The Cruellne
James Clammer
Ebook version published in 2014 by
Galley Beggar Press Ltd
The Book Hive,
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The Cruellne
The cruellne is a creature very similar to us, in that it has two arms, two legs, hands, a body like ours. It is small, about the size of a ten-year-old child. Only from the neck up is it at all different. Instead of a chin, a long beak curves up and outwards, and in the place where a human nose might join a forehead, the upper beak begins its downward arch to meet and slightly overhang its neighbour. The two halves of the beak together make a shape that is bulbous and cup-like. If you have ever seen a black and white drawing of the dodo, before they became extinct, you will have a good idea. Cruellnes are fish-eaters by preference and the beak, or the bill, is this particular shape, cup-like, to enable it to catch and hold fish before swallowing whole. To the sides, two small eyes stare out and although the eyes have no pupils at all but are completely black, still somehow they express emotion. Whether this is from the way the cruellne widens or closes its eyelids, or from something more general in its expression, I do not know. Above the eyes the head curves away, and the topmost part has a thin layer of feathers which the cruellne will let you stroke if it is feeling happy.
The double L in the cruellne's name is not sounded. Mother has told me that the letters are a hangover from their time in France and Spain, many hundreds of years ago, before they discovered how to paddle logs or sail their makeshift rafts across the Channel. Since they are flightless, also like the dodo, they have had to learn how to be clever with their hands. Despite that there are not many of them left. The correct way to pronounce a cruellne's name is KREW-ENNE. Neither the males nor females have individual names like we do, though most are able to speak a basic kind of English, which is the most beautiful thing of all about them.
Last summer, when the days were hot and long and I would sleep at night under a single twisted sheet, mother took me to London to see a cruellne. She did not tell me at the time that that was what we were doing; she merely came into the room where I was trying to read and told me to get dressed. It was unusual, that sort of decisiveness. We had both spent the summer drowsing, not bothering with anything other than domestic chores, and even those not often, not daily. We would sleep or read or watch television, and in the late evening I would climb the hill that lies behind our house and watch the sun drop beneath the Downs and try to memorise all the colours. There was nothing to bother us and the weather did not change, it was one hot day after another, winter would never come again. Then one morning, without knocking, mother bustled into my room: in one hour's time we were catching the train to London.
Why are we doing that? I said. I don't want to go to London. There
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