by Piers Torday
I look down at the knife in my shaking hand, and again at the stag. In his eyes there is only encouragement, nothing else. My brain is racing, thinking of everything he has taught me, but this time we’re surrounded. There are no varmints here to come out of the ground or fishroad to save us.
And as if it can sense my thoughts, as if it was wired into my head rather than strapped round my wrist, my watch buzzes angrily. I don’t want to take my eyes off Ma or the stag, but I glance quickly down at the flashing pale square –
One word.
DON’T
Then it’s gone, as quickly as it came, the screen black as before. There’s no time to think –
‘Come on, boy – don’t be shy,’ says Ma, giving me a shove. ‘Don’t pretend you aren’t hungry too.’
Don’t? Don’t? No, I won’t.
I fling down the knife, which bounces and shines on the ground, resting at Ma’s feet.
There’s a gasp from the crowd. Ma isn’t having that though. She picks up the knife, takes my arm and squeezes my hand around the handle, lifting it up, so the knife – its point glittering – is poised just above a plump vein running across the stag’s throat, pumping faster and faster.
*Make it quick,* says the stag. *For I am ready.*
*But I can’t,* I say. *I don’t want to kill you. I don’t want you to go—*
*I made a promise,* is all he says.
Ma puts her hands over mine again, and the blade –
‘There, lad, I’ll guide you’ –
I close my eyes –
When the voice comes, it is loud and strong.
‘Stop!’
It’s Polly.
She’s stood up, and the crowd’s gaze – like a shower of arrows – has shot her way. She doesn’t seem bothered. Her face set, she steps forward.
I look at her as if to say, ‘What are you doing? Sit down!’
She shakes her head. Everyone’s looking at her, but she doesn’t care.
‘Kester. You always try to do everything on your own.’
That’s not true. I let her help me at Wind’s Edge, but—
‘It’s my turn now. My turn to help you, don’t you see?’
There’s confusion among the crowd now. Ma has paused, a frown on her face, but Polly is quite calm, stepping forward into the light.
‘It’s OK. It’s my turn to be brave now.’
People are asking each other questions, calling out, ‘Who is she?’ and, ‘What you on about, girl?’
She’s not listening to them. It’s like a force field, an invisible bubble that only she can see, has closed up around her. She picks her away towards us between all the sitting and lying bodies, like they were just logs or rocks. She sweeps a loose curl of hair back behind her ear. Everything is careful, thought through. She jabs at her chest, with a passion that surprises me. ‘I can talk, Kester. You can’t. Let me speak for you.’
‘All right, lass – but after we’ve eaten, all right?’ calls Ma.
She can’t see the force field. Polly shakes her head, like nothing in the world will change her mind, and steps closer towards the fire. Standing right in front of the flames – everyone watching – arms folded, immovable. When she speaks, it is loud and clear, so everyone can hear.
But she only says one thing:
‘You can’t kill that stag.’
Dead simple. Just like that.
There’s a stunned silence at first. Even from Ma. Then – right at the back, from the smoke-filled shadows, a shout –
‘Don’t be dumb! It’s only an animal!’
Followed by a laugh, a nasty dirty laugh. Then some people near the voice begin to chuckle as well – and then everyone begins to laugh, a ripple spreading through the crowd, like the fire itself, catching everyone it touches. Repeating Polly’s words back to her – ‘You can’t kill that stag’ – like she’d just said the world was flat and the moon was made of cheese.
Laughs and words, thrown at her from every side. Even Ma’s face crinkles up with laughter, and not the nice kind. Everyone roars and screams, slapping their thighs, heads thrown back, eyes watering, shoulders shaking – proper, proper laughing; you could probably hear it from a mile off.
Everyone laughing but Polly and me.
Ma’s face hardens again. As it does, and everyone sees Polly not blushing or backing down, the laughter fades away to a blanket of silence that flattens everything. Ma turns to face her at last, her voice rough and angry.
‘Why not, lass?’
When Polly replies she looks so pale, so tired and hungry like the rest of us, and yet so strong and brave at the same time. Her voice doesn’t waver.
‘Two reasons. One, because he’s the last one ever. We’re taking him, and the others, to Premium, whether you like it or not.’ Polly points at me. ‘And his father’s going to find a cure for them.’
There’s a cry of disbelief from the crowd and Ma explodes with rage.
‘I don’t bloody care what you think, little missy! Take them to the man Facto says started the thing in the first place – I don’t think so. And besides, what does it matter anyhow?’ She slaps the stag on the flank as if he was just a rock standing there, not a living, breathing thing. ‘In the end, they’re only bloody animals.’
But that is where she is so very wrong.
‘And the second reason,’ says Polly, ‘is this.’ She digs into her pocket, and pulls something out of it. Something small and pale, a ball of wax, squashed and misshapen by the journey, sitting in her outstretched hand.
The pine resin Polly collected by the fish-road.
‘It might come in useful, you never know.’
She glances at me, like I’m meant to be doing something – and Ma squints from the other side of the circle to see what she’s holding and then shakes her head with irritation, leaving the knife in my hand and striding round to Polly. ‘What on earth …? Right, I’ve had enough of these children’s games.’
There’s murmuring and muttering of agreement all around. I quickly glance at the stag. He’s following her every move as intently as I am.
Polly. The girl who guarded her cat with a gun.
She keeps looking at me. Again and again.
Why? Crosser and crosser glances, like I’ve forgotten my lines in a film I didn’t know I was in.
But I can’t think. I’m completely distracted by watching her and Ma –
And then – I’m so stupid –
Like a massive penny dropping inside my brain, I realize.
I nod back, to show I’ve understood –
Just as Ma gets to her, Polly chucks the resin up into the air.
Everyone freezes – the crowd, heads back, Ma mid-stride round the fire, me, the stag, the men holding him – watching the waxy ball roll and spin through the air, till it falls straight into the heart of the fire – and everything goes bang.
The resin ball explodes inside the fire with an earsplitting boom, sending a mushroom cloud of dirty flames up into the night, half-burnt planks and oil drums flying, hurling through the air, black clouds billowing out, everyone screaming, running for cover, coughing and choking.
I whip round and with the knife cut the ropes holding the stag. He rears up and knocks the man holding the reins flying on to his front with a powerful kick. Then there is Bodger, stomping out of the smoke, trying to grab the whirling ropes spinning in the air, and he gets a hoof right in the jaw and slams on to his back like a felled tree.
The smoke clouds grow lower, blacker and thicker.
One sleeve over my mouth to help me breathe, I scoop up the mouse and jump on to the stag. He leaps into the centre of the fire circle, scattering the onlookers, who swear and shout as they trip over one another in the rush to get out of the way.
As we break through the moving line of people I catch sight of Polly dead ahead on the other side of the flames, waiting for us. But Ma is fighting through the smoke towards her too, wiping the soot out of her eyes, reaching out �
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Grabbing the stag tight with my knees, spurring him on, we leap forward faster – I lean down and take Polly’s outstretched hand. With every muscle in my body, I hoist her up, just out of Ma’s grasp –
‘Stay where you bloody are!’ Ma snarls. ‘That’s my beast now. Your father took my last ones, and I’ll be damned if I let you …’
But I think Polly and I are the only ones who can hear her now, over the scrambling, the voices shouting, and it’s hard to make anything out through the chaos. Men, women, children, falling over one another in the smoke as they run from the flames.
The stag ignores them, charges directly into the crowd, and batters straight through a rundown fence at the edge of the field like it was made of paper, landing with a stony thud back in the farmyard.
*The others – quick!* I yell.
He doesn’t reply, just nods, and we are pounding straight through a line of connected barns, slamming into a wall of bales wrapped tight in black plastic, ripping them with his horns, as they scatter everywhere like giant boulders and then –
Wolf-Cub jumps up, straining at the leash holding him to the wall. *I knew you would come for us, Wildness!*
Polly leaps off and unties his rope, while I jump down and let the cockroach out of his jar. He rolls out in a huff, shaking the little wings on his back, those wings he never actually seems to use. *Thank you, soldier. I shall be complaining at the highest level about our mistreatment as prisoners of war,* he barks.
I unhook the door to the pigeons’ cage and they fly out in a flurry, straight into my face. Only the scruffy white pigeon is left, pecking around on his own in the corner, like he doesn’t want to leave. I stick my head in.
*Hey, white pigeon, don’t get too cosy in here.* He ignores me. I shake the cage. *Look, I’ve set you free for once.* No response. *Do I not even get a thank-you?*
He waddles right up to the entrance, and looks around at his empty prison.
*Cosy in here, thanks.* And with that he grabs the cage-door hook with his beak, and snaps it shut.
Strange bird.
There are shouts coming from the field. We haven’t got long. I turn to them all, to see the mouse doing a Storytelling Dance of Explanation about what happened by the fire. Their chatter fades away to an embarrassed silence as they see me watching, and none of them – including the stag, his eyes streaming from the smoke – will look at me.
I know what this is about, and I’m not having it.
When the stag asked me in the field, I couldn’t answer. I didn’t know. Perhaps the watch was trying to tell me something. I don’t know if what Ma says is true. Dad used to say, throwing his hands up, when he couldn’t win an argument with Mum – which was quite often – ‘Well, you might say that – but as a scientist –’ (here Mum would groan with her head in her hands) ‘– I can’t speak about what I don’t know, only what I do know. So there.’
So there.
*Now you might have heard that woman say things about my father and his magic, things you might not have liked.* The shouts grow nearer. *I don’t know if any of those things are true. I’ll tell you what is true though. You might believe in your old dreams and your calls. But I believe in something else. The only thing I’ve had to believe in for the last six years – my dad, and the good he does with his magic. And I can tell you this for a fact – if my father did start the berry-eye, he’s the one person who will be able to stop it.*
They all stare at me.
There’s a silence which seems to last forever.
And then slowly the mouse takes to the floor to do a very quiet and gentle We Still Believe In You Dance. Then the wolf-cub is licking his nose, and the General is muttering, *Well spoken, soldier. Like a true general.* Even the white pigeon finally emerges from his cage to say that he believes I’m the one person who can’t stop the berry-eye.
The stag tilts his horns towards us, and Polly and I leap on to him. I roar over the sound of the fire and the shouts heading our way, *The cullers want to exterminate you. The outsiders want to eat you. But I promise – I’m going to take you to a man who wants to help you – and once we’ve found him, we’re not leaving till he does!*
The wild’s cheers seem to drown out the cries of the outsiders running after us as the stag races out of the bale barn and we bank sharply, down to the corner of the yard, following the birds down a bumpy track, out of Ma’s farm gates and on to a road.
And we don’t stop running till the light of the fire and the angry shouts have disappeared.
Old Burn Farm seems far away by the time we reach the first fork in the road. I call a halt and, wiping the worst of the soot from around my eyes, look behind me at my wild. They’re all just staring at me, waiting for the next move.
Behind us lies everything that we have been through – and in front of us, the empty road.
The road that goes back to what I know, or at least, what I thought I knew.
The road that leads to Premium.
As we march down the empty road, the farm far behind us, the wolf-cub suddenly stops. So suddenly that I nearly fall right over him.
*Wildness? What’s that noise?*
*What noise?*
He listens – and every hair of his fur seems to be standing on end, and then finally I can hear it too. It’s like only a rumble at first, but unmistakable.
The noise of something else on the road.
A noise I recognize immediately – because the last time I heard it, we were inside the van making it.
Skuldiss.
And getting nearer every second.
Quickly I order the pigeons to find a safe route, and they fly off to scout ahead, the rumble of the culler van growing louder and louder, and I turn to see bars of headlights swooping round corners in the dark, peering over the brow of the hill behind –
Then the birds are back –
*We shall follow the line of the road but not stay on the road,* the grey pigeons call down. *It is the safest way.*
*Yes, don’t follow us, it’s not safe,* says the white pigeon.
We hurry through a narrow gap in a hedge, into a field of brambles that prick us with their thorns as we stumble through them.
All of us, including the stag, crouch down low behind the hedge as the cullers thunder past on the other side.
Then, like the night has eaten it up, the van’s gone.
It’s quiet and dark all around and suddenly my head feels light as air. Suddenly the ground seems like the place where I want to be, and I slump on to it. Polly is digging into her bag immediately.
‘You’re hungry. You need to eat. We need to eat. There might be some cat biscuits left.’
But there aren’t. Only a disintegrated, inedible soggy mush.
I can feel Polly thinking for a moment in the dark.
‘Here. Give me your watch,’ she says.
I can’t imagine how we’re going to eat a watch, but I unstrap it anyway and pass it to her. Straightaway she is on her knees in among the hedgerow, shining it into every corner. I can hear muttering, tearing and picking.
Then she is back, clutching handfuls of sticky leaves that glisten in the watch-light, shoots and wrinkled berries. The shoots and leaves are sharp to the taste, but you can eat them. The berries too are sour – but I know they won’t give me a fever because Polly has chosen them. She has even found a strange-looking root, which if you scrape the dirt and rough skin off is snow white underneath and lifts the roof of your mouth off with its heat – but we eat the whole thing greedily.
‘You’ve just got to pretend it’s your favourite food in the world,’ says Polly, licking her fingers.
With a jolt, I realize I no longer know what that is.
I can feel the stag and the pigeons growing restless, so we keep on marching through the thorns in the dark, until the day begins again, with its cold grey light. Both the stag and I glance up at the sky. Swollen rain clouds are gathering and rolling.
But for now – no more
rain comes.
Polly rests her head on my back, dead to the world, and I can hear the mouse snoring in my pocket. (Probably the Stationary Dance of Solid Sleep.) Everyone looks tired – even the pigeons don’t fly all the time, but take it in turns to waddle along the ground behind the others.
We head out of the brambles and on to a churned-up mud track, to the edge of a wood where the trees bend right over the path. The gnarly branches are hunched up close together, warped twigs all intertwined. Even in daylight, the path disappears into the woods in total blackness.
The stag pulls up sharp, sniffing the shoots of thorns which curl around the entrance.
*Is this the only way, birds?* he calls. *I do not like the smell of this place.*
Wolf-Cub slowly comes to a halt as well, looking suspiciously at the dark path ahead. Polly clutches my arm. The pigeons don’t give it a second thought though, ducking straight through under the arch of thorns.
*Come inside, come inside – this is the best way. No one will be able to see us here. This hide-all will conceal us for many strides.*
*Yes, no one will be able to see their way inside here,* says the white pigeon.
This time he seems to be the only pigeon actually making any sense. But we have no one else to follow.
The General leaps on to my head, bristling. *Have no fear. I shall be at your side ready to despatch any dangers we might face in here.*
It’s decided, then.
*Stag, I think we should follow the birds. They have guided us well so far.*
*As you wish,* he says abruptly – and trots on so suddenly that Polly and I almost don’t have time to duck under the thorns, which knock the General spinning to the ground.
*At your side or underneath you, as you wish,* he mutters as he picks himself up.
The further we go inside the wood, the harder it is for any light to pierce the treetops twisted together above our heads, only just making it through in grey pools here and there.
But the strangest thing about the wood isn’t the darkness.
It’s the quiet.
It’s so quiet in here, so deathly quiet, that you can hear every twig crack, every snort of breath, even every twitch of the mouse’s whiskers. Soon none of us is saying a word, just crunching silently over the forest carpet, careful step after careful step.
