Harry the Poisonous Centipede

by Lynne Reid Banks

  What happened when they were in the wet tunnel was worse than the worst earthquake they had been through, or could imagine.

  First of all the tunnel suddenly seemed to jump – a very big jump, not a little jump. The two centis clung on to a big wet thing inside their tunnel with their forty-two (well, eighty-four counting both of them) feet, but not for long because suddenly they were flying through the air.

  Not just flying nicely like a bird on the breeze, but like a cork flying out of a bottle. Like a bullet fired from a gun. Well. Not quite that fast, but it felt that fast to them.

  Of course you can guess what had happened. They had popped down into the sleeping Hoo-Min’s mouth. And he had felt them running around, and it had wakened him, and he had leapt up and spat them out as hard as he could. PTUI!

  Of course, you and I can think of nothing much worse than having a couple of centipedes crawling around inside our mouths. The poor old Hoo-Min, you might think! No wonder he spat them out and sent them flying through the air.

  But think of poor Harry and George! They had forty-two feet apiece, but they didn’t have wings. Flying through the air was about the worst feeling they’d ever had. Even worse than nearly drowning. But it didn’t last as long.

  A moment, that’s all. Then they landed back on the bed.

  Luckily it was soft. They weren’t hurt, just frightened out of their wits.

  They ran around in circles for a minute or two. And then suddenly it was bright-time.

  Light flooded them. They crouched down. Then a shadow fell on them.

  They both knew what they had to do when a shadow fell on them.

  Run. Run! Run!

  29. The Chase

  They ran.

  They ran across the warmweb thing. But it wasn’t good for running on! Their feet kept falling into the open bits of the blanket and snagging in the tiny hairs of the wool.

  They kept expecting something to whack down on them. But the Hoo-Min was looking for something to hit them with. That gave them a few moments, long enough to reach the edge of the bed.

  They headed straight down. Luckily they found the bed-leg and slid down it head-first.

  Then they were on the floor. They ran across it like mad, heading for the door. They could see it now.

  The Hoo-Min had found something to hit them with. It was a rolled-up newspaper, but they didn’t know that. All they knew was that something came down – CRASH! – just behind them as they ran.

  They shot forward, faster than ever.

  The Hoo-Min could see them quite plainly. He saw the way they were running. There was nothing wrong with his eyes, or his aim. Yet he kept missing them.

  The reason was, he just couldn’t believe how fast they were running. He aimed at where he thought they would be, but by the time the newspaper landed, they were always a little bit further on.

  They reached the door of the showerroom. The newspaper came down WHACK! against the crack under the door. It just caught Harry’s back feelers as he raced under it. He felt it, and it hurt, but it didn’t stop him.

  Before the Hoo-Min could get the door open and follow them, they had shot across the tiles to the drainage hole and dropped down it.

  What would you have done if you’d been the Hoo-Min? If you’d burst into the showerroom and seen those two centis disappearing down the drainage hole?

  You’d have turned on the shower – right?

  Right. And that’s just what the Hoo-Min did.

  30. Down the Up-Pipe

  Harry and George had had some good luck and they’d had some bad luck on their adventures. Now they had the best bit of luck they’d had so far.

  They just didn’t know it.

  What happened when the Hoo-Min turned the tap on full was that – nothing happened. Not a thing. Where this Hoo-Min lived, things didn’t always work properly. And sometimes there was no water for a while.

  By a wonderful piece of good luck (for the centis) no water came out of the shower to wash them away and maybe drown them. Not a single drop.

  So they shot down the Up-Pipe and fell on the earth-pile together in a tangle, and no jet of water shot down after them. A lot of noise did follow them. It was the Hoo-Min saying bad words in a very loud voice, but the centis didn’t know that.

  They untangled themselves and stood up. Most of the white-choke was gone and they felt terrific. Triumphant! They’d done it! They’d actually climbed on a Hoo-Min and survived! They felt like a pair of the bravest centis who ever lived!

  “Wait till we tell Mama!” crackled Harry. “Wait till—”

  And then they saw her.

  She was lying at the bottom of the earth-pile. They saw her in the light coming down the Up-Pipe.

  She was lying in a crumpled heap. She looked like – she looked like – a very dead centipede.

  31. The Long Way Home

  “Mama!”

  They ran their front feelers all over her body, and Harry tried to make her wake up by pushing her head with his.

  “Is she dead?” asked George in a whispering crackle.

  “No! No! She can’t be! Mama! Wake up, wake up!”

  But Belinda didn’t move.

  “We’ve got to get her home!”

  “How can we? She’s so big!”

  “She’s no heavier than the molecricket!

  Come on!”

  George didn’t say anything more. But what he was thinking was that the molecricket was much smaller than Belinda, and that when they brought home the molecricket, it was almost all downhill. The long way back to the nest was nearly all uphill.

  But they had to try.

  They got hold of Belinda’s front feet and dragged her, and when they couldn’t drag her any more they tried getting behind and pushing her, but that didn’t work, so they had a rest and then dragged her some more.

  It was by far the hardest thing either of them had ever done, and it just went on and on. When they thought of the length of the tunnel still to come, they both wanted to lie down and give up.

  What kept them going?

  Harry kept going because Belinda was his mother. George kept going because Harry did.

  They both kept going because they knew they shouldn’t have put themselves first, and left Belinda at the bottom of the Up-Pipe in the white-choke.

  They both kept going because they could imagine how they would feel, for the rest of their lives, if they didn’t.

  But the worst thing they each thought of, though neither of them said it, was that perhaps it was for nothing.

  Perhaps she was dead all the time.

  At last, just as they thought they were going to have to give up, something wonderful happened.

  As the centis were dragging Belinda along, they felt her get a little lighter. They looked along the length of her body and saw that her back legs were moving. A bit of her was walking, helping.

  “Mama! You’re alive! You’re alive!”

  Belinda’s head moved. They felt her front feet moving too.

  “Try to walk, Mama! Help us get you home!”

  And she did. Slowly at first, and then, as more and more of her legs started to work again, she moved by herself.

  The centis danced at her side, encouraging her. It wasn’t that much further anyway – they’d nearly got her back all by themselves.

  Soon they came out of the tunnel to the nest.

  Belinda fell to the ground and the centis pulled her leaf over her. She stopped moving and her feelers drooped, but they knew she was just asleep this time.

  The air in the nest-tunnel was almost clear again. The white-choke was gone, though they could still smell it a little, enough to remind them how awful it had been.

  Harry and George crept about, being quiet.

  “Aren’t you hungry?”

  “Starving! What I couldn’t do to a lizard right now!”

  There were no lizards, but luckily Belinda had caught a couple of beautiful fat spiders, four ants and a grasshopper the
night before. The two hungry centis ate the lot, sharing the grasshopper between them.

  Although they were tired, they decided to go hunting for something for Belinda to eat when she woke up.

  They went to the no-top-world.

  32. The Toad Hunt

  It was a lovely quiet night – the moon shone down through the trees and made dappled patterns on the leafy ground – just the kind centipedes feel safe in. Harry and George ran around and played in the moonlight.

  “Wasn’t it awful, though? – the Hoo-Min!”

  “We actually climbed on it!”

  “Don’t tell your mama, she’d kill us!”

  “She was right about them. They are the scariest things in the world. But I must tell her! She’ll be so proud of us!”

  “Don’t count on it! I’d keep quiet, if I were you,” said George, rubbing his bottom with his back legs rememberingly.

  After a while they got hungry again, and that reminded them what they’d come out for.

  They spotted a young toad squatting near a patch of wet ground where the Hoo-Min had been watering its garden.

  They raced each other up to the toad. It tried to hop away, but they caught it, overpowered it with their poisonclaws, and were soon dragging it back to their tunnel.

  By the time Harry and George got home, Belinda was better. She’d got up and was waiting for them.

  “My wonderful centis!” she said, and gave them a centi-kiss with her feelers. “Thank you for helping me home! And now, I want to hear everything.”

  Harry’s wish to tell his mother everything had gone. He didn’t know quite how she’d take it. So he said, “Er – well, we spotted this toad, and—”

  “No, No! When you went Up the Up-Pipe!”

  “Oh, that.”

  “Of course I know you were both lucky and didn’t meet a Hoo-Min, or you wouldn’t have come back alive.”

  “You did, Mama,” said Harry.

  “I did?” asked Belinda, puzzled.

  “When you went up. When you were young.”

  Belinda crouched down and they saw her feelers quiver. “That was very different. Your father was with me.”

  Harry stiffened with astonishment.

  “My father?” He hadn’t known he had a father. He’d never heard about him.

  “I meant to tell you when you were older,” said Belinda. “I didn’t want to make you sad.”

  She looked so sad herself that Harry was afraid to hear, but he had to. “Tell me now, Mama!”

  33. A New World

  “Your father was a brave centipede. When we went Up the Up-Pipe together, we were young and foolish, and we didn’t know what was up there. The Hoo-Min chased us, and your father—” She stopped.

  “Yes? Go on!” crackled Harry.

  “Your father turned on the Hoo-Min and attacked him, and let me escape down the Up-Pipe. I… I never saw him again.” She dropped her head and trailed her front feelers on the ground, a sign of deep sorrow.

  Both centis were speechless.

  “He gave his life for me, so I could look after you and the other little centis in my basket,” Belinda said quietly. “It’s time you knew, Hxzltl.”

  “So that’s why you told me never to go Up the Up-Pipe,” Harry breathed. “That’s why it’s the worst place in the world for you.”

  “I never dreamt,” said Belinda, “that one night I’d send you up there myself, and that it would save all our lives.”

  They were all very quiet. The toad lay among them and nobody thought of eating it. George was thinking, “Maybe the Hoo-Min we climbed on is the very one that killed Hx’s daddy.” The idea made his cuticle cold on his back.

  That was when Harry said, in a choky crackle, “My daddy was a hero.”

  Only he didn’t say “hero”. There was no word, then, for hero in Centipedish. He made one up, and afterwards it spread – the way new words can – until all centipedes now use it to mean “the bravest of the brave”.

  What Harry said was, “My daddy was a centipede-who-tackled-a-Hoo-Min.”

  And in case you’re wondering if, in that case, Harry and George became centiheroes because they’d actually climbed on a sleeping Hoo-Min and gone in its mouth – they didn’t.

  They didn’t because they never told Belinda, and they never told any other centipedes about their adventure. They kept quiet because they knew they hadn’t been brave – only reckless and foolish.

  But every once in a while, when they were alone together, they would nudge each other, and one of them would say…

  “I wish we’d just had one good bite each, though – don’t you?”

  MORE THAN A STORY CONTENTS PAGE

  10 WEIRD AND WONDERFUL FACTS ABOUT POISONOUS CENTIPEDES

  CENTIPEDE-SPEAK

  CHOCOLATE CENTIPEDE CAKE

  WEIRD FOOD

  FIND THE WORD

  ARE YOU SCARED OF CREEPY-CRAWLIES? QUIZ

  MAKE A SCARY BUG HEADDRESS

  10 Weird and Wonderful Facts About Poisonous Centipedes

  There are lots of different kinds of centipede, but Harry is a giant black centipede. He will grow to be about 20 centimetres long, like his mother.

  Centipedes, even giant black ones, are not dangerous to humans, unless they are allergic to insect bites. But a bite from a centipede HURTS.

  The name Centipede means a hundred legs, but most kinds of centipede have far fewer. Centipedes seem to ripple along the ground when they run, so it’s hard to count their legs!

  Centipedes have special front legs called maxillipeds. They squeeze poison over these sharp claws and stick them in their enemies.

  Centipedes have their skeletons OUTSIDE their bodies to keep their soft inner parts safe. This skeleton is called a cuticle and Harry’s is shiny and black. It is divided into twenty-one segments. Each bit has two legs, one on each side.

  Each leg is slightly longer than the one in front, so a centipede’s back legs are longer than the front ones.

  If one of its legs is cut off, it will grow back again.

  Centipedes breathe through tiny holes along their bodies.

  Centipedes have bad eyesight, but their sense of smell is fantastic.

  They “smell” and sense things with two long feelers which stick out of their heads.

  Centipede-speak

  Centipedes have their own way of talking about the Hoo-Min world. What did Harry, George and Belinda mean by:

  Hoo-Min

  Up–Pipe

  Big-yellow-ball

  No-top-world

  Hairy biter

  Bright-time

  Belly-crawle

  White-choke

  Meat-mountain

  What do you think Harry and George would call these?

  A snail

  A car

  An apple

  A bunch of flowers

  Rain

  Wht dd y sy, Hrry?

  Centipedish is hard because all the vowels are left out. See if you can understand what Harry is saying!

  To make it easier, here are some sentences in Centipedish, with x’s where the vowels should go. Can you put in A,E,I,O or U in the right places?

  My nxmx xs Hxrry. Whxt’s yxxrs?

  Lxxk bxhxnd yxx!!!! Xt’s x hxge hxxry bxtxr!!! Rxn!!

  X’m hxngry, Mxm! Cxn X hxvx sxmx sxppxr?

  What does the next beetle in the series look like?

  What is worse than an alligator with toothache?

  A centipede with athlete’s foot

  What goes 99-clonk, 99-clonk, 99-clonk?

  A centipede with a wooden leg

  Chocolate Centipede Cake

  You need:

  An adult to help with melting and pouring the chocolate, a swiss roll, a 250g block of chocolate, a packet of liquorice sticks, or chocolate fingers, two marshmallows and some small round coloured sweets.

  What you do:

  Put the swiss roll on a big plate.

  Break up the chocolate into squares and put it
in a small saucepan.

  Get an adult to put a little water into another, bigger saucepan and put the first saucepan inside the second, so that the handle sticks out. Ask the adult to put the saucepans on a VERY LOW heat. But don’t touch the chocolate! It’s still going to get very hot.

  WATCH OUT: Chocolate MUSTN’T get too hot, or it goes dry and crumbly, so get the adult to check that the water in the bottom saucepan doesn’t dry out. Don’t splash any water into the chocolate, either.

  When the chocolate is smooth and creamy, ask the adult to pour it over the swiss roll, so that the cake is evenly coated.

  Wait until the chocolate has started to cool. Cut a liquorice stick lengthwise in two to make feelers for your centipede. Stick them firmly in one end of the swiss roll at the top. Use the marshmallows to make eyes and the small coloured sweets to divide the body into segments.

  Now take the liquorice sticks or chocolate fingers and press them into the cooling chocolate coat to make “legs” for your centipede. (Make as many as will fit.) Leave the cake for about an hour until the chocolate has hardened. Cut a slice.

  Yum!

  Weird food

  If you think that George and Harry’s idea of a yummy snack is yeuch!, try some of these strange dishes from around the world.

  France

  Snails

  Australia

  Kangaroo

  Korea

  Live eels

  Asia

  Deep fried scorpions, silk worms & cockroaches

  USA

  Grilled rattlesnake

  Scotland

  Haggis – sheep’s stomach stuffed with mincemeat

  Japan

  Fugu – a fish so poisonous that if there is a mistake in the way it is prepared, the diner will die. Every year there are fatal accidents…

  Tibet

  Tea with rancid butter made of yak’s milk

  Iceland

  Shark

  Mexico

  Roasted grasshoppers

  Bali

  Black rice pudding

  Puzzling Parents

  George said to Harry, “My grandpa is only six days older than my dad.”