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| Slinkachu |
This year I've been continuing my workshops with St Augustine's C of E in Kilburn, and this week I got them to imagine being really small and to write about an ordinary experience. There were some lovely results, including a kitchen adventure and an uninterested Barbie in a toy shop. I got a bit carried away by it, and wrote this little piece, which I thought I'd put up here. The picture on the left is by Slinkachu, who makes wonderful pictures of little people in the city:
website is here.
WASP ATTACK
by Philip Womack
It
had been a long Wednesmonth, and we were nearing the middle of it. I’d managed
to persuade father and mother that we had almost enough food for the long dark
month that was coming up – and so Mindy and I were allowed out of the complex for a bit of fun.
We’d scrambled through the tunnels, and nodded to Paul the old porter.
“Coast is
clear,” he said, and grumpily opened up the gate for us. We stepped outside, I
holding my spear, and Mindy with her little catapult that she was just learning
how to use. It was a time of the month when the Nameless Ones seemed to be going
about their business in their weird buildings, and so it was relatively safe to venture into the black plain.
I needed to get out of the complex, anyway: all that darkness, all
that walking through tunnels.
Mindy
ran off immediately to the old lake, and started splashing about joyfully. I
scanned the vast black desert. There was nothing to be seen. I put down my
spear, and relaxed, breathing in the cold wind. It filled me with excitement.
I
could see all the way up to the stone wall, above which the Nameless Ones sometimes
trampled. There were the strange tall trees that didn’t put out leaves,
stretching up and up to the outer sky.
As
Mindy shrieked and yelped and splashed, I caught the scent of something – that odd, sweet-salty tang that meant some store of food was about. They were so
careless, the Nameless Ones, always discarding things that could feed us for
months.
I
looked about, and there it was. As big as the entrance hall to the King’s
chambers. A thick container resting against the stone wall, and it
was half full of the hard loaf that, despite its tastiness, the Nameless
Ones must hate, since they threw so much of it away.
Did
I have time to get it? I wondered. It was a fair few minutes’ hike. I saw
Mindy’s tiny figure wading about in the edges of the old lake and thought –
she’s old enough to take care of herself for a bit. That prize is good enough.
It’ll last the tribe for ages if I can drag one of those loaves back.
So
I picked up my metal spear, and set out across the black plain, past the yellow
road that ran in double lines, that led to the centre of the Nameless Ones’
city, a place so terrifying we never went there. I scrambled over boulders,
keeping the smell of the loaves in my nostrils. I was salivating. I began to
feel adventurous. I imagined the scene: sweating, dirtied and bloodied, I would
heave the loaf into the complex, and be met with the praise due to a returning
warrior, and the King’s daughter would smile at me and maybe later we would
dance.
The
smell was almost overpowering now. I was nearly there. I caught Mindy’s happy
squealing on the wind. High above me towered layer upon layer of the thick,
crunchy loaf. I considered the prospect. I’d be able, if I tried, to pull one
out from near the middle. I grabbed hold of its thick edge – my hands smarting
from the sharp white rocks of salt that covered it – and began to pull.
Then
I heard it. Mindy. She wasn’t yelling with joy. That was fear – worse, horror.
I whipped round and saw Mindy splashing as fast as she could out of the old
lake.
Whirring
angrily above her, its heavy wings clashing, its vicious weapons glinting, and
its eyes, its hideous eyes, was that terror of the plains, in all its black and
gold striped glory.
I
ran. What else was there to do? I left behind the prize, my tribe’s sustenance.
I sprinted over the black desert, waving my spear angrily. The monster was
making long, lazy circles around Mindy. She looked so small and frightened, she
might have been a doll.
“Help!” she screamed. “Garmond, help!” She
took shelter behind a boulder. The monster spun its cruel circle, and I took
aim. Mindy yelled. I hurled the spear with all my might, hoping it would reach its target.
“Run!”
I cried. It didn't seem to take any time at all, and yet it felt like forever. I watched as my spear hit the thing sideways, not piercing its armour. It wobbled, knocked a little off course. Mindy was running
back to the gate. The noise had caused the porter to open it, and he was
peering out anxiously. Mindy neared the entrance.
Weaponless,
I ran, the monster’s fearsome buzz filling the skies. My sister’s face, white,
staring at me. The porter’s mouth, open. His arms outstretched. The shadow of
the monster on the plain. I tripped, and fell, and rolled over onto my back,
and saw the creature, its sharp sting extended, making straight for me.
Death.
I closed my eyes. What would it mean? We all lived out through the months, from
the Moon’s to the Sun’s, seven months a year. Some of us lived to 120 or so.
I’d reached 24. I had so much left to live.
I
braced myself. The noise was too much. I heard the monster’s wings, and I heard
it preparing to strike.
And
then a thump. A thud.
The whirring stopped, and a low buzzing, fitfull and
quiet, replaced it.
I opened my eyes.
The
monster was on its side, a gash leaking out some horrible liquid. It was twitching, angrily. But it was dying. My sister was
waving me in. She’d shot the beast with her catapult, and the porter had followed it with a spear. I cried out my thanks.
They
carried me inside. That night, at the feast, I caught the eye of the
princess, and she smiled at me: the boy who’d faced a monster, and lived.
