Wild Stories

by Colin Thompson

  In his dreams he was out there right in the middle of a large red flower. He was standing ankle deep in a pool of sweet nectar. The sun shone down warm on his back and a gentle breeze drifted over the edge of the petals, tickling the hairs on his neck. It was paradise. No birds hovered in the air looking for an ant to eat. Birds, like everything else apart from Frank1942, no longer existed. For the first time in his life he was completely alone and it was wonderful. Well, he wasn’t exactly alone. On another flower was a beautiful lady ant. Frank1942 slipped over the edge petal and crawled down the stalk towards the lady ant’s flower. As he started to climb again, his dream exploded and he woke up to find the world crashing down around.

  Sandra3687 looked out across the world. From the blade of grass she was hanging on to, a sea of green spread out in all directions right off into a distant haze. It was the first time she had ever been on the surface. Until that morning she had lived in the soft brown tunnels that spread out under the lawn. Each day she had rushed off to work with everyone else and hadn’t even known that there was a world above. But then, with no warning, everything had changed. Suddenly the world had come crashing down and a few seconds later she had seen the sky.

  She knew what had happened. Old ants had told of the day when The Gardener would come, when their world would come to a sudden and violent end. Sandra3687 had never believed it. She had thought it was just stories to make them work harder but now it had happened. The Gardener had come and punished them.

  All around her in the relics of her home were the remains of her brothers and sisters. She alone had survived the disaster. She wondered about other parts of the nest, if it had been the same there, if she was now the only ant left alive in the world.

  ‘Hello,’ she shouted, but no one answered. She climbed down from the grass and set off in no particular direction. She thought it best to get as far away from the broken nest as possible in case whatever had happened, happened again. There were some big red flowers in the distance and she set off through the grass towards them.

  It was all new and frightening. The sky was filled with large dark shapes that covered the sun with giant shadows as they passed. Sandra3687 kept stopping and looking nervously over her shoulder. It wasn’t being out in the world that was so scary, it was the fact that she was all alone. To make herself feel braver, she tried to think of all her brothers and sisters and pretend that they were just out of sight behind her. When she had felt afraid in the past she had always felt better when she recited her best poems. They always cheered her up.

  Humpty Ant sat on the wall

  Humpty Ant had a great fall

  All the King’s horses

  And all the King’s men

  Trod on him.

  she sang, and

  Sweet Claire was a lovely young ant

  Who was clever and quite elegant.

  She said it’s quite clear

  I can see to next year

  Because I am a Clairvoyant.

  and,

  Baa, baa, black ant

  Have you any wool

  Yes sir, yes sir,

  No, hang on a minute.

  No, of course I haven’t

  I’m an ant, stupid.

  She was still working on that one.

  ‘Hello, is there anyone there?’ she called but there was no reply.

  Frank1942 knew what had happened. The Gardener had come to punish them all for not working hard enough. Frank1942 shook the dust off his back and looked around. It was incredible, it was just like his dream. He had landed in the middle of a large red flower and the dust he had been covered in wasn’t the remains of his home at all. It was sweet golden pollen. Like the dream, the sun was shining and a gentle breeze was blowing through the leaves. He looked around but unlike the dream there was no beautiful lady ant on another flower. He was all alone.

  Perhaps she’s been held up, he thought. If I wait, she’ll probably be along in a minute.

  ‘Hello, is there anyone there?’ he called but there was no reply. He lay down in the warm sunshine and was soon fast asleep.

  ‘Hello, is there anyone there?’ Sandra3687 shouted but there wasn’t. She picked her way through the tall grass all afternoon until at last she reached the clump of red flowers. She climbed up onto one of the petals and looked round, but she was all alone. She called again but there was no reply.

  Hidden in the middle of his flower and fast asleep, Frank1942 heard nothing. He slept so deeply that even the thunderstorm that came in the evening didn’t wake him. By then Sandra3687 had gone. She had run up a wooden plank, across an old chicken’s foot and out of the garden to the canal bank. There she had found another ants’ nest, changed her name to Muriel47889 and settled down to live happily ever after.

  And as for Frank1942, hidden in the middle of his flower and fast asleep, the next morning a child picked the flower he was sleeping on and put it in a vase on the kitchen window sill. For the rest of his life Frank1942 lived in the back of a drawer in a home of dishcloths and sponges that tickled his feet. For breakfast he ate cake crumbs with marmalade and for dinner he ate cake crumbs with strawberry jam. Every evening he looked out through the window at the wild garden. Across the lawn the ants had built a new nest but it was too far away for Frank1942 to see it. Besides, he had no time to worry about what was going on outside. He had his poetry to work on and was far too busy trying to find new words that rhymed with ant.

  Full Circle

  In gardens all over the town people raked up gold and brown leaves into great piles and the evening air was filled with the soft sweet smoke of autumn bonfires. Birds tired from a summer raising children huddled in the branches and waited for winter.

  And as it had done since the beginning of time, winter followed autumn and the days grew short and cold. The sun stayed low in the sky, its light weak and tired and it gave out so little heat that the heavy frost lay undisturbed from dawn to dusk. Every twig, every blade of grass, was held in suspended animation and an intense cold crept into every corner.

  As the winter sank deeper into the earth so the animals that lived in its heart dug down below it. Some animals had flown away to warmer lands while those that were left did the best they could to survive. Some curled up in their beds and slept. Others sat it out and waited for spring.

  Soon winter passed and the air was crowded with anticipation. Sleepers awoke, plants began to move and in the late spring it began to rain, not the destroying rain of winter but a hesitant rain that carried the promise of summer. A delicate uncertain rain fell in tiny drops, so small that you could barely see them. They hovered in the air like wet smoke, drifting down from clouds that were so thin the sun shone through them lighting everything with a dreamlike sparkle. The new grass twinkled as if every blade was made of glass and anyone who walked on it would break it. The children sat in the house, their chins resting in their hands, and stared out at the garden.

  By the open French windows the children’s grandfather, back from a life at sea, sat on a kitchen chair and smoked his pipe. The day was so peaceful that even the bees buzzed silently. Everyone felt themselves being lulled to sleep.

  Through the open window came the wonderful smell of soft new rain on warm grass. It was that lush smell that first comes to you in your childhood and sits quietly in the back of your brain until you die. And for the rest of your life, every time it returns, it brings with it the same magic drawn up from the roots of the earth. It is the same smell that our most ancient ancestors, long before they walked on two legs and were human, caught in the mosses and ferns of the primeval swamps. It goes back far longer than that and tells you so by the shiver it sends down your spine. Its caressing softness filtered into the children’s senses marking them forever, labelling them as two more specks in the palm of nature
’s hand.

  Sunshine replaced the rain and the swallows came back from Africa. In great sweeping waves they flew across Spain and north over France. They swept across the sea and spread out along the south coast of England on the journey back to their old homes. As they moved northwards they split up into smaller and smaller groups. Last year’s children followed their parents back to the nests where they had been born. Under bridges, in dark caves, in the roofs of barns and houses, wherever they had grown up, they made their new homes. They swooped low over water shaking off the last of the desert dust they had carried all the way from Africa.

  Many years before, the old grandfather’s sister had lived in the house with her old dog. When the dog had died she had moved away to live by the sea and for many years the house had stood sad and empty. Like the hibernating animals waiting for summer, so the house had waited for life to return to its rooms. Only Ethel, the old chicken, had been left behind. Only she had still been there when the old lady’s nephew had brought his family to live in the house. Now Ethel was gone too but life never sleeps and Ethel’s children still scratched and fussed about the garden. The old dog was buried beneath his favourite tree and on hot summer days, that was where Rosie took shelter from the midday sun.

  The years passed, the grandfather went to live by the sea and the children grew up and moved away. Rosie’s beard turned from brown to grey and Ethel’s children had children of their own.

  And through it all, the old house and its wild and wonderful garden grew older and older and as each year passed and each new coat of paint was added, generation after generation of children and animals made the house called fourteen their home.

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