto, from vans to helicopters.

  Dad waves his hand like he’s swatting away a fly. As if it was a signal, the butterflies and bees covering the bushes outside begin to hover near the windows as we talk.

  ‘Yes, yes, I know they look like iris chrysographes, but of course they, you know … can’t be, can they? You’re not thinking hard enough.’

  She rubs her brow, confused, and looks at me, as if perhaps this is some game of Dad’s that I know and she doesn’t. And then at the flowers again, peering at the black velvet petals.

  ‘Because they’re—’ she starts, but Dad interrupts her.

  ‘No! Nothing to do with the flowers themselves. It’s the flowers that are the problem though.’

  A thought begins to rumble into my head. It’s like a riddle … Dad must see me concentrating. ‘You should know this too.’

  I look at the flowers around us, their scent nearly choking us it’s so strong. I look at the animals outside, the bees buzzing round the glass, the only ones left alive in the world that we know of –

  Polly beats me to it. ‘There can’t be any flowers, Professor. We didn’t see any on our way here, not through the whole Quarantine Zone. Because …’

  *There aren’t any insects left to pollinate them!*

  ‘There aren’t any insects left to pollinate them!’

  We both say the same thing at the same time in our different voices. The toad croaks with excitement, leaping about at Polly’s feet. At all the noise, the rest of the wild also start to move up from the lawn, noses, ears and whiskers crowding in at the open lab doors.

  ‘Exactly,’ Dad says, beaming. ‘The only, you know … things left that could spread enough pollen for this many flowers are –’ he waves his hand at the insects outside the lab window – ‘buzzing about in our garden. Whoever grew these knows something we don’t.’

  But Polly isn’t smiling. She’s frowning hard again, looking at the irises. Taking a couple, she places them under Dad’s microscope and peers through the lens at the petals. And the leaves, and the stalks. Again and again.

  I’m just about to give up and go and find someone (or something) more interesting to talk to outside when she lifts her head up. ‘There’s something else strange though, isn’t there, Professor?’

  This time Dad isn’t smiling. ‘Your friend is a very clever girl,’ he says to me. He looks at her. ‘Go on.’

  Polly holds out a sheaf of irises to me. ‘Look at them, Kidnapper.’

  I do. They just look like plants to me, a bit wilted now, but a load of plants. There’s nothing special about them, they’re just … all the same.

  Our eyes meet. ‘You see, don’t you?’ she says. ‘They’re all the same. And I mean exactly the same. They’re identical. Every single one.’

  ‘Yes! Not just the way they look,’ says Dad. ‘I ran some tests last night. They’re identical on the inside as well as out.’

  *Which means Facto just … made these flowers?* I say. *In the same way they make fake food f
or us to eat?*

  He holds his palms up, speaking to me alone in the animal voice that we share together. (Which is what freaks me out the most, as he still hasn’t explained why.) *Perhaps.*

  *And so by giving them to Polly, that means what?*

  *I don’t really, er, know, dear boy … This is all very new, you see.*

  I take a deep breath, trying to control myself at his vagueness, all the time. *She must have some idea what they mean. Ask her again.*

  He puts his hand on my shoulder. *Kester,* he says. *She’s your friend—* I brush him away.

  *No! I want to know.* I turn to face her, grabbing a handful of flowers off the table. *Ask Polly what they mean. She must have some idea.*

  Dad looks at my friend, pale and trembling, and scratches his head. There’s a pause – and then before he can say anything to her, the wild are pouring into the lab, crowding round us and butting in.

  *Yes, why did that metal bird come and take the squirrel?* says the wolf-cub, his paws scattering a pile of Dad’s paperwork across the floor. *Did I scare it off? I know I am the best at scaring off giant metal birds ever.*

  *Are we safe here? That’s what I’d like to know,* says the mouse, shaking her tail from side to side over a computer keyboard in a Dance of Typical Mouse Anxiety About The Future.

  *Yes!* says a skinny rabbit, up on his back legs. *Are we safe yet? We want to know! The metal bird took our squirrel. That ain’t right … I just want to be safe.*

  Then suddenly all the animals are shouting and yelling, the rabbit worrying if they’re safe again, if we shouldn’t find somewhere to hide from a machine that brings flowers, and the stag is telling them to be quiet, and the toad is croaking when –

  *SHUSH, all of you!* bellows Dad. The rabbit dives under a desk, his ears twitching with fear. *I know you all have many questions you want answers to.* He picks one of the identical irises off the desk and holds it up. *Questions … that I want answers to as well.*

  He takes us all in with a sweep of his bushy-eyed gaze, and turns to Polly, translating for the animals as he goes along.

  *The man who gave you these flowers is very powerful and very dangerous. He wants us to be scared; he wants us to be confused. So we need to be one step ahead of him.*

  Polly looks down at her feet. ‘How do we do that, Professor?’

  Even though it’s a sunny day outside, it feels like a cold wind has just blown through the room. Every animal that I rescued, that I brought hundreds of miles to be here, turns their head and wide eyes up to my friend, waiting to know that they will be safe. Dad stretches out a wilting flower towards her.

  ‘I’ve told you what I know about these. You’ve spotted that they’re all identical. These are your animals too. You brought them here as much as Kes did.’ He lowers his voice, softer, sounding a lot less like Professor Jaynes and a whole lot more like a dad. ‘Polly. You need to tell us the truth.’

  She steps back. ‘No …’

  He shakes his head gently. ‘You’ve got to tell us before they make their next move. It’s up to you to save these animals now. Tell us what you have.’

  For a moment Polly just stares at my dad. Then she drops the irises all over the floor, leaning on the worktop to steady herself.

  I put my hand on her arm. I don’t want her to worry. I’m sure she’ll work it out. She always does.

  Then Dad is bustling over too. ‘Oh dear … I didn’t mean to, you know … You don’t have to tell us straightaway. Take your time and all that … Look, why don’t you do something useful, take your mind off things, eh? It’s time to give your pals their medicine.’

  He picks up a tray full of glass vials and thrusts it into her hands. Vials of purple Laura II – the prototype cure for the virus that we helped my dad make, named after my mum. Each one contains an animal’s daily dose.

  Polly gazes down at the tray for a moment, and then I take her hand and lead her out through the glass lab doors and into the garden, the wild trotting behind us.

  They are used to the ritual now, and line up in a row, as Polly and I pass along with the tray.

  We start with the small animals like rabbits and polecats, who still wriggle and jump as we try to put a few drops of the cure in their mouths. By contrast, the stag takes his medicine obediently, his mouth open and ready. The toad leaps around from empty flowerpot to bush, Polly running after him till she is exhausted. But he takes it in the end.

  Then we test the animals’ blood, for things like their sugar levels. You get a microscopic pinprick of blood with a super-thin needle, drop it on a strip of really tiny dots called microdots, and a hand-held meter measures the strip and the blood-sugar level straightaway.

  The only unhappy animal is the wolf-cub. His side is still bandaged after being shot by Captain Skuldiss and he needs a different special drug to help the wound heal. So after the cure and blood test I also have a small bottle of painkilling pills for him.

  He doesn’t like swallowing them. *I only take these because you are the Wildness,* he growls.

  *I know,* I say, tipping three chalky tablets into his mouth. *You are the best at taking pills in the world!*

  To my surprise he doesn’t reply, but crunches the pills up and slinks off – like I said something to upset him. I was only talking to him in the way he likes to speak.

  The cure always makes the wild sleepy, and as they drift off afterwards to doze in the shade Polly flops down behind me on the concrete lab steps. She sighs, chin in her hands, the toad for once sitting still at her feet.

  I set down the tray full of discarded vials and sit next to her. Then I put my hand out, on top of hers – but she snatches it away.

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it right now.’

  My face suggests that we, and my animals, don’t have that option.

  She nods, picking at one of the long creepers trailing over the steps before beginning to twist it round and round in her hands for a while. When she speaks again, it’s in a voice so small I only just notice. The voice I haven’t heard her use since we lost her cat Sidney.

  ‘Kester … do you have any secrets?’

  I wish I did. Not that I can think of.

  ‘You and the animals – there’s nothing that you all know but I don’t know, is there?’

  Well … the animals have their secrets. They have their dreams, which are stories about their animal ancestors, passed down from beast to beast over the generations. I learnt from the pigeons that the dream they tell each other the most is the one about my gift. I know it begins at the First Fold, the first ever sheepfold that we passed on our journey down here.

  But I am not allowed to hear it, as they consider dreams sacred and for animals only.

  All I know is that it foretold everything that happened since I met the wild. The stag knew things were going to happen before they did. It made me feel safe even when we were in terrible danger, knowing that everything was happening for a reason. But he only tells me what the dream says once it has happened.

  So it’s not really my secret.

  ‘No.’

  Polly picks up the creeper again, threading it over and over till I think I’m going to scream. Then she just says it straight out.

  ‘Would you mind if I did?’

  We both stare at each other for moment, as a long cloud passes overhead, casting a shadow across the whole garden. Then Polly shoves the creeper in her pocket. ‘It doesn’t matter. Pretend I didn’t say that.’

  She’s not getting away that easy. I put a hand on her shoulder.

  ‘OK,’ she says with a sigh, pulling the creeper out of her pocket. It seems to be getting longer and longer, strands twisted together. ‘You have to understand that there were things I couldn’t tell you, until I could trust you –’

  Until she could trust me? The girl I saved from going over a waterfall?

  ‘I’m sorry, but Mum and Dad made me promise not to tell anyone. Anyone.’

  That’s not good enough. We’ve
been through too much together. I kick at the ground between her feet until she waves the creeper in the air, like a flag of surrender.

  Then she’s fierce, leaning forward and looking around her all the time.

  ‘All right! But you must promise not to tell your dad. I don’t want to get in trouble. It’s not my fault, you see.’

  That’s going to be really difficult.

  ‘Swear!’

  She sticks her hand out. I place mine over it. ‘Swear on the Professor’s life that you won’t tell him,’ she repeats. ‘Even if you can’t speak out loud, I’ll know if you’re lying.’

  I swear inside. Our eyes meet for a moment over our hands. I feel red-faced again and jerk my hand away.

  ‘OK, OK.’ Polly looks around again. Then she takes a deep breath and begins to tell her secret. ‘You thought you and your animals were the first to ever take on Facto. But you weren’t.’ She glances away at the animals lying all over the lawn. ‘There was already a rebellion against them.’ This isn’t news. We’d met Outsiders who hated Facto on our journey. ‘And my mum and dad are leading it. Or at least they were …’

  That makes me sit up.

  Polly holds her palm up as if to silence me.

  ‘Why do you think I had a gun when you found me? What do you think Skuldiss was really looking for at Wind’s Edge? Not just one sick cat, that’s for sure.’

  Suddenly my mind is jumping back into the past, trying to piece together parts of a puzzle I’ve only just discovered. Sidney was Polly’s cat, who had the virus. I thought Polly was coming with us to the city to find her a cure, but when we jumped in a river to escape Captain Skuldiss, she was swept over a waterfall. I rescued Polly, but I couldn’t save Sidney.

  But Polly didn’t go back home after that. She stayed with us.

  ‘They started when Facto made the countryside a quarantine zone. Mum and Dad didn’t see why they should leave their home when no people had actually caught the red-eye. They thought Facto wanted to put the countryside out of action so everyone would have to eat their disgusting formula. So they decided to stay and fight.’