Some of you might be wondering who the scorch Perry the
Prickler is, but I hope most of you are screaming, “I love you, Perry!” By the
end, I hope I can add all of you to my growing list of fans across the world.
Before I get into a typical day in my life, I’ll explain who
and what I am to those of you who are a bit slow and haven’t yet read Fire Country by David Estes. A prickler,
which is what I am, is what most of you twenty-first century humans call a
cactus. So yeah, I’m a cactus. Before you yell out “BORING!” and close this
webpage, give me a chance to show you just how awesome I really am. (And if
that’s not enough incentive to keep reading, if you don’t read the whole way
through I’ll jab you with my prickly barbs. And your friends, too!)
More specifically, I’m a cactus in a place called FireCountry, a rough land of desert sands and barren cliffs, where the few
survivors are either built for the hot-as-scorch climate (like me!) or learn to
survive over the course of many years, like a few of the human tribes that live
here.
You’re probably still thinking that my life as a cactus in
the desert would be boring, right? I mean, I’ve got no way of moving around
because my legs are stuck in the sand, I have no one to talk to except the
buzzards and crows—who like to use me for bathroom target practice—and I have
very few friends. Trust me, my life is anything but boring. So let me tell you
the story of what happened today…
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…wait, wrong story,
let me try that again. Once upon a time…no, no, no, stupid, Perry! Bad, Perry!
Maybe I haven’t given David Estes enough credit for how hard it is to write
stories. But I can’t let him show me up or I’ll never hear the end of it. I’ll
tell this story if it kills me. So here we go:
I didn’t wake up when the Sun Goddess peeked over the
horizon because I was already awake. In fact, I’m always awake, because most
pricklers are notorious insomniacs. There’s just too much to see in the world
and I’d hate to miss something because of a long nap! In any case, the night
had been cool and calm. A burrow mouse or two had crept past me, sniffling at
my skin, but I’d jabbed them with my prickly barbs and they’d scurried away. Don’t let the sandstorm hit you on the way
out, suckers! I’d yelled.
As the sun rose higher across the red sky, I leaned back,
basking in its warmth on my face. The gentle breeze swayed my arms from side to
side and I felt my juice production increase inside my thick skin. (Side note:
if anyone wants to come by for a visit, I’ll give you a sip of my fire juice in
exchange for a back scratch.)
That’s when it happened. A strange-looking (aren’t all humans strange-looking?) girl ran
toward me carrying something bulky in her arms, screaming bloody murder, as if
she had a pack of Cotees after her. Now, for those of you who don’t know,
Cotees are the mangiest mutts around, the lowliest of low canines, too small
and weak to be dangerous on their own, but absolutely deadly in a pack. As it
turns out, this particular human did
have a pack of Cotees on her tail. There were five of them and they were
drooling something fierce, just itching to sink their teeth into her sun-browned
flesh.
“Perry!” she shouted, which is when I realized I knew this
particular human. I didn’t like her that much, but I would call her a friend.
Siena. A skinny girl who always seemed to get herself into plenty of trouble.
Like now, for instance. She’d run into me—to her detriment—on more than one
occasion, but now it was clear she was scorch-bent on using me as a barrier
between her and the Cotees.
Heya, Skinny, I
said in her head. What can I do ya for?
“Shut yer searin’ mouth, Perry, and git outta the way!” she
shouted, her long strides carrying her closer. Her knees knocked together and
she almost went down, but just managed to keep her balance while clutching the
large, awkward object to her chest.
I didn’t respond, because she knows searin’ well that I
couldn’t “git outta the way,” as she put it, even if I’d wanted to, which I
didn’t. So I said nothing, just did my best to look menacing as I chanted, Die Cotees, DIE!
Those stupid Cotees pulled up sharply, their filthy claws
skidding in the dust, giving Siena enough time to duck behind me and drop what
she was carrying. It was long and odd-shaped and wrapped in a thick tug-skin
blanket.
What the scorch are
you doing, Siena? I asked, and then shouted over to the mutts, COTEES! You’re trespassing on private
property! Get going before I bury your butts in a fire ant hole!
“Ya think that’ll work, Perry?” Siena said, her hand
touching my skin in between my prickly barbs.
Not a chance, I
said, watching the Cotees look at each other, their tongues lolling out the
side of their mouths. One of them seemed to shrug as if to say, It’s just a regular old prickler, even if
it’s talking to us.
And then they charged.
Siena might do a lot of wooloo things—like trip over her own
feet and run into sharp-barbed pricklers—but she can shoot her pointers like no
other. As the Cotee pack came at us, she withdrew her bow and grabbed a
pointer, nocking it like a pro. She shot the first pointer from a position just
above my right arm, and it flew straight and true and slammed into the head of
the lead Cotee, right between its eyes.
He yelped and flew back, crashing into one of the others
while the remaining three kept a-comin’. Siena whipped out another pointer and
strung it up and ziiiiiip! She nailed
one in the chest, dropping it like a sack of ’zard meat.
The remaining two dogs were so close I could smell their
foul breath, see the half-starved desperation in their blood-shot yellow eyes.
Siena ducked around one way; they went the other, with me caught in the middle.
They circled me two or three times, a game of Cotees and burrow mice, until the
Cotees finally wised up and realized that splitting up was the best course of
action. So one went one way and one the other, with Siena trapped between them.
So she shot one in the eye with her next pointer, jumped
over its dead, bleeding corpse, and kept on hustling around me. By this point I
was getting so dizzy from trying to watch all the action at once that I felt
like lying down—but of course I couldn’t do that ’cause I was stuck firmly in
the sand. I just wanted it to be over, because I was itching to know what was
in that tug-skin blanket Siena hauled all the way across the desert.
Siena fumbled around, trying to get her next pointer out,
but it was stuck in her satchel and that Cotee was picking up speed, determined
to catch her, snarling and snapping its jaws. And, of course, Siena tripped.
She went down hard, all knees and elbows, reaching for me as
if I could reach out and help her. The Cotees eyes grew huge and hungry and she
was dead tugmeat—my only human friend was going to die.
No! I shouted,
catching a bit of wind and leaning into it, forcing my sway as far as I’d ever
let it go, to the point where my main trunk felt like it was cracking, like I
might break in half and topple over—but I kept stretching even further, until I
was so close to the Cotee I could feel his matted fur brushing up against my
skin…
ARGH! I yelled,
leaning even further, smashing myself into him, stabbing him with a hundred
prickly barbs and knocking him off balance. He yelped and twisted to the side,
missing Siena by the slightest of margins, his coat blooming with red spots of
blood.
As I sprung back to my normal position I was praying to the
Sun Goddess that I didn’t have any internal damage. Siena rolled away from the
sprawled out Cotee and then leapt to her feet, finally managing to extract her
pointer. The Cotee, looking more haggard by the second, scrambled to its feet
and charged, its mouth open wide. Siena calmly strung her pointer, aimed it,
and shot it.
Right into the Cotee’s mouth. The beast’s head snapped back
and it did a full backflip, landing hard in the dust, which quickly formed a
cloud around it.
And I let out a deep breath even though I don’t have lungs
and don’t need to breathe. Do you always
have to make a big entrance? I asked.
Siena, breathing heavily, laughed and said, “Only for you,
Perry.”
That’s when I saw it—the last Cotee. Not the one she’d just
shot, but the only one she didn’t—the one that had got knocked back by the
first one she killed. It seemed we’d both completely forgotten about it, and
now it was racing toward Siena from behind, while she was turned away from it.
Siena! I shouted.
Somehow, someway, she seemed to understand exactly what was happening and
ducked just as the Cotee sprung at her. The surprised mutt blew past her, its
claws outstretched, just missing her…
…and flew right toward me.
In an act that Siena would later described as “Heroic” and
“So like Perry,” I didn’t move even the tiniest bit. I stood there, stalwart
and prepared to do what I had to do to save my friend, even if it would hurt
me.
As it turned out, it didn’t hurt me in the least. The Cotee
crashed into me, a thousand prickly barbs stabbing into its skin, its eyes
widening, its jaws clamping shut, its body going limp. The Cotee got stuck to
me, which was both exhilarating and disgusting in equal measure, its dead body
hanging from my barbs.
“Yuck,” Siena said, and I hoped she was referring to the
dead Cotee.
Carefully, so as to not break any of my barbs, she eased the
Cotee carcass from my skin and placed it aside with the others. “We make a good
team, Perry,” she said.
At least one of us
does, I said, and she rolled her eyes because she thought I meant me. When
really I meant her. It was my little secret and I laughed inwardly.
“I’ve got a surprise for you, old friend,” she said,
returning to where her tug-skin blanket sat covered in dust.
For mwah? I said,
genuinely surprised. No one’s ever given
yours truly a gift. What is it?
She pulled out a shovel, which I thought was an odd gift,
but then she started digging a hole next to me. What are you doing? I asked. She ignored me and kept digging.
I was about to check to make sure she wasn’t planning on
burying the Cotees in that hole, when she said, “That’s plenty deep enough,”
and threw down the shovel.
And then she did the most unbelievable thing.
Siena lifted that tug-skin blanket and gently picked up the
most beautiful lady-prickler I’ve ever laid eyes on. She was a mesmerizing
light-green color with delicate white flowers springing from the tips of each
of her limbs. Tiny red-tipped barbs sprouted at evenly spaced intervals. And
you know what?
Siena stuck the lady-prickler in that hole and filled in the
gaps around her base.
Hi, Perry, the
lady-prickler said, her voice as soothing as honeysuckle.
Uh…hi…uh…hiya, I
said. Hiya? Really, Perry, that was the best you could come up with?
“Perry, meet Layla,” Siena said. “I met her a few weeks back
and told her all ’bout you and she agreed to move so she could get to know you.
Surprise.”
If I had a heart it’d have been hammering in my skin. Hi, Layla,” I said, loving the way her
name rolled out of my consciousness, like it belonged there.
Hi, Perry, Layla
said again. It’s so nice to meet you.
Uh, yeah…uh, you too. And
Siena laughed because she’d never seen me so tongue-tied. I glared at her and
she got the hint.
“I’ll leave you two to git to know each other,” she said.
“Sorry ’bout the mess,” she added. “The buzzards’ll be ’ere soon to git it all
cleaned up.”
As she turned to walk away, I said, Siena, and she stopped to look back. Thank you.
She smiled and winked and walked away, leaving me alone with
Layla. I like your flowers, I said.
I like your smile,
she said.
I hadn’t even realized I was smiling.
And as the Sun Goddess said her final goodbyes, casting
beautiful shades of pink, orange and red across the sky, Layla and I talked and
talked and talked, staying up all night, as most pricklers do.
So now, my friends, maybe you can appreciate a day in the
life of a prickler in Fire Country. It’s not as boring as it sounds. Every day
is a struggle of life versus death; but at the same time, every day is worth the
struggle. We suffer, we fight, we laugh, and we love. But most of all, we live.
