The Story of the Blue Planet (8 page)

The children came to a glade where a large and fierce leopard was about to eat a sheep. Hulda crept up behind the leopard, which caught no scent of a child and so concentrated on the sheep. Hulda came right up to it, holding in her laughter, before she yelled and pulled the leopard’s tail:

“Boo! Boo! I’m the butterfly monster! I’m going to eat you!”

The leopard howled pitifully and rushed away while Brimir and Hulda held their sides laughing. They rubbed their empty tummies before eating up every last bit of the lamb.

Replenished, they continued their journey. The sky was always clouded over so that they couldn’t follow the moon or find their way by the stars. Sometimes they thought they saw a shining star, but it was only a firefly with its deceptive glowing light. The cries of night owls and bats pierced the darkness, but otherwise the night was songless. The birds had flown away in search of the sun. Abandoned chicks cheeped in their nests.

The children had been walking for a long time but had no idea for how long exactly because they measured time in days, and the sun no longer circled the planet.

It began to pour with rain. A thousand woolly and curly lambs in the sky peed over the children. They found shelter in a large cave and lit a little yellow fire with dried leaves.

“We’ll never find our way home,” said Brimir sadly, “and I’m hungry again.”

“We’ll find no food in this downpour.”

They became silent and sat staring at the fire when Hulda had an idea. She walked grinning to the cave mouth and shouted out into the darkness:

“Lion! We want meat, right now!”

“Why should I give you meat?” growled the lion in the darkness.

“Should we eat you instead?” growled Hulda, and she bared her teeth. “You don’t know what a butterfly monster can do in a fit of rage.”

The lion appeared shortly after with a little reindeer in its jaws.

“That wasn’t so difficult,” said Hulda, and smiled.

“Some vegetables would be nice,” said Brimir.

“Mole! Bring some potatoes!” yelled Hulda.

“What if I don’t feel like it?” was heard muttered from beneath the forest.

“Then we’ll eat you,” said Hulda, stamping her foot.

A pile of potatoes came up through the cave floor.

“I’m still hungry,” said Brimir when they had finished the reindeer and potatoes.

“Call for food. There’s a delivery service in this forest.”

“Mink! We’d like some fish!” shouted Brimir.

“I’ve trouble enough fending for myself,” replied the mink in the darkness.

“I’ve never tasted mink meat before!” cried Brimir, and he tried to growl like Hulda.

Soon afterwards a fat and wriggling trout appeared at the mouth of the cave.

“I’m thirsty,” sighed Brimir after his meal. “I’d like some milk.”

“She-wolf, we want some milk.”

The she-wolf came and lay down by the children. They snuggled up to her warm pelt and sucked warm wolf-milk from her teats. Their sleep was passed in wolf dreams: Yellow moon. Black darkness. Red blood.

The Wildest Wild Animals

When Hulda and Brimir awoke the she-wolf had gone and the fire was cold. The darkness was so dense one could almost feel it.

“Bears! Firewood!” yelled the children.

Bears flocked to the cave, each with an armful of sticks and logs. They built a large bonfire, which Brimir set alight. The fire burned like a little sun and shone out through the cave entrance.

“Maybe it’s possible to fly in the glow of the fire if the flames are powerful enough,” said Hulda staring at the bonfire.

Brimir’s eyes gleamed. “Bears! More firewood!” he shouted.

The bears added a whole tree to the pile. The fire blazed more and more intensely.

Until at last …

“I can fly!” cried Hulda. “HA! HA! HA!”

The children glided like flies around the bonfire, wildly ecstatic. Circleaftercircleaftercircle. The flames licked the roof of the cave. The rain pounded down outside. Lightning lit up the forest. Shrieking bats joined them.

“We are wolf-cubs! We are black hornets! Everyone’s afraid of us! We’re the wildest of wild animals!”

The dark shadows flickered.

“Spiders and silkworms! We need clothing!”

“Why should we spin and weave for you?”

“Because otherwise we’ll rip down your webs! We are the butterfly monsters, the strongest and most ferocious of wild animals. You have to obey us!”

The worms span their finest silk, and the spiders wove from it precious clothes in thousands of colors. The children put reindeer horns on their heads and flew screaming around the flames.

“We don’t have to hurry home. We’re fine right here!”

“Hyena! We’re hungry!”

The hyena laughed its cynical laugh and set off into the forest. Shortly afterwards it came with its prey in its jaws and laid it on the cave floor. The children looked horrified at its catch.

“It’s a child!”

The child lay motionless on the cave floor, its face deathly pale. It was a boy about the same size as Brimir.

“Is he dead?” whispered Hulda.

“Hee, hee, hee,” shrieked the hyena. “I thought you’d want fresh meat and would kill him yourself. Aren’t you the wildest of wild animals? Hee, hee, hee!”

The hyena ran away laughing.

Brimir ran up to the child and began to revive him.

“Is he hurt?”

“I don’t see any blood.”

“What’s a child doing wandering around in such a dark and dangerous forest?” asked an outraged Hulda.

Brimir looked at her.

“The forest wasn’t always so black. Before we fixed the sun over our island at home it had been almost certainly just like our forest, light green and dark green in turns, depending on the sunshine and moonlight.”

Brimir gave the boy some wolf-milk to drink. He soon came round, but his face remained amazingly pale.

“Who are you?” he asked, wide-eyed.

“We’re Brimir and Hulda.”

“Did the hyena eat you too?”

“No, we rescued you from it,” said Brimir.

The boy stood up and dusted off the soil and animal slobber.

“My name’s Darrow. Thanks for saving my life, but now I have to hurry back to my friends. They think I’m dead.”

“Are there more children in the forest?”

“Well over a hundred. They tried to save me, but the hyena was so fierce.”

“How will you get home? It’s impossible to find your way in the dark.”

“I know a way,” said Darrow.

Darrow went outside the cave and caught some luminous fireflies, which swam like radiant fish in the dark.

“It’s like he’s collecting stars from heaven,” whispered Hulda.

Darrow took the fireflies to the nearest oak tree and dipped them in the sticky tree sap. He then stuck them onto his forehead where they cast a pale blue glow into the forest. Brimir and Hulda followed right behind him.

“This way, my friends are over there,” said Darrow, when a glow could be seen in the distance.

The flies on his forehead buzzed and lit up the way. His eyes looked strange in this light. His teeth bluish. His skin greeny-blue. When they came over a low hill they saw the glow came from a jar full of thousands of buzzing fireflies, shining like a full moon. Round the jar sat creatures warbling weird songs.

“Are you sure Darrow’s alive?” whispered Hulda. “He’s so ghostly.”

Darrow came to a halt and looked round slowly. The firefly light was so strong they had to squint.

“Come Brimir. Come Hulda. Come and meet my friends.”

“If Darrow’s dead, then his friends are zombies and ghost children,” whispered Hulda, a tingle of fear running down her spine.

The Ghost Children

“Come,” said Darrow, trying to pull them along.

The ghostly children sang beautiful songs about the sun and the butterflies. They sang about sunrise and sunset, birds and flowers, and fruits and a sky that was sometimes blue or white and sometimes red or full of glittering stars. They sang with sorrow about Darrow who had ended up in the belly of a fierce hyena.

“Stop singing that, I’m here,” shouted Darrow.

The song ceased. The creatures by the firefly-light looked round.

“It’s Darrow,” they cried. “Darrow’s alive! Darrow’s alive!”

The children rushed round Darrow and hugged him. There were certainly well over a hundred of them.

“Oh, Darrow, our dearest best friend, we cried so much,” said a little girl with black eyes.

Brimir looked at Hulda and tears came into his eyes. “That’s how glad to see us everyone will be if we ever get home.”

Darrow had been kissed so much he leeded to wipe his face. “This is Brimir and this is Hulda,” he said. “They saved me.”

“Weren’t you scared of the hyena and the predators in the forest?”

Brimir was going to explain everything. “No, you see, we’re coated with TEF…”

But Hulda interrupted him. “Yes, we were dreadfully scared.”

“Where do you come from?” asked the children.

“We come from an island in the big ocean on the other side of the planet, and my name is Brimir.”

“Hooray for Brimir the Brave!”

“And I’m Hulda.”

“Hooray for Hulda the Heroine!”

“Are you looking for the sun?” asked a thin boy.

“Have you seen it?” asked Brimir, brightening up.