Piers Torday - The Last Wild

I keep on running, down through the forest of spiky trees.

My scarf catches on a branch –

I fall over on my front, right into the mud –

Hit my knee on a rock and get straight up again –

I’m going so fast. Just have to keep breathing and stay upright.

Stars begin to dance across my eyes. The more they do, the more I get used to them, like they’re normal.

A twig snaps behind me, or maybe I snapped it. Don’t care. Don’t care if someone does find me. I need help, medicine, a doctor — anything.

The soft ground turns into a gravelly track — that leads through two crumbling old pillars.

I’m dizzy with excitement and confusion. There are some words on the pillars — old-looking words carved into them, which keep blurring. I trace their ridges with my finger.

WIND’S EDGE

Looking between the pillars, over a rambling field dotted with stooping trees, I can see the house beneath the chimneys, so big and old it could be a museum. It must have a hundred windows and doors.

As long as behind one of the doors is a bed, I don’t care.

There are no lights in the windows and the paint is peeling off the wooden doors. The track turns into a paved circle, with threads of weed tangling in between the cracks.

I stagger up the uneven stairs to the tall doors, each step a massive effort.

The door is locked. I rattle the handle and see there’s an old-fashioned doorbell, which I press — but nothing happens. I hammer on the door as hard as I can. It sounds as weak as a twig tapping against a window. Forcing myself to knock again, all I can hear is the sound of my own fist echoing against the wood inside.

I turn away from the door and push on round the corner, shivering like crazy, and wobble across an overgrown orchard, past blackened piles of long-rotten fruit. Just going near them, the sweet stink clouds my head in a rush that makes me want to puke — deep breaths, deep breaths .

It’s no good.

Everything is shut up and fastened down. There’s no way in. One of the fire-snakes in my stomach slides down my leg and scurries over to the rotten fruit. Only it’s not a fire-snake.

*General,* I just manage to say, *I thought …*

The General doesn’t look up from the fruit. But when he speaks, his mouth sounds full. *I’d like to say I came along to protect you, but that wouldn’t be entirely true.*

He’s now totally coated in rotten apple from top to bottom. I try to speak but the words don’t come out properly.

The General sighs. *What are my orders now?*

Unable to speak at all any more, I just point at a line of sheds, tacked on to the side of the house. The cockroach looks at me, looks at the mushy apples and makes a hissing noise. Then he darts between my legs and under the door of the nearest outbuilding.

I wait unsteadily, using every ounce of concentration I have left to stay upright.

After what seems like forever, there’s a rattling noise from inside. The door swings open, banging in the wind, and perched on the rusting lock is the General.

*Did you ever wonder how cockroaches get absolutely everywhere? Well now you know.*

I shake my head, and follow him into the shed. It’s damp and smells of armpits.

*A fragrance of true beauty,* the General says happily, before scuttling along rows of tall metal shelves, weaving in and out of old flowerpots. Groggily I stumble against them –

*Mind where you go, soldier!* the cockroach calls out, and, stepping over him, I fall against a door in the wall, which opens with a gentle click into the house beyond.

In the dark I feel my way along the walls and edge carefully round till I find the ridges of another door, which twists open. I can hear something else now — not the General, something new –

A crying noise.

*What is that infernal wailing?* mutters the General, but I’m hardly listening to him. Whatever it is, I’m heading for it as fast as I can. I know crying doesn’t mean food. But it means someone, something living. I don’t care how dangerous it is. I need help. I stumble along a corridor lined with paintings, down steps and round a corner towards a warm glow of electric light …

*Just try to be quiet and stay out of sight for longer than ten seconds,* I whisper to the cockroach. He scuttles up my leg and into my pocket.

The crying is high and painful to listen to, like a screaming baby.

I reach the bottom of the stairs and find myself looking into a dimly lit room. The light comes from a low lampshade hanging over a long wooden table. A table covered in glass-topped boxes, each one filled with a collection of pebbles or rocks or shells. And a brass microscope, next to row after row of bottles stoppered with corks, filled with a muddy liquid.

There’s a globe, an old-fashioned ticking clock and towering piles of leather-bound books. Everything is covered in a thick layer of dust. It really is like a museum in here.

Some of the books are spread open, showing pages with dead brown leaves stuck to them, and flaking flowers, all marked with tiny handwritten labels. And curled up right in the middle of one of the books is the crying thing.

I take one jerky step after another across the deep carpet.

The thing should be dead, not sat here crying. Thin, white and fluffy, curled up on an old book, it’s a kind of pet people used to have — a cat. The white fur glitters under the light. I stumble towards it, confused –

*I wouldn’t do that, if I was you,* she snaps in a snotty voice, stopping her sobbing abruptly. The cat twists her head at me and bares her little sharp teeth and pink gums. But I’m not looking at her teeth. I’m looking at her eyes. Her burning red eyes.

The confusion spins faster and faster in my head. This isn’t the Ring of Trees — how is she even still alive, how is she …?

I have to take a picture. I point my wrist, a quick flash, then –

‘Hands off my cat,’ says a voice. ‘Turn around! Now!’

I turn around to see a girl with dark hair curled up on her head and fierce eyes staring at me over a small angry mouth. A girl wearing blue wellies. And carrying a gun, pointed at me.

With a yowl the cat leaps off the table, sending bottles and books flying in a billowing cloud of dust.

‘Sit down!’ barks the girl, waving her gleaming rifle at me. ‘Are you a kidnapper?’

I don’t know, I — all I can do is slump to the floor.

She calmly sits down opposite me, resting the gun across her knees. An outsider. So the rumours were true.

‘If you’ve come to kidnap Sidney, I’m not going to let you.’ She picks up the gun and squints down the telescopic sight, frowning at me. ‘Just because she’s the last cat ever. I don’t care how much money you want for her. We won’t pay.’

I look at the dark hole of the gun barrel, and at the cat, now stalking in and out of my legs.

*Sidney’s a weird name for a girl cat, isn’t it?*

But Sidney the female cat just snarls. *I didn’t choose the name. Talk to her — tell her what you want,* she says, flashing her teeth. *You can see she knows how to use that thing.*

I believe her.

*I can’t talk to people, only animals. I’m sick. I just want to get better …*

*Oh, we all want that,* she says, narrowing her burning red eyes and turning her back on me with a flick of her tail.

‘Put your hands where I can see them,’ says the girl.

I hold them out, palms up.

‘On your head!’ she snaps.

Leaving the gun resting on her knees, but her eyes on me, she reaches behind into one of the boxes piled up behind her, finds a water bottle, unscrews the cap and takes a long, slurping sip.