by Anna Fargher
‘There must be a road running through the forest. It means Man is close. We must hurry away,’ Henri said, urgently moving into a canter. ‘They were probably fighting the battle in the forest before.’
It was then that a yell rang out into the night, sending cold shivers rippling over their fur.
‘It’s all right, Harry!’ another voice shouted, and a man stood up in full view inside the rear end of the truck. He looked out into the night, directly at the stag. ‘We’re nearly there, just hang on!’
‘That man,’ Pip gasped in disbelief. ‘It couldn’t be.’
‘Don’t worry, little one,’ the stag said, watching the truck’s red tail lights race into the distance, far away from where they stood in the middle of the wheat field. Seeing the threat disappear, Henri puffed from his nose and slowed to a steady walk once more. ‘They’ve gone now.’
‘I don’t believe it,’ Pip said, not listening to him. ‘He looked and sounded just like Peter.’
‘Who’s Peter?’
‘He’s the son of the umbrella shop owner, where I used to live in London,’ she said, the words flying out of her mouth. ‘I thought I’d never see him again. I have to see if it’s really him. Quickly, Henri, follow that van!’
‘You must be mad.’
‘Please! He won’t hurt you.’
‘I can’t risk it, they could kill us both.’
‘But I know him. He won’t hurt us,’ she said, insistently patting his forehead with her paws. The stag gently shook his head and antlers. ‘Please, you have to believe me.’
The clatter of wings sounded in the gloom as the eagle and the pigeon returned, swooping through the night and landing on the stag’s antlers once again.
‘There is a small village ahead,’ Léon said, drawing his strong, speckled wings into his sides. ‘Beyond it are more woods and meadows, if we continue through the night we should reach the Fleur Forest at dawn.’
‘What’s wrong, liddle lady?’ GI Joe cooed, seeing Pip’s whiskers twitching with agitation.
‘Did you see that van that just went past?’ she said. The eagle and the pigeon exchanged a confused glance and nodded. ‘We need to follow it.’
‘That’s crazy,’ GI Joe scoffed. ‘We’re trying to keep you and Henri away from the humans, not deliver you straight to them. It isn’t safe.’
‘That’s what I said,’ Henri insisted.
‘Please, I think I know one of those men.’
‘A mouse cannot know a man,’ Léon said, shaking his speckled head in disbelief.
‘But I do!’ Pip said. ‘We lived in the umbrella shop together. He’s a good man and he’s an orphan like me. He probably doesn’t even know his parents are dead – they were killed at the same time as my own, three days ago. Please, he’s my friend. Please, I have to see if it’s him so I can say goodbye.’
‘Pip, I don’t know,’ GI Joe cooed. ‘It’s a huge risk.’
‘Not if you take me on your back,’ she said excitedly, her mind brimming with an idea. ‘You can fly us there. If they see you, they wouldn’t hurt one of their own messenger pigeons. We can go and quickly see if Peter is OK and then we can catch up to Léon and Henri and make our way to the Fleur Forest together.’
‘It’s not a bad plan,’ the eagle said after a pause.
‘You’ve got guts, liddle lady,’ the pigeon said, his eyes twinkling. Léon and Henri nodded in agreement. ‘No doubt about that.’
‘Let’s go then!’
‘We never know unless we try, right?’ he said, fluttering down from Henri’s antler to the back of the stag’s head. ‘All right, climb on.’
With a grin that made her whiskers pop on her cheeks, Pip hurried to GI Joe and clambered up his silky grey wing to his back.
‘I’m ready,’ she said, taking a firm grip of the pigeon’s neck feathers in her paws.
‘Hang on tight, liddle lady,’ he said, stretching his wings. ‘Here we go!’
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
PETER
Beating his strong, grey wings swiftly up and down, GI Joe soon left Henri behind, carefully crossing the wheat field below with the eagle protectively circling the night air nearby. From high above the land, Pip watched her friends beneath fade into the distant shadows and quickly become as small as one of the stars, innocently blinking all around her. She looked up and marvelled, unable to fathom how many there could be and how much of the world they could see.
‘Do you see it?’ she said, staring into the gloom below, searching for Peter’s truck along the road.
‘Not yet,’ GI Joe said, charging towards the North Star glinting in the darkness ahead. ‘Do you?’
‘No,’ she said, feeling a tight knot of worry twist inside her. ‘Hurry! Fly faster, GI! It was driving so quickly, I don’t want to lose it.’
‘You got it!’
Pip felt the power rush through the pigeon’s wings at once. She tightly held on to his neck feathers, feeling the wind yank her whiskers as they burst forward. Gazing downwards, her little eyes desperately scanned the darkness.
‘There it is!’ she cried, spotting a flash of the red rear lights of the truck on the ground below. It was slowing down. ‘Do you see it? Down there!’
‘I sure do, liddle lady,’ he said. ‘Now hang on to your whiskers!’
The pigeon instantly stopped flapping his wings and drew them close to his body. Bowing his head, he dived steeply downwards, dropping through the air like a stone. Gasping in alarm, Pip watched the land zoom closer with every second and tightly scrunched her eyes shut with fright. But just as she was about to let out a scream, GI Joe’s wings suddenly shot open. As the air caught beneath them, they steadily glided through the night towards a small windmill and a group of old stone barns.
Three soldiers were jumping from the truck and rushing another man on a stretcher through the large doors of one of the barns. Holding the door ajar was a woman wearing a khaki shirt and long green trousers tucked into army boots. Her blonde hair glowed in the dark from the hurricane lamp she held up to her shoulder. As she pulled the door closed behind them, her fair, gentle face carried an expression of sorrow.
‘Hurry, GI,’ Pip said. ‘We have to look inside.’
The pigeon burst upward and landed on the roof of the barn, which had collapsed on one side. Clambering down from his back, Pip crawled over furry patches of moss growing over the dilapidated roof and, peering through the gaps in the broken tiles, she searched the faces inside.
Two rows of six beds dressed with white sheets lined the floor below. Inside each one was a man lying on his back. Some had bandages covering their heads, arms and legs, while others were missing whole limbs, the stumps wrapped with gauze. The blonde woman hurried between the rows of beds with a pair of soldiers, who were carrying the stretcher away from the collapsed end of the barn. An older woman tended to the two other new arrivals, who were hobbling in pain.
‘I’m going in,’ Pip said, scampering to a missing tile where the wall of the barn met the roof. ‘I can’t see well enough from here.’
‘Nor can I,’ GI Joe cooed, fascinated by the soldiers below. ‘Let’s go.’
Slipping through the open gap, they carefully crept unseen along the uppermost part of the barn to the open hayloft, directly above the flurry of people tending to the man on the stretcher below.
‘Keep your hand there!’ the blonde woman was telling a soldier. His hands and arms were covered with blood as he pressed down on the injured man’s upper leg. ‘You must keep holding the pressure there or we’ll lose him. What happened?’
‘Shrapnel,’ the soldier said, lifting his head to look her in the eye.
‘It’s him!’ Pip squeaked excitedly. ‘It’s Peter! I knew it was him!’
‘Shhh,’ GI Joe hushed. ‘Be quiet, liddle lady – the humans will go crazy if they see us in a hospital.’
Pip stared at Peter’s kind face. His piercing blue eyes shone through the grit and grime spattered on his cheeks from th
e earlier battle in the forest. They were not the same as she remembered. It was as if a cloud of upset had been cast over them, like a storm was brewing in the distance.
‘It was a Jerry tank,’ Peter said, gravely watching the injured man’s eyes roll into the back of his head. ‘It nearly finished us before we managed to take it out.’
‘What’s his name?’
‘Captain Stevens.’
‘Captain Stevens,’ the nurse said loudly. ‘Captain Stevens, can you hear me?’
The man was silent.
‘What’s his proper name?’ She spoke quickly. ‘His Christian name?’
‘It’s Harry. Harry Stevens.’
‘Harry,’ she said firmly, kindly stroking his bloody forehead. ‘Harry, can you hear me?’
The injured man groaned softly.
‘Harry, I need you to stay awake. Do you understand?’
The man didn’t utter a word.
‘What’s your name?’ she said, urgently looking at the soldier.
‘Lieutenant Smith.’
‘Peter, I need you to keep talking to him.’ She looked at the other soldier watching helplessly from the end of the bed. ‘You – go over there to the supply cabinet. Get me as much gauze as you can carry and some clamps. Nurse Wallis will help you.’
Hurrying to a large metal locker standing against the wall at the opposite end of the barn, he and the other nurse collected a pile of white bandages.
‘It’s all right, Harry,’ Peter said. ‘Soon as we get you fixed up the sooner we’ll get that nice glass of brandy we were talking about.’
‘We must stop the bleeding,’ the blonde woman said, tightening the tourniquet around Captain Stevens’s upper thigh. He moaned in pain. ‘Peter, I need you to slightly lift your hands for a moment.’ Blood continued to ooze in a steady flow from the wound. ‘Put them back! Put them back!’ she said hurriedly and he did so at once. ‘And apply more pressure if you can.’
The other soldier returned and, snatching a handful of fresh gauze from him, the blonde nurse pushed it under Peter’s fingers.
‘You – get his leg and lift it to your shoulder. It will stop him losing so much blood.’
Without a moment’s hesitation the other soldier did as he was told, leaving the collected medical supplies between Captain Stevens’s feet.
‘Pass me that clamp!’ She said, motioning to some silver tongs. The soldier swiftly handed them to her. ‘Now lift your hands again, Peter.’
He did so and she feverishly tended to the Captain’s wounds.
‘Nurse,’ Peter said kindly. ‘Nurse?’
‘Wait. I think I’ve got it! Just hang on, Harry, we’re nearly there.’
Peter slowly lifted his hands and rested one on the blonde woman’s shoulder. Flinching with surprise, she followed his gaze and looked into Captain Stevens’s pale face, staring lifelessly up at the mouse and the pigeon peering down from the hayloft above.
Pip quietly gasped, feeling the cold silence of death fill the barn.
‘I’ll clean him up,’ the blonde woman said softly, with a mournful bow of her head. ‘You can put his leg down now.’
As she walked away, the other soldier gently placed Captain Stevens’s leg back on the bed. With a sigh, Peter closed his commanding officer’s eyelids with his fingers.
‘Poor Peter,’ Pip said. ‘He looks so sad.’
‘A damn shame,’ GI Joe cooed, gently shaking his head. ‘Rest in peace, Captain.’
Wondering what Captain Stevens had seen, suddenly Peter looked up and locked eyes with Pip, peering from the hayloft above. In the moment he took to blink in disbelief, she had vanished from view, lying perfectly still on her stomach beside the pigeon.
‘Did you see something?’ the blonde woman said, returning with a bowl of water and dipping a fresh cloth inside it.
‘Nothing,’ he said, pausing to look again. Seeing nothing, he sighed, shaking the unlikely image from his head. ‘I thought I saw something from long ago.’
‘You should rest a while. My eyes play tricks on me too without enough sleep.’
‘What’s your name?’ Peter said, solemnly watching her lift the fabric out of the water and squeeze out the excess water back into the bowl.
‘Nurse Edwards,’ she said, tenderly placing the cloth on Captain Stevens’s face, wiping the blood away from his broad, handsome cheek.
‘No,’ Peter said with a kind smile, ‘what is your Christian name?’
‘Oh,’ she said, smiling to herself in return. ‘It’s Grace.’
‘Thank you, Grace.’ Peter said, taking her free hand in both of his. ‘You are a fine nurse. I know he would have thanked you too if he could.’
She looked up and her blue eyes reflected the warmth in his.
There was a loud thumping on the doors to the barn. Tearing their gaze away from each other, Peter and Grace looked towards it. The other nurse took a hurricane lamp and pressed her face to a crack in the large timber doors before pulling them ajar. GI Joe drew Pip closer with his wing as a group of eight exhausted soldiers stepped inside.
‘We need Captain Stevens,’ the first soldier said. ‘He was brought here some time ago with more of our men.’
‘Hello, Private Hartley,’ Peter said, briskly walking the length of the barn.
‘Lieutenant Smith, sir,’ Hartley said with a salute. Peter returned it and the soldier handed him a folded piece of paper. ‘We have a location for an enemy stronghold a few miles east of here. Major Adams has instructed Captain Stevens and our platoon to go there and take it out.’
‘I regret to inform you,’ Peter said, his brow furrowing, ‘that Captain Stevens has passed away from the wounds he suffered in today’s battle.’
All the soldiers’ faces fell.
‘Does that mean you’re our captain now, sir?’ one of them asked. ‘You’re the next man in the chain of command.’
Peter paused and took a deep breath.
‘Yes, Jonesy, it does,’ he said, sombrely nodding his head. ‘We leave at once.’
‘Pip,’ GI Joe said firmly. ‘We gotta go now. If these boys are heading east like we are, we need to be ahead of them. It’s too dangerous for Henri if we’re seen.’
‘But this could be the last time I ever see him,’ Pip pleaded. ‘Please. Just one more minute.’
‘No, liddle lady, it’s time you said your goodbyes. He’s gotta job to do, and so do we.’
Pip looked down at Peter, wanting to remember every line on his young face, the blue of his eyes and the darkness of his hair. She wondered if he knew that his parents were gone. Perhaps it was a small mercy if he didn’t; then he’d be saved from the sadness she felt every day.
‘Come on,’ GI Joe said, nudging her with his beak. ‘No time to lose.’
‘OK, OK,’ Pip said with a knowing flick of her tail. ‘I’m coming.’
They hopped back along the uppermost part of the wall of the barn, retracing their steps back to the gap in the roof tiles. Slipping through it and climbing to the back of GI Joe’s neck once more, Pip gazed downwards for a final glimpse of Peter, picking up his rifle as he led his men out of the barn and into the night.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
GUTS AND GUILE
GI Joe hurried east, swaying his head from side to side, scanning the earth below for signs of Henri and Léon. As he quickly gathered pace, Pip gazed over her shoulder and felt the sting of tears. Seeing Peter was like stepping into the past and her mind was flooded with memories of Mama and Papa in the umbrella shop. His eyes, once so clear and full of life, had darkened, and she knew that war would have changed hers forever too.
‘Please don’t let him get hurt,’ she whispered quietly, looking into the stars twinkling above her. ‘Please keep him safe.’
Shivering with the memory of Captain Stevens’s lifeless eyes staring blankly up at her, a teardrop trickled down the length of her whisker. Drooping from the whisker’s end for a brief moment, it fell and vanished into the wind.
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br /> ‘Hold on, liddle lady,’ the pigeon said with a sudden clatter of his wings. ‘We’re being followed.’
‘What?’ she said, feeling the fur on the back of her neck stand on end. ‘Who by?’
‘I don’t know. Another bird is circling us.’
Pip searched the night about them and felt her heart thump inside her ears. Sure enough, a bigger bird was matching GI Joe’s speed through the night alongside them.
‘It’s coming for us!’ she cried in alarm, watching the bigger bird’s broad, black wings storm through the air towards them. ‘Hurry, GI!’
The pigeon bowed his head and swiftly dived through the sky.
‘Faster, GI!’ she urged, seeing the bigger bird plunge through the air after them. ‘It’s gaining on us!’
‘It’s a falcon!’ the pigeon said, beating his wings as fast as he could. ‘They’re the only birds fast enough to catch us.’
Thick brambles lay below, tangled around the shadowy border of a wood. Hurtling through the sky towards them, it was then that Pip realized GI Joe was not going to slow down.
‘Whatever happens next,’ GI Joe said, panting from the strain of flying, the thorns zooming closer, ‘do not let go of me!’
Pip instinctively closed her eyes as the spikes ripped through their skin. Wincing in pain, they tumbled through the undergrowth in an explosion of feathers and landed on the cold earth beneath the brambles with a thump. Pip and GI Joe froze, watching in silence as the falcon swooped and landed on the thorns above them.
Pip trembled, hardly daring to breathe. Staring wide-eyed at GI Joe, her ears cocked, hearing the quiet whimpering of two petrified rabbit kittens, their long ears flattened against their heads.
‘We should never have left the warren,’ the smaller one was crying softly as though in a trance. ‘We never should have left the warren.’
‘I wish we hadn’t,’ the bigger rabbit muttered in reply, trembling all over. ‘I wish we hadn’t.’
‘Shhh!’ Pip hushed them as quietly as she could, but the rabbits could not hear her through the panic rising inside their little bodies. ‘Be quiet! It will hear you!’