This is not something that happens often to a poisonous centipede. Harry was generally very busy about something or other. Chasing things like beetles, ants and worms, biting them with his poison pincers, and eating them; running away from bigger things like snakes and rats trying to eat

him

; exploring in the tunnels; playing with George, his best friend; or just being at home in his nest-tunnel with his mother, Belinda.

As perhaps you know, Harry was not his real, Centipedish name. This was (are you ready for this?) Hxzltl. And George’s was Grnddjl. And Belinda’s was Bkvlbbchk. They’re hard to say. But then, so is any word, if you leave the vowel-sounds out.

Try it with your own name. Bet you can’t say it in Centipedish so anyone would recognise it. I mean, say your name is Daniel, in Centipedish (which leaves out the a’s, e’s, i’s, o’s and u’s) it would be Dnl. If your name’s Rebecca, it would be Rbcc. If your name

begins

with a vowel, say Anna or Ursula or Oscar, it’s even worse – I mean, how could you say Nn or Rsl or Scr?

But that’s the way centipedes talk to each other – well, I say “talk”, it’s more of a crackle. Too faint for human ears to hear. Often they just signal with their feelers. That’s why they’re rather strange, secretive, mysterious creatures.

You’re really lucky to have me to tell you about them.

Where was I? Oh yes. Harry. Being bored for once.

He’d spent the early part of the night, since he woke up, helping his mother in their nest-tunnel. He’d straightened out his leaf-bed and rubbed his head on the earth floor to polish it.

Then Belinda had brought home a stag beetle for their breakfast and he had helped her get its massive jaws and its hard carapace off and had hauled them out to their rubbish tip tunnel. Then, while they ate, he asked for a story and his mother told him one about a family of marine centipedes.

“Once upon a time, beside the great no-end puddle, there lived a family of centipedes that could swim.”

The stories always began like that. Harry loved them. He thought marine centipedes – his distant cousins – were brll, not to say cl and wckd. But she cut the story short at the most exciting part, because she thought she heard something interesting bumping about on the no-top-world over their heads, and scuttled off to investigate it.

That left Harry, tummy full of stag beetle, not feeling like moving much, wanting to know the end of the story – and missing George. Who was missing.

I mean, he’d disappeared. This was not unusual. George was a free spirit. He didn’t have a mother (though he borrowed Belinda when he was lonely or hungry). No one to keep tabs on him and stop him doing silly or dangerous things.

So quite often, he went off and had an adventure on his own. Then he was sometimes gone for nights. Harry and George were getting to be big centis now (a centi is a child centipede). A bit like teenagers. So Belinda couldn’t keep control the way she used to.

Harry lay on the floor of the nest-tunnel. He stretched himself to his full length, which was now about five inches. All his segments (he had twenty-one, with a pair of legs on each, forty-two legs altogether) felt lazy. And yet in Harry’s head was an urge to go somewhere, do something, have an adventure. Only, what?

He let himself play with the idea of going along the forbidden tunnel and Up the Up-Pipe into the Place of Hoo-Mins. He and George had done that once, when the white-choke (which was smoke) had driven them out of their usual tunnels and they had had to climb into the Hoo-Min’s home, up his drainpipe, and

very nearly

never came back again.

But no. That was too scary. Harry had a healthy fea

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Harry the Poisonous Centipede’s Big Adventure

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