by Piers Torday
‘You’ll do,’ she says.
He shakes his coat, his fur sticking out in spikes and waves like he’s electrifying himself against her. *I only submit because you are the Wildness. Otherwise I would take out her throat.*
The woman smiles at me. ‘Oh, I don’t mind his bark. Once upon a time I’d have shot him myself, just like that.’
She mimes swinging an invisible gun over the crook of her arm, raising it to her shoulder, aiming it right at the cub and then firing an imaginary trigger. His growl turns to more of a whimper, but he doesn’t move. She swings the invisible gun round at the pigeons on the ground, still squinting. They freeze where they stand. Ma seizes her moment and, before they can react, she is in the middle of them, quickly shining her torch into their eyes one by one – like an expert, like Dad would have done.
‘Not bad, not bad at all,’ she says. ‘Fat healthy-looking birds you’ve got there, my lad.’
*Not a bad-looking fat bird yourself,* says the white pigeon quietly.
‘You can’t be too careful,’ Ma explains, stuffing her torch back in her pocket. ‘I lost everything to that stinking plague: my best beasts, prize herds, these crops I had to let rot – everything.’
She presses a small black fob in her hand. With a clunk and a hum, the whole back wall of her kombylarbester folds down into a ramp.
‘Right – we’d better get you in there with the rest of ’em before a blasted culler sees us.’
While Ma bashes and hammers at the outside of the machine, fixing the broken cable – we crowd inside the metal cave. Straightaway the stag rushes forward out of the darkness, and the General is suddenly on my shoulder, the pigeons crowding round all of us and getting in the way and flapping in my face so I have to push them away.
I’m looking for someone else.
It’s big in here and smells stale. By the cracks of light I can see the cave is full of smaller machines, jagged shadows and curves, straining at the chains holding them to the sides. And sitting right underneath one of them, her foot resting on a pile of old sacks – it’s Polly. She gives me a big smile.
‘I told you there were others who could help,’ she says. ‘That woman found us, she put me on the back of the stag, and I’ve told her everything, and she’s on our side, Kidnapper, and –’
I’m about to go over to her, when there’s a loud rattling noise from the corner, and the pigeons explode upwards crazily.
At first I think it’s just the kombylarbester restarting. Ma must have fixed whatever the mouse did, because with a loud roar from beneath our feet, the machine is suddenly lurching off over the field again. But the rattling continues – growing louder, pushing against metal, trying to get in, met by a low steady growl from the wolf-cub. And then, with a plop, a small ginger furry ball explodes out of a chute in a cloud of dust and rolls across the floor, spluttering.
The mouse gets to her feet and does a massive sneeze, and then as we all stare, she puts one paw out and rotates her whole body around it. First in one direction, then the other. And then the other paw, spinning twice around again. Next she touches her tail with her nose. Finally she rolls on to her back and spins around, her tiny feet waving in the air. She wriggles back on to her front and shakes her whiskers.
No one says anything. I take a photo, and the flash in the dark makes everyone jump, blinking.
*Sorry,* I mutter, and the mouse looks at us all in surprise.
*You got a problem or something?*
*No, just wondering what that was meant to be,* I say.
*That, my two-legged friend, was a special harvest-mouse Dance of Welcome.*
*I’ve never seen a mouse dance before,* growls the wolf-cub.
*Well! You ain’t seen nothing yet in that case, my good friends from the north. As a matter of fact, we harvest mice have over forty-six thousand different dances. We’ve also got the Corn Is Coming Dance. We’ve got the Corn Has Arrived Dance. We’ve got the Corn Is Really Something Now, You Should Check It Out Dance. We’ve got the Corn Is Kind Of On The Turn Now, So Hurry Up Dance. We’ve got the—*
*All right – I think we get the idea.*
She stops, looking hurt. So I hold out my palm and she hurries into it, her claws pricking my skin.
*I guess I should say thanks, Mouse,* I say. *I think you saved our lives.*
She bristles. *Harvest Mouse, if you don’t mind. Not any old mouse.* I can just see the orbs of her jet-black eyes glistening, her muzzle no bigger than a pencil tip. *Get my name right, and we’ll get on just fine. Get it wrong, and I’m afraid I will answer to no one for my actions. Isn’t that right –* She looks around, behind her, and stops mid-sentence. As if she was expecting to see something there.
*Oh, I forgot again,* she says, subdued. *They all went, you see – the rest of my nest.*
*Was it the berry-eye?* I ask.
Harvest Mouse is outraged again. She nips my finger.
*Do you mind! Certainly not, thanks very much. It never touched us. Not our little nest.* Then she is the least loud she has been since I met her. *But the problem was, you see, it took away what we was going to eat. No bee nectar, no fruit, no grubs – and then they even took the crops away.*
As she talks, her tail flicks constantly against my fingers. It feels surprisingly strong. I’m trying to make sense of what she’s saying.
*So – the rest of your … nest – they starved because of the berry-eye?*
*Got it in one, sunshine. You might call it a plague, but to us it was a famine.* She sighs. *I’ve got no one left, so I was sort of hoping that …*
Her voice trails off as she sees the wolf-cub watching her, his brow creased with suspicion, the stag keeping a stern silence behind him.
*She is too small to be any trouble,* coo the grey pigeons from their corner. *And she could be of use.*
It’s decided then.
*Yes, Mouse, you can come with us, in case there are other kombylarbesters we need your help with.*
*Ta very muchly, my old love, don’t mind if I do. Where are you lot off to anyhow?*
As I tell her our story, her little eyes light up. Then, wrapping her tail around my finger, she swings off like an acrobat and twists and tumbles through the air, landing perfectly on the corner of a big old plough gathering dust in the corner.
*Special Flying Dance of Acceptance On A Dangerous Journey!* she cheeps.
The wolf-cub has gone very quiet since the mouse arrived. I stretch out to stroke him, when there’s a jolt, and a sound like the kombylarbester is turning, stopping and turning again before finally juddering to a stop.
With a yell of *Freedom Dance!* the harvest mouse slides over the floor, wriggling her tail, and both Polly and the wolf-cub are thrown on top of me. As we disentangle ourselves, the ramp yawns open and the first thing I see is the silhouette of Ma standing in the doorway. The very end of the daylight streams past her as she beckons us to come out.
I can’t believe what I’m hearing at first – sounds that I haven’t heard for so long – the noise of other people, lots and lots of them, all chattering and shouting and arguing and running and walking, the noise of engines roaring. Standing on the edge of the ramp, my hand on the wolf-cub’s head as my eyes adjust to the light, I think for a moment that we have arrived in the city already.
But not the city we’re looking for.
Not a city of skyscrapers, but one of metal barns and corrugated roofs, the huge square in front of us filled with tractors and trailers. The barn rooftops stretch out as far as we can see, glinting in the evening light. There are stacks of tyres and oil drums and plastic sacks piled high into the sky, and enough machinery – arms, diggers, claws, ploughs, sprays – to fill a whole scrapyard.
‘Welcome to Old Burn Farm, my beauties!’ says Ma, with another big smile.
I can see we’re in a farm, all right, but not any old farm. Polly takes the words out of my mouth.
‘It’s the biggest farm in the world,’ she whispers.
&nbs
p; ‘Well, come on, for heaven’s sake!’ says Ma. ‘We don’t bite.’
I see now the ‘We’ she refers to – a circle of men and women waiting at the bottom of the ramp, all in padded waistcoats like hers. More outsiders – lots of them. The men are wearing caps, and the women have scarves around their hair. All are carrying pitchforks and spades. But it’s their eyes I notice the most – not red but hungry, big rings of shadow around them, sunken into their cheeks, and staring at us.
For a moment we hesitate and the wolf-cub’s hackles rise, but then the outsiders are smiling, patting the stag’s flank, stroking the cub’s neck and letting the pigeons peck at scraps of corn between their feet. Even the mouse is doing what must be a Dance of Friendship in an old lady’s hand. There is a wave of chatter through the crowd, like they can’t believe they’re seeing actual animals again, until Ma silences them with a bellow.
‘Bodger? Where’s Bodger?’
There’s the sound of footsteps so heavy that I think they might be leading an animal through, rather than a person – but the crowd parts to reveal someone who looks like a mix of both. He must be a person, because he has two arms and two legs, ears, eyes and a nose, like us. But his long arms are covered in furry hair, and when he sees us he grins to reveal a mouth full of teeth as big and cracked as the stag’s. The thing you notice most about him is the massive handlebar moustache, which looks like a hairy black caterpillar draped over his thick lips.
He doesn’t say anything. He just grunts.
‘You’ll like my friend Bodger,’ Ma says briskly to me, wiping her dirty hands on her trousers. ‘He’s not from round here, and he can’t talk either – just like you.’
Bodger just stares at us and the animals.
Ma turns to him. ‘Right – take this one and his girlfriend to the sickbay, please.’
She doesn’t sound so friendly any more.
‘I’m not his girlfriend!’ Polly says fiercely. Very fiercely.
Bodger smirks. He stomps over to us, but before he can lay a hand on me I wriggle away, back to my wild. I’m not letting them out of my sight. I’m not losing another one ever again.
Ma plants herself between us, her legs apart.
‘Don’t worry. We’ll look after them. We know how to look after our beasts, don’t we?’ She gives a strange smile to the crowd, who just nod, their hands tightening around their pitchforks, their jaws set. ‘We’ll look after all of you.’
Wolf-Cub jerks forward as one of the farmers grabs on to the scruff of his neck. Another throws a rope around the stag and he starts with surprise, just as a net is thrown over the pigeons and the mouse finds herself trapped under a cage. Even the General is popped neatly into a large glass jar.
No way. I dig my heels in and shake my head.
‘I said I’ll look after ’em,’ says Ma. ‘I’ve been a farmer for thirty-five years and think I know how to look after some animals.’ Her steady stare again. Then she raises an eyebrow. ‘And from what I’ve been told, I might even do a better job than you.’
Before I can look at Polly, Bodger is behind us, his hot breath on our necks as Ma nods sharply at him. He grabs both of us by our hands and leads us firmly away from my wild.
I look back quickly at the ramp. All the animals are standing looking at me, not saying a word, like I’m leaving them on purpose.
*I’ll come and find you!* I shout. *I promise!*
And then Bodger pushes us through a door into a barn, and they’re gone, out of sight.
He drags us on through the empty barn, ignoring Polly’s cries of pain as she hobbles along, down a paved passage and some crooked steps until we come to a low door covered in plastic sheeting. There’s a messy red cross painted on it, and a single word:
QUARANTINE
The man-ape finally releases us, and we stumble back, shaking the blood back into our squashed hands. He grunts and pulls back the plastic curtain, pointing at the door.
‘Why?’ demands Polly. ‘Why do we have to go in here? You know we can’t get the virus –’
But Bodger just puts a sausage-like finger to his mouth to shush her, and then points to the sign, points to his eyes and shakes his head. I understand exactly what he means. I can see Polly about to open her mouth again, but I catch her gaze. Now is perhaps not the best time to start an argument with a man fifteen times the size of us both put together.
Bodger fishes a rusty key out of his pocket, turns it in the lock. He nods at me and I push open the stiff wooden door. We’ve barely taken a step before he boots us in and I tumble over Polly on to a floor of earth. As we pick ourselves up he locks the door behind us, his footsteps stomping away back up the passage.
We’re in a cramped wooden shed. It looks much older than the giant metal barn we’ve just come through. A few candles in glass lanterns dangle from the rough beams that make up the ceiling and I can just make out four low beds in the dim light. Camp beds – put up among heavy shovels and forks leaning against the wooden walls.
Dragging her sore foot, Polly heaves herself on to the last bed by the wall. I roll up her trouser leg and finally take a proper look at her ankle in the candlelight. Angry, red and swollen – it doesn’t look any better. She folds her arms.
‘I’m sure they’ll come back soon with some medicine and something to eat. I bet they’ve got some formula.’ She sounds cross. ‘You don’t look very pleased about our new friends, Kidnapper.’
I’m just wondering how normal it is for new friends to lock you in their shed. But instead of answering I kneel down next to her and dig out the fistfuls of leaf-cure I pulled from the tree in the swamp. They’re drier now, but still have their woody tang and they shine in the glow from the lantern.
Polly’s eyes light up. ‘You found them!’
I manage a smile and slowly lay the leaves in thick layers over her ankle. I look around, and spot a roll of rough orange string dangling off a hook on the wall. Through a mixture of biting and tugging, I manage to tear it into lengths, which I use to bind the leaves firmly around her injured leg. At first she flinches at the sting and the burning, but slowly her breathing grows heavier and heavier. I sit down on the hard floor next to her bed, leaning against the wall, listening to her.
Keeping my eyes open is hard.
If they do shut, for once I know a river isn’t going to sweep me away, and I’m not going to fall off a stag either, so I rest my head against the bed, next to Polly.
She doesn’t seem to mind.
*
When I wake up again, it must be the middle of the night. It’s completely dark apart from a single lantern flickering above our heads.
Polly is sitting up, already awake. She leans over. I think she’s going to thank me for getting the leaf-cure.
But when she sees I’m awake she curls her mouth up. She’s been thinking, I can tell. ‘I know you got these leaves specially, but –’ her eyes flash at me, and her voice is all choked up and angry at the same time – ‘Everything was fine till you turned up! Now Sidney’s gone. You left me all alone with only animals to look after me, and then, when we heard the people coming through the forest, I still thought it might be you.’
I look away. I was trying to help her –
‘But it wasn’t, was it? It was that woman. She was all smiling and friendly at first, promising she’d make my foot better and help us beat the cullers. Then when we got to her machine she started asking me all these questions, shining torches in our eyes – and now she’s locked us in this shed.’ She goes very quiet. ‘I’m beginning to wonder if she is our friend after all.’
I nod in agreement, which only seems to make her angrier.
‘I want to go home now, Kidnapper, and find out what’s happened to my parents – do you understand? Will you promise me that you’re going to take me home?’ She flops back against the wall with a sigh, staring at the shovels and forks racked up in the corner. ‘I just want everything to be normal again, you see. Why can’t you do that? Why can’t you
just tell me for once that you’re going to make things actually better?’
Looking at her, I wish like never before that I could talk. For a split second, I feel a muscle twang in my throat and my lips almost start to form an old shape – but then it’s gone.
Polly, I say to her inside my head, I can’t promise you that everything will go back to normal again. Not straight away. But I will make it better. I will get you home again, I promise. And we can start by getting out of here.
Standing up, I grab one of the shovels leaning against the wall. It’s very, very heavy.
‘Kester!’
I ignore her and drag the shovel towards the door. Taking a deep breath, I swing it up over my head and, shaking with the effort, smash it down as hard as I can. It doesn’t do anything apart from make a tiny crack.
‘Kester! What are you doing?’
I ignore her. The shovel nearly pulls me right over, but I tighten my grip, take a deeper breath and strike again. This time I expose a long streak of bare pale wood.
‘I said, what are you doing, trying to break down a door without me?’
I turn around. Polly smiles at me for the first time since we arrived at Ma’s farm. Only like a fraction of a smile, that no one else would spot, but I can see it. Then she puts her small hands around the shovel handle next to mine, and together we lift it up in the air.
‘Come on, Kidnapper – you’re not even trying properly.’
We bring it smashing down in the centre of the door. A plank springs out, and a cool breeze floats in.
‘Again! Harder!’
Together, blow after blow, we smash the wooden door to the shed, until there is nothing left but jagged splinters jutting out of the frame. I drop the shovel on the floor, she grabs her rucksack off the bed, and together we set off to find my wild.
We head back up along the paved corridor, through the barn. At the door leading back out into the farmyard I signal Polly to stay close behind me. Empty and dark, there are no tractors or trailers wheeling across it now, only silent lumps of farm equipment and their frightening shadows. I hold my breath, thinking Captain Skuldiss is suddenly going to rise up from behind them, pointing his gun-crutch at us.