Tale of a Clock.

Chapter One: The Adrenaline Filled Heart

Chapter One

The Adrenaline Filled Heart.

The air was cool and moist, shards of sunlight cascaded down onto thick foliage, refracting light through the beads of dew and water droplets from the previous night’s storm. Steam rose from the wet ground - the forest floor; a complex mesh of moss, leaf litter, broken twigs in various stages of rotting, and specklings of wild flowers - splashes of colour in an otherwise dirty green world.

The forest was far from silent, a soundtrack was provided by the resident birds making themselves known to each other in a myriad of complex songs; the chirping of an innumerable community of insects, and white noise of the breeze in the leaves and branches overhead made up the backdrop, filling in any gaps - a constant wall of sound.

Snap.

The small, light brown, furry body of a mouse landed on the ground, a shaved wooden twig protrudes from the rodent’s side, the bloodied fur around its entry a dark, almost black red. A small figure, no more than six centimetres tall, walked up to the mouse and gently put his boot on the mouse’s neck, before pulling out the spear. This is Nod. A young borrower.

Nod grabbed a piece of cloth from inside his long, dark cloak, and wiped the blood from the end of the spear - nothing more than a sharpened matchstick - before stopping to examine the end. It’s splintered and blunted - today’s hunt is cut short. He then packed the spear into a thin backpack - the carved end pointing out and upwards, before taking the rodent’s tail with both hands and swinging it around and over his shoulder, a small grunt is let out by Nod as the lifeless body of the mouse rested on him. 

The speckled sunlight on the ground around Nod flickered for a split second, he reacted instantly and peered up into the branches above, his eyes narrowing as the sun hit them. He can’t stay in one place for too long. The forest is a dangerous place, and everything is food for something else. For a cricket, it’s a mouse; for a mouse; it’s a borrower.

For a borrower, it’s a hawk. 

Still holding the mouse tail, Nod pulled out a folded sheet of material with his free hand and threw that behind him over the body, to hide it from plain sight. He then pulled a hood over his head, and made one last glance around around the area. Borrower hunter lesson one: know your escape routes at any moment. Nod made a dash for it.

The sounds of the forest became amplified with every hurried step Nod took. There was no margin of error here -  a branch in the way; an incline too slippery; even one puddle squelch too loud - could slow Nod down, or worse - attract attention. 

The journey to safety with his prize seemed to take forever, and the forest noise in Nod’s ears began to morph into the continuous muffled beating of his adrenaline filled heart. 

Eventually, Nod reached a gigantic cliff of moss covered moist wood - A tall garden fence. Not slowing down at all, he ran right over to where two slats of the fence met, and jumped down into a small gap dug down in the soft earth between them.

On the other side, he hurried over to a small drain covered by a metal grate which was situated on the corner of a drab terracotta-coloured building, with his spare hand, he wiped some mud off of the cloak that he sustained from squeezing between the fence posts. He stopped by the grate and removed one of the four fishing hooks attached to the bottom corner of the backpack, without hesitation, Nod started tapping the hook on the edge of grate quietly, in a complex series of metallic pings. 

Almost instantly, a torrent of shallow splashes was heard beneath the grate as the faces of two other male Borrowers illuminated in the light seeping through the gaps in the grate.

“It’s Nod!” exclaimed one of them, in an excited whisper. 

“Did you get anything?” asked the other, with a sense of urgency.

Caring more about getting back to safety - Nod didn’t reply - instead choosing to gently swing the tail of the mouse from off his shoulder. He then took the body - still draped in material - and fed it through the the gap in the grate, he lowered it until he was only holding the last few hairs of the mouse’s hairy tail, before finally letting it drop.  He stumbled back as the weight finally left his body after what seemed an eternity. 

The two boys caught the mouse, but the weight caught them off guard and they both fell to their knees. They both got straight back up, and uncovered the cloaked rodent. 

Above them, Nod looked down at the two boys examining the mouse, and finally moving it out of the way. Breathing heavily, Nod looked up at the azure blue sky. What was previously cool, refreshing air was now dry and dense on the outskirts of the forest. He wiped his brow, glistening with sweat, before looking back down and stepping onto the grate. Within seconds, Nod slipped down into the drain himself. He landed comfortably before standing up and stroking the excess water of the bottom of the cloak.

Looking up at the other two Borrowers, Nod pulled back his hood and his face - framed by thick, dark, wild hair - is lit up by the sunlight streaming down from above the grating. His smooth tanned skin dirtied by dark thumb-sized stripes across his cheeks - accompanied by smudges of mud, tiny beads of sweat and minuscule spots of blood. “That should be enough for everybody.”