Hercufleas (10 page)

The explosion rumbled on and on. Why wasn't it stopping? The earth still trembled. All around the clearing, dry leaves and twigs and clods of mud and pebbles bounced up and down, as if everything was becoming a flea. Had Ugor's dynamite started an earthquake?

The rattlesnoak lurched up into the air – the hill was growing
bigger.
The earth under Hercufleas split and he almost fell into the crack. It was as if the world was turning inside out. Earth and rocks split and tilted. Tree stumps lurched over.

Four enormous
things
burst from the ground over by Onk-Onk, then a fifth. The pig squealed and ran away from the fingers as they wriggled in the air. The rest of the giant hand worked its way up from the earth. The rattlesnoak hill was not a hill at all. It was the top of a head, with two rotten yellow swamps of eyes and fat pupils sitting in the middle of each one like toads and a mouth spitting out mud and roots.

‘Giant!' Ugor roared, frantically reloading his Bazuka. ‘Giant!'

Hercufleas gazed at Yuk rising and rising until he was high as a mountain. This must be where he went each month to sleep – he buried himself below the woodn't.

Ugor's dynamite had woken him up early.

And he looked very, very angry.

‘YUK GUZZLE.'

W
ithout thinking, Hercufleas attacked.

‘Whatever size his enemies, the winner's always HERCUFLEAS!'
he screamed.

His next leap brought him down on the crag of Yuk's knee. The giant's flesh was bark and mud and rock, held together by white roots running through his body like veins. He bounded up the body – from knee to thigh to hip. His broken arm throbbed; he could barely breathe. After a few jumps, his legs were so tired and stretched they felt like old elastic underpants, ready to fall off his bottom. But he kept going. He had to. His fleamily were on the rattlesnoak that sprouted from the giant's head.

Words tumbled down from Yuk's lips like a mudslide.

‘WHAT ITCH YUK'S HEAD?'

A giant hand flew up past Hercufleas to grope around the rattlesnoak branches.

‘HEY!' Hercufleas bellowed from Yuk's waist, try to distract him. ‘DOWN HERE!'

His voice faded into the cool night air. He had to try something else. Leaping sideways, he landed in the cave of Yuk's bellybutton. It was choked with bramble-strangle. Bats roosted in nooks above his head, swooping and shrieking. He ignored them, frantically searching the floor, sensing tender nerve clusters just under the skin like landmines. All fleas instinctively avoid biting the most sensitive parts of their host. But now Hercufleas went for the tenderest spot in Yuk's bellybutton.

And chomped down as hard as he possibly, possibly could.

‘OOOOOH!' A roar echoed around the bellybutton. ‘WHAT ITCH YUK'S BELLY?'

Hercufleas had one brief moment of triumph. He'd done it! He'd bought his fleamily some time—

Suddenly bats were all around him – a black cloud of panic, fighting to get outside. Hercufleas dodged their flurry of wings and jaws and claws. What had spooked them?

Too late, he saw.

Yuk's giant finger was rushing up the bellybutton towards him. Of course: he'd bitten, now Yuk would scratch the itch.

Right where he stood.

The finger slammed down on him. Crushing. Pulverising. Hercufleas felt his armoured skin crack and pop under the pressure. He tensed his whole body as hard as he could. Trying to stay strong. Trying to survive. He couldn't get squished.

At last he felt the pressure lift, but he was lifted up too. Out of the bellybutton. He was wedged in the gunk and sludge under Yuk's nail. Glued to the end of the giant's fingertip. A crushed and broken bug.

With his last ounce of strength, Hercufleas kicked out with his legs. He wrenched himself free, the gunk stretching like a bungee cord.
Snap!
He tumbled down into the clearing, smearing down a tree trunk until he came to a stop. Stuck.

The giant went back to rummaging around his head. His fingertips brushed the branch where the house-hat sat. Hercufleas watched from below, whispering
The Plea of the Flea
, praying for a miracle. In Avalonian fairy tales, this was the moment when the knight in shining armour appeared and saved the day…

Yuk's fingers plucked up Stickler first. ‘YUM YUM.' He spoke like Ugor: slow and stupid and cruel. ‘YUK NOT NEED TO GUZZLE TOWN FOR TASTY SNACK. TASTY SNACK COME TO YUK.'

Yuk smiled at Stickler, wriggling like a worm in his grip, then tossed the hero-seller onto his tongue. Stickler sloshed around the giant's mouth, trying desperately to paddle away from the gnashing stone teeth, clinging to Yuk's tonsils…

Then something flew up from the woodn't like a firework, punching into Yuk's chest.
BOOM!

In the burning clearing stood the silhouette of Ugor and his Bazuka.

Yuk toppled – it seemed to take hours – and slammed down into the woodn't. The impact made the giant choke and cough up into the air a shining glob of spit. Floating inside it, like a pickled egg in brine, was Mr Stickler. He rose up, slowed, stopped – and fell straight down again into Yuk's mouth. The giant swallowed him with a gulp.

‘Onk-Onk, now you fire too!' Ugor bellowed.

As Yuk lurched to his feet, the pig charged, snout belching fire and flames. Two cannonballs hit Yuk with a thud. The giant staggered back, but didn't fall. Not this time. He lunged forward to snatch the barbarian and his pig, cramming them into his mouth.

‘TASTE LIKE CHICKEN,' he said.

Hercufleas scanned Yuk's mohican tree for the house-hat… There! The impact of the giant's fall had wedged it between two branches. A few of the windows still shone faintly, like a cluster of fallen stars.

Hercufleas cried out for Min and Pin and all the others. Jump, jump, they had to jump now, before it was too late! But his shouts were too small, and came from too far away.

Yuk patted his belly. A burp erupted from his lips, sending the leaves around Hercufleas trembling.

‘THAT GOOD GUZZLE,' he said. ‘YUK FULL. NOW YUK NEED SLEEP. SOMEWHERE HE NOT GET WOKEN UP BY BIG BOOM-BOOM.'

Hercufleas watched him stomp away. To the horizon and beyond. Carrying the tiny winking lights of the house-hat with him.

H
ercufleas woke in a matchbox padded with cotton wool. He turned his head and found himself on a windowsill, lying in a sunbeam. Outside was a road strewn with rubble. A wonky sign said ‘Merit Street'.

He didn't know where Merit Street was. This wasn't the woodn't, or Avalon, this was somewhere he'd never been. How long had he been asleep? Grimacing, he sat up. Dull pain shot through his broken arm. Someone had sewn up his cracked skin with cotton thread, fixing it back in place. He was mending. Some parts of him, anyway.

There was nothing else to see on the street, so he turned his gaze inwards to the room. It had been a school once. Now half the roof was gone and the desks had rotted in the rain. Old books, swollen with damp, sprouted on the sill beside him like fungi. A faded display lined the far wall – pictures painted in bright colours by little children. Names were printed below them. Ilsa. Ivan. Greta.

This must be Tumber.

Greta's painting was of a small girl, a man, a lady, a donkey and a goat. She'd painted smiley faces on everyone, even the sun.

Hercufleas noticed her then. She was asleep on the floor, curled up by the blackboard, cuddling her axe the way other children cuddle dolls. Hercufleas watched her for a long time. She was having a good dream, he could tell. She was smiling, ever so slightly.

Why hadn't she abandoned him, the way he'd abandoned her?

Down the corridor came the echo of footsteps. An orange glow grew brighter in the doorway. Quickly Hercufleas lay back down in his matchbox and pretended to snore. He kept one eye open. Into the classroom came an old babushka with hair like chicken wire and a tiny copper earring in the shape of a bell. She'd dusted her cheeks with flour and drawn her eyebrows on with charcoal in an attempt to look glamorous. One hand held a walking stick with a brass tip and a carved fox-head handle. In the other, a fat orange tinderfly burned on the stub of a sugarstick.

The babushka looked from Greta to Hercufleas, shaking her head. She muttered something in a language Hercufleas didn't know, setting the tinderfly down. She gave Greta a gentle poke with her stick.

‘Five more minutes, Mama,' Greta mumbled.

The babushka sighed and brought her stick down on the floorboards with a sharp crack. Greta groaned. ‘Mama, Wuff is barking again.'

The babushka went over to the blackboard and raked her long nails down it. They screeched like broken violins. Greta sat bolt upright, awake and scowling again. She had feathers in her hair from the pillow propped beneath her.

‘Wake him,' said the babushka, plucking the feathers out. ‘I must tell you what will happen.'

Greta yawned. ‘Can't it wait another hour?'

The babushka
tsked
. ‘Greta Stump. Even in class you were always with the questions and not with the listening. Less than a month now until Yuk comes back to Tumber, and you wish to sleep? Those he guzzled in the woodn't will not sate his hunger forever.'

‘Yeah, Stickler was all greasy and bony,' said Greta. ‘Onk-Onk and Ugor were meaty though.'

‘Even so. When he returns, this flea is the only hope we have.'

Hercufleas lay still, but his mind raced.
This flea?
Why was the old babushka talking about
him?

Greta scowled. ‘I still say you're wrong about him.'

The babushka
tsked
again and drew her lips into a pencil-thin frown. ‘And did you lose your manners when you left for Avalon, along with Tumber's last florins?'

Greta blushed, lowering her head. ‘Sorry, Miss Witz.'

Miss Witz put bony hands on bony hips and stared at Hercufleas. He shut his eye quick and made mumbling sounds.

‘I wonder,' he heard her mutter. ‘I wonder if he really is the one.' She sniffed. ‘Let me know when he wakes, child.'

‘Yes, Miss Witz.'

Hercufleas heard her leave.

‘You know,' said Greta in the silence after Miss Witz had gone, ‘I was pretending to be asleep before
you
were pretending to be asleep.'

Hercufleas opened his eyes. He sat up sheepishly.

‘You're hungry, I bet,' she said.

His belly gave a hollow growl. He was ravenous!

‘I'll take that as a yes,' she said, running her thumb across the blade of her axe. Without wincing, she squeezed a bright bead of red blood into a thimble and plonked it angrily down on the sill beside him.

‘Don't choke,' she said sweetly.

Hercufleas glugged the thimble down, trying not to gag. Greta's bitterness was worse than ever – the taste of her anger made his throat raw. He waited for the sweet aftertaste, but it never came.

Greta's hope was gone. She no longer believed in him. It wasn't a surprise, after what he'd done. What surprised him was how painful that was. It hurt worse than being crushed by Yuk.

‘It wasn't my idea to bring you here,' Greta said in the silence. ‘I wanted to leave you behind. Like you left me.'

She bowed her head, tears pattering on the floorboards.

‘I'm sorry, Greta. Please don't cry.'

She smiled at that. ‘But I'm so good at it,' she said. ‘I've had so much practice. We all have. Tumber's other name is the Town of Tears. And I thought you could dry our eyes. I was wrong.'

Hercufleas couldn't meet her icy stare.

‘Miss Witz made me go back and find you. She's my teacher…
was
my teacher. Before Yuk guzzled the school. She's the reason you're here, and not still stuck on that tree trunk.' The ice in her voice softened a little. ‘Me and Artifax rode back to the clearing. It was easy – we could see the fires from Tumber. And I heard you. Shouting those things, about your fleamily. Saying their names, over and over, like prayers. And then I realised. You might not care about
me
, but you care about
them
, don't you?'