by Piers Torday
‘Kester,’ whispers Polly.
I wave at her to be quiet. I dart across to the iron scoop of an upturned digger and crouch down in the shadow of its jaws, beckoning Polly to follow.
‘There’s something I need to tell you first,’ she whispers, squatting down beside me. Tight-lipped, I shake my head at her. Now is not the time.
Then a truck door opens and slams, followed by voices and boots clomping towards us. I peer just over the top of the digger, and can see some men and women streaming down through the yard.
‘Kester, it’s important,’ Polly says in her extra-stubborn voice.
I nudge my head up above the iron battlements again and see where the outsiders are headed.
A giant barn with grey concrete sides and a steel door. It looks like a prison. They have just disappeared into it, swallowed up by the gloom.
Jabbing my finger ahead, I sprint out and fling myself against the side of the deserted stables next to the barn, crouching behind a half-open door. I turn back to see the shadowy figure of Polly still hiding in the digger. Waving my hand like crazy, I try and draw her across. But she doesn’t move. I throw my hands up in the air at her.
‘But what if someone sees us?’ she hisses at me.
Looking around one more time, and then counting to five, I give her the all-clear and she starts to run, back bent – just as another crowd of shadowy figures arrives. I signal at her to halt, which she does, right in the middle of the yard. She’s frozen, kneeling down, as if she was tying a shoelace.
The men and women stomp straight past her and into the shadows between the barns. Holding my breath, not daring to move a muscle, I count them, one by one, as they disappear into the darkness. Glancing back, I can see Polly actually shaking, but the people go on without even looking once in our direction.
All, that is, apart from the last one.
He stops for moment, swaying and wobbling, right in front of us. I can’t see his face; he’s just a crumpled-looking shadow, holding a shining bottle in his hand. He looks over towards Polly and stares at her. Then he rubs his eyes, like he can’t believe what he’s seeing, and hiccups to himself. Looks at the bottle in his hand, shakes his head and chucks it over his shoulder – it lands with a muffled smash.
He scratches his head and stumbles off after the others.
Polly races across the ground towards me. We spread ourselves flat against the wall of the barn the outsiders disappeared into. Straining to listen, I can just hear distant voices, and music, and another sound too, one I don’t recognize. It doesn’t matter. These people took away my animals. These people will know where they are.
‘You’ve got to listen to me, Kester,’ Polly whispers fiercely. ‘I asked that woman to help us, but she made me answer all these questions while we were walking to the kombylarbester. I had to tell her what we were doing –’
Good. Then at least Ma knows how massive this is, that we aren’t just playing a kid’s game.
‘Even if you aren’t going to listen, Kester, I’m going to tell you. She asked me everything, and I told her, I had to. Everything, including what Captain Skuldiss said about you.’
A small warning light begins to glow in my head.
‘She asked me your name and I told her. Don’t you see? She knew who you were.’
The alarm light in my head begins to flash and spin.
‘Not just you. She knew who your dad was as well.’
I look at her for a moment. Then there is a familiar voice squeaking up from our feet.
*Finally! You don’t half get around, you two – can you try staying in one place next time?*
*Harvest Mouse!* I crouch down. I never thought I’d be so happy to see a mouse. She’s rubbing her whiskers with her front paws, and then rearing up on her back legs, and then falling down again, before shaking her tail to an imaginary beat inside her head.
*The Finding A Talking Human Again After An Extended Period Of Captivity Dance!* she exclaims proudly.
‘I forgot how small she is,’ Polly says, sounding a bit disappointed. I don’t know how big she expected a mouse to be. Well, no matter how small, or how many silly dances she makes up, I’m glad to have her here. Her tail flicks swiftly.
*Are you two going to stand there all evening, or do you want me to do my Dance of Hurrying Dawdling Children Along? We don’t have much time – follow me!*
The harvest mouse hurries into the barn, and we follow her in the shadows as she weaves quickly through a labyrinth of dark passageways, towards the sound of the chatter and the music.
*How did you escape?* I ask her.
*This old mouse can get in or out of anywhere. You must know that by now.*
She darts under a heavy steel door, which we push open and find ourselves in an alleyway between two barns. The voices and drums swell in our ears, and Polly tugs at my sleeve.
‘Look,’ she says. ‘The light.’
What light? I think, looking around at the shadows. Then, following her pointing finger, I see it. Not just any light – far down at the end of the alleyway, sliding long tentacles of shadow between the walls. And I realize what the other noise was.
A fire.
*I told you there was no time to be lost,* says the mouse, scurrying on down by the edge of the alley.
We walk out of the shadows and into a field. Not a huge plain of mud this time, but a patch of bumpy grass with rusting shards of farm equipment littered everywhere, tangled weeds underfoot. And right in the middle of it, burning a crater-sized hole around itself, a bonfire.
A bonfire as tall as Bodger – as tall as two Bodgers. Made out of logs, tractor tyres, planks, dented oil drums – anything to hand, a pyramid of flaming junk crackling and roaring into the sky, giving off showers of sparks.
We all hesitate for a second – hypnotized by the flames, the mouse’s tail flicking anxiously from side to side. We’re right at the back of a huge crowd gathered round the fire, a sea of backs and heads. In the glow at the front, I can recognize some faces from earlier, like the old lady who held the mouse – but I can’t see Ma or Bodger anywhere. There must be a hundred or more people. Thin, hungry faces, their cheekbones casting deep shadows, men, women and children of all ages – even a toddler stumbling around at the front, swaying to the pulse of the music.
This isn’t just a few outsiders. This feels like a whole country, having a country-sized party.
There’s a line of girls sat down at the front with drums between their knees, banging and slapping away, and a bearded man behind playing a pipe. Somewhere I can hear a guitar – and everyone slaps their thighs, occasionally singing along, though I can’t make out the words. I can feel the rhythm of the drums drive through my body. I pick the mouse up in my palm, and she can’t help but dance along too. The air is alive with talk and beats and anticipation, then the music and chatter fade away, and for a moment all I can hear is the crackling logs and the beating of our hearts. Only for a moment though, because then the drumming starts up again, and begins to get faster –
And faster and faster –
And faster –
Everyone looks around, as if they’re expecting something. Then, appearing out of the darkness, striding through the crowd, who scramble to make way for her, clapping and patting her on the back as they do –
It’s Ma.
Strong and fierce, her eyes bright with the flames, she walks right into the middle of the circle and claps her hands. The music and singing and yelling stop dead – just like that. For a minute, she walks all the way round the circle, in silence. Not saying a word, just looking at everyone.
We stand back, hidden by the shadows and the crowd.
Her lips are shining blood red in the light, and her hair is swept up tightly on her head. She also has something she didn’t have before – a huge knife, tucked into her belt, flashing with every step.
Ma smiles, reaches carefully into her pocket, and pulls out a cigar. In a single move she draws the knife and lops th
e tip off. The bearded pipe player offers her a smouldering branch pulled from the fire. She lights the cigar, takes a big puff and blows the smoke up into the sky.
Then she begins, walking as she talks.
‘First came the red-eye. We lost our beasts. Some lost pets. All the creatures that make up this countryside – our countryside. We lost our crops. We lost –’ she pauses, and jabs at the air with her cigar – ‘everything that we knew.’
People mutter, but she silences them with a wave of her hand and shoves the cigar back in the corner of her mouth.
‘And so came Facto. They promised to sort out the virus. To keep us safe, to feed us. They made promises.’ She lowers her voice, so we have to listen more closely to hear. ‘What do we make of those promises now?’
An angry mutter ripples around the crowd. She repeats her question – louder, crosser.
‘I said – what do we make of those promises now?’
‘They’re barefaced liars!’ shouts the bearded man at the front, leaping up.
‘I hear you, Joseph, I hear you,’ says Ma, gesturing at him to sit down. ‘They killed all the animals the virus hadn’t took, but they still couldn’t get rid of it. Then they forced everyone to move to the cities, declaring this land – our land – a quarantine zone –’ more shouts and boos here – ‘and then …’ She looks down, grimacing, as if she doesn’t want to say the next bit. ‘Then they stopped giving us formula altogether.’
I give Polly a nudge in the ribs, but she’s staring at Ma, transfixed.
‘They wanted us to starve rather than carry on living in the countryside. Where we’ve lived all our life.’ The crowd aren’t whooping at this. They’re moaning.
‘And for the final insult –’ she spits on the fire, and it sizzles back in reply – ‘Facto told us that their top vet – the man meant to be looking after our animals – was the man who had caused the red-eye in the first place. The man whose experiments had gone wrong and unleashed hell on the world.’ The crowd are actually growling now. Ma curls her face into a flame-lit sneer and lowers her voice, and I have to strain to hear her, peering through the haze of smoke, as she says –
‘Professor Dawson Jaynes.’
There are more angry murmurs in the crowd – people start to shout and bang tin cups against the ground. I hang my head low, as if my dad’s name was written in glowing letters on my back. I can’t look at Polly or the mouse – but it doesn’t matter, I’m only just aware of where we are.
Because right now I’m somewhere else entirely, in my head, six years ago.
‘I’m working on a new …’ Dad had said, his voice trailing away as usual, not turning round from his computer, even though it was midnight and he hadn’t eaten anything that evening. Correction – we hadn’t eaten anything that evening. ‘This could be really … big.’ He dug his keyboard out from under the messy pile of papers on his desk, and brightly coloured shapes floated across the screen, bubbles and twisting spirals and spiky blobs. ‘Yes, Kes, this could change everything. This would really have made your mum …’
Click went the computer.
Ma pauses, letting the words sink in, and strides round to the other side of the fire. She looks over the crowd, blazing more fiercely than the fire itself. She pounds her fist into her other hand. ‘They said we were finished. They left us to starve. But now we shall take our revenge.’
Suddenly it’s like Ma is looking dead at us, and we both freeze, but then her gaze moves on.
‘Because, friends, a little miracle happened out on the plains today.’ A round of applause. ‘What if I was to tell you that I stumbled upon the son of Professor Jaynes himself.’ There’s a big cheer. I duck down even lower behind the crowd. Ma stops pacing and slows right down.
Everyone goes deathly quiet. This is what she’s been building up to all along.
‘Facto told us the animals are dead. They told us all the animals are dead. But they lied.’ She nods, agreeing with herself. ‘Because lo and behold, here is the son of the man responsible, in person, with a whole troop of living, breathing animals!’
A huge cheer goes up, and the bearded man with the flute plays a little scale on it that goes up and down. Ma lowers her hands, as if to say, ‘Enough.’ The muttering fades away.
‘So now,’ she says, the flames burning bright in her eyes, ‘we shall take back what is ours, what is our due after waiting and starving so long, all these long, lean years – we shall feast!’
The crowd start to chant, very quietly at first. She’s talking about food, but I have a very bad feeling in my stomach. I couldn’t feel less hungry right now.
‘Feast! Feast!’
We look around. Everyone is chanting. Every man, woman and child. It begins to get louder, and louder and louder.
‘Feast! Feast! Feast!’
Louder and louder the cries go, as all eyes turn back towards the tall barns of the farm.
‘FEAST! FEAST! FEAST!’
The whole crowd are on their feet, shouting, stamping, chanting –
There is a convoy of men making their way towards us from the barns –
Can’t see properly at first, they’re carrying something, pulling something, Ma looking on, gesturing them to hurry up –
And then all the chants and drums fade to nothing in my mind, like they’re happening on a different planet –
As I see what the men are pulling –
A crazed animal rearing and bucking.
Polly sees too.
‘Oh, Kester,’ she says.
It’s the stag.
*
He’s wrapped in ropes – ropes around his horns, ropes around his muzzle, ropes around his legs and body – and he’s bucking and rearing and kicking and bellowing. The ropes are held – just – by a fat man and a spotty skinhead, who struggle to hold on as the stag lashes out, his eyes rolling.
The crowd are going crazy now, surging and dancing around the stag – baiting him with shouts and cries. The last stag ever in the whole world.
Then the chanting and music grind to a halt.
There is silence apart from the crackling fire, and the stag straining at his ropes – every now and then the fat man calls out, ‘Hi-ya!’ and cracks a whip, which makes the stag rear and buck all the more. I can see he’s covered in cuts and scratches.
‘Don’t do anything. Not yet,’ whispers Polly.
But I don’t have a choice – because I am lifted clean off the ground, by an enormous arm around my waist.
Bodger.
With a grunt he pushes his way towards the fire, trampling junk and weeds, the crowd melting out of his way. It might be night but I feel like I have a bright searchlight shining right on me. I beat my fist against Bodger’s side, and might as well be hitting a concrete wall for all the difference it makes.
He dumps me on the hard ground right at Ma’s feet, and there’s a burst of applause, as if he’s just done a trick. Ma musses my hair, and I jerk away.
‘No need to be so unfriendly, Kester,’ she says. ‘Enjoyed the show so far, have you? Did you think it wasn’t for your benefit? Do you think we would have let you escape so easily?’ She grunts, like Bodger. ‘Well, you haven’t seen nothing yet. The star turn is still to come.’
Then, everyone watching with bated breath, she reaches into her belt and pulls out the massive knife.
‘You,’ she says, ‘you’re our star turn.’
A knife which she hands to me. It’s heavy and solid, pulling my arm down with the weight. I don’t want to – I can’t …
‘Go on,’ she says, pointing at the stag, rearing and bucking. ‘This is all your father’s fault. And in the country, this is how we make amends. You get first cut.’
My eyes widen and focus at the same time, taking in everyone and everything: the fire, shooting up to the stars, burning and hissing; Ma, her hand on my shoulder, gripping it tight; the faces of hundreds of hungry outsiders, nodding, urging me on, laughing, clapping, like this is a game …<
br />
Polly’s pale face right at the back of them, looking at me deadly seriously, as if she knows that what I do next will stay with us forever, that everything, all of it, rests on me; and finally, the stag himself, his muscles straining, a sheen of sweat all down his side.
The fat man pulls hard on the rope wound tight around his horns and the stag bellows in pain.
‘Hold still, you wretched beast, damn you!’ Fat Man yells.
*What do I do now?* I ask the stag, barely getting the words out, trembling with fear.
His head jerks back and forth like a puppet on a string and I actually hear the horns flex and crack under the pressure. But his reply to me is as steady as the flames in the fire.
*Is it true, what I heard her say?*
I don’t know how to answer.
And he screams again in pain, as his head is yanked back by Fat Man.
Ma puts her hand over my hand holding the knife, and squeezes it so tight that I gasp in pain. She whispers in my ear, ‘We’ll hold him, don’t be frightened.’ As if. Of the stag – never. ‘Aim for a clean cut across the throat, that’s the proper way.’ She steps back, waiting, gesturing me to cut whenever I’m ready. ‘We shall all dine well tonight, thanks to you. Dine like we haven’t dined for years.’
How could I be so wrong? The stag was right – we can’t trust any other humans. How can you ever trust someone who wants to eat you?
The girls at the front start on the drums again. The crowd begin to stamp their feet, banging cups, impatient now –
‘FEAST! FEAST!’
‘CUT! CUT!’
I know these people are only hungry. They haven’t eaten properly for months. We’re all hungry. I look again at the stag, his rolling brown eyes, his heart beating visibly under his chest, his great crown of horns – and try to answer his question.
*I don’t know –*
*Then there is only one way to find out. Do what you must,* he says, gritting his teeth. *A great stag always faces his fate. Just save the wild.*
