Hercufleas

by Sam Gayton

  The noggin pointed, and now Hercufleas could make out scores of other noggins among the threads. Their hands, Hercufleas saw, twanged the strands of Yuk’s brain, as if it was a guitar or a harp. As their eight hands plucked, they sent out flashes of light which were the giant’s thoughts.

  But coiled like a python around each noggin was a rattleroot.

  The poor creatures were like puppets on strings. To make Yuk move, speak or even blink, the rattlesnoak simply tightened its grip around the required noggin and forced it to send out the necessary commands.

  ‘The rattlesnoak’s what you must fight,’ said the creature beside him solemnly. ‘It has an enormous appetite. It makes Yuk guzzle constantly. If you could set the noggins free…’

  Hercufleas didn’t need to hear any more. He drew m from his side and leaped from the nest.

  39

  The rattleroot’s fangs gleamed as it lunged for Greta. Then a dozen black specks hopped onto its head – the fleamily. They all bit down together, and the rattleroot hissed in pain, twisting in the air. Seizing her chance, Greta scooped up her axe and lopped the snake head off. The root went rigid as a stick and fell on her lap, poisonous sap dribbling from its severed neck. She stared down at the tiny creatures that had just saved her life.

  ‘Bleugh!’ said Burp, hopping about and spitting. ‘Rattlesnoak sap tastes disgusting.’

  A second flea hopped down beside the first. ‘Be careful, everyone!’ Min cried. ‘Resist any urge to slither about and be evil! Remember, you are what you eat.’

  ‘Yessssssss, Min,’ said Dot. She shook her head. ‘I mean, yes.’

  Pin hopped onto Greta’s shoulder. ‘We’ll provide a distraction while you chop down the trunk. Kill those rattleroots at the source, it’s the only way we’ll escape!’

  Greta blinked stupidly at the limp root in her lap.

  ‘Quick!’ Min nipped her hard. ‘Get chopping!’

  Jolted by the bite, Greta scooped up her axe, scrambling to her feet. Suddenly the air was full of whizzing black smudges. The fleamily were everywhere, taunting the rattleroots, then hopping away from their lunges. Tittle star-jumped, Itch somersaulted, Jot did the double-pike-cross-split-topsy-turvy manoeuvre. The rattleroots tied themselves up in hissing, writhing knots.

  ‘Hurry!’ said Min. ‘We can’t keep this up forever!’

  Greta looked at the thick trunk. She raised her axe and swung it into the tree. THUNK. Green sap hissed from the gash in the bark, but it was only the tiniest nick. It would take another hundred strokes to bring the rattlesnoak down.

  THUNK. Ninety-nine. THUNK. Ninety-eight. THUNK.

  Inside Yuk’s brain, Hercufleas leaped from thread to shining thread. He gritted his teeth. His sword gleamed in his hand and his plan was keen in his head. He had to free the noggins, fast. Who knew how many Tumberfolk had followed Mayor Klare and Mrs Lorrenz down into Yuk’s belly?

  He crept up behind the first rattleroot. With one slice from m, it dropped off the noggin like loose ribbons on an unwrapped present.

  ‘I’m free!’ gasped the noggin, who introduced itself as Vocabulary. ‘Liberated! Unchained! Emancipated!’

  Hercufleas grinned, flexed his powerful legs and jumped up, beheading another two rattleroots and freeing two more noggins, who told him their names were Optimism and Pessimism.

  ‘I always knew this day would come!’ one cried.

  ‘Bet it won’t last,’ muttered the other.

  On Hercufleas went, slicing dozens of rattleroots, freeing dozens of noggins. He freed Empathy (who began to weep for the dead rattleroot at its feet), Philanthropy (who began to help other noggins escape) and Apathy (who yawned, shrugged and carried on doing nothing).

  Slowly the rattlesnoak began to lose control of Yuk. Hercufleas freed two noggins called Yawn and Stretch, and outside the giant stopped guzzling to yawn and stretch, as if waking up from the longest sleep. He freed Vomit, and suddenly Miss Witz and Artifax, floundering in Yuk’s stomach acid, found themselves puking back up his throat. They spewed out into the air, reeking, clothes and feathers half digested, but alive.

  Now, all around Yuk’s brain, noggins chattered to each other, and bright white lights pulsed back and forth along the threads between them as their hands plucked the strings. Hercufleas hurdled over the next rattleroot, slicing it to pieces.

  ‘What’s your name?’ he said to the noggin he’d just freed.

  ‘Grab,’ was the answer.

  ‘Grab?’ Hercufleas thought for a moment. Then he grinned. ‘Grab? Listen, I’ve got an idea.’

  Outside Yuk’s head, the battle raged too. The fleamily jumped and somersaulted, dodging the rattleroots, but slowly they were being beaten back to the tree’s trunk. Again and again Greta hefted her axe in the air and struck the rattlesnoak’s trunk.

  THUNK!

  The seed pods in the branches shivered and shook. Greta swung again.

  THUNK!

  ‘Hurry!’ Pin cried, as the fleas were pressed back and back. ‘Hurry, child!’

  THUNK! The bark was too tough. It would take Greta dozens more strokes to bring the rattlesnoak down. Unless…

  She readied one last swing, and struck with all her might. For Mama and Papa and Wuff. For everyone.

  THUNK! The axe quivered in the trunk, still only halfway through. Hot tears coursed down her cheeks. No good. They were out of time. The fleamily had nowhere left to jump: the writhing rattleroots had them completely surrounded.

  Greta knew this was the end. But instead of fear, a different feeling filled her – surrender. Soon it would all be over. All the hurt and heartache, all the suffering and struggling, it was all about to fall away to nothingness.

  All she had to do was give up.

  She wanted to give up.

  To feel nothing.

  40

  Greta had always imagined death would come silently, but this was deafening. An ear-splitting CRUNCH, then a wet snapping sound, like a million teeth sinking into a million apples and each biting off a chunk—

  Every single rattleroot around her writhed in the air and fell down dead.

  Leaves and twigs rained down on her, snagging in her hair. The house-hat fell at her feet, a crumpled ruin of velvet and broken glass. Greta ducked and whirled around – where the rattlesnoak had been, there was now a jagged stump. The tree trunk was being borne up into the night sky, carried away by Yuk’s enormous hand.

  The giant had reached up and grabbed the rattlesnoak from his own head.

  Greta watched, dumbfounded, as he pulverised the tree into splinters and brushed the whole mess from his palm.

  ‘Are we alive?’ murmured Dot.

  Greta looked at the fleas and shrugged.

  ‘I think so…’ Min began, then they all were tipped forward, sliding down Yuk’s forehead into his cupped hands. Greta lay there dazed, Yuk’s mossy palm rough against her cheek. She scrambled to her feet and stared up at him. She wanted to face him without fear before he guzzled her.

  Then Yuk spoke.

  ‘You must hate me,’ he said. His voice sounded strange. Softer. He wasn’t bellowing any more. ‘You must hate me more than anything.’

  Greta nodded, but it wasn’t true. She felt nothing at all. Just cold. Like she had died already.

  ‘Hurry up and guzzle me,’ she said.

  ‘I am sorry,’ said Yuk. ‘But once again, Greta, I must do something painful to you. I am not going to let you give up. I am going to make you live.’

  Greta looked into his eyes, the colour of rotten milk. She stared at his swampy black mouth and skin rough as bark and thorn-bush eyebrows. He was still Yuk. Still the giant who had killed her parents and terrorised her town. And yet, somehow, he was not the same. He had changed.

  Yuk looked away from them to face the dawn, and at that moment the sun burst up from behind the ruined church of Saint Katerina on the Hill.

  ‘Ahh,’ he said. ‘The sun.’

  And as Greta watched, the light changed him. Dead v
ines and rattleroots clinging to his body fell away. Rippling fields of summer grass sprouted from his skin.

  Poppies bloomed from the wounds the Tumberfolk had given him. His eyes were suddenly blue. His beard and hair turned the million rich hues of a forest in autumn. Yuk had transformed in front of her eyes.

  ‘You’re a green giant,’ Greta breathed.

  ‘Once,’ the green giant said, his eyes looking somewhere far away. He glanced down at the remains of the rattlesnoak at his feet. ‘And then I was done with planting forests, and like all my kind, I slept. And while I dreamed, the weeds began to choke the life from the garden I had made.’

  ‘You mean rattlesnoaks?’ said Greta. ‘And bramble-strangle and pine-needlers?’

  ‘I do,’ said the giant. ‘And one of them wriggled its roots into my head and made me a monster.’

  Bending down to the riverbank, he let Greta step from his hand. The Tumberfolk were there too, in their sopping wet clothes, staring up at the giant silently.

  ‘Farewell,’ he said to them.

  ‘Wait!’ Greta called to him.

  The giant paused, the summer grass on his chest ripening in the morning sun. Sparrows flitted around his hair, collecting dead rattleroot twigs for nests. A host of questions flew up from Greta like the birds.

  ‘What just happened to you? Why are you different? What changed?’

  ‘I am not the one to answer you,’ the green giant said, stepping from the river to the woodn’t. Just before he vanished into the trees, he picked an enormous bogey – like a green bowling ball – from his nose and flicked it to the ground. It crashed into the reeds, flecking Greta with mud.

  ‘Don’t flick bogeys at me!’ she roared at him. ‘Tell me what you mean! Where are you going? Come back!’

  Scowling, she kicked the bogey as hard as she could with her clogs. It cracked like a nut and split into two halves. Within the hard crust was a gooey green centre, and there, suspended like a prehistoric insect stuck in sap…

  Impossible.

  ‘Noggins and nostrils,’ Hercufleas groaned. ‘What just happened?’

  Greta began to cry. She didn’t understand why Yuk had changed, but she knew who had caused it.

  ‘You saved us,’ she told Hercufleas, hot tears running down her cheeks. She plucked him from the stringy snot with her fingers.

  ‘I did?’ Hercufleas rubbed his head. ‘Are you sure?’

  And holding him in her hands, Greta turned to show him: the Tumberfolk sprawled by the riverbank; Mayor Witz and Artifax, covered in vomit but alive; Yuk vanishing through the trees. His fleamily hopping with joy and waving at him.

  ‘And me,’ Greta whispered. ‘You saved me too.’

  Hercufleas looked into her odd-coloured eyes and smiled.

  ‘What do we do now?’ she asked.

  ‘Catch those happy tears,’ he told her. ‘Stick the kettle on the stove. I think everyone could do with a pot of nettle tea.’

  41

  Tumber was saved, but so much had been lost. Homes could be rebuilt and rubble cleared, but how did you mend the sorrow and silence? Those things will not be healed by anything but time, and time works at its own pace and will not be rushed.

  The green giant came back to Tumber in the months that followed. Where else could he go? He was alone, and the other green giants were still sleeping, lost out there among the trees. Mayor Witz put him to work clearing rubble, and among the dead streets he spread what life he had to give: wildflowers, autumn grass and fruit trees.

  He looked so different to Yuk, and was so gentle, that the Tumberfolk soon thought of him as a different creature altogether. Pulling the rattlesnoak from his head had torn out many of his memories, too, so that he could not remember his own name, only that it started with a Y. Mayor Witz suggested he choose a new name, but the green giant insisted that name could not just spring out of nothing, but needed time to grow. So it was that the Tumberfolk called him Y to begin with, and every month the green giant chose the next letter to add to his name.

  Time passed, and Y became Yân, and then Yânar, and Tumber came slowly back to life.

  The fleamily remained in the town too, for a while. Min and Pin wanted to leave as soon as possible – after all, they had a new hero to take back to Avalon and hire out at Happily Ever Afters, which they could run themselves now Mr Stickler was gone.

  ‘I’ll have the fleas draw up a contract as soon as we’re back,’ Min gabbled to Hercufleas. ‘I’ll hire you out for giant-slayings and rescues – and I think we should talk merchandise too. Just think! Yuk action dolls! Toothpicks in the shape of your sword! Giant bogey-green gobstoppers, with a toy flea inside! Obviously we’ll have to put “choking hazard” on the packet…’

  But though the fleamily talked about starting up a new business hiring heroes, and repairing the house-hat, and maybe even adding a jacuzzi to the bathroom, somehow they kept putting off leaving Tumber. There was just so much to do.

  Itch, Titch and Tittle typed up a whole new library of books for the school. Burp and Slurp started up a flea circus to entertain the Tumberfolk, tightrope-walking across two broom handles connected with cotton thread. Dot painted the nails of the roost-wives with tiny frescoes: portraits and still lives and Petrossian landscapes. She got so good that people started to call her Leonarda da Tinchi.

  Everyone had a job, and when they sat together in the evenings and recited The Plea of the Flea they were truly thankful to be together. They laughed and jumped and joked, just like before. There was only one thing missing: the fleamily needed a home.

  It wasn’t just that the house-hat was a wreck. It had been ruined long before Yuk – by Stickler. The fleamily were never quite able to enjoy their pantry of exotic blood, or the boingy-boing room, after finding out their host had paid for it all by hiring out villains as well as heroes.

  At first Hercufleas suggested they should live with Greta, but she never built her house of logs, the one she had spoken of when they were out in the Waste. Life was hard for her for a long time. Although she had helped save Tumber, Greta could never be saved from her own past. It was always there. Her parents were gone, and they would always be gone, and every day hurt.

  But Hercufleas had given her a future, and though it was not quite a Happily Ever After, still Greta filled it with what happiness she could.

  There were the evenings she spent with Mayor Witz, eating sweet beetroot pies, drinking nettle tea and telling stories in the warm light of the stove. Evenings that reminded her of her parents.

  There was Artifax, with his soft white feathers that she stroked, and his loving purple eyes. Artifax, who reminded her so much of Wuff.

  There were the long days she spent up on Yânarik’s head, which had grown into a meadow of sage and camomile. Watching the Earth stretch endlessly away to the west and endlessly return from the east. Sometimes she took her axe up there, and other tools too, though what she was making she never told anyone – except Hercufleas.

  Hercufleas.

  As always, he was the voice whispering hope in her ear. The one constant on her shoulder. It was Hercufleas who saved Greta, again and again, whenever grief threatened her. He never stopped being her hero.

  Six months after the battle of Tumber, Greta rode Artifax out into the woodn’t. The roost-wife who saw her go said she crossed the bridge without dropping her tears into the river. When Hercufleas heard that, he knew she wasn’t ever coming back.

  No one knew where she went. The cinderwikk men said it was to Avalon, to tell the truth about Prince Xin and Ugor. The cossacks shook their heads: Greta had gone to the Sorrows, to try to find a way to bring life back to the salt lakes. No, clucked the roost-wives, she went back to the Waste, to live with Sir Klaus and the Mousketeers.

  Hercufleas did not know who was right. On the morning that Greta left, she didn’t say goodbye. When he woke, still snuggled in her green scarf, it lay draped on the ground. She hadn’t even left a note – just a single drop of her blood in a th
imble, there beside him. Hours later, after he had searched all through the town calling her name, he came back and drank it down. It was sweet and full of sorrow, leaving a lump in his throat for hours. But for the first time, the bitterness had gone.

  That night in his dreams he saw a fierce bramble-haired girl riding a bird through the trees, searching for the giants, green and great as cathedrals, who lay dreaming deep in the forests.

  He saw her reach them, though it was many years in the future and she had grown old. He watched her wake the giants and lead them back to Tumber, to find their lost brother who had wandered off while they slept. And just before Hercufleas woke, he saw the green giant – whose name had grown so long it would fill a book – reunited with his family, and in that moment Greta’s grief finally left her forever.

  But in truth, where Greta went was known only to her, for no two hearts beat alike nor break alike, and so each must be mended in its own way.

  ‘I wish I’d told her the truth,’ Hercufleas said to Mayor Witz, a month after Greta left. ‘I never explained about the Black Death.’

  Mayor Witz polished her gold key. ‘What about it?’ she asked innocently.

  Hercufleas sighed. ‘You were wrong,’ he admitted. ‘When I got there – inside that chest where it was – I saw the truth. Yes, it would have destroyed Yuk. But it wouldn’t have stopped there. It would have carried on killing – on and on. First the Tumberfolk, then Petrossia, then the world. Sir Klaus told me… Only evil can come of the Black Death. So I didn’t drink it. I didn’t take its power.’

  He expected surprise, but she just looked crafty as the fox on the handle of her walking stick. ‘Dear little flea,’ she said. ‘By the time you reached the Black Death, you didn’t need its power.’

  Hercufleas looked at her. He thought back to that time, long ago, when Mayor Witz had sat knitting Greta’s scarf and his destiny into being.