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“It’s not a can’t-get-out, Hx. We can get out any time we like.”
“So what’s stopping us?”
They stood side by side on a banana, trying to get their bearings. They were far from the ground – that was obvious. They could see it racing past underneath them. “It’s a long way down,” said George.
“If we leave here we’ll Dry Out,” said Harry. Big-Yellow-Ball was shining hotly. They could feel the heat in the air and see the brightness outside the crate. The heat where they lived was a very damp kind of heat. They sensed they’d be all right as long as they stayed in the moist darkness inside the crate.
“We’d better wait till the moving stops,” said Harry. “And see what it’s like then.”
Meanwhile they tried to behave as if everything was all right, even though they both knew it wasn’t. They went back to their curved nest of bananas. Harry noticed something at once.
“Where’s Mama’s head?”
“Her what?” asked George blankly.
“The tarantula head we saved for her! It’s gone,” said Harry.
“Maybe it’s just rolled away somewhere.”
“No. I wedged it in tightly between these yellow-curves,” Harry said. “Someone must have stolen it!”
They began to quest around them. George suddenly froze.
“Hx, there’s one of us somewhere in here!”
Harry got it too, now. A decidedly pleasant aroma, amid all the whiffs of other, alien creatures like flies, beetles and spiders. Another centipede, certainly, but – different. Different from him, different from George.
“It’s my centeena!” crackled George softly.
“ Your centeena?”
“Well…er…no, not exactly. I mean…I was chasing her – last night – I hadn’t really caught up with her. I was looking for her, you know, following her scent, when I found the straight-up-hard-thing with the tarantula inside.”
“She must’ve got in before us. She’s here with us.”
“Right!” said George eagerly. “Let’s find her!”
It wasn’t hard. Although the crate was big and there were lots of bananas filling most of it, there were plenty of little spaces and chinks where small creatures could hide. As the two centeens searched, they realised that, whatever else might happen, they weren’t going to be short of a bite to eat.
They sent out inviting signals, and after a while a little female head poked out from between two big bunches of bananas.
“Hallo,” she signalled shyly. “Did you call?” Of course they hadn’t called. Centipedes can’t call. That’s just my way of putting it.
Harry watched her creep out until she was in full smell. George immediately went up to her and touched feelers with her, and ran all around her once in greeting.
“I’m Grndd and this is Hx,” he said. “What’s your name?”
“I’m Jgnblm,” she said. All right, no, I’m not proposing to go on trying to write that or expecting you to say it, though I should add that both the centeens thought Jgnblm was a most euphonious name, which means that to them it had a sweet sound.
Let’s see, then. What about Josie?
“What are you doing here?” Harry asked, touching feelers with her very shyly. He’d never touched feelers with a centeena before, except Belinda of course. It felt very nice.
“He was chasing me,” she said, meaning George. “So I just ducked in through one of those long holes to hide.”
“Why didn’t you get out again before it started to move?”
“I don’t know. I think I just liked it in here. I like yellow-curves,” she added, indicating the banana she was standing on.
“You like standing on them?” asked Harry.
“Eating them,” she said.
“You eat tree-droppings?” asked George incredulously.
“Yes.”
“I notice you like tarantula heads, too,” remarked Harry bitterly.
Josie looked puzzled. “What do you mean, tarantula heads?”
“Well, didn’t you take one from just here?”
“No,” she said. “I don’t like eating things that have been alive, it makes me feel a bit sick, so I eat lots of different tree-droppings.”
“Wait a minute. You don’t mean you never eat ordinary things?”
“No. Just tree-droppings,” she said demurely.
There was a silence.
“Hx, she’s a no-meat-feeder,” crackled George under his breath.
A centipede that didn’t like meat and wouldn’t stop anything! They waved their feelers at Josie as if she were not completely centipede.
“Please don’t feeler me like that,” she said. “It’s rather rude.”
“Oh! Sorry,” said George at once. “It’s just – I’ve never met a no-meat-feeder before. What kind of – er – tree-droppings do you like best? I’ve never really bothered to try any.”
“There are so many different kinds!” Josie said eagerly. “One never gets to the end of them!”
“Weird,” crackled George. Harry nudged him with a bump of his middle section.
“I don’t think it’s weird,” said Harry. “It’s interesting. At least you won’t be hungry in here with all these yellow-curves. I wish I liked them.”
“Try one,” said Josie.
To oblige her, Harry bent his head and took a bite.
“Ugh!” he said. “It’s horrible!”
Josie gave a centipedish laugh by shaking all her segments up and down. “No, no, not the outside! You have to get through to the soft, sweet stuff inside.” She caught a ridge of the yellow skin between her poison-claws and neatly stripped it back. “Now try again,” she said.
George backed away. But Harry nibbled a little of the soft white stuff, and then a little more. “H’m. It’s not bad, I must say. Soft as worms. But not a bit like them to taste.”
Josie shuddered daintily. “I couldn’t bear to eat a worm!” she said.
Before any more could be crackled, the jiggling movement stopped. The three of them dashed along a bridge of bananas to the long opening again and stuck their heads out.
“Smell that, Grndd! You know what that is, don’t you?” Harry said in shocked tones.
“Yeah, I’m afraid I do,” said George. “It’s the no-end puddle.”
“The no-end puddle? What’s that?” asked Josie.
“It’s water,” said Harry. “Water and water and water, more than you’d ever think there could be. It goes on and on for ever – that’s why it’s called no-end. It’s not even water you can drink, either.”
“Can you swim?” George asked Josie abruptly.
“Swim? You mean, like marine centipedes do?”
“Except they don’t,” said George. “But I can, and so can Harry, and if by any horrible chance we’re going to get dropped in the no-end puddle, like we once were, you’re going to have to learn to swim very fast indeed.”
Poor Josie crouched down on her banana and put out signals of fear. “I can’t, I know I can’t!” she waickled (you know – a wailing crackle.) “If I’m dropped in the no-end puddle, I’ll stop!”
Both the centeens rushed to her side.
“No, you won’t,” they both said. “You won’t, because we’re here, and we’ll look after you!” And then they looked at each other across her cuticle, and their feelers stuck up straight, which meant, “Why are you crackling that to her? I’m crackling that to her!”
Oh, dear. Centeenas. They can cause trouble even when they don’t mean to. It’s not their fault, of course.
And just in case you were wondering what did happen to the head, since Josie hadn’t eaten it…Well, I’m sorry to tell you that another tarantula had sneaked up through the bananas, and grabbed it. Not very nice, tarantulas.
In fact, the word ‘cannibal’ comes to mind.
4. Centeens at Sea (#ulink_c2ea91d2-a641-5e9a-9f92-f5659451d1d8)
Quite a long time passed. The three centeens crouched together amid the yellow-curves and tried to keep their centi-spirits up by sending each other hopeful signals. Then the straight-up-hard-thing began to move again.
This time it moved sharply upward and then sideways. What was happening was that they were being swung through the air on the end of a crane, to be loaded aboard a ship. But they didn’t know that. When they poked their heads out of the long hole and looked down, they couldn’t make out anything underneath them. They were too high up.
All they knew was that there was a big bump, which made everything in the crate jump, and then there was no more bright light. That was a relief to them. There were a lot of vibrations and loud noises and after a while it got really dark (that was when the hatches went on up on deck.) The centeens looked and feelered about them.
“Well, here we are – wherever we are,” said George, quite cheerfully. “At least we’re not going to drown.”
“But what is going to happen?” asked Josie fearfully.
“Who knows?” said George. “It’s a real adventure, anyway!”
Harry didn’t say anything. He was thinking it was too much of an adventure for his taste, and that Belinda would be worried sick. She was old and it wasn’t right to leave her like this. He looked at Josie, who was huddled up small at his side. “Do you want an adventure?” he asked her.
“I want my basket,” she crackled faintly. Not many centeens even remember that their mothers once kept them in special little containers like baskets when they first came out of their eggs, but “I want my basket” is still what they say when they’re feeling miserable and homesick and scared.
Harry was just going to crackle something comforting when George came over and boldly twisted his feelers around Josie’s.
“Don’t you worry, Jgn. I’m right beside you. I won’t let anything bad happen.”
She rubbed her head against his gratefully. “Thank you, Grndd,” she said. Harry lifted one feeler quizzically, and George saw it and looked away. He knew it meant, “Promises, promises.” George couldn’t really stop anything bad happening and George knew Harry knew that, but Josie didn’t know, and Harry wasn’t mean enough to tell her.
At last a different movement began. It was a sort of slow rocking and swaying, and it went on and on. Sometimes it was a very strong, frightening movement that threw them about and had them slipping and sliding among the bananas. Sometimes it was quite gentle. They got used to it, and began to think of their nest in the yellow-curves as a sort of home from home.
The worst thing by far was the cold. They weren’t used to being cold and they had no defence against it. Luckily for them, this wasn’t a refrigeration ship – you can’t freeze bananas – but the hold was kept chilled to keep the fruit fresh on its journey, and this was very hard on the centeens. They had to keep moving about as much as possible. As for keeping damp, this was a major problem too.
What they did in the end was venture out of the crate and explore the hold of the ship until they came to a crate that held potatoes. Potatoes are generally stored and shipped with earth around them. Earth is damp, and this was how the centeens managed not to Dry Out. But there weren’t many living creatures in the dirt, so they had to keep returning to their original straight-up-hard-thing to find food.
There was no shortage for any of them. Quite a lot of creatures had found their way into the crate along with the bananas, including the second tarantula. Before the voyage ended, most of them had ended, too.
Josie happily ate banana. She wouldn’t be tempted by any of the spiders, beetles or even a small and very tasty snake that the others brought her.
“No, really. I couldn’t,” she would say, humping her mid-sections in polite disgust, and turning her head away. “I’ll just eat my nice yellow-curve, thank you.”
“Aren’t you getting bored with it?” asked Harry after three nights and days.
“Yes, but it doesn’t matter,” she said. “No-meat-feeders like us must not make a fuss.” This is a direct quote from Beetle, a language that always rhymes. If any Hoo-Min vegetarians among you would like to use it – please, be my guest.
“All the more for us then,” said George, who was a bit hurt that she didn’t like anything he brought her.
But despite Josie’s no-meat-feeder-ism, they liked her. And she liked them. As time passed, they crackled a lot to each other. Harry and George told Josie their adventures, and she told them some that she’d had. They already knew from Belinda that centias could be brave. But when Josie told them about a time when she’d gone up a tree to escape from a hairy-biter, been swooped at by a flying swooper, fallen off right on to a Hoo-Min’s head, and then run down his whole huge body (“Almost as big as the tree!”) with him whacking at her with his big front feet, and got away, they thought she was almost as brave as they were.
After many days and nights, the ship docked and the crates in the hold started to be unloaded.
The centeens realised that a change was happening. There was light again, coming from above. Soon their straight-up-hard-thing was swinging upward and then downward.
It wasn’t long before they were moving again, the jiggling noisy movement they’d felt before. There was no doubt now that they were a long, long way from home, because the smells were all different. And the air was, too.
“It’s cooler here,” Harry said, questing about with his feelers. “Drier, too,” George said uneasily. “Oh, I want my basket!” moaned Josie.
“I thought no-meat-feeders didn’t fuss,” said Harry.
“Only about food,” Josie said. “We can fuss about anything else.”
“Speaking of food, we’ve eaten everything,” said Harry.
“I know,” said George. “We’ll have to get out of here and hunt soon.”
But it seemed to them a long time before the jiggling stopped and the crate was finally lowered to the ground.
There was a lot of noise going on all around them, and many new and alarming smells and vibrations. Most of it, they knew at once, came from Hoo-Mins. Peering out and feelering around, they could see and sense and smell them. The most gigantic, fast-moving, terrifying things in the world – and they were everywhere! Running around on their two legs, making loud noises to each other, and moving lots of big things from place to place.
