by Piers Torday
I still don’t see what any of this has got to do with flowers.
‘They formed a whole network with the others who stayed. Why do you think I went with Ma so quickly by the river? She didn’t force me. She was one of them.’
Ma was a farmer we met who’d lost everything to Facto and the virus. We thought she was on our side at first, but she only wanted to feed my wild to her starving workers.
‘Facto called us all Outsiders, like we were the losers. The ones left with no formula to eat and no nice cities of glass towers to live in. But it’s not the name we called ourselves.’
Polly twists the creeper over and over in her hands, threading it tighter and tighter.
‘We had a secret name – so secret we weren’t even allowed to say it to each other, in case anyone was spying on us.’
She stretches the creeper taut between her hands and won’t look at me.
‘The name was secret because Facto didn’t know what we had.’ Polly has wound the creeper into what looks like a noose. ‘Mum called it our secret weapon. It wasn’t a gun or a bomb. Mum said it was more powerful against people like Selwyn Stone than things like that.’
She pulls the noose tight, making a fat knot in the creeper.
‘Hope. We had something which gave us hope, Mum said. It could change everything. We could defeat Facto and start again. Just the thought of it made me feel safe and happy. Until I got those flowers last night.’
The cogs click into place in my mind –
‘I swear to you on my life. They asked me to look after it, and so far I have. It’s the one small thing they gave me that I did manage to bring safely from home.’ Sidney flickers briefly into my mind. ‘But you have to believe me – I still don’t even know what it is. They said I would be in danger if I knew anything more than … the name.’
Brought it with her? Confused, I half expect Polly to take a concealed test tube out of her pocket or show me a hidden locket hanging round her neck. But instead she just tightens another creeper knot and gazes down the garden at the dull white glow of the afternoon sky on the river.
‘But as soon as I saw those flowers, I realized he must know our secret. Because …’ She cups her hand over my ear, and whispers in it. ‘Because the name was Iris.’
We sit still on the steps. I feel like a ticking time bomb, without knowing what’s making me tick. The clouds press down on everything, making it feel hot and sticky.
I look at Polly, with her bare knees – still covered in bruises and scratches from our journey – drawn up under her chin. I have to know more.
But to my surprise she leaps up, winding the creeper round and round her hand. ‘I’m sorry, Kidnapper, I shouldn’t have told you. I don’t want to put you all in any more danger than I have already. It’s just that … I promised Mum and Dad, you see.’
Her eyes flick to the wild still dozing at the bottom of the garden, and back to me. ‘I promised them, swore on their life, that whatever happened … I wouldn’t let Facto get the Iris.’
Then Polly turns and runs back into the house. I race after her, just in time to hear her pounding up the stairs and the bedroom door slamming shut.
My thoughts spinning, and now starving too, I head into the house as well for some breakfast. The bright red kitchen, which was like a bomb site when we first came back, has been swept, cleaned, tidied and polished, just like when Mum was around.
I grab a bowl of formula from the side.
(Although Polly being Polly, it’s not just formula. Somehow, in the mess of rotten flowers and weeds our garden has become while Dad was locked up, she found stuff to eat. Wizened berries that still just have flavour when blitzed in our blender, a handful of shrivelled herb leaves and Facto flower petals that all make our meal taste not quite as horrible as normal.)
Slumped at the kitchen table, I click my fingers at our ultrascreen, taking up the whole of the opposite wall, which washes away my muddled thoughts with a wave of amplified noise.
A tanned man in a suit stares out at me from a bright TV studio, his name hovering just below the knot of his shiny tie. Coby Cott. Pictures and words whirl behind his head like a tornado.
MORE WEIRD WEATHER – AMSGUARD COMPLETED – BABY LEARNS TO ROLLER-SKATE
Clicking on the second headline, a new picture swerves into view.
Coby Cott is now outside, with a huge bridge of concrete and metal behind him, rising up from the river.
‘The world’s greatest civil-engineering project ever undertaken is nearing completion, Factorium officials revealed today,’ he is saying. ‘The Amsguard, nine concrete pillars and nine steel gates rising forty metres high at the mouth of the River Ams, will protect the Island from another storm surge, if the world’s ocean should rise again –’
Polly couldn’t believe her eyes when she first saw the ultrascreen. ‘We never …’ She even had to touch it to make sure it was real. ‘In the countryside … after the quarantine came … we were cut off. Everything is so much further ahead in the city.’
Perhaps – at least, when it comes to screens and Amsguards.
I swipe Coby Cott away. I’ve got enough to worry about already without thinking about Amsguards or roller-skating babies.
I feel hot and bothered and mad at so many different people I don’t know where to start. I’m mad at Polly for not telling me the truth before, and she’s still only told me half of what she knows about this stupid Iris. I’m mad at her mum and dad for making her lie with their promise. I’m so mad at Selwyn Stone. For starting all of this in the first place. For taking the red squirrel and so many other animals.
Most of all, and this is the worst part –
I feel mad at myself, and I don’t know why.
But there’s no one here I can say any of that to. So instead I just turn to go and rinse my bowl out at the sink beneath the window.
Please, I say to myself, I’ve done so much. Why can’t everything stay normal for a bit?
Which is when I hear a whisper.
Whispering from the drain.
At first I think it’s just the noise of the water, gurgling away down the plughole. But water noise doesn’t rise or fall, or get right inside your head – like the animals do. There’s more than one voice and I can’t make the words out at first, only that they’re harsh and jagged and spiky, not anything like any animal talking or singing that I’ve ever heard.
It can’t be my wild. They’re still out back munching on our garden.
*Hello?* I say, thinking perhaps the General might be playing a trick on me, hidden somewhere. But he isn’t.
I look up out of the window, to see if the noise is coming from there. And on the other side of our quiet and otherwise empty street, I see the strangest thing.
An animal where there shouldn’t be one in an animal-free city. The only animals meant to be alive are the ones in the garden behind me, and the ones at the Ring of Trees waiting for our pigeons with the cure. But there is one standing right across the road.
I only have half a memory of these creatures from before the virus came. A neighbour had one as a pet who used to jump on me and lick my face. But I don’t know the names for all the different kinds.
It’s a dog.
This one is massive, white and strong-looking, with a tiny tail, a big-snouted face and pointed ears. I can’t see if his eyes are red or pink from here. As I’m trying to get a closer look through the window, he turns, slowly, and stares at me.
The whispering grows louder and louder in my head. Loud enough so I hear what the voices are saying. Coming from somewhere far away, no more than a distant murmur, but each word stabs into my head, like a needle.
*The earth!* say the whispers. *The earth will rise!* Louder and louder the whispers go, chanting in my head.
Then the dog slowly begins to open his mouth. And the shock makes me drop the bowl in the sink with a clatter, because it’s so horrible –
Inside his mouth, where there should be teeth, there
are none, just ugly pink ridges. Where there should be a tongue, only a raw little pink stump.
A dog without a bite.
For a moment I catch sight of my face, reflected in the window. My ginger curls in need of a good cut, my green eyes staring like they are trying to tell me something I don’t want to know.
When I look outside again, the dog has gone, and the whispering has stopped. There is no sign that I ever saw or heard anything in the first place.
*
*But what do you think it all might mean?*
For the rest of the day I lay on my bed, trying to get the whispering and Polly’s story out of my mind. But I could hear her getting ready for bed – running taps, slamming doors, closing drawers – and had to go get some air.
Air and advice from those friends I still trust.
It’s night again and I’m back outside, only now hidden from the house by a cluster of tall glossy bushes. There’s a corridor between them and the high walls. The coolest, shadiest part of the garden – in fact, so cool and shady tonight that I’ve got my favourite striped scarf wrapped back around my neck.
I don’t understand why it was so hot this afternoon and so cold tonight. The news on the ultrascreen was right. The weather has gone weird. The clouds of earlier have completely disappeared, leaving the big silver moon to shine down on us.
It doesn’t matter. I always feel safe here. This is where I used to hide from Mum and Dad when we played in the garden. But I won’t ever be playing here again. Because lined up along the bottom of the wall are rows of shallow grassy mounds.
The members of the wild who fell at the Culdee Sack. A brave hare, one of the otters, the hedgehog, three rabbits and a woodpecker. Who would shoot a woodpecker?
The way animals see it, they have gone for the Long Sleep. And this strip of damp lawn is now officially a Garden of the Dead. The other members of the wild are too scared to enter it alone. Which makes it a perfect place for me to meet the stag, mouse, General and wolf-cub, when we want to talk in private.
We overcame our fears of such places a long time ago.
The bushes block out so much of the light from the city across the water that I can only occasionally make out the gleam of the stag’s horns. He paws at the ground with his hoof as he listens to me.
*Stag,* I say, *the black flowers that man brought yesterday. Do they mean anything to animals that I don’t know about?*
*Yes!* bristles the General, to everyone’s surprise. *Yes, they do.*
*A meaning unknown to me, in that case,* says the stag. *Would you care to tell us more, Cockroach?*
*Of course. They mean that we should declare war on the entire human race immediately! I shall lead my valiant troops aboard that flying machine and bring it down, while you shall both gallop ahead with the Wildness and destroy this Iris –*
The wolf-cub’s eyes catch a glimpse of light through the leaves. *I like this idea! I shall find all the irises in the world and rip them to shreds. I am the best at eating flowers ever!*
*This is not helpful!* snaps the stag. *The black flowers are not our concern. Even if you do want to eat them, Wolf-Cub.*
*But I am not a cub any more,* mutters the wolf-cub, scratching at his bandage. *I am a brave hero who nearly died. And I am nearly full grown too.*
*Very well. I shall lead the charge alone!* declares the General, jumping with excitement at our feet.
The stag is right. This is not helpful. I look at him again.
*Have you told me absolutely everything?* he says, his gaze boring right through me.
It’s impossible not to tell the truth when he looks at me like that. So, feeling embarrassed, I tell them about the voice I heard in the Forest of the Dead, towards the end of our long journey here. The voice which told me I did not speak for all animals, that there was another wild which would come in plain sight, when I was least expecting it.
There is a stony silence from all the animals.
*Why did you not tell us of this before, Wildness?* asks the stag eventually.
*But nothing happened … * I start, trailing off as they continue all just to stare at me.
Then there is a voice from the stag’s back. A voice that has not yet spoken. The mouse, her black eyes shining brightly, her tail flicking. She does not sound her normal cheery self.
*But something did happen, didn’t it, my dear?*
She rubs her whiskers with her paws. And I tell them all about the dog with no bite, the whispers I heard from the drain.
*The earth will rise?* she repeats.
I nod. She leaps off the deer’s back on to the dry grass beneath our feet. We all take a step back, clearing a circle for her.
*That sounds like an old call I once heard,* she says. *It is a dark old call all right.*
*Nonsense!* says the General. *There are no such things as dark calls. They are just tales for scaring young ones.*
The mouse grinds her teeth at him. *There are dark calls, if you don’t mind, and we have heard them in our tunnels, Cockroach, even if you have chosen to ignore them. You ignore a dark call at your peril.*
But I’m not listening to her any more. None of us is. We’re listening to the sound of squealing tyres, smashes against wood, shouts and screams –
Someone, a lot of someones, are breaking into our house.
And we’re running, all of us –
There’s a girl standing in our hall.
And it’s not Polly.
The door hangs busted open behind her, the chain dangling loose, the glass panel shattered all over the floor. There are shouts from the street, the sounds of bikes wheeling and revving. Their headlights cross and fill the doorway with a glow that fringes the stranger’s hair like a halo.
Hair piled in curls above a lollipop sticking out of her mouth. A formypop, the synthetic pink sweets made by Facto for children. You only ever got one at Spectrum Hall if you sneaked on another kid. They stink of nail varnish – and I can smell this one from here.
Formypop Girl does not look happy. In her hands she is holding a long blue prod. A prod with a rubber handle and two sharp prongs on the end, like a giant fork.
Dad leans over the banisters in his striped pyjamas, his hair in its normal tangle. ‘What is the meaning of this, oh – what do you call it – intrusion?’
The girl glances up at him and just shrugs. Then she looks at the stag, who has galloped straight in up the steps from the garden. His nostrils are flaring, his horns lowered, but she just takes out her formypop and jabs it in his direction.
‘What is you?’ she asks.
The stag looks at me, confused, and I shrug back at her.
‘What you doing with that dirty animal? You trying to get us all infected?’ Her head jerks over her shoulder. ‘Eric, get rid.’
A large boy in a grey hoody squeezes through the doorway behind her. As he clomps across the floor in heavy boots he tries to take a series of swipes at the stag, who thrusts back with his horns, sending the boy stumbling back and crashing on to the floor at the girl’s feet.
The girl sighs and looks down at him. But she doesn’t move. ‘Where the Iris?’
I look blank. She does seem very young to be working for Facto though, I have to admit.
‘Don’t play game with me boy, I not in the mood. Where she?’
‘N-no –’ I stammer my one word out.
‘No not good enough.’ She squeezes the blue rod, and it shudders into life. A pale electric light sparks between the two prongs. She points the rod at the stag and repeats her question as he rears back on his hind legs at the fizzing electric charge, his horns touching the tip of the ceiling, casting jagged shadows in the glow of the lights streaming in from the Culdee Sack.
Formypop steps forward.
‘I going to ask you one more time. Where the girl with the Iris?’
‘No –’
‘Stop saying no! We saw the helicopter. We watch you come in the city. We know she must be here. So I need to start hea
ring some yeses, understand?’
The intruder jabs the rod at the stag, making it spark again and again. Without meaning to, I glance upstairs again, towards the spare room at the end of the landing.
‘Thank you,’ says the girl, and turns off her electric prod. She yells over her shoulder. ‘Found her! Come!’
‘That’s it, I’ve had enough, I’m coming down,’ mutters Dad, but it’s too late.
The bikes outside go quiet as another kid pushes in from the street, to join Formypop and her chubby mate. They all glare at me like the bullies from Spectrum Hall. Every one dressed in the same way as the girl: ragbag clothes that are covered in dust and grime. Perhaps Selwyn Stone is using the kids in his own schools to do his dirty work now.
Fat Eric, up on his feet again, followed by a boy with a purple Mohican wearing a grubby sweatshirt that reads 123.
We all stare at each other for a moment – and then they are pushing and forcing their way past us, up the stairs, knocking Dad over as he tries to come down –
‘No!’ I yell after them, and leap on the stag. He careers round in the hall, his hoofs gouging pale half-moons out of the floorboards. Then we are clattering up the stairs past the kids, who scream as we press them against the wall. As the stag thumps muddy hoof-prints across the landing, he catches the ceiling lamp with his horns so it swings and nearly knocks me off, before we skid to a halt outside Polly’s room.
And there is Formypop already standing in the doorway, her prod lowered.
Dad lumbers up behind us, dusting himself off. ‘What is the meaning of this absolutely outrageous –’ he starts, but stops as soon as he can see what we all can.
A candle stands alone on a stool by the bed, flickering shadows over the low windowsill and the pots of garden cuttings lined along it. One single iris in a vase lies knocked over in a puddle of water, the thin blue curtain billowing over it like a sail, through the open window. Somehow I don’t think it’s the Iris everyone is looking for.