Harry the Poisonous Centipede

by Lynne Reid Banks

  “You are not. You’re as alive as I am.” Harry gave him a non-poisonous pinch with his pincers.

  “Ouch! Don’t DO that!” George sat up and shook himself.

  Harry was feeling very pleased with himself. He could really and truly swim! And he’d rescued George – saved his life!

  “What about the Up-Pipe then?” he teased. “Shall we go?”

  “Oh, shut up,” said George. But he got up and trailed after Harry along the edge of the rushing river of water, back to where they’d been.

  The water wasn’t rushing down from the Up-Pipe any more. Just trickling.

  “Why did the Hoo-Mins send water down?” asked George. He was still trembling.

  “Probably to Get us! Mama said they’re the most dangerousest things in the world.”

  “Well, they missed us!” said George, sounding a bit more like himself.

  “This time,” said Harry. “But don’t count your ants’ eggs if we tangle with them again!”

  14. Bright-time Adventure

  You might think that this adventure would have stopped George wanting to have anything to do with the dreaded Hoo-Mins.

  But George had a short memory for fear.

  “Those Hoo-Mins!” he said to Harry, only a few days later. “Trying to Get us with the water! How did they know we were there?”

  “Don’t talk about it,” said Harry.

  “They must be quite something!”

  “Something to keep well away from.”

  “Yes. Sure. Except—”

  “What?”

  “I do just want to see one!”

  “WE ARE NOT GOING UP THE UP-PIPE, and that’s IT!” shouted Harry.

  “I didn’t mean that. I meant, we could sneak up a tunnel during the bright-time and have a peep at one.”

  This couldn’t help seeming like a pretty exciting idea to Harry. He had a picture in his mind of a Hoo-Min. It looked like a tree that could move, with two feet like hairy biters.

  He looked at George for a long time and waved his feelers about in a slow and thoughtful way. Suddenly they shot straight up. This is a centi’s way of saying “YES! Let’s go for it!”

  George made lots of humps along his back with excitement.

  When the next night ended, they were put to bed (as we would say – they didn’t have beds like ours, of course; they crawled under damp leaves that Belinda had dragged down the tunnel). George was staying over in Harry’s nest. Belinda tucked them in and kissed them. She did this by making sure their leaves were damp and passing her feelers gently over their heads.

  “Good bright-time. Sleep till night-time. Mind the ants don’t have a bite-time,” she said, to tease them. (That’s the nearest I can get to what she said in Centipedish.)

  Then she went off to her own rest. Full-grown centipedes go to sleep at the same time as centis. So Harry and George didn’t have long to wait.

  As soon as all was still, they crept up an up-tunnel. Harry was trembling with excitement. Before long they could see bright light coming down. They were not used to light and they didn’t feel comfortable. Centipedes can’t close their eyes. So they tilted their heads downwards and felt their way forward with their feelers.

  They hadn’t reached the tunnel’s entrance when they heard that thumping again! It was right overhead!

  “It’s a Hoo-Min!” crackled George. “Walking on its hairy biter feet!”

  But now it was Harry who felt brave.

  “Come on! Let’s peep at it!”

  They crawled the rest of the way up the tunnel towards the light.

  15. Looking at a Hoo-Min

  As soon as their two little heads poked out of the tunnel, they saw it!

  Only they didn’t recognise it at first. They were looking for a tree with cat-or-dog feet. And this was something quite different – as you know, because what they saw looked very like you. Only a lot bigger.

  Their weak little eyes were almost dazzled by the bright sunlight. But standing just a little way away was a – well, what could they call it? A Thing.

  A monster. They had never seen or dreamt of anything half as big, awful and scary.

  “Is that one?”

  “It must be!”

  “It’s not – it’s not big like I thought!” crackled Harry.

  “No!” George crackled back. “It’s worse!”

  The Hoo-Min came towards their tunnel. They shrank back into it.

  The huge feet thumped the ground, which shook and trembled. The two centis cowered down. One foot slammed right down over the hole, shutting out the light. For a second there was darkness. Then the foot lifted and the light shone in again.

  The thumping got fainter as the Hoo-Min walked away.

  George and Harry cautiously lifted their heads above the ground and watched it go.

  “It – it makes the molecricket look like an ant!”

  “I bet even hairy biters and belly-crawlers are scared of Hoo-Mins!”

  Then George said something unbelievable.

  “Let’s follow it!”

  Harry let out a great crackle. “ARE YOU CRAZY?”

  “Its eyes must be in that round part at the top. How could it see us? It’s so far up from us. Let’s just run after it and see what it does!”

  And without waiting for Harry, George scurried out of the tunnel and took off on all his forty-two legs, after the Hoo-Min.

  16. Belinda to the Rescue

  You’ve probably noticed that Harry nearly always did what George did.

  But not this time.

  After dithering for a bit, he turned and ran back down the tunnel to his home-nest. Belinda was there, of course, fast asleep.

  “Mama! Wake up!” crackled Harry.

  Belinda shot out from under her leaf.

  “What? What is it? Is it a belly-crawler?”

  “No, Mama! It’s a Hoo-Min!”

  If centipedes could turn pale, Belinda would have become a white centipede.

  Her front feelers waved so wildly they bumped into each other and twisted together. It was like a person wringing their hands.

  “Where?” she breathed at last.

  “On – on the no-top world, Mama.”

  Belinda untwisted her feelers and seized Harry with her pincers.

  “What are you frightening me for? Where else would a Hoo-Min be? We’re quite safe down here! Hx, if this is your idea of a joke—”

  “But Mama – Grndd is up there too!”

  Belinda let Harry go.

  Grnddjl – Grndd for short – George – had no mother. It was his own fault for leaving her, but the fact was, he had no one to look after him. No one but Belinda.

  She didn’t waste time asking any more questions.

  “Come on,” she said, and began racing up the nearest up-tunnel.

  Harry raced after her.

  Halfway along it, she stopped dead and Harry ran into her rear segment.

  Without a crackle, she turned round, ran back, ran along another tunnel, stopped, listened and turned again.

  All the time Harry was trying to follow her, bumping into her, having her run over him as she turned, and then running after her again. He couldn’t make out what she was doing. But suddenly he heard the thumping overhead again, and he understood.

  Belinda was trying to find out exactly where the Hoo-Min was, above them.

  Now she ran into another tunnel. Belinda knew the network of tunnels very well. She knew how to get to the surface in the right place – nearest the Hoo-Min.

  They poked their heads out of the tunnel. The brightness fell on them. It hurt their eyes. But they put up their feelers and scented the air with them.

  Harry sensed the Hoo-Min at once. It had a very strong smell and it put out a lot of heat. Even in the hot sunshine he could feel it in his sensitive feeler-tips. The Hoo-Min was very close to them. So close its shadow fell on them.

  “Can you sense Grndd?” Belinda asked.

  They were both waving their
feelers desperately in all directions.

  “Yes! He’s over there!” said Harry, pointing both feelers.

  “I sense him. I’m going to fetch him.”

  “No, Mama! Don’t! The Hoo-Min—”

  “Stay here! Don’t you dare come out till I get back!”

  17. The Hoo-Min Strikes

  Belinda dashed out of the hole.

  She headed straight for George, who was hiding under a bit of stick. He’d followed the Hoo-Min for quite a long way and was now watching it, fascinated.

  He didn’t see what the Hoo-Min was doing. But Belinda did.

  The Hoo-Min was bending and straightening. It was lifting things.

  It was lifting sticks.

  Its big feeler was reaching out. It was reaching for the stick that George was hiding under.

  Belinda ran, signalling frantically for George to come to her, but George wasn’t noticing anything except the Hoo-Min. It was so big and so close that George couldn’t make out what it was doing – until the stick that was covering him was suddenly lifted away.

  George was out in the open! The Hoo-Min could see him!

  The Hoo-Min straightened up. Its shadow covered everything as it raised its top leg with the stick in its feeler.

  The stick it had just picked up came down again. Very hard.

  WHACK! Right on the ground where George was. If centipedes could shriek, Belinda would have shrieked. But after all, the stick didn’t land where George was, but where George had been half a second before.

  He shot out of the way just as the stick came down.

  The stick came down again.

  And again.

  It beat the earth.

  Whack! Whack! Whack!

  George ran frantically here and there, dodging the stick. But he couldn’t really dodge it. He didn’t know where it would hit next. He was more frightened than he had ever been before in his life.

  He just twisted and turned and raced here and there. It was only good luck that the beating stick kept missing him. Sooner or later, it must find him!

  Suddenly the stick fell to the ground. The Hoo-Min let it go.

  George stopped running.

  He looked around. The Hoo-Min was leaving the ground and coming back to it very heavily. The noise and vibrations were thunderous. It kept making noises from its head, as well. Noises that sounded like “OW! OW! OW!”

  Can you guess what had happened?

  Right! That brave mother centipede, Belinda, had run up the Hoo-Min’s trouser and given its leg a mighty bite!

  18. The Run for Safety

  The moment she’d done it, she ran down the leg again to the ground. She had to keep running because the Hoo-Min was jumping up and down and its great feet might have landed on her and squashed her flat.

  As soon as she was clear of the jumping, she turned and looked for George.

  He was right beside her.

  He’d seen her dashing away from the howling Hoo-Min, and had followed her.

  “Grndd! Come with me, quickly!” Belinda signalled.

  He didn’t need to be told. As fast as she ran, he ran faster. I told you centipedes can run very, very fast. Well, even I didn’t know they could run as fast as George and Belinda ran then.

  They reached the hole where Harry was hiding and fell into it on top of him. The three of them rolled down the slope, all tangled up together, and lay at the bottom. They looked like a shiny lumpy black ball with about a million legs sticking out in all directions.

  I’m exaggerating. But three times forty-two is quite a lot of legs. And two-thirds of them were awfully tired from running.

  Harry was the first to uncurl himself and become a separate centipede again.

  “Mama? Why did it start going up and down like that, and making that funny noise?”

  “I bit it,” said Belinda shortly.

  Both the centis stiffened their front feelers in astonishment.

  Then, as if they were one centi, they rushed up the tunnel again and poked their heads out.

  The Hoo-Min was nearer the ground now, all hunched up, bent over its leg and making another kind of noise. Like “Ooooooogh, uuuuuuuugh, aaaaaaaaah!”

  They ran back to Belinda.

  “You couldn’t have bitten it! It’s still moving!”

  “Well, that’s partly why they’re so dangerous. Biting them doesn’t kill them. It doesn’t even paralyse them. They’re too big.”

  “So why is it making that noise? Why did it stop trying to kill me?”

  “I think because it hurts,” said Belinda.

  “Maybe if all three of us bit it—?”

  “No, Grndd,” said Belinda. “No. We will go back to our nest.”

  Neither George nor Harry felt like arguing.

  Back in the nest-tunnel, both the centis felt very tired and wanted to go straight to sleep. But Belinda had something to say first.

  “I don’t know if you’ve learnt a lesson, Grndd,” she said grimly.

  “Oh yes,” said George quickly.

  “I doubt it. I don’t think anything can teach you not to get into trouble.

  But I have to try. Bend over.”

  That’s what she would have said, if she’d been your mother, perhaps. Centipedes can’t bend over. What she actually said was more like “Bottom up!”

  Anyway, George knew only too well what she meant.

  19. George Gets a Spanking

  George, trembling with alarm, turned round and stuck his rear segment into the air.

  Belinda stood beside it.

  She raised her first foot on that side. She brought it down hard on George’s back end.

  The next little while wasn’t much fun for George because that was only the beginning.

  Belinda walked past his raised rear segment and spanked him once with each foot. And as if that wasn’t enough, she then turned round and walked past him the other way, spanking him once with each foot on her other side.

  So that was twenty-one spanks on one side, and twenty-one more on the other. Forty-two spanks altogether. It seems a lot, but that was a normal punishment for a disobedient centi.

  Mind you, it really doesn’t hurt half as much to be spanked if you’ve got a thick cuticle on your bottom. So it wasn’t as bad as all that.

  When it was over, George lowered his tingling rear segment to the ground, and rubbed some of his nearest legs over it. If centis could sniffle, George would have sniffled.

  “Now, centis, go to your leaves,” said Belinda sternly.

  There were no kisses for either of them.

  George crept away under his leaf.

  He felt very, very sorry.

  I can almost hear you saying it: “Sorry he’d been so bad? Sorry he’d put Belinda into danger?”

  I’m afraid not.

  What he was sorry about was that he’d had a spanking from Belinda. He forgot she’d saved him. He just thought how his bottom hurt and how she wasn’t even his real mother.

  Which was pretty ungrateful of him.

  But if you’d just had forty-two spanks, you might not feel grateful either. Even if your life had just been saved.

  And in case you’re wondering if Belinda had managed to teach George not to get into trouble, don’t even think it.

  She hadn’t.

  Because I’m afraid George – and here comes a wonderfully useful word for people like him who won’t learn to be sensible – George was incorrigible.

  20 Smoke!

  A few days later, when Harry was just about ready for sleep, his mother started chewing up his bedding and spitting the bits on the floor.

  “Mama! What are you doing?”

  “I’ve got a nice new leaf for you,” she said, with her mouth full. “I’ll just use this old one for floor-lining. Come and give me a mouth.”

  So Harry helped, and soon his old bedleaf was well crunched and spat out and spread smoothly over the floor of their nest. The spitty part dried and Belinda rubbed her head over it unti
l it had a sort of shine and it looked very nice, the way new floor-tiles or a carpet would do to us.

  “Good centi! Now, come and choose a new leaf to sleep under.”

  There were plenty of leaves to choose from. Belinda had worked hard, dragging them down the tunnel. They were all shapes and sizes, and quite soft, juicy and colourful, not crackly and dull like his old one.

  “How come there are so many?”

  “This is the season when some of the trees drop their leaves,” she explained.

  Harry chose a pretty yellow one which was just the right size for him and curled up under it and went to sleep.

  In the middle of the day he was suddenly, and not at all pleasantly, woken by George landing on top of him and bashing him in the head with his own head.

  “Get up! Get up! Something terrible’s happening!” George crackled.

  Belinda shot out from under her own new leaf, and so did Harry.

  They didn’t have to ask what the terrible thing was. They could immediately smell it and sense it and even see it, despite the darkness.

  Even Belinda, who had lived the longest and seen all the seasons round, had never seen this before.

  It was all around them, in their breathing holes, in their eyes, tickling their feelers. They were dreadfully frightened. Yes, Belinda too. It was so strange, so uncomfortable, so – George hadn’t exaggerated – so terrible!

  It was smoke. But they didn’t know that. They had no word for it, and no word for “mist” or “fog” or “cloud” – nothing to compare it with. Things are so much more frightening when you don’t have words for them… They just knew it was something to run away from.

  They left their cosy nest and ran.

  21. Escape

  They ran blindly, without thinking.

  Lots of others were running too – other centipedes, and hundreds of other underground creatures – ants and beetles and bugs, and bigger things too. Things the centis would normally hunt, or be hunted by. Now none of them were thinking about eating each other. They were just fleeing from the smoke that was drifting down the tunnels from the surface.

  It was coming from a bonfire that a Hoo-Min had lit, to burn the leaves. But what do centipedes know about bonfires?