Harry the Poisonous Centipede (4 page)

Harry tested his twenty-one segments by lifting them one by one off the ground, and all his forty-two feet by moving them in the air, in a sort of ripple, first along one side of him, then along the other. They seemed to work. What a relief!

He tried to run. He found he could! He did. He ran as fast as he could run in the direction of home. (He knew by instinct which direction to run in.)

As he ran, he tried to think. Should he tell his mother what had happened to him?

Probably better not. Even though he hadn't done the one thing she'd told him never to do – go Up the Up-Pipe into the Place of the Hoo-Mins.

“Hxzltl! Where HAVE you been? I've been really worried about you!”

“Oh… I've just been – er – you know—”

“Hunting?”

“Er – yes.”

“Any luck?”

Now she mentioned it, Harry realised that he hadn't eaten since those twenty-five ants' eggs he'd had for breakfast and that he was absolutely starving. He shook his head.

Belinda gave a centipedic smile (which
she did by waving her front feelers in a particular way). “I'm glad because look what I've brought you! Your favourite!”

And she stepped aside and showed him a large, crunchy, juicy treat – his favourite indeed! It was a locust, which is like a very big grasshopper.

“Mama! Wow! Thanks! Can I eat it now?”

“Of course you can, best-in-my-nest!” she said proudly.

He ate the locust greedily, head first, although the head was the best bit and he
usually saved it till last. By the time he'd crunched the last leg, he realised he wasn't feeling very happy.

You can guess why, of course. He felt bad because he'd lied to his mother. But he didn't see how he could have told her he'd been so stupid and nearly got drowned.

Still. It wasn't as if she'd absolutely forbidden him to play near the water. She'd only forbidden him to go Up the Up-Pipe, to the Place of the Hoo-Mins. And he hadn't done
that.

He wasn't going to do it, either. Not him. No, never. He didn't want to mess with those awful Hoo-Mins.

And he probably wouldn't have done, if it hadn't been for Grnddjl.

Don't even try it. Let's call him George.

George was Harry's best friend. They'd been best friends almost from the time they'd come out of their mothers' baskets.

George didn't live with his mother. He'd run off and left her, as most centis do, as soon as he could run, and he called Harry a sissyfeelers for wanting to stick with his mother.

George lived and hunted alone, and because he was still very young and couldn't always catch anything, he often felt hungry.

Then
he saw the sense of having a mother.

He would come creeping along to Belinda's nest-tunnel and lie there, waving his front feelers feebly, looking really pathetic, until she would say, “Oh, all right then, George, you'd better come and have a bite of lizard with us. But stop teasing Harry for still living with his mama!”

Belinda worried a lot about Harry being such good friends with George. Harry got himself into enough scrapes without George leading him into all sorts of adventures.

“You don't have to do everything Grnddjl does, you know,” she would often tell Harry. “He's a very foolish and naughty centi.”

“Don't worry, Mama. I can think for myself,” Harry would say.

But it's very difficult, when your friend wants to do something that sounds exciting, to be a “dry sandbed” (which is like a wet blanket with us) and say you don't want to join in because your mama wouldn't like it.

So when one day George suggested that it was time they climbed out on to the no-top-world to do a bit of real hunting, Harry only hung back a little. He was really very keen himself to go out and see the surface world outside.

“Only we'll have to watch out for flying-swoopers, and belly-wrigglers, and furry-biters and especially Hoo-Mins,” he said.

George looked taken aback, but only for a moment.

“Oh, I know all about those things,” he said in a pooh-poohing way. “They're so big I don't know how you can help smelling them coming, or feeling the vibrations. And we won't go far from a hole. Well, come on then! Are you a scaredy-ant, or what?”

Harry said no more and followed him along a tunnel that led to the no-top-world.

It was night. The two young centis poked their feelers out, side by side, and felt around, and sniffed the outside air. It smelt wildly exciting. They couldn't see much with their weak little eye-clusters, but their feelers told them there were lots of interesting things about.

“I smell food!” whispered George.

“Me too! What is it?” Harry whispered back.

George crawled a little further out of the hole, and waved his feelers some more.

“It's something lovely and meaty, anyway! Let's follow its smell and find out what it is!”

They crawled swiftly out and ran across the ground. It was great to be outdoors! Harry wondered why his mother had never brought him before. He could feel the fresh air along his segments, and knew by instinct that he mustn't stay out long – that air could make him Dry Out. Meanwhile, this was the best fun he'd ever had!

George stopped so suddenly that Harry ran over the top of him.

“Smell that!” George crackled quietly.

The most wonderful, warm, juicy, meaty smell came to Harry's feelers. It was very close!

“What is it? A mouse?”

“No. I don't know what it is. It's over there! Let's go and get it!”

“It might be too big…”

“It's not. Can't you feel the vibrations from its feet? Its not much bigger than us! Come on, let's go for it! Get your poisonpincers ready!”

George started to run, and Harry, who was still on his back, fell off. He righted himself and ran after George. He didn't want to be left behind!

They turned a corner beside a large stone. And suddenly, they saw it!

In fact they practically ran right into it.

It was the fearsomest-looking creature they had ever seen. It was a thing called
a mole-cricket: like an enormous furry cockroach armed with a pair of huge front paws like a bear's.