Piers Torday - The Last Wild

Skuldiss.

And getting nearer every second.

Quickly I order the pigeons to find a safe route, and they fly off to scout ahead, the rumble of the culler van growing louder and louder, and I turn to see bars of headlights swooping round corners in the dark, peering over the brow of the hill behind –

Then the birds are back –

*We shall follow the line of the road but not stay on the road,* the grey pigeons call down. *It is the safest way.*

*Yes, don’t follow us, it’s not safe,* says the white pigeon.

We hurry through a narrow gap in a hedge, into a field of brambles that prick us with their thorns as we stumble through them.

All of us, including the stag, crouch down low behind the hedge as the cullers thunder past on the other side.

Then, like the night has eaten it up, the van’s gone.

It’s quiet and dark all around and suddenly my head feels light as air. Suddenly the ground seems like the place where I want to be, and I slump on to it. Polly is digging into her bag immediately.

‘You’re hungry. You need to eat. We need to eat. There might be some cat biscuits left.’

But there aren’t. Only a disintegrated, inedible soggy mush.

I can feel Polly thinking for a moment in the dark.

‘Here. Give me your watch,’ she says.

I can’t imagine how we’re going to eat a watch, but I unstrap it anyway and pass it to her. Straightaway she is on her knees in among the hedgerow, shining it into every corner. I can hear muttering, tearing and picking.

Then she is back, clutching handfuls of sticky leaves that glisten in the watch-light, shoots and wrinkled berries. The shoots and leaves are sharp to the taste, but you can eat them. The berries too are sour — but I know they won’t give me a fever because Polly has chosen them. She has even found a strange-looking root, which if you scrape the dirt and rough skin off is snow white underneath and lifts the roof of your mouth off with its heat — but we eat the whole thing greedily.

‘You’ve just got to pretend it’s your favourite food in the world,’ says Polly, licking her fingers.

With a jolt, I realize I no longer know what that is.

I can feel the stag and the pigeons growing restless, so we keep on marching through the thorns in the dark, until the day begins again, with its cold grey light. Both the stag and I glance up at the sky. Swollen rain clouds are gathering and rolling.

But for now — no more rain comes.

Polly rests her head on my back, dead to the world, and I can hear the mouse snoring in my pocket. (Probably the Stationary Dance of Solid Sleep.) Everyone looks tired — even the pigeons don’t fly all the time, but take it in turns to waddle along the ground behind the others.

We head out of the brambles and on to a churned-up mud track, to the edge of a wood where the trees bend right over the path. The gnarly branches are hunched up close together, warped twigs all intertwined. Even in daylight, the path disappears into the woods in total blackness.

The stag pulls up sharp, sniffing the shoots of thorns which curl around the entrance.

*Is this the only way, birds?* he calls. *I do not like the smell of this place.*

Wolf-Cub slowly comes to a halt as well, looking suspiciously at the dark path ahead. Polly clutches my arm. The pigeons don’t give it a second thought though, ducking straight through under the arch of thorns.

*Come inside, come inside — this is the best way. No one will be able to see us here. This hide-all will conceal us for many strides.*

*Yes, no one will be able to see their way inside here,* says the white pigeon.

This time he seems to be the only pigeon actually making any sense. But we have no one else to follow.

The General leaps on to my head, bristling. *Have no fear. I shall be at your side ready to despatch any dangers we might face in here.*

It’s decided, then.

*Stag, I think we should follow the birds. They have guided us well so far.*

*As you wish,* he says abruptly — and trots on so suddenly that Polly and I almost don’t have time to duck under the thorns, which knock the General spinning to the ground.

*At your side or underneath you, as you wish,* he mutters as he picks himself up.

The further we go inside the wood, the harder it is for any light to pierce the treetops twisted together above our heads, only just making it through in grey pools here and there.

But the strangest thing about the wood isn’t the darkness.

It’s the quiet.

It’s so quiet in here, so deathly quiet, that you can hear every twig crack, every snort of breath, even every twitch of the mouse’s whiskers. Soon none of us is saying a word, just crunching silently over the forest carpet, careful step after careful step.

The branches hang so low and thick, in knotted swags, that eventually we have to get off the stag and walk. Polly shivers behind me as we trudge along in the twilight, and then gives a start — tripping over something in the bracken.

She pulls out a long, strange-shaped stick.

‘What’s this, Kester?’ she asks.

I look at the branch as she turns it over in her hands — long, curved and yellowy-white.

The branch that’s a bone.

I wave at her angrily to put it down, but it’s too late. The stag fixes Polly and the bone with his glittering eyes, sniffing the air suspiciously. Then Wolf-Cub bounds over from behind us, a smaller white stick clenched between his jaws.

*Look what I found, Wildness,* he says proudly, but I just reach down and carefully pull it out of his jaws. I drop it on to the ground, where it lands with a clatter.

Bones shouldn’t hit soft forest floors with a clatter.

I hurriedly stand back, scuffing the ground as I do, revealing that beneath our feet, beneath the light coating of dry leaves, there are more bare white sticks, exposed and catching the light.

The floor of the silent forest is covered with bones.

*I knew we should not have come this way,* says the stag, looking daggers at the pigeons.* When animals know they are going to die they withdraw here, so they may do it in peace.* I think of what Sidney said about making her final journey. *This forest must be where all those we have lost have come to spend their last days.*

And now I understand why we haven’t seen any of the remains of other animals taken by the berry-eye. This is where they come, to die.

I look around at the pillars of black trees just visible in the gloom. I shudder to think how many animals lie beneath them.

I wheel the stag around to face the direction we came from.

*In that case, pigeons, lead us another way, back out of here.*

But they don’t move from the drooping branches above our heads, ruffling their wings and turning their heads away from me.

*It will take too long now — this wood runs as far as we can see in any direction.*

Even the white pigeon stays quiet, with nothing to add. He won’t look at me either. Wolf-Cub stares at the ground.

*Come on, this is no time to give up,* I say to the stag. But he doesn’t move. Doesn’t reply, doesn’t even look me in the eye; just stares straight ahead.

*No living animal will ever walk through a Forest of the Dead.*

I look at the mouse, who does a very short and stiff Dance of Respecting The Dead on the stag’s back, sticking her legs out at awkward angles in turn, before silently shaking her head. *Yes, well, I’d love to join you, but I’ve got this new dance I want to learn, you see …* Her voice trails away. The Dance of Cowardice, I reckon.