*General!* I shout out. *General — are you still here?*
Nothing comes back — just the wind in the rushes, and the sound of the cub sniffing the ground like he wants to snort it right up.
*There is a scent here. Another human. I can follow their tracks.*
I look up ahead at the reeds and grasses. I can’t see any sign of anything, but he’s determined.
*Let us follow the track and the scent while it is still fresh,* urges the wolf-cub.
Slumped on a rock, I slowly move a puddle of leaves around with my foot, trying to focus and think of a plan. And as I move the leaves around I see some white pebbles. Or maybe pieces of bone.
Square-shaped pieces of bone.
My heart leaps up into my throat as I realize that they’re not pieces of bone — they’re tiles.
I fall on to my knees and start digging away the mud and rubbish. There are four letter tiles there, hurriedly hidden under a leaf. But the letters don’t form any word I recognize.
I wonder if they’re the initials of something. May Follow Right Ahead? But where? My Fault Really Apologize? Doesn’t sound like Polly. Mr Firestick Returned Again? That’s something the stag would write, not Polly.
*What have you found? What have you found?* shouts the wolf-cub, jumping right into the puddle with his shaggy paws and wet muzzle, kicking the tiles up into the air. They tumble in the sky before landing back down with a splash.
*You idiot! Look what you’ve done!*
But as I crouch down again, wiping the dirt off, I realize that he’s scattered them into sense.
I scoop the tiles up in my hand and clench them tight.
*Come on,* I say, standing up. I follow the wolf-cub along the shore as he tracks the trail right along the bank, away from the swamp, the leaf-cure and the whiterforce — sniffing every broken branch, every frond of leaf, for any clue he can gather. The pebbles and sand slowly disappear, buried under knotted rolls of creepers and brambles. We keep on pushing through them, until the coils and curls of greenery fall away and we find ourselves looking down from the top of a slope, where we pause to take a breath.
A deep one.
Because it’s like the country we’ve been travelling in has just been completely flattened into the biggest and emptiest field I have ever seen in my life. All the different colours, the greens and greys and yellows, all the different leaves and blades of grass, all rolled down into one grey-brown plain of mud, stretching right into the furthest distance, where the land meets the sky.
Mud everywhere.
Here and there are ragged islands of drooping pale brown stalks — which must be all that remains of what once grew in this giant field, now just rotting into the ground.
And at the bottom of the slope, its engine idling, black smoke puffing into the air out of tall pipes, is a machine unlike any other I have ever seen. A huge green barn, covered in aerials and chutes, resting on its equally giant wheels, with a sharp line of blades fastened to the front, like a pair of jaws. A long ramp juts out from the back, at the mouth of the dark metal cave inside. It can only be one kind of machine. I look at the tiles clutched in my hand. A farm machine.
But it’s not the farm machine which is making us run down the slope as fast as we can, Wolf-Cub and I, falling over one another, screaming and shouting, the pigeons crying overhead — it’s the girl and the deer climbing into it, stepping slowly up the metal ramp into the darkness.
There’s a woman too, a woman I don’t know, in boots and a scarf, who seems to have smoke puffing out of her as well — guiding them in — but they’re too far away, the stag hasn’t heard us.
*Over here, over here!* cry the pigeons from somewhere in the sky above, but now our friends are inside the farm machine and the ramp is slowly closing up behind them. The woman is chaining it up, and I’ve never wanted to yell, actually humanly yell, more in my life — but nothing comes out. Then she is climbing up a ladder, back into the cab at the front of the machine, and just as we reach the bottom of the slope, it growls and shudders, the orange lights on top of the cab begin to revolve and the farm machine lumbers off over the ground, churning a spray of earth and dead crops into the air.
We chase after it as quick as we can, but find ourselves going slower and slower, our feet clogged with clay, stumbling over the freshly made ridges of earth, shrivelled stalks spread flat over each one, like tentacles.
The pigeons fly faster, over the top of the machine, but there is nothing they can do to stop it.
Then all of a sudden the wolf-cub stops. We can feel the ground shaking under us as the machine rolls into the distance, but it is getting further and further away, the noise fainter with every second.
*What is it? Why have you stopped?*
*I do not think we can stop this machine, Wildness. The birds can’t stop it — and I can’t help you either. We have lost them.*
*Why are you giving up? I thought you just said you would do anything for me?*
The second the words are out of my head, I wish I hadn’t said them. The wolf-cub’s shoulders droop and he looks down at the ground.
But there isn’t time to say sorry. I look at the shimmering green block on the horizon, shrinking slowly out of view, steaming smoke into the sky. I clutch the leaves and tiles in my pocket — and realize what I have to do. I don’t run after it.
Instead I plant my feet firmly on the ground and try to concentrate. To listen.
*Are you listening? I know you’re here! * I call out.
There’s no response, nothing, just the faint roaring of the machine in the distance.
*I know you’re here!* I call out again.
Snakes in the fish-road. Voices in the swamp. There must be something, even in this dead field of stalks and mud.
*Whoever you are, whoever is here — I am the Wildness and I command you to help us.*
The machine is heading for the horizon. Then something runs over my feet.
I look down, and squint. A single tiny, furry ginger mouse. My heart sinks.
*How can you help us?*
*You’ll want that metal beast stopping, no doubt.* She jerks her head towards the disappearing monster.
*Yes,* I say, *but how are you—*
*Easy as corn pie, my fine two-legged sir. That monster — this is what you lot call a kombylarbester. There’s a little black tail of a wire, you see, runs down the back, under the hatch. A couple of quick chews on that and —*
*Well, could you — you know — just do something?*
The mouse wipes her face with her paws. *Oh, I’d love to. Oh, believe you me — I would love nothing more. Problem is, see, there’s no way I can actually get to the wire by myself, on account of it being a fast-moving object right at the other end of this field. Cos normally, right, this is performed as a stationary procedure on the kombylarbester, when it’s not moving, at night. There’s a little chute, you see, that one poking out the back there — that’s the one, that’s it — and we just climb down that basically. Never done it on a moving one before.*
She sucks her teeth.
And then they are above us, grey dots and a white one in the sky, before I even ask. Diving down into the stalks and grabbing the mouse between their claws, so she shoots up in the air past my nose, dangling by her tail.
*Hey — are you having a laugh or what? I’m not going anywhere with a blooming pigeon —*
But they are gone, off into the sky, up high, and then I see — silhouetted against the setting sun — a wriggling ball drop high from their claws, still screaming loud enough for us to hear, down into a metal tube sticking out of the kombylarbester’s thrumming engine.