The Last Wild

by Piers Torday

  *You have been declared Wildness and I too have submitted like the stag. I must now hunt with you, always.*

  As we leave the roar of the whiterforce behind, a hush falls, the wolf-cub pushing silently ahead through sheaves of tall grass. Grass that seems to be growing taller the further we go into the marshes, as the ground gets soggier beneath our feet. It’s hard work, constantly slipping into boggy puddles and stepping out again. Every cell in my brain, every nerve in my body is focused on being the Wildness now, on leading and being in charge. The wolf-cub stays by my side and jumps happily over hillocks of moss erupting out of the ground in spools of bright yellow and green, endlessly sniffing every last strand.

  *Why did you leave your father? Did he fall off a cliff after a great hunt too?*

  *Not really,* I mutter.

  *It must be very hard to be without a father. I find it hard. I’m so used to him telling me what to do. But I think I’m doing really well, don’t you?*

  *Yes, you’re doing just great.*

  *Better than any other wolf-cub without a father that you’ve ever seen?*

  *Yes, much better – the best ever.*

  Some soil drops on to our head, and there is the white pigeon, who has somehow managed to get filthy from the bog as well, high above our heads, hurrying us on.

  *So why did you leave?* the wolf-cub asks again.

  I look down at the ground. *I didn’t want to. I got taken away from him.*

  The cub seems proper shocked. *Had you committed a great crime against your pack?*

  Biting my lip, I look around for something else to think about – all the rubbery leaves and pale flowers and waving grass – but the cub swipes his paw at my leg, breaking my thoughts. His eyes are hard, his jaw set. I don’t think a Wildness is meant to have committed any crimes.

  *You are the Wildness now. You have to tell me.*

  *Look, it’s not something I want to talk about right now –*

  I turn aside and stumble on. I’m the Wildness. I can do what I like. I don’t have to answer, or explain anything. We wander on in silence for what feels like hours, my hands dug into my pockets, my head full of thoughts that I don’t want to be there.

  Finally the cub speaks again, quieter this time, wounded. *I have pledged you loyalty. Do you know what that means?*

  *Not really, no.*

  *It means I will offer my life for yours if I have to. But I can only do that if I know who I am serving. You have to tell me – those are the rules of a wild.*

  *You don’t have to offer your life.*

  *It doesn’t matter. I will.*

  *Well, thanks, that’s really—*

  He leaps in front of me and stamps his paw, sending black mud flying everywhere. *I don’t want thanks. I want to know who I am serving. What did you do? What did you do that was so bad you got sent away to that place for a whole six years? You have to tell me!*

  We stare at each other in silence, the only reply coming from the wind whispering between the reeds. Then there’s a call from the rushes up ahead.

  *Found it! Found it!* call down the pigeons. *Over here!*

  *Over there!* cries out the white pigeon.

  We splash on through the swamp, following their cries, and find them perched high above our heads, spread out on the drooping branches of a tree. A tree that stands all alone in the middle of a black pond, the surface covered with floating moss and lily pads. The wolf-cub and I only just stop ourselves falling in as the rushes and reeds give way to water. But neither of us can take our eyes off the tree. Here, rising out of the bog, the leaves of the tree, which hang down in bunches, pulling it right over with their weight – are bright gold. Gold and shining and twisting in the cold air.

  Shining willow. The leaf-cure.

  The leaf-cure that is in the middle of a swamp.

  A swamp that steams and bubbles, treacly black mud stirring and oozing like oil. I glower at the pigeons, sitting coolly on top of the tree, watching me with their beady eyes. I’ve only just climbed out of a freezing river –

  *What about this? Is this in your old dream as well?*

  *Oh yes,* they nod back.

  *When are you going to tell me what’s really going on?*

  They look away.

  *We are only birds. We cannot explain everything that there is.*

  Shaking my head, I start wading into the watery mud. The swamp tugs and pulls at my feet. I try to go back, but just sink deeper in, up to my knees. It gets thicker as I go deeper and deeper, pressing around me, licking my chin.

  And then, I slip –

  My foot stumbles on a rock, I’m falling and the mud is closing over my head –

  For a minute all I can see is black, and I can’t breathe at all – and there is soil and water up my nose and in my eyes –

  I try not to panic, but it’s hard when you can taste dirty mud on your lips as it squeezes tight around your chest, making it harder and harder to breathe, and yet –

  The strangest thing. I can hear it. I can hear the swamp. There are no creatures here that I can see. No snakes, no fish, no varmints. But there are voices. Tiny faint voices, not making any sense, not forming any words, just noises and echoes of noises. Voices everywhere in the swamp. Voices waiting to be born.

  It’s only a moment – then I give one last push and I’m bursting up out of the swamp, wiping gobbets of mud from my eyes, gasping for air.

  For a moment I just stand there, black from head to foot in bog, sucking in huge breaths of air. But I don’t feel scared any more. Not of mud. Not of the outdoors. I feel different somehow. Part of things, in a way that I wasn’t before.

  Then the wolf-cub shouts at me from the bank, the pigeons from the tree – and I’m plunging forward towards the shining leaves ahead. Reaching them, I strain on my toes, grabbing at the lowest hanging bunches, ripping them off.

  *Take as many as you can!* say the birds.

  Holding the leaves high above my head, I wade back through the bog and collapse on the bank, my chest heaving up and down. I sniff the leaves clutched in my hand, dripping with mud. They smell strange and woody.

  The pigeons crowd round.

  *Place them on her ankle. Wrap them round tight. They will heal her and soothe her.*

  I stuff my pockets full of leaves until I can carry no more and we hurry back through the swamp. But it is no easier to get through than before, and as we weave our way through the pools and clumps of grasses, the light slowly begins to change in the sky.

  As we finally climb up the bank, pushing through the ferns to reach the fish-road again, and see the long shadows falling from the trees on to the water, I realize that we have been gone for most of the day. Immediately I sense that something isn’t right. Because although it is getting darker, I can still see clearly. I can see the clouds of mist from the whiterforce, the ripples of light on the water, and I can see the rocks and boulders on the shore where we left the others.

  I just can’t see them.

  By the time I start to run to the shore, the wolf-cub is already ahead of me, leaping in great strides, skidding on to the shingle, flipping rocks over with his paw, as if the stag or Polly might be hiding under them.

  *You won’t find them there –*

  *I’m not looking for them!* he snaps back. *I’m looking for the bug.*

  *General!* I shout out. *General – are you still here?*

  Nothing comes back – just the wind in the rushes, and the sound of the cub sniffing the ground like he wants to snort it right up.

  *There is a scent here. Another human. I can follow their tracks.*

  I look up ahead at the reeds and grasses. I can’t see any sign of anything, but he’s determined.

  *Let us follow the track and the scent while it is still fresh,* urges the wolf-cub.

  Slumped on a rock, I slowly move a puddle of leaves around with my foot, trying to focus and think of a plan. And as I move the leaves around I see some white pebbles. Or maybe pieces of bone.
/>   Square-shaped pieces of bone.

  My heart leaps up into my throat as I realize that they’re not pieces of bone – they’re tiles.

  I fall on to my knees and start digging away the mud and rubbish. There are four letter tiles there, hurriedly hidden under a leaf. But the letters don’t form any word I recognize.

  I wonder if they’re the initials of something. May Follow Right Ahead? But where? My Fault Really Apologize? Doesn’t sound like Polly. Mr Firestick Returned Again? That’s something the stag would write, not Polly.

  *What have you found? What have you found?* shouts the wolf-cub, jumping right into the puddle with his shaggy paws and wet muzzle, kicking the tiles up into the air. They tumble in the sky before landing back down with a splash.

  *You idiot! Look what you’ve done!*

  But as I crouch down again, wiping the dirt off, I realize that he’s scattered them into sense.

  I scoop the tiles up in my hand and clench them tight.

  *Come on,* I say, standing up. I follow the wolf-cub along the shore as he tracks the trail right along the bank, away from the swamp, the leaf-cure and the whiterforce – sniffing every broken branch, every frond of leaf, for any clue he can gather. The pebbles and sand slowly disappear, buried under knotted rolls of creepers and brambles. We keep on pushing through them, until the coils and curls of greenery fall away and we find ourselves looking down from the top of a slope, where we pause to take a breath.

  A deep one.

  Because it’s like the country we’ve been travelling in has just been completely flattened into the biggest and emptiest field I have ever seen in my life. All the different colours, the greens and greys and yellows, all the different leaves and blades of grass, all rolled down into one grey-brown plain of mud, stretching right into the furthest distance, where the land meets the sky.

  Mud everywhere.

  Here and there are ragged islands of drooping pale brown stalks – which must be all that remains of what once grew in this giant field, now just rotting into the ground.

  And at the bottom of the slope, its engine idling, black smoke puffing into the air out of tall pipes, is a machine unlike any other I have ever seen. A huge green barn, covered in aerials and chutes, resting on its equally giant wheels, with a sharp line of blades fastened to the front, like a pair of jaws. A long ramp juts out from the back, at the mouth of the dark metal cave inside. It can only be one kind of machine. I look at the tiles clutched in my hand. A farm machine.

  But it’s not the farm machine which is making us run down the slope as fast as we can, Wolf-Cub and I, falling over one another, screaming and shouting, the pigeons crying overhead – it’s the girl and the deer climbing into it, stepping slowly up the metal ramp into the darkness.

  There’s a woman too, a woman I don’t know, in boots and a scarf, who seems to have smoke puffing out of her as well – guiding them in – but they’re too far away, the stag hasn’t heard us.

  *Over here, over here!* cry the pigeons from somewhere in the sky above, but now our friends are inside the farm machine and the ramp is slowly closing up behind them. The woman is chaining it up, and I’ve never wanted to yell, actually humanly yell, more in my life – but nothing comes out. Then she is climbing up a ladder, back into the cab at the front of the machine, and just as we reach the bottom of the slope, it growls and shudders, the orange lights on top of the cab begin to revolve and the farm machine lumbers off over the ground, churning a spray of earth and dead crops into the air.

  We chase after it as quick as we can, but find ourselves going slower and slower, our feet clogged with clay, stumbling over the freshly made ridges of earth, shrivelled stalks spread flat over each one, like tentacles.

  The pigeons fly faster, over the top of the machine, but there is nothing they can do to stop it.

  Then all of a sudden the wolf-cub stops. We can feel the ground shaking under us as the machine rolls into the distance, but it is getting further and further away, the noise fainter with every second.

  *What is it? Why have you stopped?*

  *I do not think we can stop this machine, Wildness. The birds can’t stop it – and I can’t help you either. We have lost them.*

  *Why are you giving up? I thought you just said you would do anything for me?*

  The second the words are out of my head, I wish I hadn’t said them. The wolf-cub’s shoulders droop and he looks down at the ground.

  But there isn’t time to say sorry. I look at the shimmering green block on the horizon, shrinking slowly out of view, steaming smoke into the sky. I clutch the leaves and tiles in my pocket – and realize what I have to do. I don’t run after it.

  Instead I plant my feet firmly on the ground and try to concentrate. To listen.

  *Are you listening? I know you’re here! * I call out.

  There’s no response, nothing, just the faint roaring of the machine in the distance.

  *I know you’re here!* I call out again.

  Snakes in the fish-road. Voices in the swamp. There must be something, even in this dead field of stalks and mud.

  *Whoever you are, whoever is here – I am the Wildness and I command you to help us.*

  The machine is heading for the horizon. Then something runs over my feet.

  I look down, and squint. A single tiny, furry ginger mouse. My heart sinks.

  *How can you help us?*

  *You’ll want that metal beast stopping, no doubt.* She jerks her head towards the disappearing monster.

  *Yes,* I say, *but how are you—*

  *Easy as corn pie, my fine two-legged sir. That monster – this is what you lot call a kombylarbester. There’s a little black tail of a wire, you see, runs down the back, under the hatch. A couple of quick chews on that and –*

  *Well, could you – you know – just do something?*

  The mouse wipes her face with her paws. *Oh, I’d love to. Oh, believe you me – I would love nothing more. Problem is, see, there’s no way I can actually get to the wire by myself, on account of it being a fast-moving object right at the other end of this field. Cos normally, right, this is performed as a stationary procedure on the kombylarbester, when it’s not moving, at night. There’s a little chute, you see, that one poking out the back there – that’s the one, that’s it – and we just climb down that basically. Never done it on a moving one before.*

  She sucks her teeth.

  And then they are above us, grey dots and a white one in the sky, before I even ask. Diving down into the stalks and grabbing the mouse between their claws, so she shoots up in the air past my nose, dangling by her tail.

  *Hey – are you having a laugh or what? I’m not going anywhere with a blooming pigeon –*

  But they are gone, off into the sky, up high, and then I see – silhouetted against the setting sun – a wriggling ball drop high from their claws, still screaming loud enough for us to hear, down into a metal tube sticking out of the kombylarbester’s thrumming engine.

  I close my eyes. I don’t want to look.

  And just as I think we’ve lost them forever – and the machine is about to disappear out of sight –

  Everything stops – the humming, the grinding, the clacking and the lights. Just like that. Winding down with a huge groan, like the engine itself has been given an injection to put it to sleep.

  I open my eyes. She did it. The mouse actually did it. I feel dizzy, every part of me tingling and fizzing with excitement. Running back, I find the cub still in the shadows of the stalks. I give him a hug.

  *She did it! The mouse did it, Cub!*

  *Maybe that mouse did play a small part in it,* he says, all quiet and sad, *but I think I played the best part.*

  I slap his side. *Of course you did, you totally did.*

  Then we’re running towards the machine as fast as we can, talking quickly, until just as we reach it, out of breath and exhausted, high above our heads a door swings open out of the metal green wall of the machine. And the driver of the
kombylarbester climbs down to meet us.

  PART 5: SHE KNOWS YOUR FATHER

  It’s a woman with ruddy cheeks, splattered with mud and engine grease, blonde hair tied up in a scarf wrapped round her head. She takes a wedge of smouldering cigar out of her mouth, chucks it on the ground and squashes it into the stubble with her heel. Then she jabs her finger at me.

  ‘What you looking at me like that for, little man? I was going to come back and get you as well. Your young lady friend was very firm on that point.’ She flicks a bit of ash off her shoulder, pointing at the silent machine behind her, oily smoke still trailing into the sky from its exhausts. ‘Or at least that was my plan, till the flaming engine just cut out. Still, nothing that can’t be fixed, I’m sure.’

  I think of the mouse wriggling about in the machine’s hot pipes.

  *I do not like this woman or her smell, Wildness.* growls Wolf-Cub.

  The woman folds her arms, rocking back on her heels, looking us up and down. And then a toothy smile cracks across her face and she stretches her arms out wide as if to hug us all.

  ‘No need to look at me like that, my lad! I’m going to help you, you daft thing. Already helped your friend Polly – found her down by the river, I did – and in a terrible state she was. You must be Kester,’ she says, and there’s a strange flicker across her face for a second, but then she’s all smiles again, bending down to face us dead on. ‘You can call me Ma, if you like.’

  I can’t call her anything, but I nod and glance towards the dead machine, thinking of the others inside.

  ‘Fair enough. You need help, I hear. And you’ve come to the right place for it. I’m no friend to cullers.’ She twists to look at the wolf-cub, hands on her thighs. ‘But first, I’ve just got to check one thing, if you don’t mind.’

  Before the cub can do anything, she strides forward and, straddling him from behind, grabs his head tight between her legs so he can’t snap at her. He wriggles, but she’s got him tight. With her other hand she whips a silvery pencil torch out of her back pocket, which she shines right in his eyes. Ignoring his yelps, she calmly shines the torch all over one rolling eye, and then the other, before releasing him on to the ground with a thump.