by Piers Torday
He shakes his head, breathing like he’s trying to steady himself, and mumbles something hard to hear above the wind. His side and brow are boiling up.
The others crowd round, looking –
Shaking, I press the button on my watch. Squeezing out the very last of the faint light left in its battery, I shine it into his eyes.
Eyes which now burn a deep, pulsing red.
*How long have you known?* I ask the stag.
*I had it from the start, when I first called, when I summoned you,* he whispers.
*But your eyes, they looked brown, you didn’t say –*
*The eyes are a late sign, as you know.* He rolls his up at me. *And if I had told you I was ill, would you have accepted our quest? Would you have let me carry you here?*
The harvest mouse, who had been clinging on to his horns, jumps off. *When the others in my nest were starving, when they were –* she pauses, gulps at the memory – *we used to do something, I don’t know if it would be any help now, but –*
*This is no time for a dance, Mouse.*
She looks hurt.
*I would never suggest a dance at a time like this. What kind of self-respecting harvest mouse do you take me for, my lad?* She scratches her nose crossly with her claws. *No, if you’d keep your thoughts in your head for just a single moment – we helped them like this.* And she hurries up the stag’s leg and on to his chest. The deer gives a low grumble, but doesn’t shake her off, as slowly, not missing a single bit, the mouse begins, with claws and teeth, to remove all the mud and thorns and twigs twisted in his fur.
I look round at the others. The stag is lying stretched out, surrounded by a circle of woodland animals.
Apart from the wolf-cub, who sits upright behind me. He whispers in the dark, *Normally this would be my chance to avenge the stag for the death of my father. I should tear his dying carcass to pieces.* The cub sounds matter-of-fact. *But I will not – for now – out of respect for you, Wildness.*
I turn on him. *He’s not dying! He’s not dying, OK?*
The wolf-cub shrinks away, cowering.
I turn back to the stag. *You didn’t say anything. Why didn’t you—*
*It makes no odds now. I have survived longer than I expected. I have carried you here, as the dream said I would.* The wind hits in rolling gusts, like jabs in the side, each one making us flinch. *Now you must go on and leave me here. Take the others, find your father and find us a cure. Find us all a cure. Hurry.*
I glance up at the darkening, brooding sky. *There is no way I’m leaving you here, not after everything—*
*All of that is meaningless unless you find us a cure. I will rest here until you return.*
I thump my fist into the ground, spraying him with a burst of loose soil. *We can’t leave you here, on the edge of the city. Who knows what could happen? Anyone could find you, cullers – or worse. You’re not well enough for us to leave you on your own!*
*You will go faster without me.*
*Then what’s the point of it all? Telling me to be the Wildness, telling me to make decisions, to take charge – and then when I do, you don’t listen. We can’t leave you here! You’ll die!*
*Maybe, Wildness,* says Wolf-Cub, nervous I will turn on him again, *that is what he wants.*
*But it’s not what I want!*
‘He can look after himself. He’s taken care of us all the way, hasn’t he?’ says Polly, touching me on the back.
The others begin to drift even further away from the stag, towards the lights, as if they have decided already.
I kneel down by him again. He is so weak I have to really strain to hear him.
*You are a good Wildness. I have trained you well. But you must trust me now. This is the right thing to do.* Foamy mucus drips out of his mouth on to the ground. *The only thing to do.*
I stroke his soft, wet nose and his chipped horns. He’s carried me so far. I didn’t have anything before I met the stag; and now –
*Oh yes, you did, Kester,* he murmurs, a glimmer of a smile in his burning eyes.
*Just promise me,* I say, trying to ignore my tears, *that you will be all right. And I promise we will come back and find you. And we will make you better.*
He grunts. Then his tone changes, just like the wind. *Go now. Before a storm comes – go!*
I need no further telling. I touch his warm head once more, stand up and turn around to face the city fence. As I do, my watch vibrates with a last spasm of energy. I glance down, and have to strain to see two words, only just visible on the dying screen:
GIVE UP
I turn the watch off. Give up? That is the one thing I am not doing, whoever or whatever is trying to tell me. I feel so full of fire, that I don’t think a whole regiment of cullers could stop me now – the wild is waiting.
Beyond the fence there are towers, lights, people and machines. Everything that used to feel normal. And now – I don’t know how it will feel.
But without waiting another second I start striding straight towards the fence, Polly hurrying behind me.
‘Where are you going, Kester? Wait! You can’t just walk into Premium with a hundred animals!’
Watch me.
We enter the city through a hole in the fence, blown open by the wind.
Then we’re sneaking along alleyways, striding under shady bridges splattered with graffiti, breathing in as we slide along the narrow gaps in between buildings. Only Wolf-Cub keeps up with me, as we leave the last of the countryside behind.
Now we march up a white concrete ramp, which rises through the forest of towers and twists and turns on high pillars, raised above more wasteland far below, over slums filled with rickety sheds, caravans and piles of rubbish. Steam and another smell rises up, the smell of something oily that makes me gag – and the General’s antennae twitch eagerly.
Then the road swoops down again into the city proper, taking us along wide streets lined with grey old-fashioned buildings with tattered flags dangling outside, and small withered trees in pots standing in rows, like guards. We come to a sprawling block of shops and their never-ending windows. The old hare stops for a moment and peers at his reflection in them, gawping at the faded and peeling signs plastered across the giant walls of glass.
No more shops as the road leads into the heart of the city – just the towers we saw from the cliff, shining glass skyscrapers that climb into the clouds, each one home to thousands of people, the very top floors soaring high above even the pigeons.
*How do people live there? We couldn’t fly that high.*
*Yes, how do people fly up that high?*
‘Where is everyone, Kester?’ asks Polly, looking around at the deserted streets. ‘I thought Premium would be full of people.’
It is. But people frightened of animals, frightened of the plague they carry – perhaps people who have never seen a living one before now.
As we walk past the towers, there are pale faces pressed to ground-floor windows – blinds hurriedly slam down, lit rooms go dark as we pass. Headlights approach us, making the polecats start in alarm, but when the drivers see the animals they brake and reverse quickly or dive down a side street out of our way.
*Hah! None dare approach the mighty cockroach warrior!* says the General from my shoulder.
We continue down the street, past a silent government building that looks like a locked box, and over a bridge, taking us over the river, early-morning mist still curling along it, hiding the ships and cranes moored along its edge.
The River Ams. The river that was once a fish-road.
The fish-road that splits Premium in two, between the new half and the old half – where I once lived with Mum and Dad.
We stop to catch our breath, the animals peering through the bars of the bridge at the water flowing below. I look out further – to my right, where way down along the opposite bank, four tall and dark chimneys stick up through the fog. I can’t help but shiver, seeing them again for the first time in six years – the four t
owers of Factorium.
But we aren’t going there. After the bridge we turn left –
Then left – left again –
To where there are no towers of any kind, just a street with houses set back from it at the top of long drives, sealed off behind fences and walls and cameras and lamps that come on as you walk past. The wind seems to have followed us, curling down the roads. And now it’s not just a cold wind –
But a wet one as well.
We all look up at the clouds in the sky as spots of rain begin to explode on my hands. The rain that can mean only one thing.
The drops grow bigger and colder and wetter as we go past the lines of cars, raindrops now speckling the dark windscreens and shiny bonnets. I start to hurry, half running, Polly pulling her T-shirt over her head like a hood, trying to keep up as we turn at a polished kerb, into a big circle of a dead end.
My street – it’s my Culdee Sack, as Mum used to call it.
I know I should wait for the others, but I start to run.
‘Kester!’ yells Polly. ‘Where are you going? Wait for us!’
I’m not listening to her. All I can hear is the blood pounding in my head, the rain hammering on the pavement.
I glance at the different names of the houses flashing by on their shiny letterboxes, trying not to slip on the pavement growing slicker and wetter under my feet –
Until I reach the gates right at the end.
The gates of a low white house, standing on its own, the sheets of water bouncing off the glass roof that slides down one side, into the garden. Everything is just as it was six years ago. There are no lights on apart from the security lamps along the drive, like it’s a runway. I feel like a tiny kid again. Not for the first time, I wonder whether Dad is actually going to be pleased to see me.
‘Shall I come with you?’ Polly’s stopped a little way behind. She’s struggling to make her voice heard over the wind and the rain.
I shake my head, spraying wet everywhere – I have to do this by myself.
I wipe as much water as I can off a small metal box on the wall next to the gate, and type the code into the keypad …
Nothing happens.
I try again, wiping more water off, pressing harder this time – and to my relief the gates slither noisily back. He hasn’t changed the code. It’s only a small thing, I know, but it makes squelching up the long drive – in the glow of the security lights – easier than I thought it would be.
Because there’s a knot in my stomach, tangling up, growing warm in my belly.
I find myself pulling up my trackies, trying to flatten my hair despite the rain, wiping the worst of the mud off my face, straightening my sodden scarf. Here I finally am, six years later, standing on the doorstep of our own home in the rain, with a girl and over a hundred animals.
I count to ten, and press the doorbell.
It rings, but no one comes. I press it again.
Then a light comes on – at the end of the hall.
I can hear him coming down the passage.
Another light, a shadow appears behind the frosted glass, and all I’m thinking is, Open the flipping door –
A rattle and clunk of locks, a chain slides back, the door opens and –
‘Hello, childrens,’ says Captain Skuldiss. ‘Well, this is a nice surprise and how do you do.’
And everything goes black.
I’m back in Spectrum Hall, back in my room, right at the beginning. My window is broken again, rain and wind blowing on my face. I feel for my arms, my watch. I can’t see anything, everything is dark, but I am still – alive.
I know this because I’m in pain. There is pain all over, throbbing in my head, in my arms and in my legs. Pain I’ve felt before – from a metal crutch. I groan, try to move and a thousand nerves scream at me.
Then, just as before in my room, there are pigeons pecking at me, pulling my hair, pulling at my clothes, my ears and nose –
*Wake up! Wake up, Kester! We can’t do this alone! Help us!*
I open my eyes instead – because I can do that.
At first I can only see the darkness of the sky above, the rain still pouring on to my face. Where has the roof of my room gone? And then slowly, painfully, I realize where we are and I twist my head round on the wet road, to see what is happening at the end of it. To see what is happening in our drive, our street. I know it’s home, but it doesn’t feel like it any more.
Captain Skuldiss is standing in our open gateway with his back to me, lit by the security lamps. He flicks his wet hair back and flexes his fingers together with a nasty crack. I hear a scream from the other side of the road.
Polly. I can’t speak. I can’t move.
The pigeons fuss and pull at my hair.
Skuldiss points his crutch at the sky. I flinch. But there’s no shot. Instead a fierce glare fills the street. Tall floodlights, that I hadn’t seen in the dark, hidden in the shadow of the big houses, behind their high walls and gates, all blasting at once with a light as strong as a midday sun.
Skuldiss points his crutch again. An explosion of noise follows the explosion of light.
A van, splashing its way down the road. I can hear it screech and hiss to a halt at the entrance to the Culdee Sack. A door slides open and people are jumping out into the road with heavy boots.
I don’t need to see them to know who they are.
The van we last heard on the road from the farm.
Cullers.
There is no stag to stop them now. Skuldiss and the cullers’ van have blocked the only way out. My wild are surrounded by high walls and gates. Pain shoots through my neck and spine, but I force myself to turn and watch.
The Captain leaps further into the road, and Polly runs forward to meet him.
They’re arguing. Then Skuldiss grabs Polly and pins her to him with one crutch, before pointing the other directly at the wild.
The street falls quiet, not a sound from anyone, just the rain splashing down in sheets.
‘So, little girls,’ I hear, ‘as you can see, Captain Skuldiss always finishes his job.’ He swings his crutch round and round, pointing at and naming all the different animals in turn – at otters and polecats and rabbits – like they’ve ever done anything to him. Then he turns to her, and as if he’s asking her to choose her favourite colour, says –
‘So which one would you like me to kill first, please, little girls?’
Polly doesn’t reply to Captain Skuldiss, but just gives a little gasp of pain, as he squeezes his other arm tighter round her neck. There is no smile in his voice now.
‘Just go and bring me the dirty animals you would like to die first, and be quick about it, please.’ He shoves her back into the road, where I can see her facing the wild in the rain. ‘And remember, Uncle Skuldiss is watching, so no funny tricks, my little chickadee,’ he says, waving the gun-crutch at her.
I don’t know how long Polly stands there, just looking, the wild staring back at her.
I’m trying so hard to move, to speak, but nothing –
‘I’m wai-i-ting!’ sings out Captain Skuldiss.
She shakes her head.
He swings the crutch and jabs her in the back. ‘The very clever thing about these here bullets, you know, is that they work on little childrens just as well.’
Polly begins to sob, but she doesn’t raise an arm or point a finger. She doesn’t even look at the wild now and just stares at the ground.
Skuldiss stamps a crutch on the ground crossly. ‘Very well, have it your way,’ he says. And then starts to have a conversation with himself. ‘Oh! What’s that you say, little girls? You chose this sick beastie over here?’
He points the gun-crutch at one of the wild.
The quivering elderly hare.
‘The long eared rabbitty-thing. Very good. Are you sure?’
Polly doesn’t react.
‘I said, are you sure?’ repeats Skuldiss, jabbing her in the back of the legs.
She gives
the tiniest nod.
‘Thank you, little one. Now look, how easy it is!’
There’s a bang, wisps of smoke in the wet air and then, with a short sigh as if he was only breathing out, the hare slumps over on to the ground, a dark dot oozing right between his eyes, his long ears splayed out on the ground. The first animal who came and answered my call in the forest. He thought I’d saved him.
Polly gives a choked scream, like it died in her throat.
‘One down, ninety-nine to go,’ says Skuldiss.
The others begin to panic, rabbits scrabbling in all directions, polecats attempting to squeeze under gates, pine martens scrambling over walls –
I try to move, but waves of pain flood my brain, pinning me to the ground.
Skuldiss raises his crutch again, carefully takes aim, so cool, so calm, like he was taking pot-shots at tin cans in a fairground – and there’s another bang.
My wild are disappearing before my very eyes.
I can’t talk to them – all I can hear is the firing guncrutch and Polly, sobbing.
I slump back down. It’s a nightmare and I can’t wake up.
Wet feathers and claws fluster next to me.
*Kester! You have to save them. Now! You have to.*
It’s no good. It’s over. Dad’s not here. I tried.
*Kester, you promised. You promised the stag. You have to save them.*
No. No. I’m just a boy. He’s a maniac. I haven’t got a gun, I can’t walk – I roll over away from them on to my side. I can just see a blur of white feathers out of the corner of my eye.
*I saved this from the stag. I promised it for you.*
The white pigeon still makes no sense. But this time he’s insistent.
*Yes, we saved from the stag. For you.*
And then he’s pressing something against my clenched hand.
Something sharp as a dagger. Something held in his beak.
It’s a curved piece of pointed bone, shot from a stag’s horn.
The pigeons must have picked it up off the road – and kept it all this time.
More shots echo round the Culdee Sack.
I think of the stag, lying in the wasteland. I think of everything he said to me. I look at the white pigeon pecking at my hand, at his funny orange eyes.
