Hercufleas (3 page)

(Any human readers might find it strange that baby fleas can talk. But newborn fleas are not really babies at all. Inside their egg, they have spent a great deal of time listening to the world outside. And because their shells are strong but very thin, unhatched fleas hear their fleamily talking for months and months and quickly learn how to speak themselves.)

‘Never mind about your first word, little one,' said Min gently. ‘How about we give you a name, to cheer you up?'

‘Call him Tot,' said Jot.

‘Call him Little,' said Tittle.

‘Call him Peck,' said Fleck.

‘But I've already got a name,' said the hatchling, and it was the truth. Inside his egg, he'd wondered about many things: mostly questions he could not answer until after he hatched, like ‘What does red look like?' and ‘Do I like hugs?' and ‘What happens on Tuesdays?' But he hadn't ever wondered about his name. Not once.

‘You already have a name?' Min repeated in astonishment. ‘Where did you get that from?'

The little flea shrugged. He'd just always known it, as if it was floating around inside the egg before he even got there.

‘Well?' Pin leaned close. ‘What is it?'

The little flea smiled, because this would be the first time he would say it out loud.

‘I'm Hercufleas!'

T
he fleamily gawped at the little flea, then at each other, in amazement.

‘Hercufleas?' repeated Speck.

‘Hercufleas?!!' Fleck echoed.

‘What sort of a name is
Hercufleas
?' scoffed Burp.

Titch, Tittle and Dot shook their heads.

‘Can't you pick another name?'

‘Something a little smaller?'

‘Something flea-sized?'

But Min told them all to shush. Scooping Hercufleas into her arms, she gave him a gentle nip on his cheek. ‘I think it's a
wonderful
name,' she told him.

‘All right, all right!' Pin laughed. ‘Hercufleas it is.' Bounding over the table, he hugged the little hatchling too. ‘Welcome to the fleamily.'

‘Hooray!' everyone shouted, bundling forward and joining in the cuddle.

In the centre, Hercufleas closed his eyes and snuggled into Min's arms. He still didn't know what red looked like or what happened on Tuesdays, but he knew he liked hugs. Especially from his fleamily.

‘Let's give him the tour!' cried Fleck, and everyone cheered and nodded.

‘Show him the living room!'

‘Show him the boingy-boing room!'

‘Show him the cellar!'

‘Well, little one?' Min murmured in his ear. ‘Where would you like to go?'

Hercufleas smiled again, because that was the second thing he had never wondered about. It wasn't just his name he knew: it was something much more important, and far harder to explain.

He knew
why
he'd hatched.

What his purpose was.

His destiny.

‘I want to go on an
adventure
!' Hercufleas cried, and hopping out from the hug he jumped towards the house-hat's front door.

‘Now wait just a moment!' laughed Min, bounding over and tugging him back. ‘You can't go outside yet, Hercufleas.'

Hercufleas looked up crossly. ‘Why not?'

‘Because you're only three minutes old,' she replied, ‘and you haven't even seen the house-hat yet. If you want to go on an adventure, you should probably start
in here
before you go
out there.
'

Hercufleas thought about it. ‘I suppose that does make sense,' he said eventually.

With a cheer the fleamily seized hold of him, and before he knew it, Hercufleas was whooshing out of the kitchen to explore the house-hat. His fleamily took him down a hallway and up a staircase, where stamps showing princesses and dukes were licked to the wall like portraits. Hercufleas jumped when he saw the last one on the landing: a ferocious bearded man with smouldering eyes and an iron crown on his head.

‘That's the Czar,' said Tittle in a spooky voice. ‘He ruled Petrossia, the land to the north, years and years ago. Nothing left of him now but dusty bones, ruined castles and creepy portraits…'

‘Stop scaring your baby brother,' scolded Min.

‘I'm not scared!' Hercufleas insisted, hopping away from the Czar as fast as he could.

‘Look here, Hercufleas.' Min opened the door halfway up the stairs. ‘This is where we sleep.'

Inside the bedroom were a dozen matchbox beds, spaced around the curved wall like the numbers on a clock. On the headboard of the smallest bed, Pin wrote ‘Hercufleas' with an eyelash dipped in ink. Hercufleas liked his bed very much, with its mattress stuffed with mouse hairs and quilt of woven silk and feathers, but he was eager to explore more of the house-hat, so off they went again.

His fleamily rushed him up to the top floor, to a living room with twelve comfy armchairs and polka-dot wallpaper. Behind another door was a bathroom with a tin cup raised above a candle nub that turned the water hot.

‘We relax in there,' said Itch. ‘We wash in here…'

‘And up this way,' said Pin, leading Hercufleas up a straw ladder to the attic, ‘is where we have
fun.
'

Up in the house-hat's highest room, all the walls were made from glued-together elastic bands. There the fleamily bounced and whizzed like a dozen balls inside a lottery machine. They called it the boingy-boing room, and it was their second favourite room of all.

‘Whooooooooohooooooooo!' Hercufleas yelled, hurtling from one wall to the next. He landed by the door and looked up at Min with an enormous grin on his face.

‘Well?' she said. ‘Why don't you go boingy-boing some more?'

‘We'll teach you how to do star jumps!' said Tittle.

‘And somersaults!' said Itch.

‘And when you're
really
good, the double-pike-cross-split-topsy-turvy manoeuvre!' said Jot.

A long, loud gurgling echoed around the boingy-boing room.

‘Did you hear that?' Hercufleas said. ‘My tummy just said its first word. What does
gurgle-gurgle-glog-glog
mean?'

‘It means you're hungry,' said Min. ‘Come back down to the kitchen.'

Hercufleas shook his head stubbornly. ‘I've already explored there,' he said. ‘I want to go somewhere new.'

‘Trust us.' Min laughed. ‘You've explored nearly all the house-hat… But we've saved the best bit until last.'

‘You mean there's something even better than going boingy-boing?' Hercufleas said breathlessly as they hopped back downstairs. ‘What is it?'

Min smiled. ‘It's called dinner,' she said.

W
hile Min and Pin set the table, Hercufleas followed the others down to the kitchen's cellar and squeezed inside. With silent awe, he stared up at the racks of bottles, tiny as dewdrops, each one filled with a red bead of the world's rarest, most exquisite blood.

He hopped up and down the shelves, reading labels. There was dodo blood, rhino blood, platypus, narwhal and manatee blood. Blood the colour of crimson and scarlet and ruby and vermilion and puce and maroon. Now Hercufleas knew what red looked like. It looked…
delicious.

(Unless you are a flea yourself – or a vampire, or a head louse – then the idea of having blood for dinner is probably making you queasy. But imagine you are a flea, and suddenly blood becomes the yummiest thing in the world: like flies to a spider or cabbage to a slug or espresso coffee to a grown-up. Just because you or I might shudder at the very thought of gobbling such things, there will always be some strange creature out there who finds it tasty.)

Hercufleas wandered around the shelves, wondering which blood to pick. No two drops tasted alike, the others told him. Squirrel blood was nutty, dragon blood was fiery, sloth blood helped the fleas sleep and cheetah blood made them very untrustworthy at cards. There was even a drop of reindeer blood, sent over from Laplönd, which Min saved for festive occasions.

His brothers and sisters bustled around him, gathering what they wanted.

‘Hey, Slurp, let's have hyena blood again. It's a good giggle!'

‘Titch, how about we all drink chameleon blood, then play hide-and-seek later?'

Hercufleas was bewildered. So many flavours to explore! He didn't know where to start. The others began clamouring for him to hurry up, so finally he snatched a bottle at random and hopped back to the kitchen table.

Before they ate, Min made the whole fleamily recite a prayer to remind them how wonderful their life was, and how fortunate they were that they did not have to live like other fleas, who were the size of poppy seeds, and had to survive on hosts that did not want them there, and lived under the constant peril of thumbs and soapy baths and flea powder. The prayer was called
The Plea of the Flea
, and now she taught it to Hercufleas:

The plea of the flea

And the tick and the nit

Is to hop in hope

And only bite a bit.

Run from their fingers

Run from their thumbs

And we'll all jump to fleaven

When our last jump comes.

‘What's fleaven?' Hercufleas asked.

‘The heaven that fleas and all other insects go to after our short lives are through,' Min answered. ‘All the great and good bugs of the world go there, including Pinocchio's cricket and Anansi the spider. Now then. Let's say it together, shall we?'

The fleamily rushed through the prayer, then reached out and unstoppered their bottles. At once an indescribably delicious smell oozed into the kitchen. Hercufleas seized up his bead of blood and glug-glug-glugged it down. His belly's growl became a purr. A wonderful fiery feeling spread through his body. He felt proud. Brave. Not like a flea at all. He was a
CHAMPION!

Before he knew what he was doing, Hercufleas leaped onto the table and roared, ‘Whatever size his enemies, the winner's always HERCUFLEAS!'

Everyone stared at him. Dot began to giggle. Hercufleas gave her a haughty sniff, but suddenly his courage and pride all drained away. Why had he done that? Blood flushed from his belly up to his face as the rest of the fleamily laughed.

‘Looks like Hercufleas has a taste for
lion
blood!' Pin chuckled, leaning forward and reading the label on his bottle.

Min pulled him back down into his seat. ‘Fleas can only keep breathing and bouncing so long as they have blood,' she explained. ‘But be careful, Hercufleas: you are what you eat. The blood you drink becomes part of you, and changes you too. That drop of lion blood…'

‘Made me feel like a lion!' Hercufleas cried, suddenly understanding where his urge to pounce and roar had come from.

‘Happens to us all,' grinned Burp. ‘Last week I drank three drops of bat blood. Now I wake in the mornings hanging upside down inside the chimney!'

‘Blood isn't just food to us fleas,' said Pin, when everyone had stopped laughing. ‘It's
alchemy
.'

Now dinner was done Hercufleas sat back, sighing contentedly, his body fat and pink. Around him, his fleamily did the same. They no longer looked like shrivelled sultanas, but a bunch of juicy grapes. Pin and Min muttered silly things like: ‘What a fine vintage that was, bottled fresh from the vein!' and ‘Yes, the subtle hints of plasma perfectly complement the initial flavours of iron.'

‘Where are we going on an adventure next?' Hercufleas cried, but the fleamily were yawning and slumped in their chairs, and Min said it was time for bed.

H
ercufleas didn't want to go to bed. He had only been alive for Today so far – Tomorrow was an impossibly long time to wait for more adventures.

‘I want to
explore
!' he whinged. ‘I don't even know what's outside the house-hat.'

‘You shall,' said Min. Ushering him into the bedroom, she tucked him up in his silk and feather quilt. Then, snuffing out the lights one by one, she told the fleas a story, which was an adventure you went on inside your imagination. Burp and Slurp wanted a tale about the Bögenmann, but Min said it was too scary for little fleas only one day old.

Instead she told them about a talking cricket and a wooden puppet called Pinocchio. She stopped at the bit where Geppetto the carpenter is thrown into prison, promising to tell the rest of the tale another night. Then she fetched her leggolin, which was like a violin, only played with her feet. In the golden light from the doorway, she played the fleamily beautiful melodies too high for human ears to hear, until dreams came and took them off to sleep one by one.

All except for Hercufleas.

Long after the lights went out he lay in his bed, listening to everyone around him mutter and snore. He tried not to fidget and to keep his eyes closed, but it was impossible. His legs twitched, kicking off the covers. He sat up and looked at the door.