Skrimsli, page 18
In their minds they looked at each other. The gorilla did not have any human words. He ‘spoke’ in pictures and feelings, which Skrimsli understood very well.
What are you doing here? The gorilla challenged.
I don’t want to fight. I don’t want to kill. I don’t want to die. Skrimsli responded. Do you?
There was a pause. No, the gorilla replied. Man will hurt my friend if I don’t fight.
So, Itmis was using the same tactic on everyone here! It wasn’t surprising. The gorilla began to fight back again and gripped Skrimsli’s throat once more. But the cub simply increased the pressure on its windpipe a little more
You will die first, he told it. Do you want to die?
No.
Then do this.
Skrimsli hesitated then. He had thought of a plan but not how to explain it! How would he describe biting, strangling, struggling, but with enough restraint to do no harm? Then he had it. A memory of himself and Taze fighting when he was a cub. He showed it now. The gorilla was smart. He understood at once and answered with a memory of his own: a smaller version of himself and another just like him, rolling over and over, falling out of trees and rolling again on the ground.
Yes, said Skrimsli.
Yes, the gorilla responded. YES!
Skrimsli released his grip a little and was immediately wrapped in strong arms and legs that rolled him over and over in the dust; this time they held but did not crush. Skrimsli let the gorilla stand above him and even hold his head and shake it. The cub could feel the strength that his opponent was no longer using but holding in reserve. Then he rolled on top and put his mouth around the gorilla’s neck again. The gorilla screamed so convincingly that Skrimsli let go. It pushed him off and ran around the pit, whooping and beating its huge chest with its big flat hands.
And just like that, they were playing. Really playing. For the next few minutes neither of them thought of anything else but the pleasure of wrestling and rolling, ambushing and escaping, until they were both tired and out of breath. Skrimsli remembered what Taze did when she’d had enough and rolled onto his back and played dead. The gorilla stood on its hind legs and beat its chest again. Yes, thought Skrimsli, bluff is what you do best!
The human crowd roared so loud Skrimsli thought his ears would burst.
Then the doors to their respective tunnels slid open with a rasp and they could escape back to the quiet of their cells. Play fighting was exhausting. Skrimsli lapped his water bowl empty and slept.
Over the following nights, Skrimsli met all the other animals who were Itmis’ prisoners, one after another. The first night it was Karu, who was easy to communicate with but who had forgotten how to play. In his years under Kobret’s control he had got used to dominating small opponents with overwhelming strength, or simply threatening violence and doing nothing. He was stiff and out of condition. Only by really scratching him on the nose and getting him really angry could Skrimsli elicit a convincing fight. And that was dangerous! Karu eventually understood what was required of him but not before Skrimsli had a torn ear and bruised ribs.
The next night a female gorilla came into the light of the pit. She had been told what to do by her partner, so from the first moment they were playing. She was smaller and not as strong as her companion, but she was quicker and cleverer. She out-smarted Skrimsli several times, poking, tweaking, pinching and leaping out of reach. She taught the cub a whole lot of new things.
The most difficult opponent was the red ape. When Skrimsli tried to reach out to her mind, he felt himself pushed aside by a powerful force, just as if she’d struck him. She would not fight. She paced around and around the pit and stayed out of Skrimsli’s way. The crowd booed – a sound that Skrimsli knew from the circus was very bad. Itmis could see that Skrimsli was holding back.
‘Fight! Fight, Stripy, or you know what will happen,’ he called down. Then in a louder voice he yelled to the booing crowd. ‘If she won’t fight, kill her. Kill her, kill her.’
The human crowd took up the chant: kill her kill her kill her.
Skrimsli could feel the horrible desire for blood which filled the air. Blood for no reason, not for food, not for safety but for some dark human reason that smeared the air with its stink. At that moment, if he could have killed the entire human crowd, he would have.
The chanting grew more and more frenzied and Skrimsli feared that something bad would happen. Perhaps some of the humans had guns and would shoot the ape and himself? He needed to do something.
Skrimsli paced behind the ape for two more circuits of the pit until the movement of her limbs, the way her eye flitted about fearfully, was in his head. He relaxed his body, looked loose, inattentive. Then, he pounced, pinning her on her back, his forepaws on her arms. Underneath her fur her body was skinny, her long, long arms very thin. She didn’t struggle but it was she who came into his mind.
Do it, she said clearly, in human words. I want to be gone from this world that is not my own. I want my head emptied of their voices and their words.
Her misery was overwhelming. Skrimsli felt himself drowning in it.
Fight me! he told her. And you will live to escape!
Escape to what? she replied. My forest home is cut down. My family dead. I have never known a life that was not made by humans. Why should I want to live?
A life made by humans? Was that all that he too had lived? He had never even seen another of his own kind! Why was he was not filled with this blackness? What answer could he offer this poor, sad creature? Only the answer in his own heart, the vision he had seen through the elephant’s eye, and the sound and smell that had made his body thrill – ocean. There was still a world to discover.
Because there is a trail in the world to follow, and this is not the end of it, he told the red ape. He felt this thought sink into her, like water into parched ground. The red ape’s mind opened softly, and he saw it was a mind for finding and remembering, for mapping in space and time. She understood the meaning of a trail. Slowly her face, which was very close to his, changed. Her eyes lit up.
Perhaps, she said. Perhaps.
Then with one hand she reached up and pulled his whiskers very, very hard!
All of the fighters in the pit had been circus animals, kept to perform tricks to keep humans amused. They had lived with humans and had acquired the human habit of naming words, even if there were no other words that they used. The male gorilla was Silverback. His friend, the female, was Leaf; and the red ape was Ray. Every day Skrimsli thought of new ways to outwit Silverback, Leaf, Ray and Karu and when they met to fight, he knew they had been doing the same. Sometimes he fought three of them in one night, sometimes just one, and sometimes they fought each other. He did not see these contests but heard the reaction of the crowd. The fights between the red ape and the female gorilla made the humans scream with laughter. Every night the crowds around the pit grew bigger and louder.
But what the humans thought did not matter. Skrimsli began to realise that what was more important was that every day all the fighters in the pit grew stronger, more wily, more experienced. Grew to know each other better. Grew to trust each other more.
Skrimsli watched the human guards whenever he could and encouraged the others to do the same. He grew certain that he and his opponents in the pit could defeat them if they worked together. But how to work together when they were locked away in separate cages?
20
Kal
Possibility and Uncertainty
The twins put their photographic equipment away. Listig had taken photographs of both Kal and the Palatine, standing against one of the walls of the dirty courtyard of the amphitheatre. Listig had been very careful that nothing about their surroundings would give away their location. She packed the photographic plates into a box and locked it.
‘There,’ she said. ‘All the proof we need that the Palatine and the Erem terrorist are still alive and dangerous!’
‘And in the hands of ruthless kidnappers, whose only thought is money!’ Spion added.
The two sisters snickered together.
‘Now, we have the photographs, sister. Please can we kill them?’ Listig asked.
‘How many times, Listig!’ Spion snapped. ‘We may need to offer more proof that they are alive, or no one is going to pay to make sure they become dead. Patience, sister!’
Itmis stepped forward from where he had been standing in the shadows.
‘Their cells are ready,’ he announced. ‘I expect to be reimbursed for the new locks I’ve had to fit and the guards I’ve had to employ.’
‘Oh, you’ll get your cut, Itmis, never fear,’ said Listig, with mock sweetness. She sidled up to him and kissed his ear. Itmis looked as if he didn’t know whether to blush or throw up.
‘It will be quite the fortune,’ Listig continued, wrapping herself around him like a cat. ‘I’m going buy a whole pack of dear little dogs, did I tell you?’
Spion sighed in exasperation at her twin’s frivolity.
‘If everything goes to plan,’ Spion told Itmis sternly, ‘these photographs will ensure that interested parties will pay a great deal to fund the final elimination of the Palatine and the Erem terrorist. At that stage, we will send you notice of our imminent return, to finalise their demise and the proof thereof.’
‘What my sister means,’ Listig said, leaning her head onto Itmis’ shoulder, ‘is that as soon as the Yalen, the Nordskys and the Automators pay up, we’ll come back and kill ’em and take some snaps to prove it! And you will get lots of lovely money.’
They’ll kill you too, Itmis, you fool, Kal wanted to say, but the gag was in place now and even breathing was a strain.
‘In the meantime,’ Listig continued, ‘all you have to do is make even more money from your new show here! And we all know how much you like money, Itmis, dear.’
Itmis looked like a dark cloud.
‘I like money well enough. I need money to rebuild my father’s circus. But I like revenge too, and I will take mine on that wretched cat and his friend, and the treacherous bear. They will pay for what they did.’
He strode away barking to his new hired helpers. ‘Get these prisoners to their cells!’
Kal didn’t remember what had happened next because get these prisoners to their cells meant a wad of cloth, steeped in some sharp-smelling chemical was pressed over Kal’s face and everything went black. Kal woke inside the walls of a stone cell. One tiny window let in enough pale daylight to show that the cell was empty but for a low bed of wooden slats, a grubby blanket and a tin bucket.
‘Palatine?’ Kal called. ‘Owl?’ The words echoed mockingly in the dank air.
There was a sudden scuff of heavy boots outside the door.
‘Shuddup. You’re not in ’ere to talk. No talking, alright?’
Kal had never liked walls of any kind. Walls had always made Kal want to run outside and breath the open air. Inside these walls and the darkness, panic rose like a flood. Kal’s heart pounded with one thought:
I’m going to die here.
I’m going to die here.
I’m going to die here.
Kal pushed the thought away, but it kept seeping back.
Several sets of boots scuffed the floor outside and there was the sound of something, someone, being dragged along a corridor.
‘Palatine?’ Kal risked a shout.
‘Kal!’ came the answer. She was here, close by. It was like reaching the surface after someone tried to drown you. But she was dragged into the next cell and the door banged shut. The panic rose again and Kal wrestled with it. Focus. That was how to get through this. Do something: concentrate. If the walls are the enemy, then get to know them. Find out if they have weaknesses.
The cell was eight paces long and four wide. Kal measured it twice, keeping the paces even and accurate helped to keep the panic at bay. The ceiling was high, perhaps twelve paces up, with solid roof beams and huge overlapping tiles; there would be no way to lift even one of them to make escape that way possible. The door was heavy wood, with studded metal braces, and hinges that looked like they had lasted for five-hundred years and were ready for another thousand. The lock was huge; the key that opened it must be massive. Perhaps too large to be carried on the belt of the guard. Could it be hanging on the wall outside? There was a sliding panel at the top of the door that covered a grill for the guard to look through, and another at the bottom that Kal guessed was to slide out the bucket and slide in food. High up in the end wall, too high to see out of, was an unglazed window, secured with close-set bars that even Owl could not have squeezed through. It did at least let air in. The cell would be cold at night, but Kal was used to cold.
After inspecting every corner, crack and stone, and finding no obvious possibility for escape, Kal made just one encouraging discovery: a gap between two stones, where mortar had been scraped away high in the shared wall between Kal’s cell and the Palatine’s. Kal stood on the bed with a strip of wood pulled from one of its slats and poked the hole. Mortar fell out on the other side of the wall; the hole went right through! Kal wiggled the slat again and pushed more loose mortar through, hoping the Palatine would notice, hoping that this could be a way for them to communicate. But there was no response, and then the guard stepped to the door; Kal only just had time to lie on the bed and pretend to be asleep before the panel in the door slid back and the guard scowled through the grill.
Kal lost track of time. At some point the panel in the door slid open again.
‘Bucket!’ the guard growled.
Kal slid out the full bucket and the guard slid an empty one back. Then a wooden bowl appeared, with a scoop of grey porridge in. There was no spoon. Was the light in the sky fading? Was it dusk or dawn? Why was it so hard to work this out? Kal’s heart was racing again. It was impossible to keep still. Pacing the cell, over and over and over was the only way not to scream.
At last, the light did fade. Darkness was a relief; the definite coming of night was a way to hold on to reality. Kal kept pacing; the guard began to snore. A tiny fall of mortar and a ‘psssst’ sound came from the hole in the wall. At last. At last! The Palatine had found it.
Kal leapt onto the bed and pressed lips to the gap between the stones.
‘Are you alright?’ Kal asked.
‘Yes,’ the Palatine whispered. Kal had never been more glad to hear any sound! ‘But that porridge is even worse than your cornmeal!’
‘At least the beds are comfortable,’ Kal replied, ‘and the view is very lovely.’
The smallest gasp showed that the Palatine was suppressing a laugh. Kal knew the gesture: the back of her left hand raised to her mouth, her eyes darting. They fell silent for a moment, then both tried to speak at once.
‘You first!’ the Palatine instructed.
A hundred thoughts crowded Kal’s mind in a tangle of confusion but one thing seemed the most important.
‘How long do we have before the twins get back?’
The Palatine’s voice came firm and quiet between the stones. ‘You must stay calm, Kal.’
‘How can I stay calm when they might come to kill us at any moment?’ Kal hissed back. ‘When anything could be happening in Erem? When that man has Owl and the tiger in his grasp?’
‘Kal. Kal. Listen to me. Listen!’
Kal’s forehead pressed to the cold stone of the wall. ‘Alright, I’m listening.’
‘I have been keeping careful track of the time since we were captured,’ the Palatine said. ‘The twins will travel downriver to Shamanow, then to Bisque City across the Sand Sea. They must present their report and convince the Nordskys and the Automators that they are telling the truth and then they must do the same with my brother. And only then will they return. It will all take weeks.’
‘And what do we do? Just wait to die?’
‘We do not wait to die. We wait for opportunity.’
‘What opportunity? Have you looked at this place? There’s no way out!’
The Palatine sighed. ‘We just haven’t found it yet, Kal. We have weeks to find it, perhaps months. And in that time, who knows what will happen. As the twins said, Itmis is very fond of money. He will use the tiger and the bear and whatever else he can lay his hands on to ply his father’s filthy trade here in the amphitheatre. He will be distracted from us. Something will happen and there will be an opportunity.’
Kal tried to believe what was said but the walls pressed in and panic pushed its way up again.
‘We’re going to die here!’ Kal whispered.
‘No, Kal,’ said the Palatine, her words hard-edged. ‘We are not. You must have hope. Please, Kal!’
‘I’ll try. I’ll try,’ Kal told her.
‘Goodnight now. We must sleep,’ the Palatine said. ‘We will need our strength.’
Kal lay down on the hard, cold bed. Strength had drained out through the damp walls. Hope was something that existed under the stars, not here in this miserable cell. Even so, surprisingly, Kal slept.
Days passed, their slow rhythm set by the sliding open of the metal panels for buckets and food and the changing of the guard. At first, the guards were vigilant, pulling back the grills to peer in at their prisoners every hour. But they grew lazy, and it was possible for Kal and the Palatine to spend longer whispering through the stone gap. The Palatine persuaded Kal that it was necessary to learn to fight.
‘When opportunity comes,’ she counselled, ‘you must be ready, and useful.’
It was comforting to hear her being the bossy Palatine, giving orders, being certain. So Kal agreed to a list of exercises and drills that everyone in Yuderan learned to defend themselves from attack.
