The Bromeliad 2 - Diggers

In the beginning...

...Arnold Bros. (est. 1905) created the Store.

At least, that was the belief of thousands of nomes who for many generations* had lived under the floorboards of Arnold Bros. (est. 1905), an old and respected department store in the middle of the city.

*[Nome generations, that is. Nomes live ten times faster than humans. To them, ten years is a long lifetime.]

The Store had become their world. A world with a roof and walls. Wind and Rain were ancient legends. So were Day and Night. Now there were sprinkler systems and air conditioners, and the nomes' small, crowded lives ticked to the clock of Opening Time and Closing Time. The seasons of their year were January Sales, Spring into Spring Fashions, Summer Bargains, and Christmas Fayre. Led by the Abbot and priesthood of the Stationer!, they worshipped in a polite, easygoing sort of way, so as not to upset him. Arnold Bros. (est. 1905), who they believed had created everything, i.e., the Store and all the contents therein. Some families of nomes had grown rich and powerful and took the names-more or less-of the Store departments they lived under ... the Del Icatessen, the Ironmongri, the Haberdasheri. And into the Store, on the back of a truck, came the last nomes to live Outside. They knew what wind and rain were, all right. That's why they tried to leave them behind. Among them was Masklin, rat hunter, and Granny Morkie, and Grimma, although they were women and didn't really count. And, of course, the Thing. No one quite understood the Thing. Masklin's people had handed it down for centuries; it was very important, that was all they knew. When it came near the electricity in the Store it was able to talk. It said it was a thinking machine from a ship which, thousands of years before, had brought the nomes from a far Store, or possibly star. It also said it could hear electricity talk, and one of the things the electricity was saying was that the Store would be demolished in three weeks. It was Masklin who suggested that the nomes leave the Store on a truck.

He found, oddly enough, that actually working out how you could drive a giant truck was the easiest part. The hardest part was getting people to believe that they could do it. He wasn't the leader. He'd have liked to be a leader. A leader could stick his chin out and do brave things. What Masklin had to do was argue and persuade and, sometimes, lie very slightly. He found it was often easier to get people to do things if you let them think it was their idea. Ideas! That was the tricky bit, all right. And there were lots of ideas that they needed. They needed to learn to work together. They needed tolearn to read. They needed to think that female nomes were, well, nearlyas intelligent as males (although everyone knew that really this wasridiculous and that if females were encouraged to think too much theirbrains would overheat).

Anyway, it all worked. The truck did leave just before the Storemysteriously burned down, and hardly damaging anything very much, it wasdriven out into the country.

The nomes found an abandoned quarry tucked into a hillside, and movedinto the ruined buildings.

And then they knew everything was going to be All Right. There was goingto be, they'd heard, a Bright New Dawn.

Whatever that was.

Most nomes had never seen a dawn, bright or otherwise, and if they hadthey would have known that the trouble with bright new dawns is thatthey're usually followed by cloudy days. With scattered showers.

Six months passed ...

This is the story of the Winter.

This is the story of the Great Battle.

This is the story of the awakening of the Cat, the Dragon in the Hill, with eyes like great eyes and a voice like a great voice and teeth likegreat teeth.

But the story didn't end there.

It didn't start there, either.

The sky blew a gale. The sky blew a fury. The wind became a wall sweepingacross the country, a giant stamping on the land. Small trees bent, bigtrees broke. The last leaves of autumn whirred through the air like lostbullets.

The garbage dump by the gravel pits was deserted. The seagulls thatpatrolled it had found shelter somewhere, but it was still full of movement.

The wind tore into the heaps as though it had something particularagainst old detergent boxes and leftover shoes. Tin cans rolled into theruts and clanked miserably, while lighter bits of rubbish flew up andjoined the riot in the sky.

Still the wind burrowed. Papers rustled for a while, then got caught andblasted away.

Finally one piece that had been flapping for hours tears free and fliesup into the booming air. It looks like a large white bird with oblongwings.

Watch it tumble... .

It gets caught on a fence, but very briefly. Half of it tears off, andnow that much lighter, it pinwheels across the furrows of the field beyond... .

It is just gathering speed when a hedge looms up and snaps it out of theair like a fly.