Monday 5th October 2015
I couldn't sleep much last night, and by around 6am I stopped trying. I climbed down from my sleeping-table in the basement, hauled myself up the stairs to the ground floor, and climbed out through the brownie-flap to go for a walk down to the dying oak tree at the bottom of the garden. It all seems strangely empty now that my friend Toby and the rest of the Tree People have gone off in search of new trees to colonise. I hope they're all right. If the world can be a strange and frightening place when you're 20cm high, what must it be like to people 2mm high?
Today, though, the strange person who came shoving his way through the long grass, scattering the Grass People who make their homes in clusters of grass stalks bound together, was nearly as tall as I was. He looked much heavier, too – not because he was as broad-bodied as the dwarves in the mountains where I come from, but because his entire body was made out of clay.
His torso and his thick, cylindrical arms and legs were dressed in a shirt and trousers coloured in patches of green and brown, which apparently is what a soldier's uniform nowadays looks like. But his stubby arm-ends and leg-ends (there was nothing that could really be called hands or feet), and his round, almost featureless ball of a head, were bare and exposed to the wet grass. With every step he took, he left terracotta-red traces on the grass, as if his whole body was one open wound. He winced, but he ploughed on as if pain had ceased to matter to him.
I wondered whether he had originally had realistic hands and feet, and had squashed them into solid lumps or worn them down on his long walk. Probably he had never had them. He looked like the simplest possible clay doll that a child could have made, so featureless that it was really more an 'it' than a 'he' or 'she' – but still, I couldn't stop thinking of him as 'he'. His head didn't even have a smiley face drawn on it, only two holes indented in the front to represent eyes, and two more on the sides to represent ears.
No – not just representing eyes and ears. The eye-holes glowed red. They weren't merely normal eyes that happened to be red, like mine, and they didn't look as if someone had added tiny red light-bulbs to a clay doll. It was more as though they were windows to a fire burning inside his head.
At any rate, he seemed to be able to see where he was going. If so, did the ear-holes mean that he could hear, too? Experimentally, I called, 'Good morning!' The clay man turned and looked at me. I waved. The clay figure stepped back nervously, and held up his arms, as if surrendering.
'Most honourable clay person,' I said, 'there is truly no need to be afraid. I mean you no harm, but I must admit that I'm excited to meet another homunculus, when I thought I was the last.'
The clay man shook his head so violently that I was afraid it might fall off.
'Are there more like you?' I asked.
The clay man put an arm-end over his eyes. It stuck to his face. When he had wrenched it away, shuddering with pain as he did so, the clay that had torn away from his arm almost obscured one eye. Of course, he had no fingers to rub his eyes with, nor eyelids to stretch, but he contorted his face until that fiery hole shone as round and bright as the other.
He seemed very frightened, though still trying to be brave. I could hear his heart pounding. I didn't know how a clay doll could have a heart, but it sounded about the size and speed of the heart of a mouse, and he smelled strongly of house-mouse. Of course! You can create a homunculus only by taking the life-force from something else, and, where my creator had made us from invertebrates, this homunculus had obviously been made from a mouse. Apart from the mouse-smell, he smelled – well, not like any clay I had ever smelled, but like a mixture of gypsum, Vaseline, and sheep's wool. I didn't know what he could be made of if not clay, but he didn't seem to have hardened or dried out. Perhaps this was part of the magic that had made him.
Finally, he reached a decision. He picked up a twig from under the tree, which he could do only by stabbing it deep into his arm-end. Then, he tried to use the tip of the twig to draw on his face. After a few clumsy attempts, he stomped forward towards me, pointed the twig at my mouth, and then, with his free arm, pointed at himself.
Hoping I had guessed correctly what he meant, I pulled the twig out of his arm and pressed the wound closed (hoping also that the fragments of bark trapped inside wouldn't fester). I felt sick at what I was doing. I'm horribly squeamish. Last month, Bryony, one of the fairies who live here, had been attacked by an owl, and I had dressed her wound, but that made me feel ill too. I wished my brother Mizell was still alive. He was the only one of us who was truly interested in medicine, and used to spend hours studying the laboratory notes of the alchemist who created us. If Mizell had been human, he would definitely have been a doctor.
Well, he wasn't here, and I was. I took the stick and drew the line of a smile on the clay man. He shook his head, held his arms so close together that they almost touched, and then spread them wide apart. He wanted a mouth that opened.
I thrust the stick into his face, stabbing a hole, and then waggled the stick to and fro to enlarge it. When I withdrew my stick, the clay man stretched his round gap of a mouth into the broadest smile he could manage without closing it (just in case he could never open it again).
'Ank oo,' he said. 'Ank oo eghy ngukch.'
'You're welcome,' I said. 'Would you like to come with me? If you're running away from a cruel master, I did the same myself, and I'm sure that my friends will look after you and protect you, just as they have me.'
The clay man nodded, and stomped forward, stopping when he caught sight of his reflection in a jam-jar lid lying on the path. I had read stories where ugly people, such as Frankenstein's Monster, were terrified when they first caught sight of their own reflection, but this person didn't seem surprised. Of course, if he was one of many brothers, he must have had a fair idea of what he looked like. He only shook his head sadly, then brightened.
'Kang oo shkulk gee?' he asked. 'I glike gy gou – ngy ngouch,' he corrected himself, trying to speak as clearly as possible. 'Kang you gich ngee a ngoazh? Ee-yah? Hang ang geek? Kleazhe?'
'I can do my best,' I said. I'm not a sculptor any more than I'm a surgeon, but thinking of the task as sculpture made it slightly less daunting.
'Ang kake gish och!' added the clay man angrily, gesturing to his jacket. 'Ugicorng! I'ng gok a sholgier! I'ng a gezherker!'
'Understood,' I said soothingly – though I couldn't tell for sure whether he was describing himself as a deserter or a beserker. Either way, he clearly hated his uniform, and hated being forced to be a toy soldier.
Suddenly, he gave a scream of terror. 'Ook ouk! Ik'sh a goy!'
He turned to run away, toppled over and put out his arms just in time to avoid falling on his newly-made face. The impact left his arms noticeably shorter and thicker, with bits of gravel sticking in the ends.
'It's all right,' I said. 'This is my…' – I could see it wasn't a good idea to use the word 'master' to someone whose experiences had all been of tyranny and abuse, as mine had once been – 'my friend. Ben. He won't hurt you.'
'Naturally will I not!' said my Master, speaking English as I had done (the clay man's speech was hard to make out, but it sounded more like an attempt at English than anything else). He knelt down (but carefully, in case there were any Grass People on the path) to get a better look at the new arrival. 'I have never – seen you before. Where – do you come from?'
The clay man said something I couldn't make out, which sounded like, 'Gish keyeging hoang, ing wayah. Shek-kenger gurg, ngingekeeng gorky.'
'He's the first homunculus I've met in three hundred and forty-eight years,' I said. 'He hasn't told me much about his life yet, but I'd guess that he's running away from a cruel master. I don't think he's going to put you in as much danger as I did,' I added. I certainly didn't feel ready to tell my new friend about my past just yet.
'But he is a homunculus? Like you? Looked – did you look like that, when you younger were?'
'Certainly not!' I snapped, before realising that this was, in fact, a reasonable enough question. 'Clearly, this one is made rather differently from me – he seems to have been created using a mixture of homunculus technology and golem technology, in fact. As you can see, he's modelled out of clay, like a golem, but his activating principle is the life-force of an animal – a mouse, I think – rather than sacred writing on his forehead.'
'Hello. Don't be frightened. Want – do you want to come with us?' said my Master. He held out a hand invitingly, palm upwards on the ground, so that the clay man could climb onto it if he wished.
'It's not a good idea to touch him,' I said. 'He's made of raw clay, not baked, and it's very sensitive. Perhaps if you fetched a tin tray for him to climb onto, he might let us carry him to the house. After all, wherever he's come from, he's had a long journey and he must be tired.'
My Master went to the house while I stayed to try to reassure my new friend. I introduced myself, and asked him his name. He was frustrated at being unable to pronounce it more nearly than 'ngoush', but when he resorted to emitting high-pitched 'Eeek! Eeek!' noises, it was easy enough to decode.
'I'm pleased to meet you, Mouse,' I said. 'To be honest, my original name was Fliegenbein – fly-leg – because I was created from some kind of insect. Twigleg is just the name I use in England.'
This seemed to worry Mouse more than reassure him. 'Hliegengein?' he repeated suspiciously. 'Izhng'k gak a Gherngang ngaing?'
'I suppose it is,' I said. I didn't think that there had been a single country called 'Germany' when I was created, and I wasn't sure whether the region I came from was part of it anyway, but it seemed a near enough description.
'Ang yaw hriengg' – Mouse's voice was heavy with sarcasm, perhaps at the idea that a human could ever be a true friend – 'he'sh a Ghernang koo, ishn'k he?'
'Yes, he is. We only moved here a couple of months ago.'
'A gnakshi shky? Aw a hrekughee? Izh hee Gewish?'
'I don't know.' If my Master had any religious beliefs, they were probably nearer Buddhism than any of the Abrahamic faiths, but perhaps we weren't so different from refugees. 'He's just a boy,' I said. 'He doesn't have any parents, so a kind man we met on our travels offered to let us come and live with him. You can meet him, soon, if you come with us. You'll like him. I don't think any of them are gnakshi, but I'm not sure what that is.'
'Ey gong ush. Eghery ngike. Huh goy who gnaig ngee – he wonksh sholger koo krokek hing, ing ger waugh. Gak'sh why he gakesh ush.'
'A boy wants you to protect him in a war? Against grown men?'
'I gink sho. He won'k shay. Angyway, I gon'k wonk koo hike. I'h hrung away.'
'I don't blame you,' I said. 'Well, there isn't a war on here, and you're welcome to stay for as long as you like.'
By now, my Master had returned with a baking-tray. Mouse looked at it in horror. 'He'gh going koo cook ngee!' he wailed. 'Gush llike ghee ugher goy!'
'No, no, I promise he won't. He isn't like the boy who made you. This is just to carry you back to the house, because it's a long way to walk.' I stepped into the tray, and Mouse hesitantly did the same. I felt curious, perhaps too much so to be tactful. 'If clay men like you get baked, do they go stiff and rigid?' I asked.
'Ngo! Ghey gurshk inkoo hlaing!'
'Into flames?' Whatever Mouse was made of didn't sound like any clay I had ever encountered, if it was flammable. 'We won't let anything like that happen to you, I promise.'
My Master was quiet as he carried us back to the house, but when he had set us down on the coffee table in the living-room, as the kitchen table was much too crowded with people having breakfast, he held out his hand for me to climb up his arm. 'Twigleg,' he said, still speaking English so as not to exclude our guest, 'want you to school – do you want to come to school with me today, or do you want to stay here?'
'I'd love to come with you,' I said. 'But I think I'm going to be too busy.'
