Piers Torday - The Last Wild

There’s murmuring and muttering of agreement all around. I quickly glance at the stag. He’s following her every move as intently as I am.

Polly. The girl who guarded her cat with a gun.

She keeps looking at me. Again and again.

Why? Crosser and crosser glances, like I’ve forgotten my lines in a film I didn’t know I was in.

But I can’t think. I’m completely distracted by watching her and Ma –

And then — I’m so stupid –

Like a massive penny dropping inside my brain, I realize.

I nod back, to show I’ve understood –

Just as Ma gets to her, Polly chucks the resin up into the air.

Everyone freezes — the crowd, heads back, Ma mid-stride round the fire, me, the stag, the men holding him — watching the waxy ball roll and spin through the air, till it falls straight into the heart of the fire — and everything goes bang.

The resin ball explodes inside the fire with an earsplitting boom, sending a mushroom cloud of dirty flames up into the night, half-burnt planks and oil drums flying, hurling through the air, black clouds billowing out, everyone screaming, running for cover, coughing and choking.

I whip round and with the knife cut the ropes holding the stag. He rears up and knocks the man holding the reins flying on to his front with a powerful kick. Then there is Bodger, stomping out of the smoke, trying to grab the whirling ropes spinning in the air, and he gets a hoof right in the jaw and slams on to his back like a felled tree.

The smoke clouds grow lower, blacker and thicker.

One sleeve over my mouth to help me breathe, I scoop up the mouse and jump on to the stag. He leaps into the centre of the fire circle, scattering the onlookers, who swear and shout as they trip over one another in the rush to get out of the way.

As we break through the moving line of people I catch sight of Polly dead ahead on the other side of the flames, waiting for us. But Ma is fighting through the smoke towards her too, wiping the soot out of her eyes, reaching out …

Grabbing the stag tight with my knees, spurring him on, we leap forward faster — I lean down and take Polly’s outstretched hand. With every muscle in my body, I hoist her up, just out of Ma’s grasp –

‘Stay where you bloody are!’ Ma snarls. ‘That’s my beast now. Your father took my last ones, and I’ll be damned if I let you …’

But I think Polly and I are the only ones who can hear her now, over the scrambling, the voices shouting, and it’s hard to make anything out through the chaos. Men, women, children, falling over one another in the smoke as they run from the flames.

The stag ignores them, charges directly into the crowd, and batters straight through a rundown fence at the edge of the field like it was made of paper, landing with a stony thud back in the farmyard.

*The others — quick!* I yell.

He doesn’t reply, just nods, and we are pounding straight through a line of connected barns, slamming into a wall of bales wrapped tight in black plastic, ripping them with his horns, as they scatter everywhere like giant boulders and then –

Wolf-Cub jumps up, straining at the leash holding him to the wall. *I knew you would come for us, Wildness!*

Polly leaps off and unties his rope, while I jump down and let the cockroach out of his jar. He rolls out in a huff, shaking the little wings on his back, those wings he never actually seems to use. *Thank you, soldier. I shall be complaining at the highest level about our mistreatment as prisoners of war,* he barks.

I unhook the door to the pigeons’ cage and they fly out in a flurry, straight into my face. Only the scruffy white pigeon is left, pecking around on his own in the corner, like he doesn’t want to leave. I stick my head in.

*Hey, white pigeon, don’t get too cosy in here.* He ignores me. I shake the cage. *Look, I’ve set you free for once.* No response. *Do I not even get a thank-you?*

He waddles right up to the entrance, and looks around at his empty prison.

*Cosy in here, thanks.* And with that he grabs the cage-door hook with his beak, and snaps it shut.

Strange bird.

There are shouts coming from the field. We haven’t got long. I turn to them all, to see the mouse doing a Storytelling Dance of Explanation about what happened by the fire. Their chatter fades away to an embarrassed silence as they see me watching, and none of them — including the stag, his eyes streaming from the smoke — will look at me.

I know what this is about, and I’m not having it.

When the stag asked me in the field, I couldn’t answer. I didn’t know. Perhaps the watch was trying to tell me something. I don’t know if what Ma says is true. Dad used to say, throwing his hands up, when he couldn’t win an argument with Mum — which was quite often — ‘Well, you might say that — but as a scientist —’ (here Mum would groan with her head in her hands) ‘— I can’t speak about what I don’t know, only what I do know. So there.’

So there.

*Now you might have heard that woman say things about my father and his magic, things you might not have liked.* The shouts grow nearer. *I don’t know if any of those things are true. I’ll tell you what is true though. You might believe in your old dreams and your calls. But I believe in something else. The only thing I’ve had to believe in for the last six years — my dad, and the good he does with his magic. And I can tell you this for a fact — if my father did start the berry-eye, he’s the one person who will be able to stop it.*

They all stare at me.

There’s a silence which seems to last forever.

And then slowly the mouse takes to the floor to do a very quiet and gentle We Still Believe In You Dance. Then the wolf-cub is licking his nose, and the General is muttering, *Well spoken, soldier. Like a true general.* Even the white pigeon finally emerges from his cage to say that he believes I’m the one person who can’t stop the berry-eye.

The stag tilts his horns towards us, and Polly and I leap on to him. I roar over the sound of the fire and the shouts heading our way, *The cullers want to exterminate you. The outsiders want to eat you. But I promise — I’m going to take you to a man who wants to help you — and once we’ve found him, we’re not leaving till he does!*

The wild’s cheers seem to drown out the cries of the outsiders running after us as the stag races out of the bale barn and we bank sharply, down to the corner of the yard, following the birds down a bumpy track, out of Ma’s farm gates and on to a road.

And we don’t stop running till the light of the fire and the angry shouts have disappeared.

Old Burn Farm seems far away by the time we reach the first fork in the road. I call a halt and, wiping the worst of the soot from around my eyes, look behind me at my wild. They’re all just staring at me, waiting for the next move.

Behind us lies everything that we have been through — and in front of us, the empty road.

The road that goes back to what I know, or at least, what I thought I knew.

The road that leads to Premium.

As we march down the empty road, the farm far behind us, the wolf-cub suddenly stops. So suddenly that I nearly fall right over him.

*Wildness? What’s that noise?*

*What noise?*

He listens — and every hair of his fur seems to be standing on end, and then finally I can hear it too. It’s like only a rumble at first, but unmistakable.

The noise of something else on the road.

A noise I recognize immediately — because the last time I heard it, we were inside the van making it.