by Piers Torday
One word.
*Death!* they shout – over and over again, until it seems the earth above will fall in and cover us all. *Death to the human!*
The light from the world above shines brightly down through the holes in the roof, dazzling me. The foxes yank my wrists and ankles tight, making tears of pain stream from my eyes as they flatten me across the white stone floor, my back arching.
My nostrils seem to be full of nothing but the smell of fur and feathers, floating and filling the air like dust, making me gag. The chants, which I first heard as faint whispers in a drain, are now as loud and crashing as a thunderstorm – if you were trapped in the actual cloud, that is.
They were waiting, all this time. Hundreds and thousands of creatures, driven from the city by humans and disease, waiting for revenge.
Dagger plants two stubby paws either side of my head.
I look up, and his white face swims through my tears, more like the ghost of a dog than an actual creature. But the hot drool that flecks my cheeks, the clash of his steel jaws, are more than real enough. He stretches out a paw and drags his claws along the white rock behind him, making a screeching noise. The cries slowly fade away. There is a last flap of wings, and then all is silent.
Silent, but for my heart, pulsing hard and thick against my chest, ringing in my ears. Dagger just stares ahead at his legions, waiting.
*Child of the humans,* he declares, *you, like all your ancestors, have squandered your precious gift.*
I have just enough energy to say, *What do you mean – my ancestors?*
Dagger sniffs and clears the back of his throat. *Don’t pretend to me that your treacherous wild has not filled your head with lies about the dream and your so-called gift. You are just trying to delay your inevitable fate.*
And with a half-squeal, half-yawn, the dog leans over and stretches his jaws till they are gaping wide open directly above me. I can almost see down his pink gullet into his stomach. He tugs at my scarf, pulling it free, exposing bare skin.
I am trapped underground with thousands of animals whose only desire is to see me dead. No one knows I am here. I have never felt more alone. Perhaps Aida came looking for me. Or perhaps Dad has. But how would they find me?
I wonder if this is what Polly feels like right now.
*Wait!*
The dog pauses, his teeth grazing my throat. He looks up, and I raise my head as much as I can, staring down my chest at the cavern ahead.
*Wait,* says the voice again. It is not mine, but one I recognize.
Splish-splashing down the shallow stream, caked in chalk dust, just managing to dodge the spiders as he comes – it’s the rat.
As he approaches, Dagger turns and snarls at him. *So, the traitor dares to desert his post.* He releases his paw off my neck. *Now is not a good time to beg mercy for your crimes, Rat. You have already betrayed this wild by your refusal to join the war.*
A nearby cat with a chewed-up tail lashes out with a claw at my guide. *Shame on you!* she yowls, but the rat doesn’t flinch. It is the first time I have seen him properly in the light. His eyes are sunken, his fur dry and patchy. *But he is my new friend,* is all he says simply.
The foxes look at one another and grin.
*But he is my new friend,* repeats the Skulker in a babyish voice. The others snigger.
*Do you hear this, my wild?* says Dagger, not looking at the rat directly. *This traitor, who was exiled to guard this sacred place as a punishment for his crimes, now calls this enemy a friend.*
There are squeals of *Traitor! Traitor!* from the piles of rats in the far corner of the cave.
My rat just takes another shaky step forward, into the circle.
*Oh dearie me … I know I shall regret this, but humans never hurt this rat, you see. I used to live off their food, their leavings, the precious things they threw away, and even some they didn’t – they were useful to us sometimes. Rats have always lived near humans …*
*Silence!* Dagger shouts him down. *I have heard enough. Guardians, take him away.*
The foxes and wolves look at one another, uncertain.
Dagger blinks. *One of you! Do I have to repeat myself, or do you want to feel these metal teeth?*
Eyes Wide leaps off my legs and pounces on the rat, grabbing him with his jaws, where he hangs unhappily, drooping out of either side.
*Take him away,* Dagger barks. *Throw him down the darkest and deepest hole you can find. There he can think on the damage he has already done to all animals. While he slowly starves to death. Alone.*
*But I challenge you for him,* the rat replies.
Dagger almost does a double take. *What did you say?* he asks, with the first thing approaching a smile I have heard in his voice.
*It is the ancient animal custom,* says the rat, heaving for breath. *I shall fight you for him.*
Like the stag fought for me in the Ring of Trees. And won. But that was a stag against a wolf, not a rat against a dog four times his size with metal jaws.
*No, Rat,* I start, but I am drowned out by a thousand animals laughing. Cackling and screeching and howling. Dagger himself is unable to speak for a moment.
Then silence. The crowd is waiting. They are looking forward to this.
Dagger gives a curt nod of his head.
*I accept your challenge, traitor rat. It will be good for this wild to witness where betrayal such as yours ends.* And then, briskly, to the watching creatures, *We are to fight a war; the sooner you all develop your hunger for blood, the better.*
Eyes Wide lets the rat fall to the ground. My guide turned champion picks himself up, and shakes the dust off. *Oh dear,* he says to himself. *You’ve done it now.* Then he catches sight of me watching him, and brightens. *But I do not do this for a cause, Wildness. I do it for a friend.*
Dagger snorts, and the two beasts begin to circle each other directly in front of me.
A massive, muscular block of a dog with metal jaws. A weak and underfed rat. I can’t bring myself to watch.
Dagger is still circling, when the rat makes the first move. He throws himself at his m uzzle, but the dog bats him aside with a paw, sending him flying on his back.
*Oh dearie me,* says the rat, and is still struggling to right himself when Dagger picks him up by his loose fur and shakes him in his teeth till the rat squeals so loud I wish I could block the noise from my head.
The foxes gather round to watch, like they are drawn by the pain. I am able to sit up, rubbing my wrists where they held me down, shuffling to the side of the white rock.
Dagger drops his foe at his feet, in front of the boulder. Dazed, the rat lifts his snout. *You silly old rat,* he murmurs to himself.
But all animal eyes are on the dog, licking his chops as he pads round the dusty circle, waiting for when he will deliver the final blow. He turns his back on the audience, facing the rat dead on.
*Now, traitor, prepare to face justice.*
And he leaps for the rat, but as he does, the most amazing thing happens.
The rat leaps too. I never knew rats could jump so high.
He leaps high into the air, clean over the head of Dagger – who bounds straight into the rock, bashing his snout with an angry howl and collapsing in a daze.
The rat lands just the other side of him, on the edge of a crowd. He turns to look at me. He’s bloodied and torn, but alive. *You see, I am a good friend,* he says. *Will you stay now?*
If I stay, I will never escape from this hole. I have to warn the others about this dog and his plans. I have to find Polly and the Iris, to help us all start again – even this crazy wild.
So I don’t answer. I turn away, and I run for my life.
I run and run as fast as I can, not looking back, trying not to listen any more. I don’t know where I’m going, only that I must run. Away from the animals now baying for my blood, and away from the tunnel we came in by. I have to get back to the earth above I have left for too long, warn Dad and the wild. If they are still there, if S
tone hasn’t come for them already, looking for his precious Iris … The Iris that could somehow turn the world back to the way it was. Before there were viruses and dark wilds.
Unable to think clearly, I stumble instead into one of the shadowy tunnels leading off from the painted cave behind the white rock.
One of the many, many tunnels. Some of them look freshly burrowed, soft piles of crumbling chalk gathered in drifts around their entrances. There is no time to choose. I run into the one directly ahead.
It must lead somewhere.
Anywhere would be better than the Underearth. I must be able to get back home somehow.
I run, tripping over rocks, bumping into jagged walls that twist and intrude without warning. I shine my watch as a guide, take instinctive turns at forks in the way and run flat into dead ends of boulders piled together and retrace my steps.
Occasionally I think I can hear hungrily panting tongues echoing in the tunnels behind me, and I shiver, hurrying on even faster.
Without any other guide, I follow glimmers of light or trickles of water wherever I can spy them. I force myself through narrow holes that suddenly open into huge caves and splash around the edge of silent green underwater lakes. Shining my light up, the rust-stained ceiling hangs low, with twists of slippery stone that drip on to my head as I duck past.
All the time, the only thing keeping me going, the only thing that stops me from collapsing and sobbing until I cannot move, is the thought of the wild waiting for me at home, the animals who don’t want to kill me.
I had almost forgotten that animals can kill.
I mean, of course I know that animals kill other animals, that they always have done. But what that dog was doing to that rat –
I have to blink the thoughts away, gulp back down the tears.
That’s not right, is it? I know animals will always kill some other animals, because they have to eat. But should any animal – including us – ever have that much power over another one?
I don’t know. What I do know is that my watch light is beginning to fade. My world dwindles to a few glowing green rocks in front of me. Then from a few rocks to just my hands, and then they disappear too, till the light is barely a spark on the screen and …
I am in total darkness. Blackness all around, not one ray of light above, to the side, behind or even below me. Nothing to reflect in the water or gleam off a rock. Just impenetrable dark, that suddenly feels thick and foggy.
Even with the watch working, I tripped over enough rocks and banged my head enough times. My hands outstretched, I take a step forward and then to the side, and then back. Time after time, I find nothing but damp walls. Like the Underearth is closing in on me.
I am miles underground, miles away from Dad or the stag, or anyone who could help me. No one knows where I am, where I went. Far off, in the maze behind me, I can hear wolves howling, foxes barking and the tap-tap scuttle of hundreds of spiders.
Other than the creatures chasing me, I am completely animal-less for the first time in so long. I attempt a Dance of Keeping One’s Spirits Up While Lost Underground, but it isn’t the same without the mouse.
In a way I am glad my wild aren’t here though. That they didn’t see how I left that rat. Perhaps I will never see them again.
Perhaps I don’t deserve to.
*I’m sorry, friend,* I say to the empty darkness all around. *I’m sorry.*
The only reply is water dripping somewhere.
As I lean against a wall and slowly slide down it on to the ground, a slow dread begins to creep up and twist around me, choking my thoughts like a poisonous mist.
The realization that I may never get out of here.
I left that rat on his own. I deserve to die. I didn’t just leave him. I left Polly alone, when she needed me the most. I could have stopped her running away, talked her round – then none of this would have happened. I left Aida at the railway. I left Dad on his own with the wild. And now where are they all? There wasn’t any formula in that train to hold Stone to ransom with.
I haven’t helped anyone at all. I’ve made things worse.
That rat should have known better than to trust me as a friend.
*I’m sorry, friend!* I yell out into the blackness, but it makes no difference. He isn’t going to hear me. No one is ever going to hear me ever again.
Then, in the darkness, something crawls over my face. Over my face, down my neck, across my ear and into my hair.
*Goodness me, there’s no need to shout!* scolds an angry voice. *Where the blazes have you been anyhow? I thought I was never going to find you.*
I have never been so happy to hear a grumpy cockroach.
*General! How did you find me?*
*Your metal horse flung me one way and you another when it fell over. I’ve been searching for you in these tunnels ever since. Luckily you decided to start yelling your head off …*
I want to tell him everything I have seen and heard, but right now – *We’re lost, General. We’re never going to get out of here.*
There is a very long sigh from just behind my left ear.
*Enough of this “we’re”, if you don’t mind. I am a cockroach. I was raised in what you call tunnels, trained in them, and quite frankly happiest when in them. How do you think I got into Spectrum Hall in the first place?*
And how he got me out, with his cockroach army …
*If I can’t get you out of here and back to your wild in one piece, never call me General again. Now, I have heard spiders scuttling about in these tunnels. Large ones – and if there’s one thing a cockroach likes least in the world, it’s spiders. Especially the large ones, so quick march and follow me.*
Then he scuttles off into the black, constantly stopping and waiting for me to find my way behind. We crawl on in this way for what feels like hours, him hurrying ahead and waiting for me to catch up. He never says anything, apart from the occasional very long sigh as he waits once more for me to find my way in the dark.
Just as I begin to think he might be actually leading me in circles, I hear him scuttling over some ground that sounds different to the smooth rock slabs I have become used to. He is walking over loose stones, and then, when he speaks again, he sounds even further away than normal.
*Right, come on through here, and we’re nearly there.*
*But do you think—*
*Come on. No more questions. Just get yourself through here.*
It almost sounds like he is behind a wall.
I follow the voice. Or rather I try to follow the voice.
I can feel fresh air on my face. I can see a distant square of light. I can hear the General. I just can’t get to him.
In the darkness, I can feel that the ceiling of the passage we are in hangs very low, till it is just touching the back of my neck. I crouch down to go under it, and find my way blocked by a pile of slimy boulders.
There is only a tiny gap between them.
*I can’t get through there!*
*Nonsense! Of course you can – I measured it with my antennae. A tight fit, but a fit nonetheless.*
I wave my hands under the rock in front of me. There is only just enough room for them. *But—*
*It is our only way out.*
So I get down as low as I can, and with my hands start to haul myself into the crevice between the rock and the boulders. I am lying flat on my stomach, my head cricked at an angle, as I squeeze between two slabs of stone.
The gap is so narrow my hands are trapped at my sides, and it feels like it takes forever just to push my whole body into the hole.
*What are you doing? Are you trying to come out backwards?*
I barely have enough breath to think, never mind reply, and I just grunt. I push myself along, using my legs as much as my hands, my mouth filling with grit and stale air.
And then, just when the General seems to sound within touching distance – I can’t go any further.
The gap has become too narrow.
*I can’t
…* I say to the General, and start to wriggle back. Except I can’t go back either.
Enclosed in a wall of rock, the whole city above me, the Underearth beneath.
I am stuck. Completely, utterly trapped. I would rather face a whole pack of wolves than be stuck here.
All I can think, again and again, is: I deserve this. I left that rat.
So I try to move quickly, force my way forward, but that just makes things worse. I kick my legs, and my shoes get pulled off. I can feel my heart rate beginning to accelerate, and sweat pours down into my eyes, which would blind me – if I could see where I was in the first place.
And then, there is a light feathery touch of antennae on my hand. My cockroach guide has returned.
*Don’t panic! Do you know nothing about soldiering? The first rule in a crisis is, don’t panic. Now. Try not to move so fast; you’re not escaping from a fire …*
I have to focus. I have to remain calm. With my fingers gripping wherever they can, I inch forward behind the insect.
*You might need to take a deep breath here …*
I do, and somehow –
*Wriggle up to your right, on your side for this bit …*
Painfully, crushing my insides, but slowly pressing on –
*You are very nearly there …*
Just as I think if I have to go any further I will need to dislocate a joint to do so, there is air above my head. Air and space. I hastily scramble forward –
*But be careful not to come out all at once!*
And fall straight into a muddy pile of shingle. I have never cared less in my life about falling into a muddy pile of shingle. Gasping for air, I have never felt more alive in my life, or more glad to be alive. Not just because we are through that crevice, but because above our heads in the darkness is the one thing we have been seeking for what feels like hours.
A crack of genuine light.
PART 4: IRIS
Not a pinprick far away in a domed ceiling above, not fringing the end of a smooth metal shaft, but an actual crack of daylight that is almost reachable if I stand on my toes.