In the short time that he had been in the flat country, Skelter had come to regard the hedgerow as a place of activity, swarming with red soldier beetles, brass moths, ants and ladybirds. On these insects fed the troublesome shrew, whom bank voles and woodmice avoided almost as assiduously as they did hawks and falcons. Skelter also found comfort in the hedge. It afforded him some cover from eagles, and he liked the busyness of the place better than the relatively empty ploughed or planted fields.
Although the rabbits had assured him that there were no golden eagles in the region, he still could not quite believe it. His mind and body were tuned to the fact of eagles, and it was going to take more than a few reassuring words from rabbits to convince him thoroughly that no golden killers inhabited the skies over the flatlands. There was also this strange aerial creature to consider.
It could be that this was a local story, which they invented to make fools of strangers. The highlands had its share of those tales, though of course the local population didn’t take them seriously. It could be that this flying assassin was nothing more than a product of over-active imaginations. Rabbits, hares, vanish without a trace, taken by foxes or snared by men, and those left behind begin inventing exotic reasons for the disappearances.
‘You see that mist-shrouded island? It’s a place of terror, for there are headless hares there, that haunt the marshes and frighten wandering souls to death! Why only last season a hare was found stiff as stone, its eyes starting from its skull, and no reason for it …’
He was new to this region, and he could not just dismiss things out of hand before he had heard from others, especially hares. If the hares on this island said the same things, and made precautions against the creature, then Skelter would have to take seriously the idea that there was a large flying predator in the area. But as for magic, well that was so much damp hay as far as he was concerned.
From the shadow of the hedge, he made forays out into the fields, for his meals. The land was a rich brown colour: good arable earth. It stretched gently away on all sides, combed or full of crops, further away from the sky than any he had seen before, but closer to heaven. Fertile loam beyond a highland hare’s imagination. The soil covering his northern mountains had been sparse, allowing the growth of heather and sage, but little else. The peat hags had been covered with grass and weeds, but this flatland earth contained succulent treasures, one or two of them vegetables for which he had no names. Skelter ate his fill, thinking that at last he had found the garden of his soul, where he could indulge his palate forever.
In these fields he found vegetables of the same varieties as those which surrounded the rabbits’ wood, such as alsike clover, lucerne, sainfoin and black medick, all grown by the farmers for the sake of the rabbits and hares, or so it seemed. There was also fodder cabbage and buckwheat, parsnips and swedes, field beans and white mustard, the names of which he had learned from his good friends the rabbits. He ate his fill, glancing up occasionally to see if he was being observed by friend or foe, ever wary in this place which was so very different from the land of his birth.
PART TWO
Lord of the Flatlands
Chapter Eleven
Bubba lived in the belfry of the island’s village church tower, beside the great bell that never sounded, the rope having been rotten and unusable since mid-winter. Bubba had arrived in the tower shortly afterwards, and had used it as his roost ever since. He liked the tower. It understood Bubba.
It was true that Bubba had large sharp, diamond eyes and a tufted crown. If the rabbits or hares he had killed and eaten had ever asked him what he was, he would not have been able to give them a proper answer. His mother had been a man and it was Bubba’s belief that he himself was partly human with extraordinary powers: the power of flight, of keen-sight, of silent movement in the dusk and dawn.
It was not natural for Bubba to fly in the twilights of dawn and dusk, but his mother had only taken him out at those times, and had been very secretive with him. It was as if mother had been afraid someone would see them, and so used the gloaming to cloak their excursions. Bubba’s habits were not easily broken, and he had somehow caught the feeling from mother, that if he was seen by other people something terrible would happen. So Bubba continued the habit of hunting in half-light, when he could still see the prey himself, but was less likely to be noticed by other men. Twilight is a time of half-shadows, when shapes are not easy to define, and size difficult to judge, especially regarding creatures in flight.
He spoke no language known to animals or birds, so was unable to communicate, except with the church tower, and this he spoke to not with words, but with his head.
—Tower, you are my only friend. You keep me hidden from my enemies within your breast. Your old grey stones have seen much history, but have you ever seen a creature like me before?
—No Bubba, you are unique, but that does not mean you are a freak, for you have perfection of form. You are invincible among all creatures, except man.
—I am misunderstood.
—Great beings are often misunderstood, unappreciated for their true worth.
—Only you understand me, Tower.
Bubba then, was self-sufficient, needed only his own company, and missed only the mother who fed and raised him as his own. When mother had taken him out, Bubba had seen falcons and hawks and knew he was not one of them. He was unique, brought by his mother from a far off place of swamps and jungles, a place of rainforests and giant brown rivers.
Mother had transported him secretly to the big dark mansion on the edge of the marshes, with its great timbers and many rooms. Whereas Bubba was part human, mother had been part bird, controlling a flying machine. Mother had carried packages of white powder from the jungles to colder lands in his great rigid bird of metal, and sometimes Bubba had been allowed to go with him. Once or twice, Bubba had to protect his mother, by attacking people and tearing their faces with his talons and beak. Many humans were afraid of Bubba.
That Bubba was some other kind of bird was not possible, for they were all far smaller than he was, and were worthy of nothing but contempt. Bubba could bite the head from a tawny owl, bring down and kill a deer on the run, break the back of a hare.
When mother had died, the night the olive-skinned men had come bringing their small guns with them, Bubba had been locked in another room. He heard the plopping noises first, then the crashing and smashing, as furniture was turned over and drawers were pulled out, and pictures were torn down, and carpets were ripped up. Even then he knew that mother was dead.
When they opened the door and pointed their guns into the room, he flew at their faces, clawing and jabbing with his terrible hooked beak. They ran away screaming, clutching their eyes. Bubba found mother in a pool of blood, and had left him there. The men had left the way open for him to leave the house. So Bubba flew away from the mansion, out into the wild country. There he found he could hunt down quarry unprepared for a part-human with wings, and so each night Bubba feasted.
When the people wailed below the tower, every seven days, Bubba would croon along with them, remembering how his mother used to make noises for him, and Bubba used to make them back. Bubba was sad without mother, but the murmuring mortals in their stone-and-wood nest helped to soothe away Bubba’s spiritual pain.
Yesterday evening Bubba had taken a rabbit on the run: had snatched it from the ground with only a whisper of wind. The other rabbits had not even missed their companion: had seen nothing, heard nothing, knew nothing. Bubba was the shadow of death. Bubba was the red slayer, whose secret turns and passes instilled doubt in the undoubtful, implanted fear in the fearless. Bubba came in with the darkness as darkness himself, his mighty shape with its terrible armoury of sharpened steel, ready to slash arteries and sever heads from bodies.
—Tower, I have a voracious appetite.
—You are predator, you have to kill, it’s in your nature.
—That’s not what I said, tower.
—It’s no
t what you say, Bubba, but what you mean.
Bubba had no compassion for the dying, no emotion for those in pain. He had eyes colder than the stone from which the tower was built: a heart as dry as the mortar that held his nest together. Bubba felt he was ancient, a Dark Age creature, with a mind thrown backwards into a winter of nights. He was fashioned of mystical matter from the hands of the magician who was his mother. He was brute and brick, ire and iron. In his head were wildernesses that spread inwards to infinity; were pits that dropped to the centre of the sky; were heights that fell deep into the earth.
—Tower, am I wise, or am I mad?
—You are both wise and mad, for the two are inexplicably interwoven in you.
—What has made me mad, tower?
—Time and loneliness have darkened part of your mind, Bubba, but this darkness makes the wisdom shine through more brightly.
Inside Bubba’s belfry were littered the skulls of now unnameable creatures, bones scattered like white twigs over the floorboards. There were spiders and insects in every corner, and birds used to come to this place before Bubba arrived, for there were droppings and hard white splashes of calcium on wood and brick. Once upon a time there had been bats and mice too, but Bubba had eaten all these: mere titbits snatched between proper meals.
Outside and all around the tower was his domain, as far as he could see, which was a land surrounded by ocean. He was the lord of the flatlands. He terrorised the countryside with his presence, swooping out of the sky like a winged demon, and carrying off which ever quarry he pleased.
—Tower, do I rule my kingdom well, or am I a tyrant?
—Not all tyrants are despots, Bubba.
—Is that my answer, tower?
—Yes.
Evening crept across the land, enveloping all with a faint blush, and filling holes with shade. Bubba stood on the spar which held the great bell, like a man would stand, a cloak of black feathers around his shoulders. When dusk thickened Bubba took to the air, flying out through the belfry window.
His wings were silent as he cruised above the land. He watched the quilted flatlands sweeping below him, eyes alert for movement amongst the deepening shadows. His eyes were so sensitive he could detect a gnat twitching.
He found a tall tree, an elm, and alighted on one of the uppermost branches. All around him were the end of day activities: the starlings gathering in a single tree, all talking at once; the twittering bats emerging from their hollows; the ducks settling; the weasels and stoats coming out after prey. Bubba’s eyes lit upon a domestic creature, a small terrier that was hurrying along the bottom of a ditch to a good sporting ground it knew lay at the end.
Bubba shuffled on the branch, readying himself for the launch, while the unsuspecting dog scrambled up the side of the ditch and into the long grass. Bubba waited. Eventually the dog left the tall grass and began walking along a furrow, towards a rabbit warren in the corner of the field. Some way along the furrow shallowed out, the side ridges almost disappearing. When the terrier reached this point, Bubba took off, falling in a dipping arc.
There was an exhilarating rush of wind around his head. He came up behind the terrier, who was intent on reaching his own goal: a place where he could run out and surprise some rabbits and chase them all over the field.
At the last moment some instinct made the terrier look over his shoulder, but instead of glancing upwards, its gaze was directed down the channel formed by the furrow. The dog’s head was still in that position when Bubba struck, the talons sinking into the back and side of the terrier’s neck.
However, a terrier is not a rabbit or hare, and the dog was quicker than Bubba expected. It twisted violently. Bubba’s talons were partly impeded by a thick leather collar with brass studs, that the terrier had round its neck, and amazingly Bubba lost his grip. The dog dropped to the ground, wounded but still alive. It dashed into some woods that abutted the ploughed field.
This had never happened to Bubba before in his life. That quarry should escape was unthinkable. His talons had been in the creature. It should be broken, dead!
Bubba wheeled away from the edge of the wood, then turned about. The terrier no doubt thought it was free from harm inside the forest. It was to learn that nowhere was a safe haven, where Bubba was concerned.
The giant bird flew straight into the line of trees, and weaved in and around the trunks, as easily and skilfully as a goshawk. Bubba was more at home amongst the trees, than he was in the open sky, despite his great size. He followed the terrier, as it desperately tried to throw off its hunter, running into thickets and briar patches, around large boles, under bramble bushes. Bubba sometimes landed in the trees, launching himself from a thick bough once he had the measure of his prey again.
The dog’s whimpering could be heard over the whole woodland, and other creatures, badgers, rabbits, stoats, weasels, all found themselves holes and disappeared inside them. The smell of blood was in the air and terror went swimming through the green darkness beneath the canopy. It caught hold of the throats of young and old, and held them still.
Bubba was relentless, indefatigable, and tracked the dog in a circular route around the woods. Finally, he cornered the terrier in a glade. Bubba’s diamond eyes flashed in triumph. Nothing escaped those claws, the size of a man’s hand. Nothing escaped that huge hooked mouth.
He fell on the unfortunate dog like a rock. There was a choked-off yelp, a thrashing, and then Bubba’s beak ripped open the dog’s throat and let the gore out.
The blood tasted good. Bubba pecked through the eye-sockets to get at the sweet brains, still warm, inside the skull. When he had fed on these, he took the carcass in his claws and rose up into the purple-black sky.
Bubba was majestic in flight, and any who saw him from below would have gasped at his size, at his shape. Here, Bubba was unique. Here he was some dark savage god, omnipotent amongst the beasts of the field and the birds of the air. Nothing could withstand him except man, and man was not aware of his presence.
He carried the body of the small terrier to his nest and there he picked and tore at the meat with his beak and claws, until bits of flesh lay all around him, and the floor was speckled with gore. As he stripped the bones of hide, the flaps of skin and hair were scraped and then pushed aside. The offal was dispensed with very quickly, the soft warm meats going down into his gullet with speed: liver, kidneys, entrails.
In a day or so, the skull would join the other white sightless head bones that decorated the belfry. What had been a boy’s pet, loved and cherished just a sunset ago was now the pitiful remains of a feast.
Bubba felt a little overfull from gorging.
—I have eaten, tower.
—Your will be done.
Chapter Twelve
There was one creature who was not afraid of the lord of the flatlands, or any other fiend for that matter. Her name was Jittie, and she was a predator herself, living on a tasty diet of snails, slugs and worms. She wasn’t a large creature, certainly not as big as a rabbit or a hare, and though she had a vast array of weapons they would have been no defence against the mighty Bubba. That monstrous killer, now brooding away the daylight hours in his dark tower, could have snatched little Jittie from the ground, slit her belly open with one stroke, and swallowed what was inside in three gulps.
No, Jittie’s strength of spirit lay in her attitude towards life. She was not naturally aggressive, like the shrew, though she would occasionally attack mice, rats, frogs, and even larger creatures than those. She certainly did not acknowledge any other creature as her superior. She was introverted, interested in what went on around her even when it concerned her only indirectly, and was rarely ruffled by anything. It would not occur to her to be frightened of another creature, even the badger, who was her only natural enemy.
Jittie was a hedgehog.
A badger was in fact the only indigenous predator who could have forced his snout between Jittie’s spines to reach her vulnerable stomach. Even a fox could not d
o this, though foxes have been known to roll a balled hedgehog into water and wait for it to uncurl or drown before making a meal of it. Jittie’s greatest danger was in being squashed on the highways and byways of man by one of his machines, since whenever she felt danger approaching she rolled into her protective ball and remained motionless.
The fact was, Jittie really didn’t care about very much at all, except enjoying life in her quiet, simple way. She cracked open the shells of snails with her sharp incisors, pulled elasticated worms from their wormeries, and snatched slugs from the leaves of plants. She made herself a nest lined with leaves and pieces of moss to sleep out the winter, and one of dry grass in which to raise her young, if any, in the summer. If death came, on feet or wings, so be it: Jittie was a fatalist. If the worst came to the worst, the Elysian Fields of hedgehog heaven awaited her.
Her current summer nest was in a disused rabbit hole beneath a hawthorn hedge. She had seen the funny-looking new hare arrive the evening before and wondered why it stayed so close to the ditch, when all the hares she knew preferred the open field. Still, as she said to a neighbouring hedgehog, it was none of her business really. If the hare wanted to act in a peculiar manner, that was really up to itself, and was nothing to do with her. Unpredictable creatures, hares. Full of their own importance, always posturing, quite unreliable. Still, you had to admit it wasn’t natural.
Not natural at all, said her neighbour. Then again, those madcaps were capable of anything, rushing around as if the world was coming to an end one minute, and standing stark staring still the next. Who could fathom hares? Other creatures moved around at a reasonable pace, getting things done methodically, correctly, efficiently, while hares … Why they jumped and jerked, danced around on their hind legs, boxed each other for goodness knows what reason, and generally put the jitters into anyone that came into contact with them. If they did anything useful at all, it was always a botched job, though they were either too lazy, or more likely too impatient, even to make a proper home for themselves, and lived in those little ruts that took about two minutes to scrape out. You would think they were nomads or something, the way they seemed happy with the minimum of comfort, but oh no, they lived in their shallow scrapings their whole lives, never going anywhere further than a quick run would take them.
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