A Buffalope's Tale Read online

  BG059 - A Buffalopes Tale 26/8/10 10:46 Page i

  A BUFFALOPE’S TALE

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  By the same author FOR CHILDREN:

  Sebastian Darke: Prince of Fools Sebastian Darke: Prince of Pirates Sebastian Darke: Prince of Explorers Alec Devlin: The Eye of the Serpent Alec Devlin: Empire of the Skull Alec Devlin: Maze of Death Cursery Rhymes

  FOR ADULTS: The Sins of Rachel Ellis Tiger Tiger

  The Tarantula Stone Speak No Evil Black Wolf

  Strip Jack Naked Slayground

  Skin Flicks

  Burn Down Easy Bad to the Bone 1999

  Love Bites

  SCREENPLAY: Dream Factory

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  A BUFFALOPE’S TALE

  Philip Caveney

  Book Guild Publishing

  Sussex, England

  BG059 - A Buffalopes Tale_Ebook_Imprint 29/7/11 12:25 Page iv First published in Great Britain in 2010 by The Book Guild Ltd

  Pavilion View

  19 New Road

  Brighton,

  BN1 1UF

  Copyright © Philip Caveney 2010 The right of Philip Caveney to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in a retrieval system, in any form or by any means, without permission in writing from the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real people, alive or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Typeset in Palatino by Ellipsis Books Limited, Glasgow

  Printed in Great Britain by CPI Antony Rowe

  A catalogue record for this book is available from The British Library.

  ISBN 978 1 84624 729 3

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  For the many readers who have asked me how Max came to be so miserable – this book is for you.

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  Chapter 1

  For as long as I can remember, I have always stood out from the herd.

  The Great Migration

  That is to say, from the very beginning, I was different from my fellow buffalope. I didn’t really look any different from the others and, I’m sure, my habits were more or less the same as those exhibited by buffalope the known world over. But I had something that none of the others seemed to possess: an enquiring mind. It was this, more than anything else, that led me to become the creature that I am today, admired and revered across the known world as Max the Mighty.

  My earliest memories are of being with the rest of my herd on the great plains of Neruvia, and of being very close to my Mother, who, for the purposes of this story, I shall call Bess, as this is a name you humans will understand and it’s the closest-sounding human name I can find to her real one, which is achieved by expelling air through the nostrils. But I can hardly expect mere humans to master that technique; it’s all some of you can do to have an intelligent conversation in your own language.

  Bess was kind and attentive, quite the nicest mother a young buffalope could wish for, and she was always standing guard over me, keeping an eye out for trouble. Even now, if I close my eyes, I can still feel her great damp snout snuffling at me in the night and I can taste the sweet, rich milk that she gave me whenever I was hungry, which, if I am honest, was most of the time. I’ve always had a healthy appetite, which is why I’ve had such problems maintaining my figure over the years.

  My Father, who I shall call Dan, was a great hulking presence in my life, always on the lookout for predators and other dangers. I remember his huge curving horns and the big shaggy shape of him and, though he rarely exchanged more than a few words with me, most of them pretty stern ones, it was certainly comforting to have him around.

  Now, I could tell you loads of stuff about the buffalope life, but really it mostly came down to this: through the spring and summer, we stood around and ate grass; lots of grass; lots and lots of grass. The stuff was virtually coming out of our ears.

  And when autumn came creeping in, relentless winds blasting cold rain across the hills, it was then that the great migration would begin.

  It happened every year at more or less the same time. Melchior, the herd’s leader, would sniff the cold air with his nostrils. He would glance at the ancient sage bull, Lazarus, his most trusted advisor, and then he would lift his head and issue a great trumpeting bellow, which was the signal for us all to stop doing whatever it was we were doing and start migrating. Countless hooves would stir into action and we would be off, with a sound like rolling thunder, across the vastness of the plains.

  In those far-off days there must have been near enough a thousand of us. When danger threatened, the whole herd would break into a gallop and, when we did, the plains would shake beneath the force of our hooves. When we couldn’t run, the adult animals would form a protective circle around us youngsters, their mighty horns lowered to present any attacker with a circle of deadly grey spikes that only the most ravenous beast would dare to chance.

  The migration was long and arduous and we were heading South West to the hills of Torin, where, in a hidden valley, lay The Grove: a sacred place of sanctuary, known only to us buffalope. It was widely believed that The Grove had been bequeathed to the herd by the great buffalope god, Colin (again, the closest human name to his real one, which is made by making a deep grunt and adding a high-pitched whinny at the end). It was said that Colin had broken off a small piece of his own heavenly home and let it drift down to the earth. Mind you, even then I was not entirely convinced of the existence of Colin.

  The world was supposed to be hung from his nostrils on a great silver ring and, to be absolutely honest, I couldn’t quite see how such a thing was possible. The plains were massive and they were only a tiny part of the known world, so it seemed to me that the world itself must be immense and surely there could be no snout in existence that could carry such a weight?

  Lazarus was always telling us young buffalope stories about Colin and saying that we should be pure in heart so that when we passed over, we would go to him in the great wallow in the sky. There were many in the herd who claimed to have seen him, galloping across the clouds at sunset, but I put that down to them eating too many of the strangely shaped mushrooms that sometimes bloomed on the plains.

  In Torin, on the Western coast of the known world, the weather stayed more temperate and great orchards of pommer trees grew wild. We could feast on the windfall fruit right through the autumn and into the winter and, even then, amidst the roots of the trees, we could still nose out wild vegetables, grasses and lichen. Meagre pickings, to be sure, but through the warmer months we had built up great reserves of fat, enough to see us through until next spring, when, once again, Melchior would give his call and we would begin the journey back to the plains.

  It was the buffalope way of life, sure enough – but, even at that tender age, I was beginning to be irked by the inevitability of it. I had taken part in the great migration only twice in my young life and I was already getting well and truly fed up with it. For one thing, my hooves ached something terrible. It’s been a lifelong problem for me, one that nobody ever seems to take seriously. But I’m telling you, after days of marching across that blooming plain, they were killing me.

  For another thing, it was boring going through the same routine, year in, year out. I was longing for a bit of variety in my life. There’s no harm in t
hat, surely?

  As soon as I was able to talk – which, I confess, did not take me very long, I was forever asking my poor mother tricky questions. I well remember one particu - lar day, when we were browsing as usual in the midst of the herd and I felt that I simply had to have an answer to a problem that had been perplexing me for ages.

  ‘Mama,’ I said. ‘Why do we make the great migration every year?’

  ‘My dear,’ Mama said, ‘we do so because the rest of the herd do; and they do so because Melchior, our esteemed leader, says that it is time for the journey to begin.’

  ‘Yes, but it’s very hard on the hooves, Mama. It’s not nice having aching legs. Sometimes I swear my hooves feel as though they are about to drop off. Why must we be forever trooping up and down?’

  ‘It’s just the buffalope way,’ said Mama.

  ‘That’s no explanation,’ I complained. ‘You might as well say, because the grass is green! Here’s an idea for you. What would happen if we decided to stay here on the plains?’

  ‘You’d starve to death,’ said Papa, who was a buffalope who didn’t like to use any more words than were strictly necessary. ‘Or you’d freeze.’

  He was browsing a particularly lush bit of grass at the time and didn’t really want to be disturbed by my childish questions.

  ‘There wouldn’t be enough grass to feed an entire herd through the winter,’ added Mama.

  ‘Yes, but it wouldn’t be the entire herd, would it?’ I persisted. ‘The rest of them would go thundering off and we’d have whatever was left all to ourselves. There’s only the three of us, we’d be laughing.’

  ‘Not when a pack of lupers came after us,’ said Papa gloomily. ‘And started ripping us limb from limb.’

  ‘We could take care of them,’ I said dismissively, tossing my underdeveloped horns this way and that. ‘What are lupers but mutts with an attitude problem?’

  I must confess that I already had a vastly inflated opinion of my own abilities.

  ‘There’s safety in numbers,’ grunted Papa. ‘Now belt up and let me enjoy my dinner.’

  He let out a great gust of wind from his rear end, just to make sure I fully understood that as far as he was concerned, this was the end of the matter.

  A word about wind. I appreciate some of the more delicate amongst you humans will doubtless be raising your eyebrows at the very mention of such goings on, but let me assure you that to creatures that dine daily on acres of grass, the expelling of loud gusts of wind is an inevitability. Indeed, amongst buffalope, such a process has been raised almost to the level of an art form. Why, in our herd alone, I can recall certain buffalope who could produce notes, sound effects and even short pieces of music from their back ends. But I’m getting off the subject.

  Papa moved away a bit. Mama gave me a consoling snuffle with her nice wet snout.

  ‘You’re only a youngster,’ she told me. ‘There’s no reason to worry your little head over things you don’t really understand.’

  I felt like telling her that I did understand, only too well, but Papa was still close enough to give me a whack with the edge of a horn, so I kept my peace. But I felt sure, even then, that I wasn’t going to put up with this migration business for very much longer.

  Chapter 2

  Pestilence

  As it happened, the matter was soon taken away from me. It was high summer and I was just at the beginning of my third year, when the great pestilence came upon the herd and changed our way of life forever.

  Let me warn you now: this part of my story is not exactly a laugh riot. If you’re the sort who finds sickness a problem, skip on a chapter or two. Those of you who don’t mind shedding a tear, get your kerchiefs ready.

  I can remember the very day it started. I was playing with Luthor, a nice but rather dim fellow of around the same age as me. In many ways, he was my best friend. We were practising our head butts, something that buffalope are extremely good at and spend a lot of time trying to perfect.

  Under the proud gaze of our respective parents, the two of us would stand facing each other a good distance apart and we would snort and stamp our feet and generally make a lot of noise. After a while, we would run at each other and bash our horns together with a hideous clacking sound, almost knocking ourselves unconscious in the process. Then we’d stagger away, shaking our heads to try and dispel the dizziness, before facing up to each other and going at it again.

  Yes, I know, a pointless exercise. In fact, I seem to remember thinking that very thought, but I was only doing it to please Papa, who seemed to set a lot of store by this kind of stuff and wanted me to grow up to be a big, tough customer, just like him. Anyway, Luthor and I were just lining ourselves up for the next bash when, suddenly, a frightful bellow filled the air and we all turned to look.

  We saw that one member of the herd, a rather skinny and moth-eaten old chap whom I shall call Angus, was staggering towards us looking very distressed. As he drew nearer I saw that his eyes were all red and filled with pus and that thick saliva was dribbling from his open mouth. A mantle of black flies buzzed continually around his head and he was making sounds of distress . . . no actual words, you understand, just a hideous bellowing as though he was in great pain.

  ‘What’s wrong with Angus, Mama?’ I asked. ‘He looks a bit rum, if you ask me.’ But she just shook her head.

  ‘Come away from him, dear,’ she said, and I could hear the note of fear in her voice. ‘He doesn’t look at all well.’

  ‘No, he doesn’t,’ I agreed. ‘Do you think he’s eaten a bad mushroom?’

  As we watched, appalled, Angus’s front legs seemed to buckle beneath him and he crumpled untidily to the ground. He lay there roaring and moaning and, pretty soon, a group of buffalope were gathering around him, nudging him with their snouts and asking him stupid questions like, ‘Are you all right, Angus?’ I ask you, did he look like he was all right? I took a step towards him, intent on asking a more sensible question, like, ‘Where does it hurt?’ but Papa’s voice halted me in my tracks.

  ‘Stay away,’ he told me. ‘I’ve seen this before. He has the pestilence.’

  ‘What’s that when it’s at home?’ I asked, mystified.

  ‘It’s a bad thing, little one,’ said Mama. ‘A summer sickness. If you catch it, you die.’

  ‘What?’ asked Luthor, in his slow-witted way. ‘You mean, like really die?’

  Papa gave him an annoyed look.

  ‘Of course,’ he said.

  But Luthor still wasn’t getting the message. ‘No, but, like if you get it, you’d be . . . dead?’

  ‘Yes,’ growled Father. ‘Is there something about the word “die” that you don’t understand? You would fall sick and you would drop dead, very soon afterwards. So stay away from him. And tell everybody else you meet that they should do the same.’

  Luthor nodded. He seemed to have understood. He trotted back over to his parents to tell them the news. I looked at the great press of buffalope standing around Angus and I felt a twinge of worry go through me.

  ‘They aren’t exactly keeping their distance,’ I observed.

  ‘More fool them,’ said Papa. ‘Come on.’

  And he led us through the herd to stand on the outer edges of it, as far away from Angus as was possible without actually leaving the safety of the herd.

  It was a blazing hot summer that year. The grass grew dry and yellow, like wisps of straw and in places the parched earth broke open in great jagged cracks.

  The next day, we could hear the bellows of other stricken buffalope coming from various places in the midst of the herd. News travelled like wildfire from creature to creature.

  ‘Harry has the pestilence, now! Bertha is sick! Edward isn’t feeling too clever!’

  I tell you, it was enough to make you feel very gloomy about the future. I’ve never been very good with sickness. If somebody starts throwing up, I’m out of there like a shot.

  Melchior passed word among us that each morning we were
to move away to new pastures, leaving the sick and dying behind us. He warned us that no matter who fell ill – mother, father, sister or brother – they were to be left well alone.

  As the days passed, the situation got steadily worse. More and more of our number succumbed to the sickness and as each successive beast fell prey to it, the herd would move off to a safe distance, leaving a series of shaggy heaps lying in the grass behind us, at the mercy of the carrion beasts of the plains. Vultures and buzzards filled the sky and packs of wild mutts closed in for the kill. Even as we walked away, we could hear the anguished roars of those we had left behind, as hungry jaws got to work on them.

  I could see what the herd was trying to do, but it quickly became clear to me that we would never be free of the sickness as long as we stayed together. The pestilence was hopping gleefully from one shaggy body to the next. Moving away when a creature was actually displaying symptoms of the illness was leaving things far too late. The next morning, I tried to explain this to my parents.

  ‘If we stay with the herd, we are history,’ I told them. ‘It’s as simple as that.’

  ‘But what else can we do?’ protested Mama. ‘Being with the herd is the only life we know. To strike out on our own would be too dangerous.’

  ‘Not as dangerous as staying with the herd,’ I assured her. ‘They are dropping like flies out there. I’m telling you, we’ve got to break away.’

  ‘But what of the predators?’ asked Papa, who, for once, was actually taking me seriously. ‘The lupers and panthers . . . I cannot hope to protect you both on my own.’

  ‘Papa, we will have to take our chances,’ I said. ‘Unless you want to end up like the others. And besides, I can give any predator that comes after us a jolly good thrashing.’

  Papa eyed me doubtfully.

  ‘You couldn’t thrash your way out of a ruddy pommer orchard,’ he said disparagingly. ‘You’re not even fully grown, yet.’