“Let’s (really)Read!”
An independent reading course in fiction & non fiction at CES
In this compilation of 22 extracts, you will find challenging opportunities to read, both fiction and nonfiction. Some
extracts come with a brief introduction and a link to wider reading.
Respond using the Tracker:
a) THINK
Give a short, clear account (a sentence or two) of what you read. What did you learn? What question did it inspire
you to ask.
b) RESEARCH
Note what you learned from your research.
c) DISCUSS
Connect with a reading buddy - a fiend or family member - and talk about the extract.
#
Extract
Author
F/NF
Wider reading
1
Diary of a Young Naturalist
Dara McAnulty
NF
Diary of a Young Naturalist
2
Entangled Life
Merlin Sheldrake
NF
https://www.merlinsheldrake.com/
3
His Dark Materials
Philip Pullman
F
https://www.philip-pullman.com/hdm
4
Brazilian Researchers Find Sergio Querioz
NF
https://www.reuters.com/authors/sergio-queiroz/
‘Terrifying’ plastic Rocks
5
The Boy With The Topknot
Sathnam Sanghera
NF
https://www.sathnam.com/memoir/
6
Nature’s Revenge
Zarina Zabrinsky
NF
https://emergencemagazine.org/essay/the-fallout/
7
Miyawaki Forests
Alanna Mitchell
8
Eveline
James Joyce
F
9
Our House Is on Fire:
Malena Urnman
NF
10
Rikki Tikki Tavi
Rudyard Kipling
F
11
How to Grow Up
Nick Cave
NF
12
Haulout
Source / World Economic Forum Report
NF
Review (Washington Post)
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-newyorker-documentary/where-walruses-go-whensea-ice-is-gone
13
Stig Of The Dump
Clive King
F
14
The Road
Cormac McCarthy
F
https://www.oprah.com/oprahsbookclub/read-anexcerpt-from-the-road-by-cormac-mccarthy/3
15
Sredni Vashtar
Saki
F
16
The Iron Man
Ted Hughes
F
https://bathwickstmary.org/wpcontent/uploads/2020/03/Y3-text-TheIronMan.pdf
17
Noiseless Messengers
Rebecca Giggs
NF
18
“I Interrupted…!”
Elise Joshie
NF
19
The Road
Cormac McCarthy
F
20
The Expired Bride
Amr Wahsh (Y9)
F
21
A Whale In The Desert
TristanMcConnell
NF
A Whale In the Desert (audio option)
22
The Last Ice Merchant
Documentary
NF
The Last Ice Merchant (video)
1
https://www.oprah.com/oprahsbookclub/CormacMcCarthy-on-James-Joyce-and-Punctuation-Video
Author
Genre
Form
Person
Dara McAnulty
Nature / Ecology
Diary
First
Tick if read
Introduction
Evocative, raw, and lyrical, Dara’s first book, a diary written when he was 14, explores the natural world through
the eyes of an autistic teenager coping with the uprooting of his home, school, and his mental health, while
pursuing his life as a conservationist and environmental activist. Recalling his sensory encounters in the wild,
McAnulty reveals worlds we have neglected to see around us, whether that's in forests and fields, or even in our
own back gardens. In this extract, the 16-year-old nature writer recalls a night filled with bats and moths in this
extract from his debut book. Dara is now an undergraduate at Cambridge University.
Wednesday
1
August
We take Rosie (Dara’s pet dog) into the Castlewellan Forest Park, which is fewer than 300 steps from our front
door – even fewer if you hop over the back fence. Rosie is our constant companion on walks. We call her the
“autistic dog” because she always wants to walk the same route. If we’re not all together, or if Mum isn’t with
us, Rosie stops suddenly, digs her heels in. I remember once Dad phoning Mum pleading for help because Rosie
wouldn’t budge. Mum had to go out and physically move her. Since then, it's been a standing joke that Mum is
the top dog. She-wolf.
2
The walk is easy and I’m chatting with Mum because I’ve promised myself, and her, that I won’t hold things in
to fester any more. First I tell her how much I’m missing our Fermanagh places, and that everything here is so
strange and different. “It smells different,” I explained. “Not in a bad way, it just does. It sounds different, too,
in a good way. There are definitely more birds here, more insects.”
I then go on to tell her about Jude next door, my new friend. This makes her smile and the dimples in her cheeks
become more pronounced – this happens when she’s tired. There are also shadows under her eyes, and seeing
them I want to find the beauty in everything and promise not to let the bullies weigh me down. I have so much
love around me. I want to do it for her. I want to do it for myself. It’s all around me, beauty, so why should it be
hard?
Darkness comes in quickly and it’s time to head for home. Mum grabs my arm and we stop in the falling darkness
to watch shadows fly from one side of the road to the other. Bats. Mum and I laugh, and the excitement bubbles
up. We rush back to the house: I find the bat detector and pummelled through the kitchen and out the back door.
In the garden more shapes mobilise from the trees – the bat detector is forgotten as I watch this origami take
flight, the bats’ nimble wings making strange angles as they take to the air to feed.
I stay out when Mum heads back inside, watching the night sky. I notice a new feeling, a buzzing in the air, a
pulsation that makes me look over to the buddleia growing in the garden. It’s whizzing with life and movement
is palpitating in and around it. When the light goes on in the kitchen and I’m joined by everyone – Lorcan and
Blá thnaid first, followed by Mum and Dad – I realise I must have shouted but don’t remember doing it.
We watch in wonder as countless silver Y moths feast on the purple blooms. Some rest, drunk with nectar, before
refilling, whirling and dancing in constant motion. The feather-like scales, brown flecked with silver, are
shimmering with starry dust, protecting them from being eaten by our other nocturnal neighbours. I find it
fascinating that silverY fur can confuse the sonar readings of bats, and even when they are predated they can
escape, leaving the bat with a mouthful of scales. And here we all are, the McAnultys congregated in worship of
these tiny migrants. Soon they will make the journey to their birthplace, silver stars crossing land and sea to
North Africa.
The night crackles as the storm of flitting moves off. We jump up and down and hug each other, tension leaking
out. We chat and look at the sky, sparkling with Orion, Seven Sisters and the Plough. This is us, standing here.
All the best part of us, and another moment etched in our memories, to be invited back and relieved in
conversations for years to come.
2
Author
Genre
Form
Person
Merlin Sheldrake
Nature / Ecology
Review
First
Tick if read
Introduction
3
British Biologist and author Merlin Sheldrake's book, "Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change
Our Minds & Shape Our Futures" explores the fascinating relationships between humans and the fungal
organisms upon which so much of life - including our life - depends.
Many of the most dramatic events on Earth have been – and continue to be –a result of fungal activity. Plants
only made it out of the water around five hundred million years ago because of their collaboration with fungi,
which served as their root systems for tens of million years until plants could evolve their own. Today, more than
ninety percent of plants depend on mycorrhizal fungi – from the Greek words for fungus (mykes) and root (rhiza)
– which can link trees in shared networks sometimes referred to as the "wood wide web." This ancient
association gave rise to all recognizable life on land, the future of which depends on the continued ability of
plants and fungi to form healthy relationships.
To this day, new ecosystems on land are founded by fungi. When volcanic islands are made or glaciers retreat to
reveal bare rock, lichens (pronounced LY ken) – a union of fungi and algae or bacteria – are the first organisms
to establish themselves and to make the soil in which plants subsequently take root. In well-developed
ecosystems soil would be rapidly sluiced off by rain were it not for the dense mesh of fungal tissue that holds it
together. There are few pockets of the globe where fungi can't be found; from deep sediments on the seafloor,
to the surface of deserts, to frozen valleys in Antarctica, to our guts and orifices. Tens to hundreds of species can
exist in the leaves and stems of a single plant. These fungi weave themselves through the gaps between plant
cells in an intimate brocade and help to defend plants against disease. No plant grown under natural conditions
has been found without these fungi; they are as much a part of planthood as leaves or roots.
The ability of fungi to prosper in such a variety of habitats depends on their diverse metabolic abilities.
Metabolism is the art of chemical transformation. Fungi are metabolic wizards and can explore, scavenge, and
salvage ingeniously, their abilities rivalled only by bacteria. Using cocktails of potent enzymes and acids, fungi
can break down some of the most stubborn substances on the planet, from lignin, wood's toughest component,
to rock; crude oil; polyurethane plastics; and the explosive TNT. Few environments are too extreme. A species
isolated from mining waste is one of the most radiation-resistant organisms ever discovered and may help to
clean up nuclear waste sites. The blasted nuclear reactor at Chernobyl is home to a large population of such
fungi. A number of these radio tolerant species even grow toward radioactive "hot" particles, and appear to be
able to harness radiation as a source of energy, as plants use the energy in sunlight.
We all live and breathe fungi, thanks to the prolific abilities of fungal fruiting bodies to disperse spores. Some
species discharge spores explosively, which accelerate ten thousand times faster than a space shuttle directly
after launch, reaching speeds of up to a hundred kilometres per hour – some of the quickest movements achieved
by any living organism. Other species of fungi create their own microclimates: Spores are carried upward by a
current of wind generated by mushrooms as water evaporates from their gills. Fungi produce around fifty
megatons of spores each year – equivalent to the weight of five hundred thousand blue whales – making them
4
the largest source of living particles in the air. Spores are found in clouds and influence the weather by triggering
the formation of the water droplets that form rain and the ice crystals that form snow, sleet, and hail.
Some fungi, like the yeasts that ferment sugar into alcohol and cause bread to rise, consist of single cells that
multiply by budding into two. However, most fungi form networks of many cells known as hyphae: fine tubular
structures that branch, fuse, and tangle into the anarchic filigree of mycelium. Mycelium describes the most
common of fungal habits, better thought of not as a thing but as a process: an exploratory, irregular tendency.
Water and nutrients flow through ecosystems within mycelial networks. The mycelium of some fungal species
is electrically excitable and conducts waves of electrical activity along hyphae, analogous to the electrical
impulses in animal nerve cells.
Hyphae make mycelium, but they also make more specialised structures. Fruiting bodies, such as mushrooms,
arise from the felting together of hyphal strands. These organs can perform many feats besides expelling spores.
Some, like truffles, produce aromas that have made them among the most expensive foods in the world. Others,
like shaggy ink cap mushrooms (Coprinus comatus), can push their way through asphalt and lift heavy paving
stones, although they are not themselves a tough material. Pick an ink cap and you can fry it up and eat it. Leave
it in a jar, and its bright white flesh will deliquesce into a pitch-black ink over the course of a few days (the
illustrations in this book were drawn with Coprinus ink).
Radical fungal technologies can help us respond to some of the many problems that arise from ongoing
environmental devastation. Antiviral compounds produced by fungal mycelium reduce colony collapse disorder
in honeybees. Voracious fungal appetites can be deployed to break down pollutants, such as crude oil from oil
spills, in a process known as mycoremediation. In mycofiltration, contaminated water is passed through mats
of mycelium, which filter out heavy metals and break down toxins. In mycofabrication, building materials and
textiles are grown out of mycelium and replace plastics and leather in many applications. Fungal melanins, the
pigments produced by radio-tolerant fungi, are a promising new source of radiation-resistant biomaterials.
Human societies have always pivoted around prodigious fungal metabolisms. A full litany of the chemical
accomplishments of fungi would take months to recite. Yet despite their promise, and central role in many
ancient human fascinations, fungi have received a tiny fraction of the attention given to animals and plants. The
best estimate suggests that there are between 2.2 and 3.8 million species of fungi in the world – six to ten times
the estimated number of plant species – meaning that a mere six percent of all fungal species have been
described. We are only just beginning to understand the intricacies and sophistications of fungal lives.
3
Author
Genre
Form
Person
Philip Pullman
Fantasy
Narrative
Third
Tick if read
Introduction
5
Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy is an excellent fantasy story about Lyra Belacqua, a child from a
world not unlike our own, except everyone has an animal familiar called a dæmon and the land is ruled by a
theocracy called the Magisterium. Things are happening on the literary end, too. Pullman is in the middle of
writing a new trilogy, The Book of Dust, that further explores Lyra’s world. The first book in that new series, La
Belle Sauvage, was set years before the original story. The second, The Secret Commonwealth, follows a 20-yearold Lyra as she continues her struggles against the Magisterium, and is due out later this year. Earlier this week,
The Guardian published an excerpt from the new book. So here is…an excerpt of the excerpt.
Some context: in this excerpt, Lyra, now an undergraduate student at Oxford, is fleeing from the Magisterium
for some reason; it’s always something with her. She’s stealing away downriver in the company of Giorgio
Brabandt, a gyptian; the gyptians are a nomadic people Lyra worked with in the original trilogy. They’re aboard
his boat, The Maid of Portugal, and being searched for by zeppelins from the Magisterium. But the zeppelin has
another problem to deal with: mysterious “will-o’-the-wykes,” creatures that appear as floating lights above a
swamp.
Extract
Twenty-year-old Lyra has to flee Oxford by boat for the third time in her life, this time in the company of the old gyptian
Giorgio Brabandt. As they sail towards the safety of the Fens, they hear a zeppelin approaching.
As darkness was falling at the edge of the Fens, rain began to fall too. It was the time of day when Giorgio
Brabandt usually began to look for a likely spot to moor for the night, but as they were so close to his native
waters, he was inclined to keep moving. He knew every twist and turn of these mazy waterways, and the lights
he sent Lyra to mount at the stem and the stern were a matter of courtesy to any fellow boaters, not a necessity
to show the way.
“When do we get into the Fens, Master B?” said Lyra.
“We’re there now,” he said. “More or less. There en’t no frontier nor customs post, nothing like that. One minute
you’re out, the next minute you’re in.”
“So how do you know?”
“You got a feeling for it. If you’re gyptian, it’s like coming home. If you en’t gyptian, you feel uncomfortable,
nervous, you feel that all them boggarts and horrors is out there in the water, watching you. Don’t you feel that?”
“No.”
“Oh. Well we can’t be there yet. Or else I en’t told you enough stories.”
He was standing at the tiller, in oilskins and sou’wester, while Lyra sat just inside the doorway wrapped in an
old coat of his. The stern light threw a yellow outline around his bulky form, and lit up the incessant raindrops
that filled the air. Lyra was aware of the potatoes cooking on the naphtha stove in the galley behind her; she’d
go in soon and cut some slices of bacon to fry.
6
“When d’you think we’ll get to the Zaal?” she said.
“Ah, there’s a way to tell that.”
“What is it?”
“When you’re close enough to see it, you’re almost there.”
“Well, that’s helpful, I must—”
He suddenly put up a hand to hush her, and at the same moment his dæmon looked up. Brabandt sheltered his
eyes with the brim of his sou’wester and peered up too, and Lyra followed their example. She could see nothing,
but heard a distant rumble from the upper air.
“Lyra, run forrard and dowse that glim,” said Brabandt, easing the throttle back and reaching out with his other
hand for the stern light.
The light at the prow was reflected along the length of the cabin roof, so Lyra could see easily enough to run
along and jump down. When she reached up and turned the wick down to extinguish the flame she could hear
the sound more easily, and a moment later she could see the source of it: the pale egg-like form of a zeppelin,
cruising slowly some way behind them on the starboard side, below the clouds, and showing no lights.
She felt her way back to the cockpit. Brabandt had steered the Maid of Portugal in towards the side and cut the
engine to a murmur. As Lyra jumped down she felt a little jolt as the boat touched the grassy bank.
“You see it?” he said quietly.
“I can see one. Are there more?”
“One’s enough. Is it follerin us?”
“No. I shouldn’t think they can have seen the lights yet, not through this rain. And the noise that engine is
making, they’d never be able to hear ours.”
“I’m going to move along then,” he said.
He pushed the throttle forward, and the engine responded with a gentle rumble. The boat moved on.
“How can you see?” said Lyra.
“Instinct. Keep your trap shut. I need to listen.”
The roar of the zeppelin’s engine was loud now. She squinted up through the lashing rain, and could see nothing
She remembered the potatoes, and ran inside to take them off the stove and drain them. The warm, comfortable
old cabin, the clean galley, the steam, the smell of the cooked potatoes – they felt like a bulwark against the
7
danger above; but she knew they were nothing of the sort, and that a bomb well aimed would kill her and
Brabandt and sink the Maid in a matter of moments.
She hurried from end to end of the boat, checking all the blinds. There wasn’t a single chink. Finally she
extinguished the light in the galley and went out to the cockpit again.
The roar of the zeppelin’s engine was loud now. It sounded as if it was directly overhead. She squinted up through
the lashing rain, and could see nothing.
“Psst,” said Brabandt quietly. “Look out starboard.”
Lyra stood up and stared as hard as she could, ignoring the rain in her eyes, and this time saw a little flickering
greenish light. It was inconstant, but it always came back, after vanishing for a second or two, and it was moving.
“Is that another boat?” she said.
“It’s a will-o’-the-wyke. A jacky-lantern.”
“There’s another!”
A second light, reddish in colour, appeared and disappeared not far from the first. Lyra watched them approach
each other, touching, disappearing, and then flickering up again a little way apart.
The Maid of Portugal continued to move ahead, steady and slow, as Brabandt kept checking left and right,
listening, peering, even lifting his face to sniff at the air. The rain was beating down harder than ever. The marsh
lights seemed to be keeping pace with the boat, and then Lyra realised that the zeppelin overhead had moved a
little in their direction, as if to see what they were. The engine sounded very loud, very close, and she wondered
how the pilot could see anything at all in the murk. The boat was leaving no wake, and every light on board was
out.
“There’s another one,” Lyra said.
A third light had joined the first two, and now they set up a weird halting, pausing, swerving dance. The cold
inconstant glimmer made Lyra feel uneasy. Only the solid deck beneath her feet and the bulky presence of
Giorgio Brabandt saved her from a sickly fear of things that were outside, just beyond the reach of reason,
inhabiting the dark.
“It’s going that way,” said Brabandt.
He was right. As if it was being pulled, the zeppelin was moving to starboard, towards the marsh lights.
Brabandt pushed the throttle further forward, and the narrow boat picked up speed. In the faint glimmer of the
marsh lights Lyra could see him straining every sense, and Anneke his dæmon jumped up on to the cabin roof,
head moving this way and that to catch a fragment of scent that would help avoid a mudbank or steer round a
bend.
8
Lyra almost said “Can I help?” but realised as she opened her mouth that if he had a task for her, he’d tell her.
So she sat down in the doorway again and kept still, and looked out to starboard, where the marsh lights were
flickering more brightly than ever.
Suddenly a line of fire streaked down towards the marsh lights from the teeming sky above. It hit the water and
exploded in a blossom of orange and yellow flame, and after a second Lyra heard the brief whistle of the flight
and the solid crump of the explosion.
The marsh lights went out all at once.
“There,” said Brabandt. “They broke the law now. They’re allowed to fly over, but not to do that.”
Anneke was growling as she stood four-square and gazed at the rapidly fading glow from the rocket.
A moment later a dozen marsh lights flickered again, moving swiftly, darting here and there, even rising and
falling. Little jets of fire spurted up from the ground, to flare and go out in a moment.
“That’s made ’em angry,” said Brabandt. “Trouble is, they’re showing us up.”
The boat was still purring forward into the dark, but he was right: the marsh lights were so fierce and brilliant
now that, small as they were, they illuminated the whole length of the Maid of Portugal, streaming with rain and
catching every flicker of light.
“They don’t like us, the will-o’-the-wykeses, but they like them zeppelins even less,” Brabandt said. “But they
still don’t like us. Wouldn’t bother ’em a bit if we got sunk and drowned, or smashed into a thousand splinters.”
Anneke barked, a short yap of alarm. She was looking up, and Lyra, following her gaze, saw a little shape falling
from the zeppelin and briskly unfolding into a parachute. Almost at once the wind caught it and tossed it
backwards, but then the black shape under the canopy burst into a brilliant flame.
“Flares,” said Brabandt, as another fell, blossomed, and blazed.
The response from the marsh lights was instant and furious. More and more of them flickered into being and
leaped and danced towards the falling flare, and when it reached the water, they swarmed all over it, their cold
fire mastering its heat and finally drowning it in a cloud of smoke and a chorus of wet little shrieks and sucking
noises.
Suddenly Lyra jumped up and ran inside, feeling her way along the length of the boat to her little cabin in the
prow. She felt for her bunk, felt the bedside table, moved her hands over the book and the lamp until they found
the velvet bag that held the alethiometer. With that safely in both hands she moved back through the boat,
conscious of the little movements Brabandt was making with the wheel and the throttle, of the roar from the
zeppelin’s engine somewhere above, of the moaning of the wind. From the galley she saw Brabandt at the tiller
outlined against the flickering marsh lights, and then she was in the doorway again, and sat on the bench from
where she could see out.
9
“All right?” said Brabandt.
“Yes. I’m going to see what I can find out.”
She was already turning the little wheels of the alethiometer, and peering close in the intermittent glimmer to
try and make out the symbols. But it was no good: they were more or less invisible. She held the instrument
between her palms, and stared fiercely out at the flickering jacky-lanterns, aware of a powerful contradiction
that almost tore her mind in two. What she wanted to do would involve this secret commonwealth of Brabandt’s,
and yet she told herself it was nonsense, superstition, nothing but meaningless fancy.
The zeppelin was turning around ahead of them, its searchlight probing the rain and the dark marsh gloom
below it. Another minute or two, and it would be facing them, and once it had the Maid of Portugal fixed in the
glare of the light, nothing would save them.
Pan, Pan, Pan, Lyra thought, I need you now, you little bastard, you traitor.
She tried to imagine gathering all the jacky-lanterns as if she was herding sheep, but it was so hard, because
after all she had no imagination, as Pan had said. What would it be like to do that? She thought harder and
harder. She thought of herself as a light-herd, and the absent Pan as a light-dog, racing from side to side across
the marsh, crouching down still, leaping up again, barking short sharp commands, running where she thought
him to.
And how stupid, she thought, how childish. It’s just methane or something. It’s just natural, meaningless. Her
concentration faltered.
She heard a sob coming from her throat, completely against her will.
Brabandt said, “What you doing, gal?”
She ignored him. She gritted her teeth and summoned the absent Pan again, a hell-hound now, with glowing
eyes and slaver flying from his lips, and she saw the terrified marsh lights fleeing and flocking and circling round
as the zeppelin’s cold beam of light came closer and closer and she heard the drumming of rain on the great
snout-prow of the aircraft, even over the wind and the roar of the engine.
She felt something rising inside her, like a tide, wave upon wave of it, growing and receding and then growing
again, a little more each time, and it was anger, it was desire, it was visceral.
“What they doing? Good God – look at that … ” Brabandt was saying.
The marsh lights were speeding and climbing, dashing again and again at a spot on the water just ahead of the
zeppelin’s searchlight, and then with a shriek something rose out of the marsh that wasn’t a jacky-lantern nor a
will-o’-the-wyke but a large bird, a heron or even a stork, heavy and white and terrified by the darting green
glimmers that harried it up and up and into the beam of the searchlight, and higher still, snapping at its legs,
crowding like hornets at its great hefty body as it lumbered up in fear and hurled itself at the aircraft—
10
Brabandt said hoarsely, “Hold tight, gal.” The searchlight beam was nearly on them.
Then in an explosion of fire and blood and white feathers, the heron flew straight into the port engine of the
zeppelin. The aircraft lurched and swung to the left at once, and dipped and sagged as the starboard engine
screamed and the great slug-shape drifted sideways and downwards. The tail heaved itself round, caught by the
wind with no port engine to stabilise it, and the craft drifted down and down towards the swamp, and closer and
closer to the Maid of Portugal, as if it were sinking on to a bed. Little scraps of sound, screams, cries, came
whirling through the wind and were snatched away again. By the glow of the dancing marsh lights as well as the
fire that was now blazing out of control from the zeppelin, she and Brabandt watched in horror as a figure, two,
three, hurled themselves out of the cabin and fell down into the dark. A moment later the great broken shell of
the zeppelin collapsed on to the water only fifty yards away from them, surrounded by clouds of steam, and
smoke, and flame, and the dance of a thousand marsh lights, capering in triumph. The heat scorched Lyra’s face,
and Brabandt tilted his sou’wester against it.
It was horrible to watch, but she couldn’t look away. The skeleton of the airship showed black against the great
blaze of light, and then it crumpled together and fell in with a cascade of sparks and smoke.
“They won’t survive that, none of ’em,” said Brabandt. “They be all dead now.”
“Horrible.”
“Aye.”
He moved the throttle lever, and the boat moved out into the middle of the watercourse and gathered speed
slowly.
“That heron,” Lyra said shakily. “The marsh lights were chasing it. They made it fly up into the engine. They
knew what they were doing.”
And so did I, she thought. I made it happen.
“A heron, was it? Might’ve been. I thought it was a flying boggart. They do fly, some of ’em, making a kind of a
whirring noise. Only there was so much else going on we couldn’t a heard that. That’s probably what it was, a
flying elf or a spirit out the waters. Summing from the secret commonwealth, what I told you about. Look at the
jacky-lanterns, now.”
The marsh lights, dozens of them, had all gathered around the burning wreck, making little darts towards it and
out again, flickering and dancing.
“What are they doing?”
“Looking for any survivors. They’ll pull ’em down under the water and finish ’em off. Them potaters done yet?”
“Oh – yes.”
11
“Well, don’t let ’em get cold. Tell you what, there’s a tin of bully beef in the locker. Chop it up with the potatoes
and fry the lot. I’m getting peckish.”
Lyra felt sick. She couldn’t help thinking of the dead men from the zeppelin, burned or drowned or worse, and
of that beautiful white bird, driven up without mercy into the blades of the engine. Food was the last thing she
wanted just then, but when the hash was cooking she found that after all, it was a shame to waste it, and it did
smell good; so she brought two plates of it to the cockpit, where Brabandt began by scooping up a forkful and
dropping it over the side.
“For the will-o’-the-wykes,” he said.
Lyra did the same with hers, and then they ate their supper, sheltering their plates from the rain.
4
Author
Genre
Form
Person
Sergio Queiroz
Nature Writing
Article
Third
Tick if read
Brazilian researchers find 'terrifying' plastic rocks on remote island
TRINDADE ISLAND, Brazil, March 15 (Reuters) - The geology of Brazil's volcanic Trindade Island has
fascinated scientists for years, but the discovery of rocks made from plastic debris in this remote turtle refuge is
sparking alarm.
Melted plastic has become intertwined with rocks on the island, located 1,140 km (708 miles) from the
southeastern state of Espirito Santo, which researchers say is evidence of humans' growing influence over the
earth's geological cycles.
"This is new and terrifying at the same time, because pollution has reached geology," said Fernanda Avelar
Santos, a geologist at the Federal University of Parana. Santos and her team ran chemical tests to find out what
kind of plastics are in the rocks called "plastiglomerates" because they are made of a mixture of sedimentary
granules and other debris held together by plastic.
"We identified (the pollution) mainly comes from fishing nets, which is very common debris on Trinidade
Island's beaches," Santos said. "The (nets) are dragged by the marine currents and accumulate on the beach.
When the temperature rises, this plastic melts and becomes embedded with the beach's natural material."
Trindade Island is one of the world's most important conservation spots for green turtles, or Chelonia mydas,
with thousands arriving each year to lay their eggs. The only human inhabitants on Trindade are members of
the Brazilian navy, which maintains a base on the island and protects the nesting turtles.
"The place where we found these samples (of plastic) is a permanently preserved area in Brazil, near the place
green turtles lay their eggs," Santos said.
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The discovery stirs questions about humans' legacy on the earth, says Santos.
"We talk so much about the Anthropocene, and this is it," Santos said, referring to a proposed geological epoch
defined by humans' impact on the planet's geology and ecosystems.
"The pollution, the garbage in the sea and the plastic dumped incorrectly in the oceans is becoming geological
material ... preserved in the earth's geological records." Photo
5
Author
Genre
Form
Person
Sathnam Sanghera
Autobiography
Memoir
First
Tick if read
Introduction
For Sathnam Sanghera, growing up in Wolverhampton in the eighties was a confusing business. On the one
hand, these were the heady days of George Michael mix-tapes, Dallas on TV and, if he was lucky, the occasional
Bounty Bar. On the other, there was his wardrobe of tartan smocks, his 30p-an-hour job at the local sewing
factory and the ongoing challenge of how to tie the perfect top-knot. And then there was his family, whose
strange and often difficult behaviour he took for granted until, at the age of twenty-four, Sathnam made a
discovery that changed everything he ever thought he knew about them. Equipped with breathtaking courage
and a glorious sense of humour, he embarks on a journey into their extraordinary past - from his father's harsh
life in rural Punjab to the steps of the Wolverhampton Tourist Office - trying to make sense of a life lived among
secrets. Sathnam Sanghera was born to Punjabi immigrant parents in Wolverhampton in 1976. He entered the
education system unable to speak English but went on to graduate from Christ's College, Cambridge with a first
class degree in English Language and Literature. He has been shortlisted for the Costa Book Awards twice, for
his memoir.
This week’s reading is preceded by a listen: https://youtu.be/JCK4e_kGjkw
Outside, I relished ripping open the wrapper and sliding the bars out from the cardboard slip inside, but Dad
wolfed down his share in two gulps – like a pig chobbling coal, Mrs Burgess would have said. There was no
chance of me doing that. I was going to make it last as long as could, even if it meant being late for school.
Crawling along, with Dad glancing repeatedly at his watch, I nibbled the milk chocolate off the top first, then
off the sides, and then – trickiest bit here, the chocolate is at its thinnest – from the bottom. Finally, a cuboid of
sugary coconut caught between the tips of my fingers, themselves stained with the yellow haldi of lunch. I
polished it off in quarters.
‘That was Sohni, Dad.’
I kept the black cardboard slip from inside the wrapper with the intention of sniffing it and reliving the
experience later, but it drifted on to the classroom floor during afternoon registration, as I ransacked the pockets
13
of my shorts for the strip of blue airmail, with my name written on it. Mrs Jones waited. ‘How do you spell that?’
‘Ess, ay, en, gee, haitch…’ ‘You mean aitch…’ ‘Gee, haitch…’ ‘Not haitch. Aitch is pronounced without an haitch…’
Again, my mouth opened and closed wordlessly. Fortunately, she changed the subject.
‘I see your name alliterates…’ She looked over the whole class now. Or rather, she looked at the wall and I
assumed she was looking over the whole class. ‘Does anyone know what alliteration means?’ A sea of blinking
eyes. We knew nothing. ‘Alliteration is a stylistic device, or literary technique, in which successive words begin
with the same consonant sound or letter.’ She may as well have been speaking Mandarin. ‘For example, the
phrase: the sweet smell of success. Actually, Wordsworth springs to mind.’ She closed her eyes. ‘And sings a
solitary song, That whistles in the wind…Can any of you think of an example of alliteration?’ The blinking
intensified. ‘Come on, I’m sure one of you can think of something. A dime a dozen is another example. Bigger
and better? Jump for joy?’ It was only when I noticed my classmates laughing that I realised I’d inadvertently
replied. ‘Silly sausage!’ ‘Yes! Excellent example. Well done. One house point to you.’ Ten house points meant a
visit to the headmaster’s office to claim a bright red maxi badge, which you could wear on your pullover as a
demonstration of your swottiness. ‘Very well done.’ Smiling, Mrs Jones returned to the register. Now then, that
name sounds familiar. Are you Narinder’s brother by any chance?’ ‘Yes, miss.’ ‘Gosh.’ Her tiny cross-eyes almost
disappeared into her large face when she smiled.
‘One of the best students I ever had. We’ll be lucky if you turn out half as good…
6
Author
Genre
Form
Person
Zarina Zabrinsky
Nature writing
Recount
First
Tick if read
Introduction
Zabrisky is currently based in Odesa, Ukraine. From the beginning of the 2022 full-scale Russian invasion of
Ukraine, Zabrisky has been reporting on the war. Born in St. Petersburg, Zabrisky is of Jewish origin and moved
to the United States as a child. She has previously held jobs as a kickboxing instructor, translator, travel
coordinator and business liaison in Kazakhstan and a street artist. Zabrisky received a degree in English
language and Literature at the Philological Faculty at St. Petersburg State University.
Nature’s Revenge
I wake up from the piercing wail of an air raid alarm, the putrid stench of a peat swamp burning, the sour taste
of metal in my mouth. I’m in Ukraine, twenty-five miles from the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. The murky air
and smokey skies remind me of the days of the San Francisco Bay Area wildfires: a face mask, itchy eyes,
shortness of breath. The wildfire in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone presents a different risk—especially if it
reaches the Red Forest.
14
In 1986, the worst nuclear disaster in history turned a pine forest two miles west of the power plant into orange,
golden, and rusty red horror. The windblown radioactive dust killed not just the chlorophyll molecules in the
pine needles but the whole ecosystem—a complex living network of trees, animals, birds, reptiles, and insects.
The Soviet leadership knew that if the Red Forest burned and released the deadly particles into the atmosphere,
more areas would be affected. But, in a rush to bury the poisonous trees, the rescuers forgot to measure the depth
of the grave. The new forest growing atop the remains absorbed from the underground waters cesium-137,
strontium-90, and plutonium-238, -239, and -240. The half-life of plutonium-239, the most toxic of these
radioactive substances, is twenty-five thousand years. This means that for the next twenty-five thousand years,
if the Red Forest burns, the wind will carry inhalable death far and wide.
In 2022, during the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Russian military dug trenches in the most polluted
areas of the Red Forest, apparently unaware of the rules of conduct in the contaminated territory. They raised
radionuclide dust from the depths of the soil. Their shelling started wildfires. They hunted radioactive deer.
Serhiy Kireev, head of the Ukrainian government agency responsible for the radiological safety of the exclusion
zone, told me that the digging likely released isotopes of plutonium and transuranium, and there is a high
probability that some of these nuclides made their way into the soldiers’ bodies. Spontaneous combustion
occurred in several villages that have been abandoned since the Chernobyl disaster and the surrounding forest.
The Russian soldiers probably inhaled radioactive contaminated smoke.
In folk tales, the woodland is the portal to the world of the dead, a mysterious realm of the shadows of ancestors
and mythical creatures. In Ukrainian lore, this realm is protected by a fiery flying serpent prelesnik and the souls
of stillborn children poterchata, mermaids Mavka and witches Solokha, magicians molfars and werewolves
vovkulaks. In Nikolay Gogol’s gothic horror story “Terrible Revenge,” which combines Cossack history with
elements of folklore and fairy tale, a villain violates the laws of humanity and the harmony of the world. The
nature then turns on him: “the trees, girdling him with their dark forest and as if alive, nod their black beards
and stretch out their long branches, trying to strangle” the villain. In the real-life nightmare of the Red Forest,
the violated land took vengeance on the invaders, poisoning them with deadly aerosols that cause lethal diseases.
Ancient lore aligned with science and the forest itself to guard the homeland.
I think of Ukrainian ritual embroidery. Simple ornaments. Hidden symbolism. A tree: the triumph of life over
death. Pine needles: eternal life. The colour red: sun, fire, blood, life. Cleansing from evil. The Red Forest lives
on.
The hostile military takeover of a nuclear power plant could mean the end of the world. But recently, Rafael
Grossi, the head of the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency, fretted that it did not. Or at least that we no
longer think it does. What was bothering him was that warnings of the danger of having Europe’s largest nuclear
power plant getting swallowed by the war in Ukraine had become a matter of “routine.”
15
7
Author
Genre
Form
Person
Alanna Mitchell
Nature writing
Article
First
Tick if read
Introduction
Pioneered by a Japanese botanist, compact Miyawaki forests are beginning to replace backyard lawns on tiny plots around
Canada.
Atree is not just a tree. It is part of a collaboration of living creatures both intricate and mysterious — microbes,
fungi, shrubs, ground- covers. In turn, this assemblage attracts insects, birds and mammals in a merry mashup
of collegiality.
This refashioned understanding of the tree is giving rise to a tiny, forested revolution in cities across the world,
including several in Canada. Rather than planting lawns around a solitary tree — once the ideal —
municipalities, homeowners, schools, businesses and others are planting Miyawaki forests.
Named after the Japanese botanist Akira Miyawaki who invented them about 40 years ago, the densely planted
forests are perhaps the size of a tennis court, often even smaller. But these minuscule forests are mighty,
containing hundreds of plants, each striving to get its share of sun and rain. Done the right way, the forests
achieve mature heights in about 20 years, rather than 100 or more, because they grow up rather than out.
“It’s one of those few things that when you first create it, it just gets better over time,” says landscape architect
Heather Schibli. Her firm manages CanPlant, an organisation that is beginning to track Miyawaki forests in
Canada and the native species they contain.
So far, there are nearly a dozen in Ontario and Quebec, with plans in the works for many more across the country.
One of them is in Schibli’s backyard in Guelph, Ont. Its 230 woody plants are packed into eight metres by nine,
leaving enough room for a back deck, trampoline and shed.
Schibli started by covering her lawn with a layer of cardboard, then adding compost and mulch. Once the forest
was planted, she needed to bolster organisms in the soil, a key element of forest life. She took a spoonful of soil
from a local wild forest, using it to make a “tea” with which to water the new forest. This tea fosters mycorrhizae,
the fungal threads that bind plants together, communicating and sharing food.
The trees must be native and local, evolved to live together. They are chosen to form four structural layers —
canopy, sub-canopy, arborescent (small understorey) trees, and shrubs.
The benefits multiply. Trees that grow tall quickly absorb more carbon dioxide than trees that grow slowly,
building carbon into root and branch. The forests help manage stormwater: Schibli’s neighbours diverted runoff water to her backyard to nurture the trees. Air quality around the forest is better because of the oxygen the
16
plants emit, and all that greenery absorbs noise and soothes the spirit. More species arrive. It’s the recipe for an
ecosystem.
8
Author
Genre
Form
Person
James Joyce
Fiction
Short Story
Third
Tick if read
Introduction
"Eveline" is a short story by the Irish writer James Joyce. It was first published in 1904. It tells the story of
Eveline, a teenager who plans to leave Dublin for Argentina with her lover. At the start, a young woman, Eveline,
nineteen years of age, sits by her window, waiting to leave home. Her mother has died as has her older brother
Ernest. She fears that her father will beat her as he used to beat her brothers and she has little loyalty for her
sales job. She has fallen for a sailor named Frank who promises to take her with him to Buenos Aires. Before
leaving to meet Frank, she hears an organ grinder outside, which reminds her of a melody that played on an
organ on the day her mother died and the promise she made to her mother to look after the home. At the dock
where she and Frank are ready to embark on a ship together, Eveline is deeply conflicted and makes the painful
decision not to leave with him. And so, she decides to “go back” such that she experiences disappointment for
ever. The extract below is the ending: for the full story, ask the Librarian or find it here.
She stood up in a sudden impulse of terror. Escape! She must escape! Frank would save her. He would give her
life, perhaps love, too. But she wanted to live. Why should she be unhappy? She had a right to happiness. Frank
would take her in his arms, fold her in his arms. He would save her. She stood among the swaying crowd in the
station at the North Wall. He held her hand and she knew that he was speaking to her, saying something about
the passage over and over again. The station was full of soldiers with brown baggages. Through the wide doors
of the sheds she caught a glimpse of the black mass of the boat, lying in beside the quay wall, with illuminated
portholes. She answered nothing. She felt her cheek pale and cold and, out of a maze of distress, she prayed to
God to direct her, to show her what was her duty. The boat blew a long mournful whistle into the mist. If she
went, tomorrow she would be on the sea with Frank, steaming towards Buenos Ayres. Their passage had been
booked. Could she still draw back after all he had done for her? Her distress awoke a nausea in her body and she
kept moving her lips in silent fervent prayer. A bell clanged upon her heart. She felt him seize her hand: “Come!”
All the seas of the world tumbled about her heart. He was drawing her into them: he would drown her. She
gripped with both hands at the iron railing. “Come!” No! No! No! It was impossible. Her hands clutched the iron
in a frenzy. Amid the seas she sent a cry of anguish! “Eveline! Evvy!” He rushed beyond the barrier and called to
her to follow. He was shouted at to go on but he still called to her. She set her white face to him, passive, like a
helpless animal. Her eyes gave him no sign of love or farewell or recognition.
Author
Genre
Form
Person
Tick if read
17
9
Malena Thunberg
Autobiography
Memoir
First
Introduction
Greta Thunberg’s mother reveals the reality of family life during her daughter’s transformation from bullied
teenager to climate icon.
One evening in the autumn of 2014, Svante and I sat slumped on our bathroom floor in Stockholm. It was late,
the children were asleep. Everything was starting to fall apart around us. Greta was 11, had just started fifth
grade, and was not doing well. She cried at night when she should be sleeping. She cried on her way to school.
She cried in her classes and during her breaks, and the teachers called home almost every day. Svante had to run
off and bring her home to Moses, our golden retriever. She sat with him for hours, petting him and stroking his
fur. She was slowly disappearing into some kind of darkness and little by little, bit by bit, she seemed to stop
functioning. She stopped playing the piano. She stopped laughing. She stopped talking. And she stopped eating.
We sat there on the hard mosaic floor, knowing exactly what we would do. We would change everything. We
would find the way back to Greta, no matter the cost. The situation called for more than words and feelings. A
closing of accounts. A clean break.
“How are you feeling?” Svante asked. “Do you want to keep going?”
“No.”
“OK. No more,” he said. “We’ll cancel everything. Every last contract,” Svante went on. “Madrid, Zurich, Vienna,
Brussels. Everything.”
One Saturday soon afterwards, we decide we’re going to bake buns, all four of us, the whole family, and we’re
determined to make this work. It has to. If we can bake our buns as usual, in peace and quiet, Greta will be able
to eat them as usual, and then everything will be resolved, fixed. It’s going to be easy as pie. Baking buns is after
all our favourite activity. So we bake, dancing around in the kitchen so as to create the most positive, happiest
bun-baking party in human history.
But once the buns are out of the oven the party stops in its tracks. Greta picks up a bun and sniffs it. She sits
there holding it, tries to open her mouth, but… can’t. We see that this isn’t going to work.
“Please eat,” Svante and I say in chorus. Calmly, at first. And then more firmly. Then with every ounce of pentup frustration and powerlessness. Until finally we scream, letting out all our fear and hopelessness. “Eat! You
have to eat, don’t you understand? You have to eat now, otherwise you’ll die!”
Then Greta has her first panic attack. She makes a sound we’ve never heard before, ever. She lets out an abysmal
howl that lasts for over 40 minutes. We haven’t heard her scream since she was an infant.
18
I cradle her in my arms, and Moses lies alongside her, his moist nose pressed to her head. Greta asks, “Am I
going to get well again?”
“Of course you are,” I reply.
“When am I going to get well?”
“I don’t know. Soon.”
On a white sheet of paper fixed to the wall we note down everything Greta eats and how long it takes for her to
eat it. The amounts are small. And it takes a long time. But the emergency unit at the Stockholm Centre for
Eating Disorders says that this method has a good long-term success rate. You write down what you eat meal by
meal, then you list everything you can eat, things you wish you could eat and things you want to be able to eat
further down the line.
It’s a short list. Rice, avocados and gnocchi.
School starts in five minutes. But there isn’t going to be any school today. There isn’t going to be any school at
all this week. Yesterday Svante and I got another email from the school expressing their “concern” about Greta’s
lack of attendance, despite the fact that they were in possession of several letters from both doctors and
psychologists explaining her situation.
Again, I inform the school office of our situation and they reply with an email saying that they hope Greta will
come to school as usual on Monday so “this problem” can be dealt with. But Greta won’t be in school on Monday.
Because unless a sudden dramatic change occurs she’s going to be admitted to Sachsska children’s hospital next
week.
Svante is boiling gnocchi. It is extremely important that the consistency is perfect, otherwise it won’t be eaten.
We set a specific number of gnocchi on her plate. It’s a delicate balancing act; if we offer too many our daughter
won’t eat anything and if we offer too few she won’t get enough. Whatever she ingests is obviously too little, but
every little bite counts and we can’t afford to waste a single one.
Then Greta sits there sorting the gnocchi. She turns each one over, presses on them and then does it again. And
again. After 20 minutes she starts eating. She licks and sucks and chews: tiny, tiny bites. It takes forever.
“I’m full,” she says suddenly. “I can’t eat any more.”
Svante and I avoid looking at each other. We have to hold back our frustration, because we’ve started to realise
that this is the only thing that works. We’ve explored all other tactics. Every other conceivable way. We’ve
ordered her sternly. We’ve screamed, laughed, threatened, begged, pleaded, cried and offered every imaginable
bribe. But this seems to be what works the best.
Svante goes up to the sheet of paper on the wall and writes:
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Lunch: 5 gnocchi. Time: 2 hours and 10 minutes.
Not eating can mean many things. The question is what. The question is why. Svante and I look for answers. I
spend the evenings reading everything I can find on the internet about anorexia and eating disorders. We’re sure
it’s not anorexia. But, we keep hearing that anorexia is a very cunning disorder and will do anything to evade
discovery. So we keep that door wide open.
I speak endlessly to the children’s psychiatry service (BUP), the healthcare information service, doctors,
psychologists and every conceivable acquaintance who may be able to offer the least bit of knowledge or
guidance.
At Greta’s school there’s a psychologist who is experienced with autism. She talks with both of us on the phone
and says that a careful investigation must still be conducted, but in her eyes – and off the record – Greta shows
clear signs of being on the autism spectrum. “High-functioning Asperger’s,” she says.
Meeting after meeting follows where we repeat our story and explore our options. We talk away while Greta sits
silently. She has stopped speaking with anyone except me, Svante and Beata. Everyone really wants to offer all
the help they can but it’s as if there’s no help to be had. Not yet, at least. We’re fumbling in the dark.
After two months of not eating Greta has lost almost 10kg, which is a lot when you are rather small to begin
with. Her body temperature is low and her pulse and blood pressure clearly indicate signs of starvation. She no
longer has the energy to take the stairs and her scores on the depression tests she takes are sky high. We explain
to our daughter that we have to start preparing ourselves for a stay at the hospital, where it’s possible to get
nutrition and food without eating, with tubes and drips.
In mid-November there’s a big meeting at BUP. Greta sits silently. As usual. I’m crying. As usual. “If there are
no developments after the weekend then we’ll have to admit you to the hospital,” the doctor says.
On the stairs down to the lobby Greta turns round. “I want to start eating again.” All three of us burst into tears
and we go home and Greta eats a whole green apple. But nothing more will go down. As it turns out, it’s a little
harder than you think to just start eating again. We take a few careful, trial steps and it works. We inch forward.
She eats tiny amounts of rice, avocado and bananas. We take our time. And we start on sertraline, an
antidepressant.
Svante and Greta have been at the end-of-term ceremony at school where they tried to make themselves invisible
in the corridors and stairwells. When students openly point and laugh at you – even though you’re walking
alongside your parents – then things have gone too far. Way too far.
At home in the kitchen, Svante explains to me what they’ve just experienced while Greta eats her rice and
avocado. I get so angry at what I hear that I could tear down half the street we live on with my bare hands, but
our daughter has a different reaction. She’s happy it’s in the open.
20
She devotes the whole Christmas break to telling us about unspeakably awful incidents. It’s like a movie montage
featuring every imaginable bullying scenario. Stories about being pushed over in the playground, wrestled to the
ground, or lured into strange places, the systematic shunning and the safe space in the girls’ toilets where she
sometimes manages to hide and cry before the break monitors force her out into the playground again. For a full
year, the stories keep coming. Svante and I inform the school, but the school isn’t sympathetic. Their
understanding of the situation is different. It’s Greta’s own fault, the school thinks; several children have said
repeatedly that Greta has behaved strangely and spoken too softly and never says hello. The latter they write in
an email.
They write worse things than that, which is lucky for us, because when we report the school to the Swedish
schools inspectorate we’re on a firm footing and there’s no doubt that the inspectorate will rule in our favour.
I explain to Greta that she’ll have friends again, later. But her response is always the same. “I don’t want to have
a friend. Friends are children and all children are mean.”
Greta’s pulse rate gets stronger and finally the weight curve turns upwards strongly enough for a
neuropsychiatric investigation to begin. Our daughter has Asperger’s, high-functioning autism and OCD,
obsessive-compulsive disorder. “We could formally diagnose her with selective mutism, too, but that often goes
away on its own with time,” the doctor tells us. We aren’t surprised. Basically, this was the conclusion we drew
several months ago.
On the way out, Beata calls to tell us she’s having dinner with a friend, and I feel a sting of guilt. Soon we’ll take
care of you too, darling, I promise her in my mind, but first Greta has to get well.
Summer is coming, and we walk the whole way home. We almost don’t even need to ration the burning of calories
any more.
Six months after Greta received her diagnosis, life has levelled out into something that resembles an everyday
routine. She has started at a new school. I’ve cleared my calendar and put work on the back burner. But while
we’re full up with taking care of Greta, Beata’s having more and more of a tough time. In school everything is
ticking along. But at home she falls apart, crashes. She can’t stand being with us at all any more. Everything
Svante and I do upsets her and in our company she can lose control. She clearly is not feeling well.
One day near her 11th birthday I find her standing in the living room, hurling DVDs from the bookshelf down
the spiral staircase to the kitchen. “You only care about Greta. Never about me. I hate you, Mum. You are the
worst mother in the whole world,” she screams as Jasper the Penguin hits me on the forehead.
It’s autumn 2015 when Beata undergoes an evaluation for various neurodevelopmental disorders. She is
diagnosed with ADHD, with elements of Asperger’s, OCD and ODD [oppositional defiant disorder]. Now that
she has the diagnosis it feels like a fresh start for her, an explanation, a redress, a remedy. At school she has
marvellous teachers who make everything work. She doesn’t have to do homework. We drop all activities. We
avoid anything that may be stressful. And it works. Whatever happens we must never meet anger with anger,
21
because that, pretty much always, does more harm than good. We adapt and we plan, with rigorous routines and
rituals. Hour by hour. We try to find habits that work
The fact that our children finally got help was due to a great many factors. In part it was about existing care,
proven methods, advice and medication. It was also thanks to our own toil, patience, time and luck that Greta
and Beata found their way back on their feet. However, what happened to Greta in particular can’t be explained
simply by a psychiatric label. In the end, she simply couldn’t reconcile the contradictions of modern life. Things
simply didn’t add up. We, who live in an age of historic abundance, who have access to huge shared resources,
can’t afford to help vulnerable people in flight from war and terror – people like you and me, but who have lost
everything.
In school one day, Greta’s class watches a film about how much rubbish there is in the oceans. An island of
plastic, larger than Mexico, is floating around in the South Pacific. Greta cries throughout the film. Her
classmates are also clearly moved. Before the lesson is over the teacher announces that on Monday there will be
a substitute teaching the class, because she’s going to a wedding over the weekend, in Connecticut, right outside
of New York. “Wow, lucky you,” the pupils say. Out in the corridor the trash island off the coast of Chile is
already forgotten. New iPhones are taken out of fur-trimmed down jackets, and everyone who has been to New
York talks about how great it is, with all those shops, and Barcelona has amazing shopping too, and in Thailand
everything is so cheap, and someone is going with her mother to Vietnam over the Easter break, and Greta can’t
reconcile any of this with any of what she has just seen.
She saw what the rest of us did not want to see. It was as if she could see our CO2 emissions with her naked eye.
The invisible, colourless, scentless, soundless abyss that our generation has chosen to ignore. She saw all of it –
not literally, of course, but nonetheless she saw the greenhouse gases streaming out of our chimneys, wafting
upwards with the winds and transforming the atmosphere into a gigantic, invisible garbage dump.
She was the child, we were the emperor. And we were all naked.
You celebrities are basically to the environment what anti immigrant politicians are to multicultural society,”
Greta says at the breakfast table early in 2016. I guess it’s true. Not just of celebrities, but of the vast majority of
people. Everyone wants to be successful, and nothing conveys success and prosperity better than luxury,
abundance and travel, travel, travel.
Greta scrolls through my Instagram feed. She’s angry. “Name a single celebrity who’s standing up for the climate!
Name a single celebrity who is prepared to sacrifice the luxury of flying around the world!”
I was a part of the problem myself. Only recently I had been posting sun-drenched selfies from Japan. One “Good
morning from Tokyo” and tens of thousands of “likes” rolled in to my brand-new iPhone. Something started to
ache inside of me. Something I’d previously called travel anxiety or fear of flying but which was now taking on
another, clearer form. On 6 March 2016 I flew home from a concert in Vienna, and not long after that I decided
to stay on the ground for good.
22
A few months later we walked home from the airport shuttle having met Svante and Beata off a flight from
Rome.“You just released 2.7 tonnes of CO2,” Greta says to Svante. “And that corresponds to the annual
emissions of five people in Senegal.” “I hear what you’re saying,” Svante says, nodding. “I’ll try to stay on the
ground from now on, too.”
Greta started planning her school strike over the summer of 2018. Svante has promised to take her to a building
supplier’s to buy a scrap piece of wood that she can paint white and make a sign out of. “School Strike for the
Climate”, it will say. And although more than anything we want her to drop the whole idea of going on strike
from school – we support her. Because we see that she feels good as she draws up her plans – better than she
has felt in many years. Better than ever before, in fact.
On the morning of 20 August 2018, Greta gets up an hour earlier than on a regular school day. She has her
breakfast. Fills a backpack with school books, a lunchbox, utensils, a water bottle, a cushion and an extra sweater.
She has printed out 100 flyers with facts and source references about the climate and sustainability crisis.
She walks her white bicycle out of the garage and rolls off to parliament. Svante cycles a few metres behind her,
with her home-made sign under his right arm The weather is rather lovely. The sun is rising behind the old town
and there is little chance of rain. The cycle paths and pavements are filled with people on their way to work and
school.
Outside the prime minister’s office, Greta stops and gets off her bicycle. Svante helps her take a picture before
they lock the bicycles. Then she nods an almost invisible goodbye to Dad and, with the sign in her arms, staggers
around the corner towards the government block where she stops and leans the sign against the greyish-red
granite wall. Sets out her flyers. Settles down.
She asks a passerby to take another picture with her phone and posts both pictures on social media. After a few
minutes the first sharing on Twitter starts. The political scientist Staffan Lindberg retweets her post. Then come
another two retweets. And a few more. The meteorologist Pär Holmgren. The singer-songwriter Stefan
Sundström. After that, it accelerates. She has fewer than 20 followers on Instagram and not many more on
Twitter. But that’s already changing.
Now there is no way back.
A documentary film crew shows up. Svante calls and tells her that the newspaper Dagens ETC has been in touch
with him and are on their way. Right after that [another daily newspaper] Aftonbladet shows up and Greta is
surprised that everything is moving so fast. Happy and surprised. She wasn’t expecting this.
Ivan and Fanny from Greenpeace show up and ask Greta if everything is OK. “Can we help with anything?” they
ask. “Do you have a police permit?” Ivan asks. She doesn’t. She didn’t think a permit would be needed. But
evidently it is. “I can help you,” Ivan says.
Greenpeace is far from alone in offering its support. Everyone wants to do their utmost to help out. But Greta
doesn’t need any help. She manages all by herself. She is interviewed by one newspaper after the next. The simple
23
fact that she is talking to strangers without feeling unwell is an unexpected joy for us parents. Everything else
is a bonus.
The first haters start to attack, and Greta is openly mocked on social media. She is mocked by anonymous troll
accounts, by rightwing extremists. And she is mocked by members of parliament. But that’s no surprise.
Svante stops by to make sure that everything is OK. He does this a couple of times every day. Greta stands by
the wall and there are a dozen people around her. She looks stressed. The journalist from [newspaper] Dagens
Nyheter asks whether it’s OK if they film an interview, and Svante sees out of the corner of his eye that something
is wrong. “Wait, let me check,” he says, and takes Greta behind a pillar under the arch. Her whole body is tense.
She is breathing heavily, and Svante says that there’s nothing to worry about. “Let’s go home now,” he says.
“OK?” Greta shakes her head. She’s crying.
“You don’t need to do any of this. Let’s forget about this and get out of here.” But Greta doesn’t want to go home.
She stands perfectly still for a few seconds. Breathes. Then she walks around in a little circle and somehow
pushes away all that panic and fear that she has been carrying inside her for as long as she can remember. After
that she stops, and stares straight ahead. Her breathing is still agitated and tears are running down her cheeks.
“No,” she says. “I’m doing this.”
We monitor how Greta is feeling as closely as we can. But we can’t see any signs that she’s feeling anything but
good. She sets the alarm clock for 6.15am and she’s happy when she gets out of bed. She’s happy as she cycles
off to parliament, and she’s happy when she comes home in the afternoon. During the afternoons she catches
up on schoolwork and checks social media. She goes to bed on time, falls asleep right away and sleeps peacefully
the whole night long. Eating, on the other hand, is not going well.
“There are too many people and I don’t have time. Everyone wants to talk all the time.”
“You have to eat,” Svante says. Greta doesn’t say anything. Food is a sensitive topic. The most difficult one. But
on the third day something else happens. Ivan from Greenpeace stops by again. He’s holding a white plastic bag.
“Are you hungry, Greta? It’s noodles. Thai,” he says. “Vegan. Would you like some?”
He holds out the bag and Greta leans forward and reaches for the food container. She opens the lid and smells
it a few times. Then she takes a little bite. And another. No one reacts to what’s happening. Why would they?
Why would it be remarkable for a child to be sitting with a bunch of people eating vegan pad thai? Greta keeps
eating. Not just a few bites but almost the whole serving.
Greta’s energy is exploding. There doesn’t seem to be any outer limit, and even if we try to hold her back she
just keeps going. By herself.
Beata sits with Greta one day in front of parliament. But this is Greta’s thing. Not hers. The sudden fuss over
her big sister is not easy to handle. Beata sees that Greta suddenly has 10,000 followers on Instagram, and we all
think that’s crazy. But Beata handles it well. Even when her own feed is filled with comments about Greta, and
can you tell her this and that. All everyone suddenly cares about is Greta, Greta and Greta. “It’s nuts,” Beata says
24
one afternoon after school. “It’s exactly like Beyoncé and Jay-Z,” she states, with an acerbic emphasis. “Greta is
Beyoncé. And I’m Jay-Z.”
We get death threats on social media, excrement through the letterbox, and social services report that they have
received a great number of complaints against us as Greta’s parents. But at the same time they state in the letter
that they “do NOT intend to take any action”. We think of the capital letters as a little love note from an
anonymous official. And it warms us.
More and more people are keeping Greta company in front of parliament. Children, adults, teachers, retirees.
One day an entire class of elementary-school pupils stops and wants to talk, and Greta has to walk away for a
bit. Feels mild panic. She steps aside and starts crying. She can’t help it. But after a while she calms herself down
and goes back and greets the children. Afterwards she explains that she has a hard time associating with children
sometimes because she has had such bad experiences. “I’ve never met a group of children that hasn’t been mean
to me. And wherever I’ve been I’ve been bullied because I’m different.”
Several times a day people come up and say that they have stopped flying, parked the car or become vegans
thanks to her. To be able to influence so many people in such a short time is bewildering in a good way. The
phenomenon keeps growing. Faster and faster by the hour. In the run-up to the end of the strike, Greta is being
followed by TV crews from the BBC, German ARD and Danish TV2.
Altogether 1,000 children and adults sit with Greta on the last day of the school strike. And media from several
different countries report live from Mynttorget Square. She has succeeded. Some say that she alone has done
more for the climate than politicians and the mass media have in years. But Greta doesn’t agree. “Nothing has
changed,” she says. “The emissions continue to increase and there is no change in sight.”
At three o’clock Svante comes and picks her up and they walk together over to the bicycles outside Rosenbad.
“Are you satisfied?” Svante asks.
“No,” she says, with her gaze fixed on the bridge back towards the old town. “I’m going to continue.”
10
Author
Genre
Form
Person
Rudyard Kipling
Tale
Short Story
Third
Tick if read
Introduction
"Rikki-Tikki-Tavi" is a short story in the 1894 anthology The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling about adventures
of a valiant young Indian grey mongoose.[1] It has often been anthologized and has been published several times
as a short book. Book 5 of Panchatantra, an ancient Indian collection, includes the mongoose and snake story,
an inspiration for the "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi" story.
25
This is the story of the great war that Rikki-tikki-tavi fought single-handed, through the bath-rooms of the big
bungalow in Segowlee cantonment. Darzee, the tailor-bird, helped him, and Chuchundra, the musk-rat, who
never comes out into the middle of the floor, but always creeps round by the wall, gave him advice; but Rikkitikki did the real fighting.
He was a mongoose, rather like a little cat in his fur and his tail, but quite like a weasel in his head and his habits.
His eyes and the end of his restless nose were pink; he could scratch himself anywhere he pleased, with any leg,
front or back, that he chose to use; he could fluff up his tail till it looked like a bottle-brush, and his war-cry, as
he scuttled through the long grass, was: ``Rikk-tikk-tikki-tikki-tchk!''
One day, a high summer flood washed him out of the burrow where he lived with his father and mother, and
carried him, kicking and clucking, down a roadside ditch. He found a little wisp of grass floating there, and
clung to it till he lost his senses. When he revived, he was lying in the hot sun in the middle of a garden path,
very draggled indeed, and a small boy was saying: ``Here's a dead mongoose. Let's have a funeral.''
``No,'' said his mother; ``let's take him in and dry him. Perhaps he isn't really dead.''
They took him into the house, and a big man picked him up between his finger and thumb, and said he was not
dead but half choked; so they wrapped him in cotton-wool, and warmed him, and he opened his eyes and sneezed.
``Now,'' said the big man (he was an Englishman who had just moved into the bungalow); ``don't frighten him,
and we'll see what he'll do.''
It is the hardest thing in the world to frighten a mongoose, because he is eaten up from nose to tail with curiosity.
The motto of all the mongoose family is ``Run and find out''; and Rikki-tikki was a true mongoose. He looked
at the cotton-wool, decided that it was not good to eat, ran all around the table, sat up and put his fur in order,
scratched himself, and jumped on the small boy's shoulder.
``Don't be frightened, Teddy,'' said his father. ``That's his way of making friends.''
``Ouch! He's tickling under my chin,'' said Teddy.
Rikki-tikki looked down between the boy's collar and neck, snuffed at his ear, and climbed down to the floor,
where he sat rubbing his nose.
``Good gracious,'' said Teddy's mother, ``and that's a wild creature! I suppose he's so tame because we've been
kind to him.''
``All mongooses are like that,'' said her husband. ``If Teddy doesn't pick him up by the tail, or try to put him
in a cage, he'll run in and out of the house all day long. Let's give him something to eat.''
They gave him a little piece of raw meat. Rikki-tikki liked it immensely, and when it was finished he went out
into the verandah and sat in the sunshine and fluffed up his fur to make it dry to the roots. Then he felt better.
26
``There are more things to find out about in this house,'' he said to himself, ``than all my family could find out
in all their lives. I shall certainly stay and find out.''
He spent all that day roaming over the house. He nearly drowned himself in the bath-tubs, put his nose into the
ink on a writing table, and burnt it on the end of the big man's cigar, for he climbed up in the big man's lap to
see how writing was done. At nightfall he ran into Teddy's nursery to watch how kerosene-lamps were lighted,
and when Teddy went to bed Rikki-tikki climbed up too; but he was a restless companion, because he had to get
up and attend to every noise all through the night, and find out what made it. Teddy's mother and father came
in, the last thing, to look at their boy, and Rikki-tikki was awake on the pillow. ``I don't like that,'' said Teddy's
mother; ``he may bite the child.'' ``He'll do no such thing,'' said the father. ``Teddy's safer with that little beast
than if he had a bloodhound to watch him. If a snake came into the nursery now --- ''
But Teddy's mother wouldn't think of anything so awful.
Early in the morning Rikki-tikki came to early breakfast in the verandah riding on Teddy's shoulder, and they
gave him banana and some boiled egg; and he sat on all their laps one after the other, because every well-broughtup mongoose always hopes to be a house-mongoose some day and have rooms to run about in, and Rikki-tikki's
mother (she used to live in the General's house at Segowlee) had carefully told Rikki what to do if ever he came
across white men.
Then Rikki-tikki went out into the garden to see what was to be seen. It was a large garden, only half cultivated,
with bushes as big as summer-houses of Marshal Niel roses, lime and orange trees, clumps of bamboos, and
thickets of high grass. Rikki-tikki licked his lips. ``This is a splendid hunting-ground,'' he said, and his tail grew
bottle-brushy at the thought of it, and he scuttled up and down the garden, snuffing here and there till he heard
very sorrowful voices in a thorn-bush.
It was Darzee, the tailor-bird, and his wife. They had made a beautiful nest by pulling two big leaves together
and stitching them up the edges with fibres, and had filled the hollow with cotton and downy fluff. The nest
swayed to and fro, as they sat on the rim and cried.
``What is the matter?'' asked Rikki-tikki.
``We are very miserable,'' said Darzee. ``One of our babies fell out of the nest yesterday, and Nag ate him.''
``H'm!'' said Rikki-tikki, ``that is very sad --- but I am a stranger here. Who is Nag?''
Darzee and his wife only cowered down in the nest without answering, for from the thick grass at the foot of the
bush there came a low hiss --- a horrid cold sound that made Rikki-tikki jump back two clear feet. Then inch by
inch out of the grass rose up the head and spread hood of Nag, the big black cobra, and he was five feet long
from tongue to tail. When he had lifted one-third of himself clear of the ground, he stayed balancing to and fro
exactly as a dandelion-tuft balances in the wind, and he looked at Rikki-tikki with the wicked snake's eyes that
never change their expression, whatever the snake may be thinking of.
27
``Who is Nag?'' said he. ''I am Nag. The great god Brahm put his mark upon all our people when the first cobra
spread his hood to keep the sun off Brahm as he slept. Look, and be afraid!''
He spread out his hood more than ever, and Rikki-tikki saw the spectacle-mark on the back of it that looks
exactly like the eye part of a hook-and-eye fastening. He was afraid for the minute; but it is impossible for a
mongoose to stay frightened for any length of time, and though Rikki-tikki had never met a live cobra before,
his mother had fed him on dead ones, and he knew that all a grown mongoose's business in life was to fight and
eat snakes. Nag knew that too, and at the bottom of his cold heart he was afraid.
``Well,'' said Rikki-tikki, and his tail began to fluff up again, ``marks or no marks, do you think it is right for
you to eat fledglings out of a nest?''
Nag was thinking to himself, and watching the least little movement in the grass behind Rikki-tikki. He knew
that mongooses in the garden meant death sooner or later for him and his family, but he wanted to get Rikkitikki off his guard. So he dropped his head a little, and put it on one side.
``Let us talk,'' he said. ``You eat eggs. Why should not I eat birds?''
``Behind you! Look behind you!'' sang Darzee.
Rikki-tikki knew better than to waste time in staring. He jumped up in the air as high as he could go, and just
under him whizzed by the head of Nagaina, Nag's wicked wife. She had crept up behind him as he was talking,
to make an end of him; and he heard her savage hiss as the stroke missed. He came down almost across her back,
and if he had been an old mongoose he would have known that then was the time to break her back with one
bite; but he was afraid of the terrible lashing return-stroke of the cobra. He bit, indeed, but did not bite long
enough, and he jumped clear of the whisking tail, leaving Nagaina torn and angry.
``Wicked, wicked Darzee!'' said Nag, lashing up as high as he could reach toward the nest in the thornbush; but
Darzee had built it out of reach of snakes, and it only swayed to and fro.
Rikki-tikki felt his eyes growing red and hot (when a mongoose's eyes grow red, he is angry), and he sat back on
his tail and hind legs like a little kangaroo, and looked all round him, and chattered with rage. But Nag and
Nagaina had disappeared into the grass. When a snake misses its stroke, it never says anything or gives any sign
of what it means to do next. Rikki-tikki did not care to follow them, for he did not feel sure that he could manage
two snakes at once. So he trotted off to the gravel path near the house, and sat down to think. It was a serious
matter for him.
If you read the old books of natural history, you will find they say that when the mongoose fights the snake and
happens to get bitten, he runs off and eats some herb that cures him. That is not true. The victory is only a matter
of quickness of eye and quickness of foot, -- snake's blow against mongoose's jump, -- and as no eye can follow
the motion of a snake's head when it strikes, that makes things much more wonderful than any magic herb.
Rikki-tikki knew he was a young mongoose, and it made him all the more pleased to think that he had managed
28
to escape a blow from behind. It gave him confidence in himself, and when Teddy came running down the path,
Rikki-tikki was ready to be petted.
But just as Teddy was stooping, something flinched a little in the dust, and a tiny voice said: ``Be careful. I am
death!'' It was Karait, the dusty brown snakeling that lies for choice on the dusty earth; and his bite is as
dangerous as the cobra's. But he is so small that nobody thinks of him, and so he does the more harm to people.
Rikki-tikki's eyes grew red again, and he danced up to Karait with the peculiar rocking, swaying motion that he
had inherited from his family. It looks very funny, but it is so perfectly balanced a gait that you can fly off from
it at any angle you please; and in dealing with snakes this is an advantage. If Rikki-tikki had only known, he was
doing a much more dangerous thing that fighting Nag, for Karait is so small, and can turn so quickly,0 that
unless Rikki bit him close to the back of the head, he would get the return-stroke in his eye or lip. But Rikki did
not know: his eyes were all red, and he rocked back and forth, looking for a good place to hold. Karait struck
out. Rikki jumped sideways and tried to run in, but the wicked little dusty grey head lashed within a fraction of
his shoulder, and he had to jump over the body, and the head followed his heels close.
Teddy shouted to the house: ``Oh, look here! Our mongoose is killing a snake''; and Rikki-tikki heard a scream
from Teddy's mother. His father ran out with a stick, but by the time he came up, Karait had lunged out once
too far, and Rikki-tikki- had sprung, jumped on the snake's back, dropped his head far between his fore-legs,
bitten as high up the back as he could get hold, and rolled away. That bite paralysed Karait, and Rikki-tikki was
just going to eat him up from the tail, after the custom of his family at dinner, when he remembered that a full
meal makes a slow mongoose, and if wanted all his strength and quickness ready, he must keep himself thin.
He went away for a dust-bath under the castor-oil bushes, while Teddy's father beat the dead Karait. ``What is
the use of that?'' thought Rikki-tikki. ``I have settled it all''; and then Teddy's mother picked him up from the
dust and hugged him, crying that he had saved Teddy from death, and Teddy's father said that he was a
providence, and Teddy looked on with big scared eyes. Rikki-tikki was rather amused at all the fuss, which, of
course, he did not understand. Teddy's mother might just as well have petted Teddy for playing in the dust. Rikki
was thoroughly enjoying himself.
That night, at dinner, walking to and fro among the wine-glasses on the table, he could have stuffed himself
three times over with nice things; but he remembered Nag and Nagaina, and though it was very pleasant to be
patted and petted by Teddy's mother, and to sit on Teddy's shoulder, his eyes would get red from time to time,
and he would go off into his long war-cry of ``Rikk-tikk-tikki-tikki-tchk!''
Teddy carried him off to bed, and insisted on Rikki-tikki sleeping under his chin. Rikki-tikki was too well bred
to bite or scratch, but as soon as Teddy was asleep he went off for his nightly walk round the house, and in the
dark he ran up against Chuchundra, the muskrat, creeping round by the wall. Chuchundra is a broken-hearted
little beast. He whimpers and cheeps all the night, trying to make up his mind to run into the middle of the
room, but he never gets there.
``Don't kill me,'' said Chuichundra, almost weeping. ``Rikki-tikki, don't kill me.''
29
``Do you think a snake-killer kills musk-rats?'' said Rikki-tikki scornfully.
``Those who kill snakes get killed by snakes,'' said Chuchundra, more sorrowfully than ever. ``And how am I
to be sure that Nag won't mistake me for you some dark night?''
``There's not the least danger,'' said Rikki-tikki; ``but Nag is in the garden, and I know you don't go there.''
``My cousin Chua, the rat, told me --'' said Chuchundra, and then he stopped.
``Told you what?''
``H'sh! Nag is everywhere, Rikki-tikki. You should have talked to Chua in the garden.''
``I didn't -- so you must tell me. Quick Chuchundra, or I'll bite you!''
Chuchundra sat down and cried till the tears rolled off his whiskers. ``I am a very poor man,'' he sobbed. ``I
never had spirit enough to run out into the middle of the room. H'sh! I mustn't tell you anything. Can't you hear,
Rikki-tikki?''
Rikki-tikki listened. The house was as still as still, but he thought he could just catch the faintest scratch-scratch
in the world, -- a noise as faint as that of a wasp walking on a window-pane, -- the dry scratch of a snake's scales
on brick-work.
``That's Nag or Nagaina,'' he said to himself; ``and he is crawling into the bath-room sluice. You're right
Chuchundra; I should have talked to Chua.''
He stole off to Teddy's bath-room, but there was nothing there, and then to Teddy's mother's bathroom. At the
bottom of the smooth plaster wall there was a brick pulled out to make a sluice for the bath-water, and as Rikkitikki stole in by the masonry curb where the bath is put, he heard Nag and Nagaina whispering together outside
in the moonlight.
``When the house is emptied of people,'' said Nagaina to her husband, ``he will have to go away, and then the
garden will be our own again. Go in quietly, and remember that the big man who killed Karait is the first one0
to bite. Then come out and tell me, and we will hunt for Rikki-tikki together.''
``But are you sure that there is anything to be gained by killing the people?'' said Nag.
``Everything. When there were no people in the bungalow, did we have any mongoose in the garden? So long
as the bungalow is empty, we are king and queen of the garden; and remember that as soon as our eggs in the
melon-bed hatch (as they may to-morrow), our children will need room and quiet.''
``I had not thought of that,'' said Nag. ``I will go, but there is no need that we should hunt for Rikki-tikki
afterward. I will kill the big man and his wife, and the child if I can, and come away quietly. The the bungalow
will be empty, and Rikki-tikki will go.''
30
Rikki-tikki tingled all over with rage and hatred at this, and then Nag's head came through the sluice, and his
five feet of cold body followed it. Angry as he was, Rikki-tikki was very frightened as he saw the size of the big
cobra. Nag coiled himself up, raised his head, and looked into the bath-room in the dark, and Rikki could see
his eyes glitter.
``Now, if I kill him here, Nagaina will know; and if I fight him on the open floor, the odds are in his favour.
What am I to do?'' said Rikki-tikki-tavi.
Nag waved to and fro, and then Rikki-tikki heard him drinking from the biggest water-jar that was used to fill
the bath. ``That is good,'' said the snake. ``Now, when Karait was killed, the big man had a stick. He may have
that stick still, but when he comes in to bathe in the morning he will not have a stick. I shall wait here till he
comes. Nagaina -- do you hear me? -- I shall wait here in the cool till daytime.''
There was no answer from outside, so Rikki-tikki knew Nagaina had gone away. Nag coiled himself down, coil
by coil, round the bulge at the bottom of the water-jar, and Rikki-tikki stayed still as death. After an hour he
began to move, muscle by muscle, toward the jar. Nag was asleep, and Rikki-tikki looked at his big back,
wondering which would be the best place for a good hold. ``If I don't break his back at the first jump,'' said
Rikki, ``he can still fight; and if he fights -- O Rikki!'' He looked at the thickness of the neck below the hood,
but that was too much for him; and a bite near the tail would only make Nag savage.
``It must be the head,'' he said at last; ``the head above the hood; and when I am once there, I must not let go.''
Then he jumped. The head was lying a little clear of the water-jar, under the curve of it; and, as his teeth met,
Rikki braced his back against the bulge of the red earthenware to hold down the head. This gave him just one
second's purchase, and he made the most of it. Then he was battered to and fro as a rat is shaken by a dog -- to
and fro on the floor, up and down, and round in great circles; but his eyes were red, and he held on as the body
cart-whipped over the floor, upsetting the tin dipper and the soap-dish and the flesh-brush, and banged against
the tin side of the bath. As he held he closed his jaws tighter and tighter, for he made sure he would be banged
to death, and, for the honour of his family, he preferred to be found with his teeth locked. He was dizzy, aching,
and felt shaken to pieces when something went off like a thunderclap just behind him; a hot wind knocked him
senseless, and red fire singed his fur. The big man had been woken by the noise, and had fired both barrels of a
shot-gun into Nag just behind the hood.
Rikki-tikki held on with his eyes shut, for now he was quite sure he was dead; but the head did not move, and
the big man picked him up and said: ``It's the mongoose again, Alice; the little chap has saved our lives now.''
Then Teddy's mother came in with a very white face, and saw what was left of Nag, and Rikki-tikki dragged
himself to Teddy's bedroom and spent half the rest of the night shaking himself tenderly to find out whether he
was really broken into forty pieces, as he fancied.
When morning came he was very stiff, but well pleased with his doings. ``Now I have Nagaina to settle with,
and she will be worse than five Nags, and there's no knowing when the eggs she spoke of will hatch. Goodness!
I must go and see Darzee,'' he said.
31
Without waiting for breakfast, Rikki-tikki ran to the thorn-bush where Darzee was singing a song of triumph at
the top of his voice. The news of Nag's death was all over the garden, for the sweeper had thrown the body on
the rubbish-heap.
``Oh, you stupid tuft of feathers!'' said Rikki-tikki angrily. ``Is this the time to sing?''
``Nag is dead -- is dead -- is dead!'' sang Darzee. ``The valiant Rikki-tikki caught him by the head and held fast.
The big man brought the bang-stick, and Nag fell in two pieces! He will never eat my babies again.''
``All that's true enough; but where's Nagaina?'' said Rikki-tikki, looking carefully around him.
``Nagaina came to the bath-room sluice and called for Nag,'' Darzee went on; ``and Nag came out on the end
of a stick -- the sweeper picked him up on the end of a stick and threw him upon the rubbish-heap. Let us sing
about the great, the red-eyed Rikki-tikki!'' and Darzee filled his throat and sang.
``If I could get up to your nest, I'd roll all your babies out!'' said Rikki-tikki. ``You don't know when to do the
right thing at the right time. You're safe enough in your nest there, but it's war for me down here. Stop singing
a minute, Darzee.''
``For the great, the beautiful Rikki-tikki's sake I will stop,'' said Darzee. ``What is it, O Killer of the terrible
Nag?''
``Where is Nagaina, for the third time?''
``On the rubbish-heap by the stables, mourning for Nag. Great is Rikki-tikki with the white teeth.''
``Bother my white teeth! Have you ever heard where she keeps her eggs?''
``In the melon-bed, on the end nearest the wall, where the sun strikes nearly all day. She hid them there weeks
ago.''
``And you never thought it worthwhile to tell me? The end nearest the wall, you said?''
``Rikki-tikki, you are not going to eat her eggs?''
``Not eat exactly; no. Darzee, if you have a grain of sense you will fly off to the stables and pretend that your
wing is broken, and let Nagaina chase you away to this bush. I must get to the melon-bed, and if I went there
now she'd see me.''
Darzee was a feather-brained little fellow who could never hold more than one idea at a time in his head; and
just because he knew that Nagaina's children were born in eggs like his own, he didn't think at first that it was
fair to kill them. But his wife was a sensible bird, and she knew that cobra's eggs meant young cobras later on;
so she flew off from the nest, and left Darzee to keep the babies warm, and continue his song about the death of
Nag. Darzee was very like a man in some ways.
32
She fluttered in front of Nagaina by the rubbish heap, and cried out, ``Oh, my wing is broken! The boy in the
house threw a stone at me and broke it.'' Then she fluttered more desperately than ever.
Nagaina lifted up her head and hissed, ``You warned Rikki-tikki when I would have killed him. Indeed and
truly, you've chosed a bad place to be lame in.'' And she moved toward Darzee's wife, slipping along over the
dust.
``The boy broke it with a stone! shrieked Darzee's wife.
``Well! It may be some consolation to you when you're dead to know that I shall settle accounts with the boy.
My husband lies on the rubbish-heap this morning, but before the night the boy in the house will lie very still.
What is the use of running away? I am sure to catch you. Little fool, look at me!''
Darzee's wife knew better than to do that, for a bird who looks at a snake's eyes gets so frightened that she
cannot move. Darzee's wife fluttered on, piping sorrowfully, and never leaving the ground, and Nagaina
quickened her pace.
Rikki-tikki heard them going up the path from the stables, and he raced for the end of the melon-patch near the
wall. There, in the warm litter about the melons, very cunningly hidden, he found twenty-five eggs, about the
size of a bantam's eggs, but with whitish skin instead of shell.
``I was not a day too soon,'' he said; for he could see the baby cobras curled up inside the skin, and he knew that
the minute they were hatched they could each kill a man or a mongoose. He bit off the tops of the eggs as fast
as he could, taking care to crush the young cobras, and turned over the litter from time to time to see whether
he had missed any. At last there were only three eggs left, and Rikki-tikki began to chuckle to himself, when he
heard Darzee's wife screaming:
``Rikki-tikki, I led Nagaina toward the house, and she has gone into the verandah, and -- oh, come quickly -she means killing!''
Rikki-tikki smashed two eggs, and tumbled backward down the melon-bed with the third egg in his mouth, and
scuttled to the verandah as hard as he could put foot to the ground. Teddy and his mother and father were there
at early breakfast; but Rikki-tikki saw that they were not eating anything. They sat stone-still, and their faces
were white. Nagaina was coiled up on the matting by Teddy's chair, within easy striking-distance of Teddy's
bare leg, and she was swaying to and fro singing a song of triumph.
``Son of the big man that killed Nag,'' she hissed, ``stay still. I am not ready yet. Wait a little. Keep very still,
all you three. If you move I strike, and if you do not move I strike. Oh, foolish people, who killed my Nag!''
Teddy's eyes were fixed on his father, and all his father could do was to whisper, ``Sit still, Teddy. You mustn't
move. Teddy, keep still.''
Then Rikki-tikki came up and cried: ``Turn round Nagaina; turn and fight!''
33
``All in good time,'' said she, without moving her eyes. ``I will settle my account with you presently. Look at
your friends, Rikki-tikki. They are still and white; they are afraid. They dare not move, and if you come a step
nearer I strike.''
``Look at your eggs,'' said Rikki-tikki, ``in the melon-bed near the wall. Go and look, Nagaina.''
The big snake turned half round, and saw the egg on the verandah. ``Ah-h! Give it to me,'' she said.
Rikki-tikki put his paws one on each side of the egg, and his eyes were blood-red. ``What price for a snake's
egg? For a young cobra? For a young king-cobra? For the last -- the very last of the brood? The ants are eating
all the others down by the melon-bed.''
Nagaina spun clear round, forgetting everything for the sake of the one egg; and Rikki-tikki saw Teddy's father
shoot out a big hand, catch Teddy by the shoulder, and drag him across the little table with the teacups, safe and
out of reach of Nagaina.
``Tricked! Tricked! Tricked! Rikk-tchk-tchk!'' chuckled Rikki-tikki. ``The boy is safe, and it was I -- I -- I that
caught Nag by the hood last night in the bathroom.'' Then he began to jump up and down, all four feet together,
his head close to the floor. ``He threw me to and fro, but he could not shake me off. He was dead before the big
man below him in two. I did it. Rikki-tikki-tchk-tchk! Come then, Nagaina, Come and fight with me. You shall
not be a widow long.''
Nagaina saw that she had lost her chance of killing Teddy, and the egg lay between Rikki-tikki's paws. ``Give
me the egg, Rikki-tikki. Give me the last of my eggs, and I will go away and never come back,'' she said, lowering
her hood.
``Yes, you will go away, and you will never come back; for you will go to the rubbish-heap with Nag. Fight,
widow! The big man has gone for his gun! Fight!''
Rikki-tikki was bounding all round Nagaina, keeping just out of reach of her stroke, his little eyes like hot coals.
Nagaina gathered herself together, and flung out at him. Rikki-tikki jumped up and backward. Again and again
and again she struck, and each time her head came with a whack on the matting of the verandah, and she
gathered herself together like a watch-spring. Then Rikki-tikki danced in a circle to get behind her, and Nagaina
spun round to keep her head to his head, so that the rustle of her tail on the matting sounded like dry leaves
blown along by the wind.
He had forgotten the egg. It still lay on the verandah, and Nagaina came nearer and nearer to it, till at last, while
Rikki-tikki was drawing breath, she caught it in her mouth, turned to the verandah steps, and flew like an arrow
down the path, with Rikki-tikki behind her. When the cobra runs for her life, she goes like a whip-lash flicked
across as horse's neck.
Rikki-tikki knew that he must catch her, or all the trouble would begin again. She headed straight for the long
grass by the thorn-bush, and as he was running Rikki-tikki heard Darzee still singing his foolish little song of
34
triumph. But Darzee's wife was wiser. She flew off her nest as Nagaina came along, and flapped her wings about
Nagaina's head. If Darzee had helped they might have turned her; but Nagaina only lowered her hood and went
on. Still, the instant's delay brough Rikki-tikki up to her, and as she plunged into the rat-hole where she and
Nag used to live, his little white teeth were clenched on her tail, and he went down with her -- and very few
mongooses, however wise and old they may be, care to follow a cobra into its hole. It was dark in the hole; and
Rikki-tikki never knew when it might open out and give Nagaina room to turn and strike at him. He held on
savagely, and struck out his feet to act as brakes on the dark slope of the hot, moist earth.
Then the grass by the mouth of the hole stopped waving, and Darzee said: ``It is all over with Rikki-tikki! We
must sing his death song. Valiant Rikki-tikki is dead! For Nagaina will surely kill him underground.''
So he sang a very mournful song that he made up on the spur of the minute, and just as he got to the most
touching part the grass quivered again, and Rikki-tikki, covered with dirt, dragged himself out of the hole leg
by leg, licking his whiskers. Darzee stopped with a little shout. Rikki-tikki shook some of the dust out of his fur
and sneezed. ``It is all over,'' he said. ``The widow will never come out again.'' And the red ants that live
between the grass stems heard him, and began to troop down one after another to see if he had spoken the truth.
Rikki-tikki curled himself up in the grass and slept where he was -- slept and slept till it was late in the afternoon,
for he had done a hard day's work.
``Now,'' he said, when he awoke, ``I will go back to the house. Tell the Coppersmith, Darzee, and he will tell
the garden that Nagaina is dead.''
The Coppersmith is a bird who makes a noise exactly like the beating of a little hammer on a copper pot; and
the reason he is always making it is because he is the town-crier to every Indian garden, and tells all the news to
everybody who cares to listen. As Rikki-tikki went up the path, he heard his ``attention'' notes like a tiny dinnergong; and then the steady ``Ding-dong-tock! Nag is dead -- dong! Nagaina is dead! Ding-dong-tock!'' That set
all the birds in the garden singing, and frogs croaking; for Nag and Nagaina used to eat frogs as well as little
birds.
When Rikki got to the house, Teddy and Teddy's mother (she still looked very white, for she had been fainting)
and Teddy's father came out and almost cried over him; and that night he ate all that was given him till he could
eat no more, and went to bed on Teddy's shoulder, where Teddy's mother saw him when she came to look late
at night.
``He saved our lives and Teddy's life,'' she said to her husband. ``Just think, he saved all our lives!''
Rikki-tikki woke up with a jump, for all the mongooses are light sleepers.
``Oh, it's you,'' said he. ``What are you bothering for? All the cobras are dead; and if they weren't, I'm here.''
35
Rikki-tikki had a right to be proud of himself; but he did not grow too proud, and he kept that garden as a
mongoose should keep it, with tooth and jump and spring and bit, till never a cobra dared show its head inside
the walls.
11
Author
Genre
Form
Person
Nick Cave
Advice
Autobiography
First
Tick if read
Introduction
Cave’s How to Grow Up: Nick Cave’s Life-Advice to a 13-Year-Old are urgent words addressed to the tender,
hopeful, openhearted child in each of us, for, in the plainest existential sense, we are daily beginners at life. How
to harness youth’s curiosity as a creative force for bettering the world is what Nick Cave explores in answering
a 13-year-old boy’s question about how to live a full, creative, actualized, spiritually rich life in “a world ridden
with so much hate, and disconnect.”
“Fill yourself with the beautiful stuff of the world… Get amazed. Get astonished. Get awed on a regular basis, so
that getting awed is habitual and becomes a state of being.” “Make your interests gradually wider and more
impersonal, until bit by bit the walls of the ego recede, and your life becomes increasingly merged in the
universal life. Read. Read as much as possible. Read the big stuff, the challenging stuff, the confronting stuff,
and read the fun stuff too. Visit galleries and look at paintings, watch movies, listen to music, go to concerts —
be a little vampire running around the place sucking up all the art and ideas you can. Fill yourself with the
beautiful stuff of the world. Have fun. Get amazed. Get astonished. Get awed on a regular basis, so that getting
awed is habitual and becomes a state of being. Fully understand your enormous value in the scheme of things
because the planet needs people like you, smart young creatives full of awe, who can minister to the world with
positive, mischievous energy, young people who seek spiritual enrichment and who see hatred and
disconnection as the corrosive forces they are. These are manifest indicators of a human being with immense
potential. Absorb into yourself the world’s full richness and goodness and fun and genius, so that when someone
tells you it’s not worth fighting for, you will stick up for it, protect it, run to its defence, because it is your world
36
they’re talking about, then watch that world continue to pour itself into you in gratitude. A little smart vampire
full of raging love, amazed by the world.
12
Author
Maxim
Genre
Arbugaev Documentary
Form
Person
Short Film
3rd
Tick if viewed
Evgenia Arbugaeva
Introduction
Haulout is a 2022 Russian-British co-production short documentary written, directed and produced by brother
and sister duo about the Russian scientist Maxim Chakilev, who observes the life of walruses at Cape HeartStone in the Chukchi Sea. The hauling-out is the act of the pinnipeds going ashore for resting or mating. It
premiered in February 2022 at 72nd Berlin International Film Festival and was selected for Academy Award for
Best Documentary Short Film. The film follows marine biologist Maxim Chakilev to his remote hut in Chukotka,
nestled in the vast expanses of the Russian Arctic. Every autumn, he spends three months there. During his
sojourn, at night the beach fills up with countless walruses year after year, but far too often ends in the death of
some of the animals. The oceanographer observes that the walruses need a rest period on land and also mate
during that time. The warming of the sea and rising temperatures makes the ice recede, which results in the
dwindling of living space available for them. Sometimes there are phases in which the water is completely icefree. We see raging seas, and are then confronted with an unmanageable crowd of walruses lying body to body.
They are so dense that Chakilev is unable to leave his hut through the door and is forced to climb onto the roof
of the building. The camera conveys to the viewer the enormous mass of animals pushing ashore. The researcher
observing them is inferior to them in his position. A person also seems exceptionally small compared to the
many animals and the forces of nature. The noise the walruses make is also nerve-racking. When it's all over,
Chakilev can finally go out and count the animals that have been crushed by their own kind. He is sad because
the number of deaths is increasing from year to year. Watch (https://www.newyorker.com/video/watch/the-newyorker-documentary-haulout)
13
Author
Genre
Form
Person
Tim Dee
Nature
Description
First
Tick if read
Introduction
Landfill is a book about gulls and people who watch them and also about the various places gulls can be seen
these days. It is therefore a book about rubbish and the sifting and sorting and reworking of rubbish and
rubbishy places that the gulls are doing in Britain today. It is therefore also a book about the organising of
things: birds, rubbish and people, and it is interested in how, as they have moved among us in the last one
hundred years, gulls have come to occupy and to feed different places in our minds. What we think of them has
37
changed as they themselves have changed how they live. Did they choose to do this or did we make them? This
question plays across Landfill. The following edited extract comes from near the end of the book.
A few years ago my parents, in their late seventies, moved to Minehead. It was a mistake. They quickly became
stuck in the seaside town with no easy means of getting anywhere else. We joked about the last resort. My father
lost his nerve as a car driver and got scared of the hills of west Somerset. My mother suffered a period of illness
that left her immobile and trapped indoors. They survived, but it was tough for a time. Dad could manage the
level roads to the supermarket and went on little sorties, bringing back titbits to try to revive his permanent
bride. She was confined to the front room, and he, like a bowerbird, decorated it with cheap CDs and discounted
pastries. Sitting at her side, he leaned in to show her his billets-doux.
I went to help and to be as kind as I could, but by mid-afternoon on most visits I needed air. I would take my
binoculars and walk to the front. There’s a bit of beach there, and a freshwater drain that opens below the sea
wall and spreads across dark worn pebbles. Herring gulls and black-headed gulls wash in this stream, and I
hoped that if I watched, I might pick up one of the rarer gull species I was trying to learn about.
I didn’t. But my walks to the front became more common. My father, having nursed my mother, got ill himself
and had become increasingly static. I drove from Bristol to change light bulbs, cut the grass, jettison mouldy
gooseberries from the fridge, and organise trips to the local dump, a strictly no food waste place with metal skips
for sorted recyclables. In the house, stuff had built up that needed clearing. But getting rid of your life is hard.
My mother, a would-be life-laundress, offered me my pick of the paintings on their walls and then found reasons
to deny all of my choices. My father sanctioned my clearing various bin bags of plastic tubs and boxes, only for
me to see his bent frame falling slowly into one of the skips as he sought to retrieve a favoured yoghurt pot which
he had emphatically not authorised for extinction.
Dad’s spine had jackknifed and his heart was weakening. Mum was still lame. Baby, their ginger and white cat,
got ill as well and had to be shaved. Dad took to carrying the cat around by wedging it between his thighs and
stomach. He walked from the front room to the kitchen looking like a veteran miner, stooping from his shift,
blinking into the light, and cradling a sack of golden nuggets, the last haul of his life.
I topped up the seed and fat balls on the bird table and asked about gulls in the garden. There are herring gulls
working the town from overhead all day long and one – both my parents insisted it was just one – came down
most mornings onto their pocket-sized lawn and browsed freely. Baby wasn’t eating well and recently Gilbert
the gull had been enjoying a lot of old cat food. A stale doughnut, put out just that morning, was probably
snaffled by him as well. He waited on the roof above their bedroom and they often heard his claws on the tiles
and the gutter.
38
We tussled over what I might take on my next dump trip. Dad gave up some newspapers he had vetted, but
others that hadn’t been fully read still hummed for him with latent energy and had, therefore, to be kept. There
was a skull of yellowing paper that could have been a wasps’ nest. I put my fingers through it and fished out a
booklet on how to pass the eleven-plus. I’m fifty-seven and my children are in their twenties, my sister and her
boys are not far behind us. The exam disappeared from most of England in the 1970s. The booklet remains in
Minehead.
Even as I wonder what world is to be won by this, I know that in my own bat cave in Bristol I am the author of
similar madnesses, comparable hoardings for unlikely tomorrows. There are shelves but there are a lot of books
beyond shelving, there are vinyl records and record players, stuffed birds and old bird reports, there are old radio
tapes and old radios, there are towers of CDs, there are works on foolscap, roneo and video, there is a mothy rug,
a box of feathers, some baskets of stones, another of blown ostrich eggs, there are mantelpieces decked with
whalebones and bird skulls, there is half a table of fulgurites, gnarled glass fingers of lightning-struck Saharan
sand, there are rings from dead birds. And, until it died itself, I had a frozen-up freezer; which melted onto my
floor and out slid a grey mullet hooked from the muddy tide of the Wash, along with some defrosting peas, a
barn owl’s wing sliced from a roadkill, an ice-cream pot filled with ancient mulligatawny, and the disassembled
paw of an aardvark found on a dirt road in the Northern Cape.
Wasps make magnificent homes for themselves but every winter all of the builders die. Many of us know this
and its wider implications, but most of us also live as if this weren’t true.
At my parents’ house, I opened a cupboard in a lean-to that had once been a car porch. It was full of waterstained stationery, memo pads, notebooks and some rusted paper-clips. None had been used and all were now
useless. Dad shouted ‘No!’ and did his best to hurry towards me. Not even the yoghurt-pot rescue had exercised
him as much. I stopped my bagging. As he walked away, I could hear effort in his chest, a wet wind of muddied
air, like the sea’s breath at a shore or, as Robin Robertson says in his poem ‘A Seagull Murmur’, ‘the mewling
sound of a leaking heart.’
There was wine at lunch and cheesecake. The heating was working overtime. Dad remembered his National
Service duties in Plymouth Sound, where he fired twelve-pounder guns at a radio-controlled target boat called
the Queen Gull. I’d heard of the gun batteries before but never of their marks. After coffee, both parents dozed
in their armchairs. I stood up to get some air and walked to the front. It was a blowy day. The first sand martins
of the spring had been seen in half-a-dozen places across southern England, pioneers of the incoming season.
But though today’s wind had come out of the south-west, winter was in it still. My eyes swam with tears. It was
one of those days when the Atlantic bullies the Bristol Channel, requiring it to awake its faith, up its game, and
audition for sea. Though the washed out wet-waste of half of England and Wales kept the water brown, like
potter’s slip, there were deep troughs and white-crowned waves and everything streamed.
39
Herring and lesser black-backed gulls spun out of the cloud base and came down like squalls, bright lit by spears
of sunlight between broad shawls of grey rain. The Minehead Chamber of Commerce had posted a sign with a
picture of a herring gull outside the mini-golf café saying Please Don’t Feed Me. I crouched beneath it to watch
the birds. The tide was out, the beach wide. In the first water, three sickly herring gulls were washing
themselves. Two of them had one leg that hung uselessly. All their steps were hops. The third had wing feathers
that had been half eaten away. Those that remained were stained – it looked like it had fallen into something
corrosive. It was drinking heavily.
Further out, at the limit of my binoculars’ power, many more gulls splashed and washed in the spreading tongue
of Minehead drain water where it debauched into the brown fringe of the sea. There was quite a crowd: five
hundred herring gulls, one hundred common gulls and a dozen each of lesser and great black-backed gulls. I
thought of the holy dirty water of the Ganges – its lower reaches declared a ‘living entity’ in 2017 and, shortly
after, reported ‘dead’ – and of the outlets, just up the estuary, of the nuclear power plants, Hinkley A, B, and one
day C.
One bird among the many detained me. The stormy evening was floodlighting everything where the sea began,
and one gull shone out still more, even though it was a third of a mile away. A ghost gull – the colour of dirty
ice or wood ashes. It was smaller than the herrings and more delicately built with longer wings. Its body was
mucky but overall it appeared much brighter than any other gull. It was like an ice-light or snow-lantern on the
shore. Its primaries were the whitest part of it. It looked like it was thawing. I knew it at once as an Iceland
gull, only my third ever and the first I had found alone. A full adult would have been whiter still. This was an
immature, but I was too far away to properly age it by calculating the full extent of youthful dirt that it wore. I
loved it immediately nonetheless, and I knew, as I watched its northern light dimming through the Somerset
dusk that I could escape with it.
14
Author
Genre
Form
Person
Clive King Smith
Fantasy
Narrative
Third
Tick if read
Introduction
Clive King was born in Richmond, Surrey, in 1924. When he was young his family moved to a village called Ash,
near Sevenoaks in Kent, which is the setting for Stig of the Dump. He was educated at King’s School, Rochester;
Downing College, Cambridge; the School of Oriental and African Studies; and the University of London. He
then served in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve. His service as a sailor and his work as a language teacher took
him all over the world. Clive King has attempted to learn ten languages, including Tamil, Bengali, Gaelic and
Anglo-Saxon. He has not been incredibly successful with any of them, but many of his stories deal with language
difficulties of one sort or another. Clive King comes from a family of DIY fanatics. In his home you can see such
40
things as a homemade built-in ironing board, a panelled kitchen and an oak staircase. He lives with his family
in Norfolk and is a full-time writer
The Ground Gives Way
If you went too near the edge of the chalk pit the ground would give way. Barney had been told this often enough.
Everybody had told him. His grandmother, every time he came to stay with her. His sister, every time she wasn’t
telling him something else. Barney had a feeling, somewhere in his middle, that it was probably true about the
ground giving way. But still, there was a difference between being told and seeing it happen. And today was one
of those grey days when there was nothing to do, nothing to play, and nowhere to go. Except to the chalk pit.
The dump. Barney got through the rickety fence and went to the edge of the pit. This had been the side of a hill
once, he told himself. Men had come to dig away chalk and left this huge hole in the earth. He thought of all the
sticks of chalk they must have made, and all the blackboards in all the schools they must have written on.
They must have dug and dug for hundreds of years. And then they got tired of digging, or somebody had told
them to stop before they dug away all the hill. And now they did not know what to do with this empty hole and
they were trying to fi ll it up again. Anything people didn’t want they threw into the bottom of the pit. He crawled
through the rough grass and peered over. The sides of the pit were white chalk, with lines of flints poking out
like bones in places. At the top was crumbly brown earth and the roots of the trees that grew on the edge. The
roots looped over the edge, twined in the air and grew back into the earth. Some of the trees hung over the edge,
holding on desperately by a few roots. The earth and chalk had fallen away beneath them, and one day they too
would fall to the bottom of the pit. Strings of ivy and the creeper called Old Man’s Beard hung in the air.
Far below was the bottom of the pit. The dump. Barney could see strange bits of wreckage among the moss and
elder bushes and nettles. Was that the steering wheel of a ship? The tail of an aeroplane? At least there was a
real bicycle. Barney felt sure he could make it go if only he could get at it. They didn’t let him have a bicycle.
Barney wished he was at the bottom of the pit. And the ground gave way. Barney felt his head going down and
his feet going up. There was a rattle of falling earth beneath him. Then he was falling, still clutching the clump
of grass that was falling with him. This is what it’s like when the ground gives way, thought Barney. Then he
seemed to turn a complete somersault in the air, bumped into a ledge of chalk halfway down, crashed through
some creepers and ivy and branches, and landed on a bank of moss.
His thoughts did those funny things they do when you bump your head and you suddenly find yourself thinking
about what you had for dinner last Tuesday, all mixed up with seven times six. Barney lay with his eyes shut,
waiting for his thoughts to stop being mixed up. Then he opened them. He was lying in a kind of shelter. Looking
up he could see a roof, or part of a roof, made of elder branches, a very rotten old carpet, and rusty old sheets of
iron. There was a big hole, through which he must have fallen. He could see the white walls of the cliff, the trees
and creepers at the top, and the sky with clouds passing over it. Barney decided he wasn’t dead. He didn’t even
seem to be very much hurt. He turned his head and looked around him. It was dark in this den after looking at
41
the white chalk, and he couldn’t see what sort of a place it was. It seemed to be partly a cave dug into the chalk,
partly a shelter built out over the mouth of the cave.
There was a cool, damp smell. Woodlice and earwigs dropped from the roof where he had broken through it. But
what had happened to his legs? He couldn’t sit up when he tried to. His legs wouldn’t move. Perhaps I’ve broken
them, Barney thought. What shall I do then? He looked at his legs to see if they were all right, and found they
were all tangled up with creeper from the face of the cliff. Who tied me up? thought Barney. He kicked his legs
to try to get them free, but it was no use, there were yards of creeper trailing down from the cliff. I suppose I got
tangled up when I fell, he thought. Except I would have broken my neck if I hadn’t.
He lay quiet and looked around the cave again. Now that his eyes were used to it he could see further into the
dark part of the cave. There was somebody there! Or Something! Something, or Somebody, had a lot of shaggy
black hair and two bright black eyes that were looking very hard at Barney. ‘Hallo!’ said Barney. Something said
nothing. ‘I fell down the cliff,’ said Barney. Somebody grunted. ‘My name’s Barney.’ Somebody- Something made
a noise that sounded like ‘Stig’. ‘D’you think you could help me undo my feet, Mr Stig?’ asked Barney politely.
‘I’ve got a pocket- knife,’ he added, remembering that he had in his pocket a knife he’d found among the woodshavings on the floor of Grandfather’s workshop.
It was quite a good knife except that one blade had come off and the other one was broken in half and rather
blunt. Good thing I put it in my pocket, he thought. He wriggled so he could reach the knife, and managed to
open the rusty half- blade. He tried to reach the creepers round his legs, but found it was difficult to cut creepers
with a blunt knife when your feet are tied above your head. The Thing sitting in the corner seemed to be
interested. It got up and moved towards Barney into the light. Barney was glad to see it was Somebody after all.
Funny way to dress though, he thought, rabbit- skins round the middle and no shoes or socks. ‘Oh puff!’ said
Barney, ‘I can’t reach my feet. You do it, Stig!’ He handed the knife to Stig. Stig turned it over and felt it with his
strong hairy hands, and tested the edge with a thumb. Then instead of trying to cut the creepers he squatted
down on the ground and picked up a broken stone. He’s going to sharpen the knife, thought Barney. But no, it
seemed more as if he was sharpening the stone. Using the hard knife to chip with, Stig was carefully flaking tiny
splinters off the edge of the flint, until he had a thin sharp blade. Then he sprang up, and with two or three
slashes cut through the creeper that tied Barney’s feet. Barney sat up. ‘Golly!’ he said. ‘You are clever! I bet my
Grandad couldn’t do that, and he’s very good at making things.’ Stig grinned. Then he went to the back of the
cave and hid the broken knife under a pile of rubbish. ‘My knife!’ protested Barney. But Stig took no notice.
Barney got up and went into the dark part of the cave. He’d never seen anything like the collection of bits and
pieces, odds and ends, bric- à- brac and old brock, that this Stig creature had lying about his den. There were
stones and bones, fossils and bottles, skins and tins, stacks of sticks and hanks of string. There were motorcar
tyres and hats from old scarecrows, nuts and bolts and bobbles from brass bedsteads. There was a coal scuttle
full of dead electric light bulbs and a basin with rusty screws and nails in it. There was a pile of bracken and
newspapers that looked as if it were used for a bed. The place looked as if it had never been given a tidy- up.
42
‘I wish I lived here,’ said Barney. Stig seemed to understand that Barney was approving of his home and his face
lit up. He took on the air of a householder showing a visitor round his property, and began pointing out some of
the things he seemed particularly proud of. First, the plumbing. Where the water dripped through a crack in the
roof of the cave he had wedged the mud- guard of a bicycle. The water ran along this, through the tube of a
vacuum cleaner, and into a big can with writing on it. By the side of this was a plastic football carefully cut in
half, and Stig dipped up some water and offered it to Barney. Barney had swallowed a mouthful before he made
out the writing on the can: it said weedkiller . However, the water only tasted of rust and rubber. It was dark in
the back of the cave. Stig went to the front where the ashes of a fire were smoking faintly, blew on them, picked
up a book that lay beside his bed, tore out a page and rolled it up, lit it at the fire, and carried it to a lamp set in
a niche in the wall. As it flared up Barney could see it was in fact 11 an old teapot, filled with some kind of oil,
and with a bootlace hanging out of it for a wick. In the light of the lamp Stig went to the very back of the cave
and began to thump the wall and point, and explain something in his strange grunting language. Barney did not
understand a word but he recognized the tone of voice – like when grown- ups go on about: ‘I’m thinking of
tearing this down, and building on here, and having this done up . . .’
Stig had been digging into the wall, enlarging his cave. There was a bit of an old bed he had been using as a pick,
and a baby’s bath full of loose chalk to be carried away. Barney made the interested sort of noises you are
supposed to make when people tell you they are going to put up plastic wallpaper with pictures of mousetraps
on it, but Stig reached up to a bunch of turnips hanging from a poker stuck in the wall. He handed Barney a
turnip, took one for himself, and began to eat it. Barney sat down on a bundle of old magazines done up with
string and munched the turnip. The turnip at least was fresh, and it tasted better to him than the cream of
spinach he’d hidden under his spoon at dinner time. Barney looked at Stig. Funny person to find living next door
to you, he thought. Stig did not seem much bigger than himself, but he looked very strong and his hands looked
cleverer than his face. But how old was he? Ten? Twenty? A hundred? A thousand? ‘You been here long?’ asked
Barney.
Stig grinned again. ‘Long,’ he said. ‘Long, long, long.’ But it sounded more like an echo, or a parrot copying
somebody, than an answer to his question. ‘I’m staying at my Grandmother’s house,’ said Barney. Stig just looked
at him. Oh well, thought Barney, if he’s not interested in talking I don’t mind. He stood up. ‘I better go now,’ he
said. ‘Thank you for having me. Can I have my knife back, please?’ Stig still looked blank. ‘Knife,’ said Barney,
and made cutting movements with his hand. Stig picked up the sharp worked fl int from the fl oor of the cave
and gave it to Barney. ‘Oo, can I have that?’ exclaimed Barney. ‘Thank you!’ He looked at the stone, hard and
shiny, almost like a diamond and much more useful. Then he put it in his pocket, said goodbye again, and went
out of the low door of the shelter.
It was getting late in the autumn evening, and it was already dark and gloomy in the pit. Barney knew there was
a way out right at the other end of the pit, and by going a long way round he could get back to the house. There
were rustlings in dry leaves and muffl ed sounds from the middle of bramble patches, but somehow Barney found
he didn’t mind. He felt the hard stone in his pocket and thought of Stig in his den under the cliff. You weren’t
43
likely to fi nd anything stranger than Stig wherever you looked. And, well, Stig was his friend. When he got back
to the house his Grandmother and his sister Lou were just coming in from feeding the hens. ‘Where have you
been all the time?’ asked his Grandmother. ‘I went to the chalk pit,’ said Barney. ‘All by yourself!’ exclaimed Lou.
‘Yes, of course,’ he said. ‘What have you been doing?’ his Grandmother asked.
‘Well, I fell and bumped my head.’ ‘Poor old Barney!’ said Lou, and laughed. ‘But it was all right,’ Barney went
on. ‘Because I met Stig.’ ‘Who’s Stig?’ they both asked together. ‘He’s a sort of boy,’ replied Barney. ‘He just
wears rabbit- skins and lives in a cave. He gets his water through a vacuum cleaner and puts chalk in his bath.
He’s my friend.’ "Good gracious!’ exclaimed his Grandmother. ‘What funny friends you have, dear!’ ‘He means
he’s been playing CaveMen,’ Lou exclaimed helpfully. ‘Stig’s just a pretend friend, isn’t he, Barney?’ ‘No, he’s
really true!’ Barney protested. ‘Of course he’s true,’ his Grandmother smiled. ‘Now, Lou. Don’t tease Barney!’
‘Let’s pretend Stig’s a wicked wizard who lives in a cave and turns people into stone,’ Lou began eagerly. She
was always inventing stories and games like that. ‘No,’ said Barney quietly, feeling the sharp flint in his pocket.
‘Stig’s nice. He’s my friend.’ That night he kept the flint under his pillow, and thought of Stig out there in the
pit sleeping on his bed of bracken and old newspapers. He wished he lived all the time at Granny’s house so that
he could get to know Stig. He had to go back the day after tomorrow. Never mind, he’d visit Stig in the morning.
When he woke in the woods in the dark and the cold of the night he'd reach out to touch the child sleeping
beside him. Nights dark beyond darkness and the days more grey each one than what had gone before. Like the
onset of some cold glaucoma dimming away the world. His hand rose and fell softly with each precious breath.
He pushed away the plastic tarpaulin and raised himself in the stinking robes and blankets and looked toward
the east for any light but there was none. In the dream from which he'd wakened he had wandered in a cave
where the child led him by the hand. Their light playing over the wet flowstone walls. Like pilgrims in a fable
swallowed up and lost among the inward parts of some granitic beast. Deep stone flues where the water dripped
and sang. Rolling in the silence the minutes of the earth and the hours and the days of it and the years without
cease. Until they stood in a great stone room where lay a black and ancient lake. And on the far shore a creature
that raised its dripping mouth from the rimstone pool and stared into the light with eyes dead white and sightless
as the eggs of spiders. It swung its head low over the water as if to take the scent of what it could not see.
Crouching there pale and naked and translucent, its alabaster bones cast up in shadow on the rocks behind it.
Its bowels, its beating heart. The brain that pulsed in a dull glass bell. It swung its head from side to side and
then gave out a low moan and turned and lurched away and loped soundlessly into the dark.
With the first grey light he rose and left the boy sleeping and walked out to the road and squatted and studied
the country to the south. Barren, silent, godless. He thought the month was October but he wasn't sure. He had
not kept a calendar for years. They were moving south. There'd be no surviving another winter here.
When it was light enough to use the binoculars he glassed the valley below. Everything paling away into the
murk. The soft ash blowing in loose swirls over the blacktop. He studied what he could see. The segments of
road down there among the dead trees. Looking for anything of colour. Any movement. Any trace of standing
44
smoke. He lowered the glasses and pulled down the cotton mask from his face and wiped his nose on the back
of his wrist and then glassed the country again. Then he just sat there holding the binoculars and watching the
ashen daylight congeal over the land. He knew only that the child was his warrant. He said: If he is not the word
of God God never spoke.
When he got back the boy was still asleep. He pulled the blue plastic tarp off of him and folded it and carried it
out to the grocery cart and packed it and came back with their plates and some cornmeal cakes in a plastic bag
and a plastic bottle of syrup. He spread the small tarp they used for a table on the ground and laid everything
out and he took the pistol from his belt and laid it on the cloth and then he just sat watching the boy sleep. He'd
pulled away his mask in the night and it was buried somewhere in the blankets. He watched the boy and he
looked out through the trees toward the road. This was not a safe place. They could be seen from the road now
it was day. The boy turned in the blankets. Then he opened his eyes. Hi, Papa, he said.
I'm right here.
I know.
15
Author
Genre
Form
Person
Saki
Short Story
Narrative
Third
Tick if read
Introduction
"Sredni Vashtar" is a short story by Saki (Hector Hugh Munro), written between 1900 and 1911 and first published
in his 1912 short story collection The Chronicles of Clovis. It has been adapted for opera, film, radio and television.
You may listen here; the story is narrated in 13 minutes
CONRADIN was ten years old, and the doctor had pronounced his professional opinion that the boy would not
live another five years. The doctor was silky and effete, and counted for little, but his opinion was endorsed by
Mrs. de Ropp, who counted for nearly everything. Mrs. De Ropp was Conradin's cousin and guardian, and in his
eyes she represented those three-fifths of the world that are necessary and disagreeable and real; the other twofifths, in perpetual antagonism to the foregoing, were summed up in himself and his imagination. One of these
days Conradin supposed he would succumb to the mastering pressure of wearisome necessary things—such as
illnesses and coddling restrictions and drawn-out dullness. Without his imagination, which was rampant under
the spur of loneliness, he would have succumbed long ago.
Mrs. de Ropp would never, in her honest moments, have confessed to herself that she disliked Conradin, though
she might have been dimly aware that thwarting him "for his good" was a duty which she did not find particularly
irksome. Conradin hated her with a desperate sincerity which he was perfectly able to mask. Such few pleasures
as he could contrive for himself gained an added relish from the likelihood that they would be displeasing to his
guardian, and from the realm of his imagination she was locked out—an unclean thing, which should find no
entrance.
45
In the dull, cheerless garden, overlooked by so many windows that were ready to open with a message not to do
this or that, or a reminder that medicines were due, he found little attraction. The few fruit-trees that it contained
were set jealousy apart from his plucking, as though they were rare specimens of their kind blooming in an arid
waste; it would probably have been difficult to find a market-gardener who would have offered ten shillings for
their entire yearly produce. In a forgotten corner, however, almost hidden behind a dismal shrubbery, was a
disused tool-shed of respectable proportions, and within its walls Conradin found a haven, something that took
on the varying aspects of a playroom and a cathedral. He had peopled it with a legion of familiar phantoms,
evoked partly from fragments of history and partly from his own brain, but it also boasted two inmates of flesh
and blood. In one corner lived a ragged-plumaged Houdan hen, on which the boy lavished an affection that had
scarcely another outlet. Further back in the gloom stood a large hutch, divided into two compartments, one of
which was fronted with close iron bars. This was the abode of a large polecat-ferret, which a friendly butcherboy had once smuggled, cage and all, into its present quarters, in exchange for a long-secreted hoard of small
silver. Conradin was dreadfully afraid of the lithe, sharp-fanged beast, but it was his most treasured possession.
Its very presence in the tool-shed was a secret and fearful joy, to be kept scrupulously from the knowledge of the
Woman, as he privately dubbed his cousin. And one day, out of Heaven knows what material, he spun the beast
a wonderful name, and from that moment it grew into a god and a religion. The Woman indulged in religion
once a week at a church nearby, and took Conradin with her, but to him the church service was an alien rite in
the House of Rimmon. Every Thursday, in the dim and musty silence of the tool-shed, he worshipped with mystic
and elaborate ceremonial before the wooden hutch where dwelt Sredni Vashtar, the great ferret. Red flowers in
their season and scarlet berries in the winter-time were offered at his shrine, for he was a god who laid some
special stress on the fierce impatient side of things, as opposed to the Woman's religion, which, as far as
Conradin could observe, went to great lengths in the contrary direction. And on great festivals powdered nutmeg
was strewn in front of his hutch, an important feature of the offering being that the nutmeg had to be stolen.
These festivals were of irregular occurrence, and were chiefly appointed to celebrate some passing event. On
one occasion, when Mrs. de Ropp suffered from acute toothache for three days, Conradin kept up the festival
during the entire three days, and almost succeeded in persuading himself that Sredni Vashtar was personally
responsible for the toothache. If the malady had lasted for another day the supply of nutmeg would have given
out.
The Houdan hen was never drawn into the cult of Sredni Vashtar. Conradin had long ago settled that she was
an Anabaptist. He did not pretend to have the remotest knowledge as to what an Anabaptist was, but he privately
hoped that it was dashing and not very respectable. Mrs. de Ropp was the ground-plan on which he based and
detested all respectability.
After a while Conradin's absorption in the tool-shed began to attract the notice of his guardian. "It is not good
for him to be pottering down there in all weathers," she promptly decided, and at breakfast one morning she
announced that the Houdan hen had been sold and taken away overnight. With her short-sighted eyes she peered
at Conradin, waiting for an outbreak of rage and sorrow, which she was ready to rebuke with a flow of excellent
precepts and reasoning. But Conradin said nothing; there was nothing to be said. Something perhaps in his
white set face gave her a momentary qualm, for at tea that afternoon there was toast on the table, a delicacy
46
which she usually banned on the ground that it was bad for him; also because the making of it "gave trouble," a
deadly offence in the middle-class feminine eye.
"I thought you liked toast," she exclaimed, with an injured air, observing that he did not touch it.
"Sometimes," said Conradin.
In the shed that evening there was an innovation in the worship of the hutch-god. Conradin had been wont to
chant his praises, to-night he asked a boon.
"Do one thing for me, Sredni Vashtar."
The thing was not specified. As Sredni Vashtar was a god he must be supposed to know. And choking back a
sob as he looked at that other empty corner, Conradin went back to the world he so hated.
And every night, in the welcome darkness of his bedroom, and every evening in the dusk of the tool-shed,
Conradin's bitter litany went up: "Do one thing for me, Sredni Vashtar."
Mrs. de Ropp noticed that the visits to the shed did not cease, and one day she made a further journey of
inspection.
"What are you keeping in that locked hutch?" she asked. "I believe it's guinea-pigs. I'll have them all cleared
away."
Conradin shut his lips tight, but the Woman ransacked his bedroom till she found the carefully hidden key, and
forthwith marched down to the shed to complete her discovery. It was a cold afternoon, and Conradin had been
bidden to keep to the house. From the furthest window of the dining-room the door of the shed could just be
seen beyond the corner of the shrubbery, and there Conradin stationed himself. He saw the Woman enter, and
then he imagined her opening the door of the sacred hutch and peering down with her short-sighted eyes into
the thick straw bed where his god lay hidden. Perhaps she would prod at the straw in her clumsy impatience.
And Conradin fervently breathed his prayer for the last time. But he knew as he prayed that he did not believe.
He knew that the Woman would come out presently with that pursed smile he loathed so well on her face, and
that in an hour or two the gardener would carry away his wonderful god, a god no longer, but a simple brown
ferret in a hutch. And he knew that the Woman would triumph always as she triumphed now, and that he would
grow ever more sickly under her pestering and domineering and superior wisdom, till one day nothing would
matter much more with him, and the doctor would be proved right. And in the sting and misery of his defeat, he
began to chant loudly and defiantly the hymn of his threatened idol:—
Sredni
Vashtar
went
His
thoughts
were
red
thoughts
His
enemies
called
for
peace
and
but
his
he
forth,
teeth
were
white.
brought
them
death,
Sredni Vashtar the Beautiful.
And then of a sudden he stopped his chanting and drew closer to the window-pane. The door of the shed still
stood ajar as it had been left, and the minutes were slipping by. They were long minutes, but they slipped by
nevertheless. He watched the starlings running and flying in little parties across the lawn; he counted them over
47
and over again, with one eye always on that swinging door. A sour-faced maid came in to lay the table for tea,
and still Conradin stood and waited and watched. Hope had crept by inches into his heart, and now a look of
triumph began to blaze in his eyes that had only known the wistful patience of defeat. Under his breath, with a
furtive exultation, he began once again the pæan of victory and devastation. And presently his eyes were
rewarded; out through that doorway came a long, low, yellow-and-brown beast, with eyes a-blink at the waning
daylight, and dark wet stains around the fur of jaws and throat. Conradin dropped on his knees. The great
polecat-ferret made its way down to a small brook at the foot of the garden, drank for a moment, then crossed a
little plank bridge and was lost to sight in the bushes. Such was the passing of Sredni Vashtar.
"Tea is ready," said the sour-faced maid; "where is the mistress?"
"She went down to the shed some time ago," said Conradin.
And while the maid went to summon her mistress to tea, Conradin fished a toasting-fork out of the sideboard
drawer and proceeded to toast himself a piece of bread. And during the toasting of it and the buttering of it with
much butter and the slow enjoyment of eating it, Conradin listened to the noises and silences which fell in quick
spasms beyond the dining-room door. The loud foolish screaming of the maid, the answering chorus of
wondering calls from the kitchen region, the scuttering footsteps and hurried embassies for outside help, and
then after a lull, the scared sobbings and the shuffling tread of those who bore a heavy burden into the house.
"Whoever will break it to the poor child? I couldn't for the life of me!" exclaimed a shrill voice. And while they
debated the matter among themselves Conradin made himself another piece of toast.
16
Author
Genre
Form
Person
Ted Hughes
Novella
Narrative
Third
Tick if read
Chapter 1 The Coming of the Iron Man
The Iron Man came to the top of the cliff. How far had he walked? Nobody knows. Where did he come from?
Nobody knows. How was he made? Nobody knows. Taller than a house, the Iron Man stood at the top of the
cliff, on the very brink, in the darkness. The wind sang through his iron fingers. His great iron head, shaped like
a dustbin but as big as a bedroom, slowly turned to the right, slowly turned to the left. His iron ears turned, this
way, that way. He was hearing the sea. His eyes, like headlamps, glowed white, then red, then infrared, searching
the sea. Never before had the Iron Man seen the sea. He swayed in the strong wind that pressed against his back.
He swayed forward, on the brink of the high cliff. And his right foot, his enormous iron right foot, lifted - up,
out into space, and the Iron Man stepped forward, off the cliff, into nothingness. CRRRAAAASSSSSSH!
Down the cliff the Iron Man came toppling, head over heels. CRASH! CRASH! CRASH! From rock to rock, snag
to snag, tumbling slowly. And as he crashed and crashed and crashed. His iron legs fell off. His iron arms broke
off, and the hands broke off the arms. His great iron ears fell off and his eyes fell out. His great iron head fell off.
48
All the separate pieces tumbled, scattered, crashing, bumping, clanging, down on to the rocky beach far below.
A few rocks tumbled with him. Then silence. Only the sound of the sea, chewing away at the edge of the rocky
beach, where the bits and pieces of the Iron Man lay scattered far and wide, silent and unmoving. Only one of
the iron hands, lying beside an old, sand-logged washed-up seaman’s boot, waved its fingers for a minute, like a
crab on its back. Then it lay still. While the stars went on wheeling through the sky and the wind went on tugging
at the grass on the cliff top and the sea went on boiling and booming.
Nobody knew the Iron Man had fallen. Night passed. Just before dawn, as the darkness grew blue and the shapes
of the rocks separated from each other, two seagulls flew crying over the rocks. They landed on a patch of sand.
They had two chicks in a nest on the cliff. Now they were searching for food. One of the seagulls flew up Aaaaaark! He had seen something. He glided low over the sharp rocks. He landed and picked something up.
Something shiny, round and hard. It was one of the Iron Man’s eyes. He brought it back to his mate. They both
looked at this strange thing. And the eye looked at them. It rolled from side to side looking first at one gull, then
at the other. The gulls, peering at it, thought it was a strange kind of clam, peeping at them from its shell. Then
the other gull flew up, wheeled around and landed and picked something up. Some awkward, heavy thing. The
gull flew low and slowly, dragging the heavy thing. Finally, the gull dropped it beside the eye. This new thing
had five legs. It moved. The gull thought it was a strange kind of crab. They thought they had found a strange
crab and a strange clam.
They did not know they had found the Iron Man’s eye and the Iron Man’s right hand. But as soon as the eye and
the hand got together, the eye looked at the hand. Its light glowed blue. The hand stood up on three fingers and
its thumb, and craned its forefinger like a long nose. It felt around. It touched the eye. Gleefully it picked up the
eye, and tucked it under its middle finger. The eye peered out, between the forefinger and thumb. Now the hand
could see. It looked around. Then it darted and jabbed one of the gulls with its stiffly held finger, then darted at
the other and jabbed him. The two gulls flew up into the wind with a frightened cry. Slowly then the hand crept
over the stones, searching. It ran forward suddenly, grabbed something and tugged.
But the thing was stuck between two rocks. The thing was one of the Iron Man’s arms. At last the hand left the
arm and went scuttling hither and thither among the rocks, till it stopped, and touched something gently. This
thing was the other hand. This new hand stood up and hooked its finger round the little finger of the hand with
the eye, and let itself be led. Now the two hands, the seeing one leading the blind one, walking on their fingertips,
went back together to the arm, and together they tugged it free. The hand with the eye fastened itself onto the
wrist of the arm. The arm stood up and walked on its hand. The other hand clung on behind as before, and this
strange trio went on searching. An eye! There it was, blinking at them speechlessly beside a black and white
pebble.
The seeing hand fitted the eye to the blind hand and now both hands could see. They went running among the
rocks. Soon they found a leg. They jumped on top of the leg and the leg went hopping over the rocks with the
arm swinging from the hand that clung to the top of the leg. The other hand clung on top of that hand. The two
49
hands, with their eyes, guided their leg, twisting it this way and that, as a rider guides a horse. Soon they found
another leg and another arm. Now each hand, with an eye under its palm and an arm dangling from its wrist,
rode on a leg separately about the beach. Hop, hop, hop , hop they went, peering among the rocks. One found
an ear and at the same moment the other found the giant torso. Then the busy hands fitted the legs to the torso,
then they fitted the arms, each fitting the other, and the torso stood up with legs and arms but no head. It walked
about the beach, holding its eyes up in its hands, searching for its lost head. At last, there was the head - eyeless,
earless, nested in a heap of red seaweed.
Now in no time the Iron Man had fitted his head back, and his eyes were in place, and everything in place except
for one ear. He strode about the beach searching for his lost ear, as the sun rose over the sea and the day came.
The two gulls sat on their ledge, high on the cliff. They watched the immense man striding to and fro over the
rocks below. Between them, on the nesting ledge, lay a great iron ear. The gulls could not eat it. The baby gulls
could not eat it. There it lay on the high ledge. Far below, the Iron Man searched. At last he stopped, and looked
at the sea. Was he thinking the sea had stolen his ear? Perhaps he was thinking the sea had come up, while he
lay scattered, and had gone down again with his ear. He walked towards the sea. He walked into the breakers,
and there he stood for a while, the breakers bursting around his knees. Then he walked in deeper, deeper, deeper.
The gulls took off and glided down low over the great iron head that was now moving slowly out through the
swell. The eyes blazed red, level with the wavetops, till a big wave covered them and foam spouted over the top
of the head. The head still moved out under water. The eyes and the top of the head appeared for a moment in a
hollow of the swell. Now the eyes were green. Then the sea covered them and the head. The gulls circled low
over the line of bubbles that went on moving slowly out of the deep sea.
17
Author
Genre
Form
Person
Rebecca Giggs
Nature Writing
Recount
Third
Tick if read
Introduction
Very small beings are often responsible for vast surges of life. Rebecca Giggs follows the mass migration of the
bogong moth in alpine Australia: a story of superabundance and apocalypse. You may listen here
(https://emergencemagazine.org/essay/noiseless-messengers/)
THE MOTHS, when they came, were said to appear first like sea fog massing above the ocean. Lighthouse
keepers along the southeastern edge of Australia warned of beacons so darkly swarmed that on-water navigators
doubted their bearings. Ferry Boats were burdened by thousands, wings ablur. Some moths hung in clusters off
the precipitous coastal cliffs, living icicles, dripping with more moths. The moths, as a myriad, moved in: at
nightfall they “swept over the suburbs in clouds,” wrote one reporter for a Sydney tabloid, The Sun. Descending
into tea trees and turpentine gums in Gosford, the seething of the moths gave the impression of bough-shaking
winds when all else was motionless.
50
If the moths’ light-seeking caused disruption in the darkness, their urge to seek shelter when the dawn broke
made them a more invidious presence yet. So many of their oily bodies were crushed on train tracks that
slowdowns were mandated to stop locomotives slipping from the rails. They jammed the circuitry of elevators,
spoiled gatherings. At a garden party at Government House in the inland capital of Canberra, every iced cake
was seen to be decorated with moths. The moths entered people’s houses. They crept behind upright pianos,
into radio sets, betwixt the slats of venetian blinds. They got between the mattress and bed sheets, and huddled
in the pockets of dress suits. In kitchens, gutted fish were found to have bellyfuls of moths. If a light was switched
off, hundreds of tiny arrow shapes might fan out from beneath paintings hung on the wall. One year, churchgoers
counted eighty thousand moths on the windows of Saint Thomas’s prayerhouse in North Sydney. Services were
cancelled for seven days, the building sealed while the moths congregated under the eaves. People reached for
words like visitation, marvel. The less-enraptured said: plague.
These were migratory moths, called bogong moths, and through the early twentieth century few people could
say with confidence where they came from. “Noiseless messengers,” The Argus newspaper deemed the bogongs
in 1916—“noiseless messengers sent forth to flicker ghost-like through space, and collect the news of other
worlds.” Truth was, the moths had their origins underground. After frail frosts, and when the early spring was
wet, great throngs of moths emerged from pupae in the soils of lowland southern Queensland and in western
and northwestern New South Wales. Stirred by some ephemeral cue (temperature, day length, barometric
pressure), the moths took off. Though no single individual in their generation had ever made the journey—and
while each moth’s brain is scarcely a speck—the moths, their bearings imbued with instinct, set out to travel
over one thousand kilometres (620 miles).
Some years were sparser than others, but when conditions favoured the moths, there could be over four billion
on the wing. Passing through the railyards of Newcastle, they obscured electric signals. As far south as Mirboo
North in Gippsland, men complained of needing to move agglomerations of moths off the paddocks by the
shovelful. Lacking the necessary mouthparts to chew leaves, they did not skeletonize plant life as locusts do.
Instead, the moths relied on floral sugars to power them, supping thin streams of nectar via their proboscises,
along with lerp—a type of honeydew extruded by louses. Each moth could only ingest a skerrick of sweetness,
but they were so numerous that apiarists nonetheless found they had to sustain their bees on syrup after the
moth front had passed by, taking with it much of the nourishment otherwise found in flowering yellow box, red
box, grevillea.
Many moths were killed—by nightjars and frogmouths, by high winds, by sizzling up in light fixtures, and by
slapping hands—but there always seemed to be more to come. They were impervious to knock-down sprays.
Any attempt at sweeping them from a surface left behind black pencil marks. In Dubbo 1919: the moths
“destroy[ed] the happiness of many a domestic circle, and by their dying help[ed] to increase the cost of living.”
Removing moths from the home was nearly impossible. One might as soon have tried to net a mist and tow it
back out to sea.
51
Yet, not that long after they arrived, the moths disappeared from the cities, like a nightmare dissipated on
waking. Where had the moths gone to? From at least the end of the last ice age, the moths have taken their leave,
every year, to go into hiding in the Australian Alps. The bogongs chase the cold. Their metapopulation, which
has several reservoirs inland of the Dividing Range, funnels together to seek refuge from the hottest weather of
summer by climbing up above the tree line into chilled crevices and grottoes in the high-altitude scree of the
Snowy Mountains, the Victorian Alps, and the Brindabellas. When they finally enter their encampments in the
granite and basalt, the moths settle on rock faces in a tessellating pattern. Each moth, a jigsaw piece, tucks its
head under the hindwings of the one before it, until there is a wide brocade of moths that can extend for maybe
eighty metres squared, or more. If they blanket the interior of a cave, it can come to feel like a softly padded cell.
The moths enter a torpor called “aestivation.” Aestivation is the opposite of hibernation: it is done to circumvent
the swelter, not the snow. The moths are mostly motionless. Intermittently they jiggle their wings. A handful
might take a turn in the open air each night, moving as on an orrery, before settling into their long tranquillity
again. Bogongs live much longer than the average moth: between eight and nine months. They will stay there,
in the icy dark, across the turn of the new year, before returning to breed, lay eggs, and die where they were born,
in the cracking clays far away.
The Jaithmathang, Gunaikurnai, and Taungurung peoples knew of this migration—and had known since long
before European invasion. The moths’ name, “bogong,” comes from the southeastern Indigenous language
groups. Bungung denotes a moth of the mountains, or the mountains of the moths, and the brown colour that
envelopes both. The aestivation of the moths was the incitement for a pilgrimage of Indigenous Australians into
the lowlands and foothills of the Alps, land that was cyclically inhabited by the Traditional Owners who have
been its continuous custodians, and in its care, for all of the timespan the Dreaming encloses. At several
waypoints along the moths’ passage, people stupefied the insects with smoke and cooked them in coalless fires
before grinding their bodies into a paste and fashioning long-lasting patties. For the moth hunters, bogongs
were a seasonal cornerstone of their diet. The custom was so widespread that it changed the appearance of the
landscape: the ground was rumpled like a quilt from where the fire pits were dug year after year. Significant law,
intergroup consultation, and ceremony are associated with the occupation of the high plains at moth-harvest
time. Dispossession and colonial violence disturbed these practices.
For centuries the bogong moths streamed back into these caves, slept, and vanished again when the weather
cooled. The hands of the moth hunters illustrated facets of the feast on rock walls. Later came scientists, from
research institutions and universities, to study the moths across the tors of several summits. The scientists noted
that the moths smelled sweet like molasses when they arrived, and thereafter awful, like compost. Then, in the
summer of 2017/18, the bogong moths, prolific as they had been for all the years prior, vanished more completely.
Where once there had been hundreds of thousands of the insects—a juggernaut, a moving nimbus—now the
night air stood empty. On Mount Morgan and Mount Gingera: no moths. A cave long favoured by moths on a
boulder outcrop near South Ramshead, in the Kosciuszko Main Range, saw only a smattering very deep in the
far reaches; likewise in known habitat on Mount Buffalo. The next summer a single live moth was found on
Mount Morgan. Three moths made it to Mount Gingera. With a note of terror the scientists reported that within
52
a few short years bogong numbers had declined by 99.5 percent. This past December the International Union
for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) formally listed the bogong moth as endangered. What has happened to
the moths, and what will happen in the mountains if they are not restored, has much to tell about how we
envision the manifold crises we are connected to, and the scale on which they occur.
I HAD BEGUN reading about the moths at a time when we were compelled to stay indoors, to wait out a state
of semi-dormancy in lockdown. It started with a dream, the dream everyone seemed to be having that spring, of
a billowing swarm of insects. In mine, the insects were seen from far off—a murmuration knotting and
unknotting on the horizon, banking into mountainous peaks that shivered and collapsed. At a distance I
registered only curiosity towards them, but then the insects started to collect together, to concentrate, and, with
clear intent, cascade down upon the buildings of the city into the streets. A horrible fear gripped me. Long
minutes after waking I could still feel the prickling of legs and wings landing all over my skin.
Researchers who study dreams in the context of tragedy have observed that, since the outset of the pandemic,
the imagery of insects has proliferated in sleeping minds. A virus is not a living organism, but we sometimes
call it a “bug,” so the theory holds that bugs (of the arthropod kind) were a ready-made metaphor to visualise an
invisible threat. It was easy to imagine an insect horde passing through people’s heads on their pillows at night,
like a storm traversing the eastern seaboard. Friends detailed variations on the theme: one in which ants
overtook a classroom, one where a train carriage filled with hornets. My aunt dreamt that she was compelled to
hold a single insect in her mouth as she moved through a crowd. Bitter, she said.
Insects are bonded to ideas of mortality the world over, being both decomposers and natural transformers:
Scarab beetles, a feature of funerary art in Ancient Egypt. Jade cicadas, placed on the tongues of the deceased in
the Han Dynasty to ease a person’s transition into the afterlife. In the portraiture of pre-seventeenth-century
Europe, the addition of a fly signified the subject was no longer alive. And the death’s-head hawkmoth, of course,
was a harbinger of epidemic illness and pestilence in France. To be touched by insects—to be traipsed by a
lacewing, or to cup a centipede in your palm—has a morbid voltage, I think, as a foretoken of the moment the
body ceases to sense the lightest contact, before it begins to turn, in time, to stillness, to ash on the wind, or dust
on the touchpaper texture of a moth.
After the curfew each evening, I sat at home with the lamps on, watching whatever pinwheeled and buzzed
against the glass. The borders were closed and a five-kilometre travel limit had been imposed, in addition to
social distancing measures. Life seemed to have contracted down to very little. The window had become my
public square, I thought. Could I get interested in what was there, within arm’s reach but out of touch; what
visited the house, and where it came from? Mostly, it was moths. Between me and the moon, moth after moth.
Unearthly. Of various sizes.
53
What I then knew about moths wouldn’t run to more than a sentence or two. Night insects, yes, the idiom “like
a moth to a flame,” metamorphosis—full stop. I found a guidebook with pictures online and scrolled through it,
surprised to discover that what distinguishes moths from butterflies is not, as it transpires, their circadian habit.
There are many day-flying moths. Dark-loving butterfly species populate the understories of rainforests in the
country’s north. Neither is the difference a question of drabness. Moths can be dotted with vivid iridescence, as
if they’d dragged their wingtips through gasoline: there are green, blue, violet, pink, marigold, and piebald
moths. One is the bright orange of a traffic cone; another is banana-yellow with blood-red eyeballs. In dense,
low-lit woodlands, a few moth species have evolved to be almost completely transparent, a form of camouflage
that means you don’t so much see the insect as notice a ripple crossing the leaf litter.
No, finer details divide moths from butterflies. Both belong to the insect order Lepidoptera, but as a general rule
butterflies tend to have club-shaped antennae, where those of moths are more thready, or look like wincey
bottlebrushes: an attribute that helps males pick up wafting ph
eromones during the breeding season. Even if they have narrow wings, moths are also more liable to have bristles
on the surface between fore- and hindwing—a kind of Velcro that keeps all four wings aligned in motion—
where butterflies do not. And, with exceptions, butterflies are inclined to rest holding their wings sandwiched
together vertically, whereas moths idle with their wings folded over their backs, like a collapsed tent, or held out
flat in the manner of a Rorschach blot.
In all its ingenuity, evolution devised a single organism capable of living two lives, at two speeds. First, the
reclusive homebody, the caterpillar, a fleshy little digester in a vast empire of leaves, reliant on a plentiful if lownutrient diet. Second, the winged moth. Extremely mobile but slight and soon to die, moths either eat nothing
during their maturity or are dependent on high-energy but scarcer foodstuffs, such as sap, nectar, or juice. As a
strategy, this duet of bodies has proved so successful that insects exploiting it have been around since the
middle-late Jurassic. Specimens of the most primitive moths, the Micropterigidae (nine species of which live on
in Australia), have been found clenched in amber from a time near to two hundred million years ago, when they
might have been fodder for flying dinosaurs. With such a deep evolutionary past to pull upon, Australian moths
have diversified in stable environments into a plethora of specialists, sporting an array of colours, shapes, and
finishes.
54
Some are marbled, some are woolly. Some look like pieces of rotting wood, bird droppings, or thorns. A moth
that appears to be a splotch of turquoise mould reveals startling coral-coloured hindwings when it flies. Another
trails streamers that baffle birds chasing it through the air. Here is a thorax as purple and shiny as plum skin;
further on in the guidebook, a moth with a shaggy, bear-like countenance. Some roll their wings up to look like
antlers. One seems pixelated, like a rasterized object in a video game. The smeared tones of another make it
appear to have been photographed with an unfocused lens. Australia is home to between twenty and thirty
thousand moth species—almost as many as there are flowering plants—but only some four hundred butterflies
(a “depauperate insect fauna”).
Some moths can only be told apart by their gait when walking, having either a “waddling” gait, a “dancing gait,”
or moving “quick-slow-quick” as in a foxtrot. A mothtrot. A few engage in tactical mimicry: of wasps, of
repellent beetles, of less-edible moths that are their cousins. Some are furnished with hairs capable of triggering
allergies and anaphylactic shock. Others would disappear if they happened to settle on an art nouveau carpet.
Though the preponderance are herbivorous as larvae, there are also carnivores and frugivores. One moth tricks
meat ants into carrying its caterpillars into their nests, where the larvae dine delicately on infant ants. Another
has progeny that are aquatic, which subsist entirely off pondweed.
Among this spellbinding Australian bestiary are some of the world’s largest and heaviest moths. Coscinocera
hercules, the Hercules moth, is found in northern Queensland and can grow to have a wingspan of thirty-six
centimetres—the diameter of a car’s steering wheel. Caterpillars of the Hercules moth feed in bleeding heart
trees, and then they pupate for two years. The adult moth, which moves somewhat floppily, like a dropped
sunhat, lives only two days. Earlier this year construction workers sinking the foundations for a school in Mount
Cotton disturbed a giant wood moth, Endoxyla cinereus, the heftiest species yet identified by science and not
uncommon, though it is rarely seen. A builder balanced it on the tip of a saw for a photograph—a moth the size
of a catcher’s mitt, its dusky legs dangling.
The architecture of a flower, tailored for pollination by a specific insect, can provide clues about moths unmet
in the wild. Take the star-shaped orchid, from which Charles Darwin inferred the existence of a then-unknown
moth with an exceptionally long tongue needed to tap the bloom’s nectary. Decades after Darwin’s death in 1882,
such a moth—a subspecies of the Congo moth, X. morganii praedicta—was discovered with a ribboning proboscis
almost three times the length of its body. The alliances between moths and other animals, as opposed to plants,
are less well described, but as Lepidoptera elsewhere have evolved to drink the tears of river turtles, so too have
unique dependencies emerged between moths and native species in Australia. There is a moth that lives in koala
scat, and one that feeds only in the nests of finches. Most memorable is the moth found in holes hollowed out
by golden shouldered parrots in the clay of abandoned termite mounds. There, this moth species lives off the
excreta of nestlings. Though they function to keep the nest hygienic, the larvae have been known to spin cocoon
masses that have blocked the entrance to the tunnel, leaving baby parrots trapped—a gothic demise for the birds.
55
And as for bogongs? I remembered only that they were famously innumerable and transient. Having grown up
on the west coast, I had never seen one. Now I wanted to. I came to the entry for “bogong moths” in the
guidebook. Agrotis infusa: the moth’s Latinate name evokes “infused fields,” a head nod to the fact that bogongs
pupate mostly in croplands, in chrysalises that are sepia and translucent, like varnish on a coffin. It was the right
time of year to see one. Teak brown with a fuzzy sort of cape extending over the back of its head and collar, its
wings composed like a gabled roof top when at rest. Bogongs are small, with a wingspan of about five
centimetres, and they have reflective eyes—a feature that characterises members of the Noctuidae family, those
moths North Americans call “owlets” because their gleaming eyes bring to mind those of owls in the night. I
read on to learn that, with the aid of a magnifying lens, it might be possible to discern that the male bogongs
have antennae that resemble hair combs, though otherwise moths of this kind are unexceptional. Bogong moths
are easy to miss, easy to mistake, save for this feature: on each wing are two pale dots, one slightly elongated
like a comma. This is a moth adorned with semicolons.
It was the semicolons that set me off in the end: a gesture to the branching nature of sentences, and therefore of
time; the possibility of subclauses running into the future, paths taken and not taken. The idea nestled into me.
It was pleasant to think of something so small as a bogong moving out there, from state to state, when all else
was grounded. More gratifying yet was the picture that came to me next of a stranger, their gaze alighting on a
bogong moth someplace a long way away; that person becoming verily engrossed, following the moth’s mid-air
helixing until it spiralled off into the dark, and then, in time, that same moth appearing to me, conveying the
tiniest of contact-highs; the vision of someone somewhere else, grown watchful of the insect life nearby. Maybe
there was another woman I had never met, a woman who sat by her window, even now, looking for something
to wander into her reflection and bring her back to life. Perhaps she pressed her thumb against the cold surface
and felt the faint vibrations of a moth squaring on the other side. If she thought of someone like me then, with
the oval of her thumbprint fading, I hoped it made her feel she was not alone.
ON A MORNING not long ago, as the city began to stir out of its own long inertia, I drove to Melbourne Zoo to
visit the Butterfly House. In the queue, corralled along the zoo’s perimeter, people fumbled to pull up vaccine
passports on the government app, as zoo workers in khakis implored ticket holders to observe social distancing
by keeping “the length of a kangaroo” between family groups: an interval soon collapsed by impatience. Children
whooped up and down the line while mothers traded glances of bone-weary camaraderie. As the clouds flew off
overhead and the temperature began to climb, I wondered if the animals penned inside heard the hum of the
crowd about to descend and whether that noise aroused anxiety or anticipation in them. Had any of the zoo’s
creatures worried over where their spectators had gone and why they had disappeared for so long?
The Butterfly House is steamy, with rings of rock melon on wire suspended from the trees and hexagonal feeding
tables set with plastic florets, where sugar water is set out. Around 450 Lepidoptera quiver on vegetation, or on
the feeding tables, and thresh in the air. Almost all are butterflies, though there is one day-flying moth species
among them—the Hercules moth, a few saucer-sized individuals very far from the tropics where they usually
56
make their home. On the concertina of a palm leaf, two orchard swallowtails look to be mating, the fainter female
like a sandy shadow beneath the male.
There are no bogongs. To date, I have not seen one. So far this year, the mountains have not either. Yet it is hard
to put into words the upswing of emotion I experience in the Butterfly House nonetheless. I can’t help it. To be
surrounded by so much life this fragile and ornate is overwhelming. An older man is frozen mid-step by a
butterfly alighting on his forehead, on the spot notionally known as the third eye. A bygone name for
Lepidoptera is psykhe (psychê), a term that later denoted the soul. For a moment, I also stop to take stock of a
feeling inside me. Something moth-sized has taken flight within my body, a ricocheting brightness with an
autonomy all its own, a lightness that had eluded me all through the long second half of the year. As though
these vivid insects, their presence, have broken something heavy within me into parts and made it available to
catch on a breeze.
Bogong moths are not social insects. Social insects, such as honeybees and termites, have a hierarchy and
distribute roles to different individuals. What the moths are is massively gregarious—and what they are losing
now is their coming together. Denied to the moths is the momentum to densify, to persevere high in the
overworld, and endure ever more infernal summers by resting, wingtip to wingtip. And yet, some of the planet’s
most isolated insects have been restored by human effort. The Butterfly House ordinarily displays one nonLepidoptera insect at intervals, in a terrarium brought out from enclosures not open to the public: the Lord
Howe Island stick insect, a bug also called “the tree lobster” after its size. Considered extinct since 1920, a
breeding colony of just twenty-four Lord Howe Island stick insects was discovered in 2001 clinging to the ground
beneath a single shrub on a mid-ocean crag of rock, a sea mountain called Ball’s Pyramid, in the Pacific Ocean,
over six hundred kilometres northeast of Sydney. The two stick insects (the zoo named them Adam and Eve),
brought to Melbourne by their discoverers, have since sired over fourteen thousand offspring, though I’m told
they are not on display today because people too easily forget the social distancing protocols when they gather
around to view them.
Are we in time to double back, to save the bogongs? The revival of the moth won’t be so easy to secure. On Lord
Howe Island, the stick insects were killed off by invasive black rats introduced by shipping vessels: a localised
catastrophe. The plight of the bogongs, on the other hand, is entangled with the global problem of climate
change. All migratory species depend on a series of habitats, sequenced conditions in those habitats, and the
transitional spaces that provide passage between them. Such species are contingent on a far greater domain,
replete with many more resources than is needed to supply the individual. A single insect may live off a
tablespoon of nutriment. A dozen may occupy a shoebox without obvious antipathy. And though a bogong could
survive in the Butterfly House, the fate of its species hinges on weather patterns that encompass the globe. And
yet, hope resides in the insect. Having evolved to produce hundreds of offspring (over a strategy of cosseting a
few), each generation has the potential for mass depletion, but also replenishment. One adult can lay two
thousand eggs. In the wake of the IUCN listing, conservation advocates are now pushing for improved moth
habitat within agricultural lands, offset by subsidies similar to those offered to some EU farmers for engaging
57
in bee-friendly growing methods. Some reprieve also looks set to arrive with the shift into a La Niña season,
historically wetter and cooler on the eastern side of Australia.
My gaze returns to the butterflies when one lands on the back of my hand and pauses there, closing and
unclosing like a pamphlet of inscrutable information. A voice piped over the speakers warns visitors not to try
to stroke the insects or grab for them. Even with the greatest of care, it says, our touch can hurt them.
18
Author
Genre
Form
Person
Elise Joshie
Journalism
Article
First
Tick if read
Joshie, a Gen-Z for Change executive director Elise Joshi explains why the time is now for real answers from
the Biden administration on climate policy. She interrupted the Biden Press Secretary Karine Jean Pierre at a
youth activist event. She said, "Emails didn’t work. Private conversations didn’t work. Writing letters didn’t
work. Maybe directly and publicly asking for commitments would." Here’s here account.
I Interrupted the White House Press Secretary Because Climate Can't Wait
Hands trembling, breath ragged, mind racing. I had no idea if I had the guts to do it. What would be the
consequences? How would my fellow youth activists in the room react?
I’d been invited to the Voters of Tomorrow summit in Washington, DC, to listen to the White House
representatives explain all they’d done for young people, not to pressure them to do more. As I deliberated, I
turned to my trusted friends and colleagues at Gen-Z for Change and tearfully explained why I was thinking I
had to act.
This time last year, the Gen-Z for Change team was on the White House lawn listening to Biden celebrate the
passing of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), a $369 billion plan to electrify our homes, ramp up wind and solar
power, and more (while also mandating the auction of new oil and gas leases in the Gulf Coast). Later in the
fall, I was invited to the White House’s Hispanic Heritage Month celebration. I accepted these invites, and
continued to use my platform to accurately communicate climate policy like the IRA and advocate for more
action.
White House staffers have always been respectful to me and the team. Despite all my efforts, though, this
practice of invites and kind words hasn't led to bold climate action. During the viral Stop Willow campaign, I
sent emails to White House public engagement staffers urging them not to approve the project. Over 1.1
million people wrote to the administration to try to stop Willow, but the administration green-lit it anyway.
And it wasn’t just me. Climate communicator and scientist Alaina Wood had also spoken up about her
disappointing internal conversations with Team Biden after the Willow Project’s approval.
58
During the Voters for Tomorrow summit, in the minutes leading up to the White House press secretary’s
speech, I was reminded of all the avenues we had exhausted. Emailing didn’t work. Private conversations
didn’t work. Writing letters didn’t work. Maybe publicly and directly asking for commitments would.
On a personal level, I had just visited my family in Ecuador, for the first time in 16 years. I climbed 15,400 foot
mountains and spent quality time with my grandfather, speaking almost exclusively in Spanish. At one point,
my abuelo told me his spirit is with me always: on mountains, in my home in California, no matter where I am.
So, despite my fears and reservations — and feeling my abuelo’s spirit — I interrupted Press Secretary Karine
Jean-Pierre as she recited Biden’s climate successes:
“Excuse me for interrupting, but asking nicely hasn't worked out," I began. "A million young people wrote to
the administration pleading not to approve a disastrous oil-drilling project in Alaska and we were ignored. So
I'm here channelling the strength of my ancestors and generation. Will the administration stop approving new
oil and gas projects and align with youth, science, and frontline communities from the north slope of Alaska to
Louisiana?"
As you can hear in the video, my first few sentences were full of nerves. Standing up to the Biden
administration directly — an administration I voted and campaigned for in 2020 and at an event to encourage
youth turnout for 2024 — felt like a massive cliff jump. Every natural instinct was telling me not to jump.
Still, my words were backed by the science that insists that we cannot afford new oil, gas, and coal
development if we are to meet our climate goals. They were backed by the current reality of billions of people
impacted by extreme heat, drought, wildfires, storms, famine, and other fossil fuel-intensified disasters. And
they were bound by Biden’s own words, spoken when he was a candidate: “No more drilling on federal lands,
period. Period, period, period.”
I could do this, I told myself. Hold the ground, relay the science. Tell the truth about what’s happening.
And here’s the truth: The oil and gas industry artificially jacks up our energy costs and pollutes our air, water,
and bodies, all while making a profit of hundreds of billions of dollars. And yet: The Biden administration
totaled 6,430 oil and gas permit approvals in its first two years, outpacing the Trump administration’s 6,172
approvals over the same timeframe. The Biden administration’s 2023 record alone includes fast-tracking the
Mountain Valley Pipeline in the debt ceiling bill, holding a 73 million acre, Italy-size, offshore oil lease sale in
the Gulf of Mexico, approving exports for the Alaska liquefied natural gas (LNG) project, and more.
On August 10, 2020, when Joe Biden accepted the Democratic nomination for president, he said, “One of the
most powerful voices we hear in the country today is from our young people. They’re speaking to the inequity
and injustice that has grown up in America. Economic injustice. Racial injustice. Environmental injustice.”
But three years later, many young people don’t feel like the president is living up to his promise and still
hearing their voices.
From October 2022 to March 2023, after the approval of the Willow Project, support by those ages 18-29 for
Biden’s climate and environmental policy dropped 13%, down to 35% approval. With just over a year until the
59
2024 general election, President Biden’s continuing support for fossil fuels is putting his support from young
people — a key to Democratic victories in 2020 and 2022 — at risk.
Karine Jean-Pierre's response to my question was this: “Biden has taken more action on climate change than
any other president.” But that wasn’t what I was asking, nor is that enough.
A quarter of emissions come from fossil fuel extraction on public lands. The Biden administration must stop
comparing itself to the very low bar of past administrations and instead stop approvals of new coal, oil, and gas
projects, set a managed decline of current fossil fuel production, halt the hundreds of billions of private dollars
that fund fossil fuel projects abroad, and support workers transitioning out of the industry. And at the very,
very least, declare a climate emergency.
As Frederick Douglass proclaimed in “The Significance of Emancipation in the West Indies,” which
Representative Justin Jones powerfully recited in his speech after my interruption, “Power concedes nothing
without a demand. It never did and it never will.” The climate strikes for a Green New Deal in 2019 helped lead
to President Biden passing the IRA. We have and will only make progress if we push our leaders in the right
direction.
Young people are committed to doing exactly that. Since Thursday, July 27, the video of me interrupting
Karine Jean-Pierre has been viewed over 29 million times across social media. This comes less than five
months after the Stop Willow campaign, which received over 1.1 billion views across three TikTok hashtags;
1.1 million letters sent to the White House; and five million petition signatures. These moments are no fluke,
and will inevitably keep happening until action is taken. So what will it be, Joe?#
19
Author
Genre
Form
Person
Cormac McCarthy
Fiction (dystopic)
Novella
Third
Tick if read
Extract
An hour later they were on the road. He pushed the cart and both he and the boy carried knapsacks. In the
knapsacks were essential things. In case they had to abandon the cart and make a run for it. Clamped to the
handle of the cart was a chrome motorcycle mirror that he used to watch the road behind them. He shifted the
pack higher on his shoulders and looked out over the wasted country. The road was empty. Below in the little
valley the still grey serpentine of a river. Motionless and precise. Along the shore a burden of dead reeds. Are
you okay? he said. The boy nodded. Then they set out along the blacktop in the gunmetal light, shuffling through
the ash, each the other's world entirely.
They crossed the river by an old concrete bridge and a few miles on they came upon a roadside gas station. They
stood in the road and studied it. I think we should check it out, the man said. Take a look. The weeds they forded
fell to dust about them. They crossed the broken asphalt apron and found the tank for the pumps. The cap was
60
gone and the man dropped to his elbows to smell the pipe but the odour of gas was only a rumour, faint and
stale. He stood and looked over the building. The pumps standing with their hoses oddly still in place. The
windows are intact. The door to the service bay was open and he went in. A standing metal toolbox against one
wall. He went through the drawers but there was nothing there that he could use. Good half-inch drive sockets.
A ratchet. He stood looking around the garage. A metal barrel full of trash. He went into the office. Dust and
ash everywhere. The boy stood in the door. A metal desk, a cash register. Some old automotive manuals, swollen
and sodden. The linoleum was stained and curling from the leaking roof. He crossed to the desk and stood there.
Then he picked up the phone and dialled the number of his father's house in that long ago. The boy watched
him. What are you doing? he said.
A quarter mile down the road he stopped and looked back. We're not thinking, he said. We have to go back. He
pushed the cart off the road and tilted it over where it could not be seen and they left their packs and went back
to the station. In the service bay he dragged out the steel trashdrum and tipped it over and pawed out all the
quart plastic oil bottles. Then they sat in the floor decanting them of their dregs one by one, leaving the bottles
to stand upside down draining into a pan until at the end they had almost a half quart of motor oil. He screwed
down the plastic cap and wiped the bottle off with a rag and hefted it in his hand. Oil for their little slit lamp to
light the long grey dusks, the long grey dawns. You can read me a story, the boy said. Can you, Papa? Yes, he
said. I can.
On the far side of the river valley the road passed through a stark black burn. Charred and limbless trunks of
trees stretching away on every side. Ash moving over the road and the sagging hands of blind wire strung from
the blackened light poles whining thinly in the wind. A burned house in a clearing and beyond that a reach of
meadowlands stark and grey and a raw red mudbank where roadworks lay abandoned. Farther along were
billboards advertising motels. Everything as it once had been save faded and weathered. At the top of the hill
they stood in the cold and the wind, getting their breath. He looked at the boy. I'm all right, the boy said. The
man put his hand on his shoulder and nodded toward the open country below them. He got the binoculars out
of the cart and stood in the road and glassed the plain down there where the shape of a city stood in the greyness
like a charcoal drawing sketched across the waste. Nothing to see. No smoke. Can I see? the boy said. Yes. Of
course you can. The boy leaned on the cart and adjusted the wheel. What do you see? the man said. Nothing. He
lowered the glasses. It's raining. Yes, the man said. I know.
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Author
Genre
Form
Person
Amr Wahsh (Y9)
Gothic Fiction
Short Story
First
Tick if read
I stood completely still, not quite knowing what may lie beneath the headstone. It was the most
sorrowful day of my life. My mother’s wedding. She was marrying this psychopath named Silas, I
wasn’t liking him since the first day I ever met him and he was showing more of that at their
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wedding. For starters, he tried pushing her into the candles of the wedding cake! Until it happened,
He took out his knife, I saw it like a silver tooth about to bite, he shoved it into her back, she was like
a sponge. The police escorted him out of the area and took him straight to prison, no court, no judge,
they had seen it all with their own eyes. I knew quite well what lay beneath the stone, my mother.
Knowing I could only save her with the kiss of my fingers on her expired heart, I felt guilty.
It took me a while - a long while as the rain beat on the brittle leaves of the trees - to realise that
something was moving. I felt my stomach clinch, but wouldn’t let my fear eat me up. I considered
telling an adult, but I knew they would not believe me. My hopes were up in the air as I pressed my
hand against the trunk of a tree and said a prayer. As if the tree would be like a mother to me. But the
tree was silent and there were no useful things except for trees, tombs, and tarantulas. I was intrigued
by the shiny metal object next to one of the tombs. In spite of my curiosity, I was haunted by the
tomb's inscription 'Silas Blackstone', I ran my finger over the lettering and I felt it speak to me as if it
were alive. Who dug him out? Didn’t he murder my mother? He’s alive? There was a little skip in my
heartbeat as if the candle in my heart had blown out.. The light would remain so long as no breath
blew it out, especially not the breath of my fear. I would have my mother back again. Just a kiss on
her forehoed and all would be forgotten.
As I examined the shiny object, I discerned the faint outline of a shovel, but it was broken in half.
After grasping it into my hands, I began digging up his grave, and I heard the shovel swoosh, swoosh,
swoosh into the soil. And then I heard another swoosh but behind me I realised the swoosh was a
word “Well, well, well, what do we have here?” It was the haunting voice of Silas Blackstone that
made my throat contract immediately. In spite of my senses telling me to run, I turned around and
moved closer to the creepy figure, when suddenly, another voice appeared behind me, then another,
until I turned around and learned the bloodcurdling truth.
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Author
Genre
Form
Person
Tristan MacConnell
Travel Writing
Article
Third
Tick if read
Introduction: An account of survival and adaptation in Kenya, focusing on a 15 year old cattle herder.
At the foot of a ridge of successive hills, sparsely wooded with thorny acacias, lies a plain of shrubs, sand, and
gravel. The sun overhead is relentless, the sky cloudless, as it has been for months now. It is June, the depths of
the dry season, the land arid as an abandoned well, the hot wind an empty promise. Cast in relief against the
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austere beauty of the land is a dark, volcanic outcropping to the distant north that is visible for many miles in
every direction, while to the east shimmers the haze of Lake Turkana, a body of water that sprawls across
northern Kenya like a sluggish crocodile. In this part of the country, there are no paved roads, no piped water,
no electricity poles, no brick buildings, no school, no shops, and no crops. The landscape is coursed with dry
riverbeds, prone to long droughts and occasional floods; there is hot sand underfoot, and thorns on every
branch and stem.
Yet for Loura Ekaale, a rangy, shorn-skulled herder of the Turkana tribe, it is home, and a place he seems
made for: a Giacometti sculpture of a man, he is all taut muscles and leanness, his feet cracked from walking,
his face etched with lines, his eyes slits of obsidian permanently narrowed against the harsh light. He lives
with his two wives and six children in an isolated collection of five thatched reed huts, like upturned baskets,
clustered around a thorn-fenced goat enclosure. Ekaale and his family are pastoralists, livestock herders,
whose existence is contingent upon water and pasture. The freedom to migrate, to move in search of both, is
pastoralism’s fundamental strategy. Ever since he was a boy, Ekaale says, “I was led by green pastures.”
Turkana is a place and a people, and for both, migration has always been the path to survival, stretching back
through generations and far beyond, deep into prehistory, and further still into our evolutionary past, back
millions of years to when our first human ancestors emerged in Africa’s Great Rift Valley and then dispersed
in waves, out of the continent to the rest of the world.
The Rift Valley had fascinated me for decades. As a young student of anthropology, I had learned about human
evolution, about our first bipedal hominid steps, about the apelike australopithecines and the variety of Homo
species of which we today are the lone survivors. I learned how the remains of all of these were found in East
Africa and how each fossil was a phrase, a sentence, or sometimes a whole chapter in the story of where we
came from, and who we are. I learned how Homo erectus had left Africa to reach Asia and Europe, how early
Homo sapiens had followed in colonizing waves, developing agriculture, social stratification, monumental
architecture, and, eventually, all the things we call civilization: the industry, technology, consumption,
inequality, pollution, and destruction of the Anthropocene. Later, as a foreign correspondent in Africa, I lived
for years in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, four hundred miles to the south of Turkana, traveling widely to cover
the daily news of power and politics, conflict, and crisis, but only rarely did I visit the northern wilds, where
those sorts of stories were harder to discern, and even harder to sell. Still, I wanted to learn something of the
place where our human journey began, and where it continues today in a landscape that has held us, propelled
us out, and compels us back.
That dispersal, that movement in pursuit of opportunity, continues. Yet in a denial of this most fundamental
adaptive human behavior—our original survival strategy—modern migrants are more often feared than
welcomed, more often met with violence than kindness, more often left to perish than offered help.
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Turkana today is no biblical Eden. Rather, it is an unforgiving place where calamity is always a failed rainy
season away, and survival is contingent on knowledge and mobility. It is a place of geologic, climatic, and
human dynamism that demands and rewards movement. In so doing, Turkana remakes migration,
reconfiguring it as a fundamental human trait, challenging contemporary notions of the threats posed by
freedom of movement, between nations, through geographies, and across the borders and barriers erected to
stop the flow. Turkana reveals migration to be not just a right but an existential necessity.
For Ekaale, on the contrary, the threat is from anything that might limit movement: roads, fences, private
property, political boundaries, government policies, prejudice, injustice. Throughout his life, Ekaale has
engaged in multiple, overlapping forms of mobility, using movement, fluidity, pragmatism, and opportunism
to adapt to the changes around him.
Dry seasons are times of dearth, paucity of pasture, empty stomachs, parched mouths, high mobility, and big
distances, walking for days at a time without returning home. Wet seasons—scarcer nowadays as the climate
tips towards aridity and drought cycles contract—are times of plenty, of pasture and proximity to home, of
diets replete with milk and blood.
As an elder, Ekaale owns livestock but rarely herds them himself, for tending animals is a young man’s role,
one that teaches the skills required to survive, skills such as reading the land, learning the water points,
collaborating with allies, and avoiding conflict with enemies. “You have to know the hills and the trees,” he
tells me, as landmarks constitute one of the many maps that guide him through Turkana.
His oldest son, Lolamba, is learning these things now. Every morning, after the crested larks usher in the dawn
with song and the equatorial sun rises abruptly above the waters of the distant lake, Lolamba releases the
family’s fifty or so sheep and goats from their thorn-ringed kraal and, with nothing more than a small wooden
stool and walking stick, sets off for the day, returning only in the late afternoon. One morning, I walk with him
awhile through the scratchy tussocks of echemee—a hardy, saline soil–loving shrub that is dry-season forage
for goats—but his pace is brisk and light, at least twice mine, and I soon fall behind. The last I see of Lolamba,
he is paused on a basalt boulder in the saddle of Moru Sipo Hill, watching his livestock. Stick in hand, hand on
hip, leg slightly raised, he briefly and incongruously evokes Friedrich’s Wanderer above the Sea of Fog. Then he
hops to the ground and slips from view..
Ekaale is an acute listener and compelling storyteller. As he describes different ways of moving through the
landscape, his long limbs are folded like those of a contortionist entering a box. His elbows rest on his thighs,
his long fingers steepled in front of his chin. When talking, he leans forward solicitously and rubs his hands,
punctuating his answers with a clap or spread palms; when listening, he cocks his head, emitting a murmured
Mmmm of agreement and empathy, or an elongated Eh of understanding. When he talks of his livestock,
Ekaale smiles broadly, happily. He holds court beneath a thorny ebei, a Swiss Army knife of a tree, a Balanites
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related to the desert date, whose wood can be used to make tool handles, fences, poles, and stools, or for
charcoal and firewood, and whose seeds and fruit can be eaten.
Mobility is an essential strategy, as Ekaale’s first wife, Nakiru, explains to me one morning: “We move with the
rains, for if we stay in one place, the animals will die.” Livestock are food, money, and status. To be without
livestock is to be a nikebook, to have failed, to be one of “those who have nothing”; to have livestock is to have
everything, or at least enough. “Living is about how you provide for your family,” Nakiru says as she
breastfeeds her youngest child, seven-month-old Esukuku. “I can’t tell you if this life is hard, it is just life.” To
an outsider, perhaps a foreign visitor from the city, Nakiru’s life does indeed appear hard, but also simple,
unconfused, contented. The most common sounds around her homestead when I visit—besides the bleating of
sheep, buzzing of flies, and chirping of birds—is an almost constant chatter of conversation, and laughter. The
things that matter are all close at hand: family, livestock.
In contemporary Turkana, the word for “ancestors” is ngipen, and Ekaale can also navigate the land by their
resting places. He recently returned from a visit to his father’s grave, dug in a venerated position in the center
of a former goat enclosure, where Ekaale poured milk on the dirt and prayed for the recovery of his sick
daughter, Elepete. His prayer was answered, he says, beckoning to the five-year-old, who comes forward, shy
but healthy, the tartan blanket knotted at her shoulder parted to reveal parallel cicatrices on her chest and
belly. Besides landmarks and ancestors, Ekaale can also navigate the land by water sources and pastures,
memories and stories, social connections and rivalries, but these days he mostly navigates by motorcycle, a
125cc Honda “picky-picky” he uses to ferry goats to market, turning a walking journey of days into hours. The
motorcycle has also increased Ekaale’s social status: he is respected as someone who can travel far and fast,
conveying information and sharing news. The scene might appear timeless, but it is the opposite. It bursts
with time, the landscape fractures under the pressure of time.
Ekaale does not know the precise year of his birth, but he remembers being a small child in 1974, or, rather,
the year of the solar eclipse—Ekaru a Aribokin—in a calendar defined by significant natural and human events
such as heavy rains or drought, or even a particularly violent or destructive cattle raid. It was cattle raiding that
drove Ekaale and Nakiru here fifteen years ago; they migrated from the Loriu Hills, a two-day walk to the
southeast. Although Ekaale is highly mobile both day-to-day and seasonally with his goats and sheep, the
move to Moru Sipo was the first time he had relocated to a new living place. Each of these forms of migration
has its own name: the seasonal movement known as awosit, the rarer and more dramatic recentering of a life
called aramaken. The physical action of walking may be the same, but the distinction between the two is
intense, like the difference between commuting and emigrating.
Armed cattle raiding—aremor in Turkana—is a rite of passage for young pastoralist men. As a symbol of
masculinity and a way to accrue enough livestock to pay the bride price needed to marry, it serves both social
and biological functions. It is also an exercise in cohesion, bringing one group together against another—for
65
example, the Turkana against the neighboring Pokot. It was a Pokot raid on his village that drove Ekaale out.
He chose to leave for a place he had seen on his seasonal travels, a place deep in Turkana territory and far from
the Pokot raiders, where he could settle his family and live peacefully.
Seminomadic herding societies are found across Africa’s Middle Belt between the Sahara and the farming
lands farther south, and although numbers are slippery, the African Union reckoned a decade ago that one in
four Africans were pastoralists. This is no arcane livelihood, but one that uses mobility to survive in
environments characterized by erratic rainfall and frequent scarcity, where more settled lives are impossible. It
is a way of living that has persisted for many thousands of years, but it faces unprecedented pressure from
growing populations, expanding cities, privatization of lands, government policies that encourage—sometimes
enforce—sedentarism, and a changing climate that makes rain fleeting and pasture ever harder to find.
Recognizing these pressures, Ekaale is seeking a different kind of mobility for his children, not across
geography this time but society. “I want to put some children to school because I see life is not like before,” he
tells me. “Life has to have these two things: you have animals, and you learn to live the modern way.” It is a
tension he wrestles with, torn between ensuring a future for his children and maintaining a connection to the
land. “Both are important,” he says slowly, but he worries that if his children are drawn away, “they will forget
the customs of the Turkana people, how to herd livestock, and if they forget about this Turkana life, the family
will disappear, it will not exist; so the children may go to town and be scattered.” Yet he knows education is a
route to diversification, to options, choices, and alternative ways of living that help to ensure the family’s
survival, whether by herding, trading, fishing, farming, or laboring for wages. “Life depends on how you grew
up. I grew up in a family that takes care of animals, so I adopted the same,” he says. “Those who are fishing or
trading, maybe they have different skills, but even their life is good. And these businesses they do also depend
on my livestock: when I go to sell my goat, I buy their food, so we need each other.”
After talking for some hours about movement, change, and modernity, Ekaale says he would like to honor our
visit with an akiriket, a ritual feast. Preparation is a family affair. His teenage daughters, Amung and Eiyapan,
go to collect water. There are neither taps nor boreholes nearby, yet despite the heat and the absence of rain,
they find water in a knee-deep hole dug in the loose, gravelly bed of an occasional stream a mile or so away,
enough to scoop and fill their jerry cans. Lolamba picks out a sheep and drags it by its horns towards his
father, who waits, perfectly erect, spear in hand. A firm downward strike to the neck and the sheep buckles,
bleeds, dies. The children help gut and clean the carcass, which is placed, whole and unskinned, upon a pyre of
burning sticks; then they retire, for only initiated men may partake of the feast. Guests sit behind a crescent of
neatly piled stones, separated into their respective generation sets—either Those of the Mountain, ngimor, or
Those of the Leopard, ngirisae—and arranged in order of seniority. In front of them, Ekaale places choice
chunks of liver, kidney, and meat, all sliced and roasted right on the coals. As an uninitiated male, I may not
take a place at the stone crescent, nor may the photographer, who is female, but we are permitted to sit close
by and share the feast.
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The collision of modernity and tradition in Turkana creates stress, but also opportunity, and pastoralists are
nothing if not pragmatic. Behind Ekaale’s homestead, the conical Moru Sipo Hill rears up to the south, a
prominence high enough that a mobile phone company chose to build a 4G relay station on its summit. As a
result, while there’s neither electricity nor water nor roads, it is possible to livestream soccer matches and
watch YouTube videos without glitching. Late at night, Ekaale talks loudly and raucously with his visitors,
their faces lit by mobile phone screens and conversations routinely interrupted by jarring, jangling ringtones.
Mobile phones have made the sharing of information easier and faster, making them an essential tool of the
pastoralist’s trade. Ekaale charges his with a small solar panel and keeps it close at all times, clutched in his
hand or wrapped in the waistband of his sarong. Together they discuss the changing price of livestock, the
transformative value of a motorcycle, and that one time, many years ago, when Ekaale traveled far south to
Kitale, in Kenya’s lush, green farming highlands, just to see what it was like.
The chatter and laughter float through the night’s silence, drifting across the sand, gravel, rock, and thorn of a
landscape that still guides the lives of Turkana’s pastoralists, a landscape whose beauty, complexity, and
multilayered meanings Ekaale has offered me a glimpse of. But there is still more to be revealed here, beneath
the earth where lie the buried understandings of an ancient landscape and the deep history of Ekaale’s—and
our—ancestors.
22
Author
Genre
Form
Person
Sandy Patch
Documentary
Film
Third
Tick if viewed
For over 50 years, Baltazar Ushca has harvested the glacial ice that covers the highest altitudes of Mount
Chimborazo, the tallest mountain in Ecuador. This story reveals the perspectives of three brothers who were
all raised as ice merchants and how they’ve become affected in different ways by cultural changes in a small
indigenous community. Baltazar’s brothers have retired from the mountain and today, Baltazar continues to
climb, working alone as the last ice merchant of Chimborazo. View here:
(https://www.globalonenessproject.org/library/films/last-ice-merchant)
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