The Dark Wild

by Piers Torday

  I nod. The abandoned Maydoor Estate, opposite the Four Towers. We must be behind one of the identical-looking doors and windows. Where I last saw the mouse …

  The mouse.

  I try to sit up, but I can’t. My arm is wrapped tightly in bandages, too stiff to move. There is a rat though, curled up on top of the sheets, snoring happily to himself.

  ‘Don’t worry, you safe now,’ says Aida. ‘For a while at least. Facto don’t know where we are.’

  ‘Your friend led us out here after you helped us escape from the Four Towers,’ says Polly, sounding just a bit disappointed that she hadn’t had the idea. ‘She was very brave – leading us all through the different doors and corridors, with cullers everywhere,’ she adds quickly.

  ‘Hmm. Your friend not as goody-goody as she looks either,’ Aida says, also sounding a bit disappointed.

  ‘We waited and waited. We saw the water coming towards us …’

  ‘Many parts of the city are still flooded,’ says Aida with a gleam in her eye. ‘It could take months to get back to normal.’

  ‘Then the waters, you know … receded. But still no sign of … We were so relieved when we saw the birds in the sky,’ says Dad, standing above them. ‘I called out to them, and they brought you down. I very nearly thought that …’ His voice chokes, and turns to the animal voice we share in our head together, holding my good hand tight in his. *I’m sorry, Kes. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, well, you know … what my father told me, and what his father and so on …*

  *What?*

  *That we were the last, as it were, family to have a gift all humans … once used to have.*

  *Like the humans who lived at the First Fold?*

  *Indeed. But the animals believed one day there would be a, what d’you call it … reckoning between us … that mankind would ultimately be forced to make a, you know, choice. That a Jaynes would have to make it. And if we made the wrong choice … I couldn’t bear to think …*

  He looks away, rubbing his eyes.

  ‘The Professor thought you were going to die,’ says Polly in a matter-of-fact way. ‘And he didn’t have his medical equipment with him,’ she adds.

  ‘He not even a doctor either, just a vet,’ says Aida, sounding unimpressed.

  ‘I did the best I could in the circumstances,’ Dad says huffily.

  I look down at my bandage, made out of torn strips of bed sheet. My precious scarf turned into a sling. I don’t even want to know what he sewed my wounds together with.

  His big hand messes my hair. ‘But there is one piece of, ah, good news.’

  My heart misses a beat. Perhaps the mouse …

  He spreads his arms wide with an old Dad grin. ‘Tomorrow is your … birthday!’

  I fall back against the pillows in a slump. I’d completely forgotten. Thirteen tomorrow. If that is the only good news there is …

  But Dad just pats me on the head. ‘Quite right, you rest, Kes … You need to get your, you know … fully back before we, ah … make our next move.’

  I don’t understand.

  Aida explains. ‘Things are changing, see. Real fast. Faster than we can control. Since those animals went crazy, seems like people have begun to lose faith in Facto. They don’t believe them any more.’

  ‘Helped by Aida’s friends and their computers,’ says Polly.

  ‘When the power went, the Facto newscasts on the ultrascreens went down,’ Aida continues. ‘123 and Eric took the chance, started broadcasting some facts of their own on everyone’s ultrascreens. What you tell us – about the virus, the cure and the Iris.’

  I almost feel sorry for Coby Cott, trapped in the control room of the Four Towers, unable for the first time to be everywhere at once.

  ‘Don’t get too excited,’ she says. ‘Facto are back, broadcasting their lies again. But there’s no sign of anyone getting out any time soon. Not Stone, not Littleman, not the dude with the sticks. You’ll see.’

  ‘Thanks to you,’ says Polly, patting my hand. She exchanges a smile with Aida like they know something I don’t.

  Dad furrows his brow. ‘He’s still too … He can’t go anywhere with that wound. I don’t want to, you know, shock …’

  *What is it, Dad? Tell me.*

  Just speaking to him in my head hurts. My whole body feels like it is stuck together with sticky tape and paper clips. Dad can sense the pain in my voice.

  *I don’t want any sudden moves now …*

  Then my stag is behind him, only just able to stand upright in the tiny flat, the General fast asleep in his horns. *I took the liberty, Wildness – in your absence – of giving your new wild some orders of my own.

  New wild? What is he talking about?

  Aida claps with excitement. ‘We have to show him. Please, Prof, you have to let us show him.’

  Dad scratches his beard for a moment, thinking. Polly and Aida look poised for action, hands raised, just waiting for the word from him. After what seems like an age, he sighs, and nods.

  Then Polly and Aida are lifting me up, out of my bed, my arms around their shoulders –

  Dad shouting after them – ‘But please be careful – he hasn’t had his stitches out yet!’

  And they’re carrying me, quickly but carefully, to an old armchair, in a sagging flowery cover with a flat cushion.

  Gently they lower me down.

  The armchair faces a window, one of many identical windows in this block of flats. Every single one facing the Four Towers.

  I put a hand – my good hand – to my mouth.

  The last time we were here, it was dark night. There were storm clouds in the sky. Ahead were the four black chimneys of the old power station, blinking red lights, fleets of shining vehicles parked all around them behind razor fences.

  Now the sun is shining in an almost cloudless sky.

  That much I have seen before.

  But the Four Towers themselves –

  Have changed.

  I don’t know if they are still black and blinking with red lights underneath, because they are covered, each and every one, from the very top right down to the bottom – with birds and insects.

  Birds of every kind and every colour perching on and around their tops. From the crows and starlings of the Underearth, the eagles and seagulls from the Ring of Trees, the pigeons, shrikes and yellowhammers and redpolls from my wild. Bees, dragonflies and butterflies cover the industrial brick and steel in great clouds, so all you can see are glittering colours and fluttering wings.

  Around the base of the towers, if the vans and bikes are still there, they are nowhere to be seen. Either they went out to try and contain the rising, or they have been covered too by the sea of wildlife now circling the Facto HQ. Leaning forward, wincing – and making Dad give a small cry of concern behind me – I try to make them out.

  Aida lends me her binoculars.

  There they all are. Mother and her wolves. Hooded and his foxes. All the stray dogs, cats, grey squirrels, rats from the caves below. There are hordes of deer and badgers from the Ring of Trees. The only animal I can’t see is the toothless white dog we left behind on the Amsguard.

  ‘Like I said,’ said Aida. ‘The Facto crew ain’t going any place any time soon.’

  *Your new wild,* says the stag behind my ear. *You brought animals back together. Stronger than ever before.*

  My new wild. An army of animals, besieging Stone in his lair.

  ‘Are you proud, Kes?’ says Dad, crouching down next to the chair, squinting in the bright sun.

  I don’t know.

  I think of Dagger, the dog humans were so cruel to that he didn’t want to live in the same world as them – even when I tried to save him. I couldn’t show him otherwise or change his mind, even though I nearly died in the process. My eyes well up thinking of those who aren’t here – like the red squirrel and those who died in the battle of the Culdee Sack. The chaos and fires and floods we didn’t stop.

  Perhaps I have brought some animals back
together, shown some of them that not all humans are bad. But there is so much still to be done. Stone might be trapped by my wild for now, but for how long? Will other people ever trust animals again after what happened these last few days? Will we find the mouse and the Iris and bring back those we have lost?

  I don’t know the answer to these questions yet. But that’s not what Dad asked me.

  He said, ‘Are you proud?’

  I sit up as much as I can in the chair.

  Tomorrow I will be thirteen. Together, with the best friends in the world, we have fought and made peace with those who wanted to destroy us. Wounded, crowded into a tiny flat, so much yet to do, so much to be sad about, but –

  ‘Yes,’ I say to him and them all in the second word of my new speaking. My throat feels rough and sore, but I say it one more time all the same. ‘Yes.’ Yes, I am.

  Because we’re still here. Because the sun is shining bright in the clear sky. Because there are birds on the towers and deer in the street. Because I know in my heart that somewhere – in some dry corner of this huge flooded city – the bravest mouse that ever lived is waiting to be found. And when we find her, we’re going to start this world again. Me and my whole new wild.

  Look out for the final thrilling instalment of Kester’s adventure – coming soon!

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