The Second Wave (5 page)

Chip had tried to hide his excitement, but a little trickle of urine had run down the roof-slates below him.

Crag looked at him coldly.  ‘Follow me,’ he had said, and they had followed him back down the barn wall, before crossing the grass and climbing an ash tree.

Chip had never known such a satisfying feeling in his life.  Instead of searching the cold rock for a hold, everywhere that he put his paws his claws sank sweetly into the bark and it held him just where he wanted to be.

Crag had allowed them to practise climbing up and down the tree-trunk and running out along the branches.

This must be what my claws were really made for, Chip had thought, as he scratched at the bark and smelt the essence of the tree, moist under his paws.

Then it had been time to leap to the next tree.  This was another new and thrilling experience – to leap across space with nothing beneath you and to land in a leafy, twiggy mass, full of paw holds, there to regain balance, before running along a thickening branch to the trunk of that tree.

‘Don’t get carried away.  This isn’t a game,’ Crag had warned him.

Chip had no idea what a game might be, but knew from the tone of his father’s voice that the pleasure he had felt must be sinful and therefore hidden, and repented for later.

The three had moved from tree to tree, travelling up the wind-line, the scent of strange squirrels getting stronger, until even Chip’s unpractised nose could detect it.

They had then come to some pine trees surrounding a large pool, where they had paused, watching the blue of the water fading to green in the gathering dusk.  Chip was thinking, sinfully, that he had never seen such a beautiful place in all his life.

They had heard the sound of excited squirrel chatter from the trees on the other side of the water.

‘Follow me quietly,’ Crag had whispered.  ‘Try not to show yourselves.’

They had circled the pool and come to a large pine.  Here they had stopped and listened, concealed behind a screen of pine needles.  Many other squirrels were sitting in the next tree, whilst others moved about from group to group.

Chip, quivering from head to foot, felt waves of the cared-for feeling radiating outwards from the assembled squirrels.  What seemed to him to be the strangest thing of all was that they were touching each other as they sat.  He felt a great urge to leap across and nestle in amongst them, but one look at his father’s stern face killed that idea.

‘Quiet,’ Crag said, keeping his voice low, and the three sat silently, watching and listening.

‘Once upon a time,’ Dandelion started, in the traditional way of all story-tellers, after the squirrels had settled down to listen, ‘when the world was very young and there were only two squirrels in it – Acorn and his life-mate, the beautiful Primrose – the Sun looked down and saw that the ground was a mess.  No animal or bird ever bothered to hide its droppings, and smelly piles were everywhere.

‘In those days it rained only at night – just enough rain to water the plants and trees and to keep the pools and rivers full, but not the heavy rain needed to wash all the muck away.  So the days were always bright and sunny for the creatures to enjoy.

‘The Sun let the animals and birds know that they must
bury
their droppings, so that the food they had once eaten could be used again by the plants, but all the creatures were too busy doing other things, and the world was so big it didn’t matter.  And if all the other buried
theirs
it wouldn’t matter about their own.  All the reasons under the Sun why
others
should do it – but not them.

‘Soon it got so that no animal could walk on the ground without treading in horrid things, so the Sun let it be known that if the world was not cleaned up,
something
would happen.

‘Each animal and bird looked at the mess and said to itself, ‘I only did a tiny part of that - others did most of it.’  So each did nothing and, as every creature thought exactly the same, the world stayed in a mess.

‘The one morning, when Acorn and Primrose woke up, it was raining.  They looked out of their drey and the rain was pouring down.  This was so unusual that Acorn said the Asking Kernel –

Oh Great Loving Sun,

Please explain to us squirrels –

Why is it raining?

He couldn’t add ‘in the daytime,’ which is what he meant, because only five word-sounds are allowed in the last line. But the Sun understood, and made the water at the foot of his tree flash and sparkle so that Acorn could see
his
droppings tainting the pureness, and he was ashamed.

‘It was too wet now to go down and bury them, so he went back into his drey and hid there with Primrose.

‘Now, I forgot to tell you that Acorn and Primrose were then living in a sequoia tree on the top of a great rock called Portland, and
that
was the highest tree in the whole world.’

Crag turned to Rusty and whispered, ‘This is all nonsense, Sequoia trees don’t grow on Portland!’

Rusty and Chip, however, were listening intently to Dandelion, who continued,  ‘After a few days, when it had never stopped raining, lots of animals waded or swam across from the Mainland to Portland, as they could see it was soon going to be the only part of the world above the water.

‘Below where he sat in the sequoia, Acorn could see that some humans were building a boat, big enough to take them and lots of animals as well.  By the time it was finished the sea was right up to the top of Portland and washing around the roots of Acorn and Primrose’s home-tree.

‘The man was asking all the animals and birds if they would like to come into his boat, and they were all going in and taking their mates with them.  This was right at the beginning of the world, before any creatures had had any youngsters, so there were only two of each animal.

‘The man called up to Acorn and Primrose and told them to hurry, but Primrose said to Acorn, ‘I think that man eats animals.  I’m staying here.’  So the two squirrels stayed in their tree as the boat floated away on the flood.

‘It rained and rained and rained, and the water came higher and higher up the tree, until Acorn and Primrose’s drey was washed away.  The two wet squirrels huddled together against the trunk, higher up, trying to keep dry, and then scratched out a little den in the deep, soft bark to shelter in.

‘But the next day the water was up to that level, and they had to make another den-hole even higher.  Each day the flood rose and rose, until the only bit of the tree above the water was the very tip-top twig.  Acorn and Primrose clung to it, wondering what to do next.

‘Acorn said the Needing Kernel –

Oh Great Loving Sun

What I need most at this time –

Is for the rain to stop.

But as this had six word-sounds instead of five, it kept on raining. Then Acorn tried again –

Oh Great Loving Sun

What I need most at this time –

Is for no more rain.

Since he had got the word-sounds right, the Sun drove away the clouds and with them the rain, and soon the water started to go down and down.

‘Primrose joined Acorn in saying the Thank You Kernel –

Oh Great Loving Sun

We, your grateful squirrels, now –

Thank you sincerely.

‘Then, as the Sun shone to dry the wet squirrels, a great rainbow formed in the sky and, right in the middle of the arch, they could see the man’s boat coming back towards them.  Finally it grounded on the top of Portland where it was rising out of the water.

‘Soon the animals were coming off the boat, two by two.  First came two horses, then a cow and a bull, then two dogs, then two foxes, and two cats and all the other animals in pairs, except  … there was only
one
unicorn, and that was looking sorrowfully and accusingly at the man as it came down the gangplank onto the soggy ground.

‘The man shrugged his shoulders and held out his hands palms upwards.  Primrose turned to Acorn and said, I told you so!'’

‘Now, you would think that all the creatures would have learned a lesson and buried their droppings after such an event, but they had soon forgotten what had happened, and behaved just as they had done before.  So the Sun
still
has to send lots of rain to clean up the world.

‘Today, only the cats and humans hide their droppings, and that is why cats hate the rain and humans are always grumbling about the weather.’

Dandelion signalled that this was the end of the story and her audience thanked her.  After brushing whiskers with their friends, they all set out for their own dreys in the near-darkness, the Sun-day over.

Crag whispered to Rusty and Chip to follow him, and the three slipped unnoticed away through the branches, Crag mumbling, ‘Blasphemy, blasphemy! It can’t be true.  We know that there are no sequoia trees on Portland.  Blasphemy! Heathens, pleasure seekers, every one of them!’  Then, to Chip’s disappointment, he added, ‘We won’t find a worthy mate amongst that lot.’

Chip was looking over his shoulder, hardly able to believe that there were so many other squirrels in the world and desperately wanting to stay and …and … Finding no words for ‘play with’, ‘share with’ or even ‘live with’, he settled for wanting to just ‘be with’ these warm and interesting animals that he felt so close to.

‘Come on,’ his father called back gruffly.  ‘There’s nothing for you there.’

CHAPTER EIGHT

Blood woke from his dreams in the bell-tower of the disused church, shook himself and came tail first down the bell rope and into the nave, wrinkling his nose in disgust as the stink of peafowl droppings filled his nostrils.  The huge birds were roosting in rows along the back of the pews, and the sunlight, striking through the dusty stained-glass window, lit up the glossy blue of their necks.

Easy meat, thought Blood, but I can take those any time, and he slipped out through the door and down to the swamp to the place where he had found the ruddled squirrel on the previous day.  There were no squirrels at the leaf-pile, but he played with the tail and the ragged skin of yesterday’s meal, tossing it into the air and catching it, savouring the scent, until, filled again by squirrel-lust and hunger, he climbed a tree and set off on a hunting expedition.

Ex-Kingz-Mate Thizle had been visiting the drey of her son, once Prince Poplar, but who now insisted on being called Just Poplar, and she was returning to her own drey through the treetops.  She was disappointed yet again that he still showed no sign of being interested in finding a life-mate amongst the incomers’ families.  She was relieved, though, that he was not so taken by their classless ways that he might choose a female ex-zervant.  That would be intolerable.  She hoped that she had put a stop to any ideas he might just be having in that direction.

As she neared her drey, between the Zwamp and the Lagoon, she stopped and stared.  A brown creature, larger than a squirrel, was climbing up the trunk of her drey-tree.  She watched as it pushed its head into the drey and pulled out the Ex-King by the throat.  She realised with horror that the creature could only be a pine marten.  Terrified, she ran off to warn the other squirrels, finding most of them with Oak the Cautious, finalising the plans for the Harvest Sun-day.

‘The King huz been killed and eaten,’ she gasped breathlessly, forgetting to use the ‘Ex’.  There’z a pine marten on Ourland!  A pine marten!  Him’z killed and eaten the King!’

They all knew about pine martens, though only from stories and a silly Kernel that they told to unruly youngsters –

Pine martens’ sharp teeth

Bite off the ears and the tails

Of naughty dreylings.

The idea of a real-live pine marten being on Ourland was horrific.  There weren’t even dogs and foxes here!

‘Are you sure?’ asked Chestnut the Doubter.

‘Uz zaw it eat the King.  Him wuz much bigger than uz iz,’ she sobbed, ‘and the zame zort of colour but with white edgez to him'z earz and him can go up a tree az fazt az uz can. What’z uz going to do?’

The squirrels chattered in excitement and fear, looking round as though expecting hordes of bloodlusting pine martens to leap on them, until Oak, exerting his authority, said calmly, ‘We must hold a Council Meeting to discuss this.  In the meantime we will set out watchers to warn us if it is coming this way.’

Using the lessons learned the previous year, when they had had to defend themselves from a group of hostile grey squirrels on the Mainland, all those living in outlying dreys were encouraged to come and build nearer the Council Tree.  Pickets were set to keep a constant watch.

Having temporarily satisfied his squirrel-lust and finding that a peafowl would provide a meal for days, Blood stayed in the church, taking a roosting peahen occasionally and seldom venturing out.

The squirrels soon began to believe that the alarm must have been a product of Thizle’s imagination, despite the disappearance of Ex-King Willow and the ex-zervant Bug, and relaxed their guard.

A week later the elderly ex-zervants, Caterpillar and Beetle, drawn by an urge to get thoroughly ruddled again, sloped off unnoticed to the leaf-pile in the Zwamp.

Beetle ate first and was enjoying the drowsy, warm feelings when he saw Caterpillar, who had just dug himself a ruddled sloe from deep amongst the steaming leaves, staring past him.  Fear was showing in his stance and in the look in his eyes.  Beetle froze.  Caterpillar started to move backwards, still with his eyes fixed on something behind Beetle, whose neck-fur was now rising and his tail-tip swishing uncontrollably to left and right.

Beetle turned fearfully to look over his shoulder, caught a glimpse of sharp white teeth above a white-furred chest and tried to leap for a tree, but fell in a heap as his limbs seemed to tangle with one another.  Then he felt the teeth biting deep into his neck.