That’s daft, she thought. Masklin always said that if there was an Arnold Bros, he was sort of inside our heads, helping us think.
She realized that she was staring at the snow.
Why is there a hole in it? she thought.
12
III. There is Nowhere to go, and we must Leave.
From The Book of Nome,
Exits Chap. 4, v. III
“RABBITS, I THOUGHT,” she said.
Dorcas patted her hand.
“Well done,” he said weakly.
“We were in the lane after Sacco left,” said Nooty, “and it was getting really cold and Dorcas said to take him the other side of the hedge and, well, it was me who said you can see rabbits in this field sometimes, and he said find a rabbit hole. So we did. We thought we’d be here all night.”
“Ow,” moaned Dorcas.
“Don’t make a fuss—I didn’t hurt a bit,” said Granny Morkie cheerfully as she examined his leg. “Nothin’ broken, but it’s a nasty sprain.”
The Store nomes looked around the burrow with interest and a certain amount of approval. It was nicely closed in.
“Your ancestors probably lived in holes like this,” said Grimma. “With shelves and things, of course.”
“Very nice,” said a nome. “Homely. Almost like being under the floor.”
“Smells a bit, mind,” said another.
“That’ll be the rabbits,” said Dorcas, nodding toward the deeper darkness. “We’ve heard them rustling about, but they’re staying out of our way. Nooty said she thought there was a fox snuffling around a while ago.”
“We’d better get you back as soon as possible,” said Grimma. “I don’t think any fox would bother the pack of us. After all, the local ones know who we are. Eat a nome and you die, that’s what they’ve learned.”
The nomes shuffled their feet. It was true, of course. The trouble was, they thought, that the person who’d really regret it the most would be the one nome who was eaten. Knowing that the fox might be given a bad time afterward wouldn’t be a lot of consolation.
Besides, they were cold and wet, and the burrow—while it wouldn’t have sounded a very comfortable proposition back at the quarry—was suddenly much better than the horrible night outside. They’d staggered past a dozen rabbit holes, calling down into the gloom, before they’d heard Nooty’s voice answering them.
“I really don’t think we need worry,” said Grimma. “Foxes learn very quickly. Isn’t that so, Granny?”
“Eh?” said Granny Morkie.
“I was telling everyone how foxes learn quickly,” said Grimma desperately.
“Oh, yes. Right enough,” said Granny. “He’ll go a long way out of his way for something he likes to eat, will your average fox. Especially when it’s cold weather.”
“I didn’t mean that! Why do you have to make everything sound so bad?”
“I’m sure I don’t mean to,” said Granny Morkie, and sniffed.
“We must get back,” said Dorcas firmly. “This snow isn’t just going to go away, is it? I can get along okay if I’ve got someone to lean on.”
“We can make you a stretcher,” said Grimma. “Though goodness knows there isn’t much to get back to.”
“We saw the humans go up the lane,” said Nooty. “But we had to go all the way along to the badger tunnel and there were no proper tracks. Then we tried to cut across the fields at the bottom, and that was a mistake—they were all plowed up. We haven’t had anything to eat,” she added.
“Don’t expect much, then,” said Grimma. “The humans have taken most of our stores. They think we’re rats.”
“Well, that’s not so bad,” said Dorcas. “We used to encourage them to think we were, back in the Store. They used to put traps down. We used to hunt rats in the basement and put them in the traps, when I was a lad.”
“Now they’re using poisoned food,” said Grimma.
“That’s not good.”
“Come on. Let’s get you back.”
The snow was still falling outside, but raggedy fashion, as if the last flakes in stock were being sold off cheaply. There was a line of red light in the east—not the dawn, but the promise of the dawn. It didn’t look cheerful. When the sun did rise, it would find itself locked behind bars of cloud.
They broke off some pieces of dead cow parsley stalk to make a rough sort of chair for Dorcas, which four nomes could carry. He’d been right about the shelter of the hedge. The snow wasn’t very deep there, but it made up for it by being littered with old leaves, twigs, and debris. It was slow going.
It must be great to be a human, Grimma thought, as thorns the length of her hand tore at her dress. Masklin was right, this really is their world. It’s the right size for them. They go where they want and do whatever they like. We think we do things for ourselves, and all we do is live in odd corners of their world—under their floors, stealing things.
The other nomes trudged along in weary silence. The only sound, apart from the crunch of feet on snow and leaves, was of Granny Morkie eating. She’d found some hawthorn berries on a bush and was chewing her way through one with every sign of enjoyment. She’d offered them around, but the other nomes found them bitter and unpleasant.
“Prob’ly an acquired taste,” she muttered, glaring at Grimma.
It’s one we are all going to have to acquire, thought Grimma, ignoring Granny’s hurt stare. The only hope we’ve got is to split up and leave the quarry in little groups, once we get back. Move out into the country, go back to living in old rabbit holes and eating whatever we can find. Some groups may survive the winter, once the old people have died off.
And it’ll be good-bye electricity, good-bye reading, good-bye bananas . . .
But I’ll wait at the quarry until Masklin comes back.
“Cheer up, my girl,” said Granny Morkie, trying to be friendly. “Don’t look so gloomy. It may never happen, that’s what I always say.”
Even Granny was shocked when Grimma looked at her with a face from which all the color had drained away. The girl’s mouth opened and shut a few times.
Then she folded up, very gently, and collapsed to her knees and started to sob.
It was the most shocking sound they’d heard. Grimma yelled, complained, bullied, and commanded. Hearing her cry was wrong, as though the whole world had turned upside down.
“All I did was try and cheer her up,” mumbled Granny Morkie.
The embarrassed nomes stood around in a circle. No one dared go near Grimma. Anything might happen. If you tried to pat her on the shoulder and say “There, there,” anything might happen. She might bite your hand off, or anything.
Dorcas looked at the nomes on either side of him, sighed, and eased himself up off his makeshift carrier. He limped over to Grimma, catching hold of a thorn twig to steady himself.
“You’ve found us, we’re going back to the quarry, everything’s all right,” he said soothingly.
“It isn’t! We’ll have to move on!” she sobbed. “You’d have been better off staying in the hole! It’s all gone wrong!”
“Well, I would have said—” Dorcas began.
“We’ve got no food and we can’t stop the humans and we’re trapped in the quarry and I’ve tried to keep everyone together and now it’s all gone wrong!”
“We ought to have gone up to that barn right at the start,” said Nooty.
“You still could,” said Grimma. “All the younger people could. Just get as far away from here as possible!”
“But children couldn’t walk it, and old people certainly couldn’t manage the snow,” said Dorcas. “You know that. You’re just despairing.”
“We’ve tried everything! It’s just got worse! We thought it would be a lovely life in the Outside, and now it’s all falling to bits!”
Dorcas gave her a long, blank look.
“We might as well give up right now,” she said. “We might as well give up and die right here.”
There was
a horrified silence.
It was broken by Dorcas.
“Er,” he said. “Er. Are you sure? Are you really sure?”
The tone of his voice made Grimma look up.
All the nomes were staring.
There was a fox looking down at them.
It was one of those moments when Time itself freezes solid. Grimma could see the yellow-green glow in the fox’s eyes and the cloud of its breath. Its tongue lolled out.
It looked surprised.
It was new to these parts and had never seen nomes before. Its not-very-complicated mind was trying to come to terms with the fact that the shape of the nomes—two arms, two legs, a head at the top—was a shape it associated with humans and had learned to avoid, but the size was the size it had always thought of as a mouthful.
The nomes stood rooted in terror. There was no sense in trying to run away. A fox had twice as many legs to run after you. You’d end up dead anyway, but at least you wouldn’t end up dead and out of breath as well.
There was a growl.
To the nomes’ astonishment, it had come from Grimma.
She snatched Granny Morkie’s walking stick, strode forward, and whacked the fox across the nose before it could move. It yelped and blinked stupidly.
“Shove off!” she shouted. “How dare you come here!” She hit it again. It jerked its head away. Grimma took another step forward and caught it a backward thump across the muzzle.
The fox made up its mind. There were definitely rabbits farther down the hedge. Rabbits didn’t hit back. It was a lot happier about rabbits.
It whined, backed away with its eyes fixed on Grimma, and then darted off into the darkness.
The nomes breathed out.
“Well,” said Dorcas.
“I’m sorry, but I just can’t stand foxes,” said Grimma. “And Masklin said we should let them know who’s boss.”
“I’m not arguing,” said Dorcas.
Grimma looked vaguely at the stick.
“What was I saying before that?” she said.
“You were saying we might as well give up and die right here,” said Granny Morkie helpfully.
Grimma glared at her. “No, I wasn’t,” she said. “I was just feeling a bit tired, that’s all. Come on. We’ll catch our death standing here.”
“Or the other way round,” said Nooty, staring into the fox-haunted darkness.
“That’s not funny,” snapped Grimma, striding off.
“I didn’t mean it to be,” said Nooty, shivering.
Overhead, quite unnoticed by the nomes, a rather strangely bright star zigzagged across the sky. It was small, or perhaps it was very big but a long way off. If you looked at it long enough, it might just have appeared disk shaped. It was causing a lot of messages to be sent through the air, all around the world.
It seemed to be looking for something.
There were flickering lights in the quarry by the time they got back. Another group of nomes was about to set out to look for them. Not with much enthusiasm, admittedly, but they were going to try.
The cheer that went up when it was realized that everyone was safely back almost made Grimma forget that they were safely back to a very unsafe place. She’d read something in the book of proverbs that summed it up perfectly. As far as she could remember, it was something about jumping out of the thing you cook in and into the thing you cooked on. Or something.
Grimma led the rescue party into the office and listened while Sacco, with many interruptions, recounted the adventure from the time Dorcas, out of sudden terror, had jumped out of the truck and had been carried off the rails just before the train arrived. It sounded brave and exciting. And pointless, Grimma thought, but she kept that to herself.
“It wasn’t as bad as it looked,” Sacco said. “I mean, the truck was smashed, but the train didn’t even come off the rails. We saw it all,” he finished. “I’m starving.”
He gave them a bright smile, which faded like a sunset.
“There’s no food?” he said.
“Even less than that,” said a nome. “If you’ve got some bread, we could have a snow sandwich.”
Sacco thought about this.
“There’s the rabbits,” he said. “There were rabbits in the field.”
“And in the dark,” said Dorcas, who appeared to have something on his mind.
“Well, yes,” admitted Sacco.
“And with that fox hanging about,” said Nooty.
Another proverb floated up in Grimma’s mind.
“Needs must,” she said, “when the Devil drives.”
They looked at her in the flickering light of the matches.
“Who’s he?” said Nooty.
“Some sort of horrible person who lives under the ground in a hot place, I think,” said Grimma.
“Like the boiler room in the Store?”
“I suppose so.”
“What sort of vehicle does he drive?” said Sacco, looking interested.
“It just means that sometimes you’re forced to do things,” said Grimma testily. “I don’t think he actually drives anything.”
“Well, no. There wouldn’t be the room down there, for one thing.”
Dorcas coughed. He seemed to be upset about something. Well, everyone was upset, but he was even more upset.
“All right,” he said quietly.
Something about the way he said it made them pay attention.
“You’d all better come with me,” he went on. “Believe me, I’d rather you didn’t have to.”
“Where to?” said Grimma.
“The old sheds. The ones by the cliff,” said Dorcas.
“But they’re all tumbled down. And you said they were very dangerous.”
“Oh, they are. They are. There’s piles of junk and stuff in cans the children shouldn’t touch and stuff like that. . . .”
He twiddled his beard nervously.
“But,” he said, “there’s something else. Something I’ve been sort of working on, sort of.”
He looked Grimma in the eye. “Something of mine,” he said. “The most marvelous thing I’ve ever seen. Even better than frogs in a flower.”
Then he coughed. “Anyway, there’s plenty of room in there,” he said. “The floors are just earth, er, but the sheds are big and there are lots of places, er, to hide.”
A snore from the human shook the office.
“Besides, I don’t like being so close to that thing,” he added.
There was a general murmur of agreement about this.
“Had you thought about what you’re going to do with it?” said Dorcas.
“Some people wanted to kill it, but I don’t think that’s a good idea,” said Grimma. “I think the other humans would get really upset about it.”
“Besides, it doesn’t seem right,” said Dorcas.
“I know what you mean.”
“So . . . what shall we do with it?”
Grimma stared at the huge face. Every pore, every hair, was huge. It was strange to think that if there were creatures smaller than nomes, little people perhaps the size of ants, her own face might look like that. If you looked at it philosophically, the whole thing about big and small was just a matter of size.
“We’ll leave it,” she said. “But . . . is there any paper here?”
“Loads of it on the desk,” said Nooty.
“Go and fetch some, please. Dorcas, you’ve always got something to write with, haven’t you?”
Dorcas fumbled in his pockets until he found a stub of pencil lead.
“Don’t waste it,” he said. “Don’t know if I’ll ever get some more.”
Eventually Nooty came back towing a yellowing sheet of paper. At the top of it, in heavy black lettering, were the words: Blackbury Sand & Gravel Ltd. Below that was the word: Invoice.
Grimma thought for a while, then licked the stub and, in big letters, started to write.
“What are you doing?” said Dorcas.
“Trying
to communicate,” said Grimma. She carefully traced another word, pressing quite hard.
“I’ve always thought it might be worth trying,” said Dorcas, “but is this the right time?”
“Yes,” said Grimma. She finished the last word.
“What do you think?” she said, handing Dorcas the pencil lead.
The writing was a bit jagged where she had pressed hard, and her grasp of grammar and writing wasn’t as good as her skill at reading, but it was clear enough.
“I would have done it differently,” said Dorcas, reading it.
“Perhaps you would, but this is the way I’ve done it.”
“Yes.” Dorcas put his head on one side. “Well, it’s definitely a communication. You can’t get much more communicating than that. Yes.”
Grimma tried to sound cheerful. “And now,” she said, “let’s see this shed of yours.”
Two minutes later the office shed was empty of nomes. The human snored on the floor, one hand outstretched.
There was a piece of paper in it now.
It said: Blackbury Sand & Gravel Ltd.
It said: Invoice.
It said: We Could Of Kiled You. LEAV US ALONE.
Now it was quite light outside, and the snow had stopped.
“They’ll see our tracks,” said Sacco. “Even humans will notice this many tracks.”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Dorcas. “Just get everyone into the old sheds.”
“Are you sure, Dorcas?” said Grimma. “Are you really sure this is a good idea?”
“No.”
They joined the stream of nomes hurrying through a crack in the crumbling corrugated iron and entered the vast, echoing chamber of the shed.
Grimma looked around her. Rust and time had eaten large holes in the walls and ceiling. Old cans and coils of wire were stacked willy-nilly in the corners, along with odd-shaped bits of metal and jam jars with nails in them. Everything stank of oil.
“What’s the bit we ought to know about?” she said.
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