Lynne Banks - Harry the Poisonous Centipede Goes To Sea

“ Your centeena?”

“Well…er…no, not exactly. I mean…I was chasing her – last night – I hadn’t really caught up with her. I was looking for her, you know, following her scent, when I found the straight-up-hard-thing with the tarantula inside.”

“She must’ve got in before us. She’s here with us.”

“Right!” said George eagerly. “Let’s find her!”

It wasn’t hard. Although the crate was big and there were lots of bananas filling most of it, there were plenty of little spaces and chinks where small creatures could hide. As the two centeens searched, they realised that, whatever else might happen, they weren’t going to be short of a bite to eat.

They sent out inviting signals, and after a while a little female head poked out from between two big bunches of bananas.

“Hallo,” she signalled shyly. “Did you call?” Of course they hadn’t called. Centipedes can’t call. That’s just my way of putting it.

Harry watched her creep out until she was in full smell. George immediately went up to her and touched feelers with her, and ran all around her once in greeting.

“I’m Grndd and this is Hx,” he said. “What’s your name?”

“I’m Jgnblm,” she said. All right, no, I’m not proposing to go on trying to write that or expecting you to say it, though I should add that both the centeens thought Jgnblm was a most euphonious name, which means that to them it had a sweet sound.

Let’s see, then. What about Josie?

“What are you doing here?” Harry asked, touching feelers with her very shyly. He’d never touched feelers with a centeena before, except Belinda of course. It felt very nice.

“He was chasing me,” she said, meaning George. “So I just ducked in through one of those long holes to hide.”

“Why didn’t you get out again before it started to move?”

“I don’t know. I think I just liked it in here. I like yellow-curves,” she added, indicating the banana she was standing on.

“You like standing on them?” asked Harry.

“Eating them,” she said.

“You eat tree-droppings?” asked George incredulously.

“Yes.”

“I notice you like tarantula heads, too,” remarked Harry bitterly.

Josie looked puzzled. “What do you mean, tarantula heads?”

“Well, didn’t you take one from just here?”

“No,” she said. “I don’t like eating things that have been alive, it makes me feel a bit sick, so I eat lots of different tree-droppings.”

“Wait a minute. You don’t mean you never eat ordinary things?”

“No. Just tree-droppings,” she said demurely.

There was a silence.

“Hx, she’s a no-meat-feeder,” crackled George under his breath.

A centipede that didn’t like meat and wouldn’t stop anything! They waved their feelers at Josie as if she were not completely centipede.

“Please don’t feeler me like that,” she said. “It’s rather rude.”

“Oh! Sorry,” said George at once. “It’s just – I’ve never met a no-meat-feeder before. What kind of – er – tree-droppings do you like best? I’ve never really bothered to try any.”

“There are so many different kinds!” Josie said eagerly. “One never gets to the end of them!”

“Weird,” crackled George. Harry nudged him with a bump of his middle section.

“I don’t think it’s weird,” said Harry. “It’s interesting. At least you won’t be hungry in here with all these yellow-curves. I wish I liked them.”

“Try one,” said Josie.

To oblige her, Harry bent his head and took a bite.

“Ugh!” he said. “It’s horrible!”

Josie gave a centipedish laugh by shaking all her segments up and down. “No, no, not the outside! You have to get through to the soft, sweet stuff inside.” She caught a ridge of the yellow skin between her poison-claws and neatly stripped it back. “Now try again,” she said.

George backed away. But Harry nibbled a little of the soft white stuff, and then a little more. “H’m. It’s not bad, I must say. Soft as worms. But not a bit like them to taste.”

Josie shuddered daintily. “I couldn’t bear to eat a worm!” she said.

Before any more could be crackled, the jiggling movement stopped. The three of them dashed along a bridge of bananas to the long opening again and stuck their heads out.

“Smell that, Grndd! You know what that is, don’t you?” Harry said in shocked tones.

“Yeah, I’m afraid I do,” said George. “It’s the no-end puddle.”

“The no-end puddle? What’s that?” asked Josie.

“It’s water,” said Harry. “Water and water and water, more than you’d ever think there could be. It goes on and on for ever – that’s why it’s called no-end. It’s not even water you can drink, either.”

“Can you swim?” George asked Josie abruptly.

“Swim? You mean, like marine centipedes do?”

“Except they don’t,” said George. “But I can, and so can Harry, and if by any horrible chance we’re going to get dropped in the no-end puddle, like we once were, you’re going to have to learn to swim very fast indeed.”

Poor Josie crouched down on her banana and put out signals of fear. “I can’t, I know I can’t!” she waickled (you know – a wailing crackle.) “If I’m dropped in the no-end puddle, I’ll stop!”

Both the centeens rushed to her side.

“No, you won’t,” they both said. “You won’t, because we’re here, and we’ll look after you!” And then they looked at each other across her cuticle, and their feelers stuck up straight, which meant, “Why are you crackling that to her? I’m crackling that to her!”

Oh, dear. Centeenas. They can cause trouble even when they don’t mean to. It’s not their fault, of course.

And just in case you were wondering what did happen to the head, since Josie hadn’t eaten it…Well, I’m sorry to tell you that another tarantula had sneaked up through the bananas, and grabbed it. Not very nice, tarantulas.

In fact, the word ‘cannibal’ comes to mind.

Quite a long time passed. The three centeens crouched together amid the yellow-curves and tried to keep their centi-spirits up by sending each other hopeful signals. Then the straight-up-hard-thing began to move again.

This time it moved sharply upward and then sideways. What was happening was that they were being swung through the air on the end of a crane, to be loaded aboard a ship. But they didn’t know that. When they poked their heads out of the long hole and looked down, they couldn’t make out anything underneath them. They were too high up.

All they knew was that there was a big bump, which made everything in the crate jump, and then there was no more bright light. That was a relief to them. There were a lot of vibrations and loud noises and after a while it got really dark (that was when the hatches went on up on deck.) The centeens looked and feelered about them.

“Well, here we are – wherever we are,” said George, quite cheerfully. “At least we’re not going to drown.”

“But what is going to happen?” asked Josie fearfully.

“Who knows?” said George. “It’s a real adventure, anyway!”

Harry didn’t say anything. He was thinking it was too much of an adventure for his taste, and that Belinda would be worried sick. She was old and it wasn’t right to leave her like this. He looked at Josie, who was huddled up small at his side. “Do you want an adventure?” he asked her.

“I want my basket,” she crackled faintly. Not many centeens even remember that their mothers once kept them in special little containers like baskets when they first came out of their eggs, but “I want my basket” is still what they say when they’re feeling miserable and homesick and scared.