Hercufleas (9 page)

‘Who's there?' she called.

T
he
shuffle-snap-swish
grew louder. Hercufleas began muttering
The Plea of the Flea
over and over, very fast.

Greta peered into the darkness around them. The trees were so thick and the light so faint she could barely see.

‘What is it, Greta? A rattlesnoak? Don't let it get us! Fight it, chop it into matchsticks, do something!'

‘Can't fight what you can't see,' she murmured.

From her bag she pulled out a long white stick and a small silver tinderbox with a pair of tweezers hanging from the lid on a chain. Hercufleas felt heat coming from it. Around it, the air hummed.

With the tweezers, Greta opened the box a crack, drawing out a living flicker of flame.

A tinderfly! It crackled and popped like a tiny ember.

Before it burned her fingers, Greta pressed the bug down on the sugarstick. With the wick, she tied the fly in place. It buzzed there, an angry blue, until it melted the sugar below. All at once, it settled down to eat. Its wings began to burn a warm, contented orange. A smell of caramel filled the air. Greta shut the tinderbox and held the flame up to the dark.

She called out again. ‘Whatever you are, come out!'

Suddenly something enormous burst out of the undergrowth towards them. Greta's skin goosebumped with terror. Hercufleas screamed. He wasn't ready to fight Yuk yet! He wasn't ready to die! He'd only just started to live! He was so terrified, he pooed a tiny rust-red scab onto Greta's wrist (since fleas drink only blood, scabs are what they poo).

But the dark shape wasn't the giant.

In a way, it was worse.

Greta swung the tinderfly around to illuminate Onk-Onk skidding to a stop, his snout snuffling their scent on the ground.

Ugor stepped off his pig, holding his Bazuka, a rifle from the Orient that fired tiny sticks of dynamite. ‘Move and you die,' he growled, pointing the gun at them. ‘Good sniffing, Onk-Onk.' Keeping his eyes on Greta, he called over his shoulder through the trees, ‘She is here, Mr Stickler. With the flea too.'

Mr Stickler appeared behind Ugor, the house-hat on his head like a lantern. Every window was dazzlingly lit – Hercufleas threw his arm across his eyes. When at last he could look, his fleamily were all crowded on the brim holding candles, waving at Hercufleas.

Suddenly they were all yelling:

‘Don't worry!'

‘You're safe now!'

‘Ugor told us what happened!'

‘Mr Stickler said you'd probably been kidnapped!'

‘We took a boat to cut her off!'

‘Min says you can pick
two
bottles from the pantry for dinner!'

Seeing them, Hercufleas sighed in relief. Despite everything, his fleamily were all right. Everything was going to be OK.

Then he remembered that Stickler and Ugor were there too and he realised that wasn't true at all.

‘Don't worry, little one!' Min called to Hercufleas. ‘We won't let her steal you to sell to some flea circus!'

‘That's not what she's doing,' Hercufleas called. ‘That isn't what happened!'

But Stickler was speaking too, and his loud voice drowned out Hercufleas. ‘You tried to blackmail me,' he said to Greta. ‘Then you murdered Prince Xin. Stole Artifax. Kidnapped one of my employfleas. Now you will face justice.'

Greta urged Artifax back to the edge of the clearing, swinging her light from Stickler to Ugor.

‘Yes, I'm a thief,' she said. ‘A kidnapper too. But I didn't murder Prince Xin.
He
tried to murder
me
! And
you
told him to do it!'

‘Kill her, Ugor,' Stickler said with a sigh, picking dirt from under his fingernails. ‘Kill her now. We don't need to listen to any of her lies.'

‘Wait!' Min cried. ‘What about my hatchling?'

Under the hat's brim, the lenses of Stickler's scopical glasses glinted as he thought. ‘Hercufleas,' he said at last, ‘jump away from that murdering villain now. Ugor needs to dynamite her.'

Greta looked down at Hercufleas. ‘He'll tell you the truth!'

Stickler hesitated. On the brim of his hat, the fleamily were looking at each other with puzzled faces.

‘What's she talking about, Hercufleas?' asked Pin.

Hercufleas opened his mouth, about to explain everything: the flyte, Prince Xin's fall, Onk-Onk's sneeze, the escape across the lake.

But then, behind Stickler's back, Ugor swung his gun away from Greta.

He pointed it at the house-hat instead.

‘Well?' said Stickler. ‘Are you going to tell us or not?'

‘Go on,' Ugor sniggered. ‘Tell them the truth.' And there was something else the villain said, but only with his eyes:
Tell them the truth, and your fleamily will die.

‘Hercufleas?' said Min. ‘What are you waiting for?'

Hercufleas gulped. His brain, the size of a poppy seed, was completely overwhelmed. What should he do? He looked at Greta. Looked at his fleamily. Looked at Ugor's Bazuka. If he was a true, giant-slaying hero, he'd find a way to save the day.

But he was a flea, and just one day old, and he was afraid.

‘I saw who murdered Prince Xin,' he said. ‘It was… It was Greta.'

Ugor nodded and grinned, his gun moving back towards Artifax. ‘See? Is just like Ugor tell you. She thief. She kidnapper. She murderer.'

Greta shot Hercufleas a look of such venom he thought he might die from it. ‘I believed in you,' she said.

‘It's over,' said Stickler curtly. ‘Employfleas, go back inside. I've no wish for you to see what happens next.'

Min nodded at the fleamily. They hopped in through the windows and drew the black velvet curtains, but she stayed on the brim of the hat. The clearing was dark again, except for Greta's tinderfly, crackling on its sugarstick.

‘Please,' Min begged, ‘please give us Hercufleas back.'

‘You can have him.' Greta scowled. ‘I don't ever want to see him again.'

Balling Hercufleas in her fist, she chucked him at Stickler. He was mid-air when her other hand untied the wick and freed the tinderfly. It flew into the sky like an ember from a bonfire, taking the light with it, plunging them into darkness.

S
houts and screams in the night. Grunts and squeals. Shrieks and then a
BANG
as Ugor fired his Bazuka. A tiny dynamite stick arced through the air, hissing like a firework.

Then the hissing stopped.

BOOM!

Like a photographer's flash, the fireball illuminated the woodn't for an instant. The shock wave slammed into Hercufleas, cracking every joint in his armour, knocking the breath from his lungs. He saw Stickler blown off his feet, Ugor flung from his pig, and the trees beside them bursting into splinters. He hit the ground, sucking tiny sips of breath, the explosion ringing in his ears.

‘Did Ugor get her?' the barbarian shouted, stomping around the burning trees. ‘Did Ugor get her?'

Hercufleas's night vision came back slowly, but Artifax and Greta had vanished from the clearing.

I wanted to help you, he thought, wishing she could hear. But I couldn't sacrifice my fleamily.

‘My employfleas!' Stickler shrieked, hands prodding the top of his head.

Where the house-hat had sat, there was now just a sizzled bald spot, gently smouldering. The blast had blown it clean off Stickler's head.

And now there was a second explosion, only this one happened inside Hercufleas's heart. Where were Min and Pin? Where were Burp, Slurp, Speck, Fleck, Itch, Titch, Tittle, Dot and Jot? He had loved and left and longed for them – he had betrayed Greta to save them – had he now lost them forever?

‘I'm ruined!' blubbed Stickler. ‘Happily Ever Afters is done for! Never mind about my reputation, who will type up my P23 hero forms now? Who will even know what a P23 form is?'

‘Stop crying,' Ugor told Stickler, giving him a slap. ‘Fleas up there. Look.' He pointed at a steep hill, the shape of a dome, that rose behind them. Hercufleas had not noticed it until now, but the pine trees that had obscured it from sight had been blown to matchsticks. One single tree stood on the top of the hill – the rest was a tangle of vines. The house-hat lay among them, its roof burning. Hercufleas squinted and could just make out the fleamily, passing thimbles of bathtub water to each other as they fought to douse the flames.

Stickler let out a strangled sob. Rushing up to the hill, he gripped the vines and began to climb towards the house-hat. The leaves of the lonely tree on the summit shook. But there was no wind. The air was utterly still.

And yet the tree rattled again. Louder, this time. Angrier.

‘STOP!' Hercufleas yelled at Stickler. He leaped up and almost fainted. Pain screeched through him and his arm made a sound like two halves of a broken plate grating together. The impact of the explosion had cracked his armoured skin. But it didn't matter. His fleamily had landed on the lair of a hibernating rattlesnoak, and Stickler was going to wake it up!

The hero's agent swatted at the flames until they fizzled out. Then he seized the house-hat and cuddled it to his chest, while at the top of the hill the rattling from the rattlesnoak seed pods reached a frenzy.

‘RUN!' Hercufleas bounded forward, fighting dizziness and pain. ‘IT'S WAKING UP!'

Finally Stickler looked down and immediately jumped. The vines around him were moving. They slithered over his feet. One coiled around his ankle. The tip ended in a wide, flat snake head, spade-shaped so it could dig its way up from the ground.

‘Ugor?' called Stickler nervously. ‘Get this
thing
off my leg.'

With a hiss, the rattleroot sank its fangs into his foot.

Stickler screamed and kicked with his leg, trying to shake it off. ‘Ugor! Quick! Get it off!' But the paralysing poison was already starting to work. ‘Gerrit oh me! Whash go-ee on, why my shpeeki lie this?'

‘HURRY UP!' Hercufleas yelled at the barbarian, as Ugor fumbled another mini-dynamite stick into his Bazuka. It wasn't Stickler he cared about. ‘JUMP OVER HERE!' he yelled at his fleamily.

Stickler finally reached down and ripped the rattleroot from his foot. Slurring nonsense, he shuffled up the hill to the rattlesnoak trunk. In his delirious state, he must have thought climbing the tree would give him safety. More rattleroots dug their way to the surface and began to swarm towards him. Hercufleas hopped up and down, screaming for Stickler to hurry and Ugor to fire, powerless to do anything but watch.

Stickler dragged himself up the rattlesnoak trunk, using the boles and crevices in the bark for handholds. The poison had completely paralysed his left leg. He balanced the house-hat on the first branch and then clung there, his strength ebbing away, while the ground below him seethed with rattleroots.

Then Ugor fired the Bazuka, and a fizzing stick of TNT struck the hill with an enormous
BOOM
! The rattleroots dug back under the earth for protection as the shock wave slammed into Hercufleas, making his cracked arm buzz in pain.