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  ‘Wait for me by the crossing,’ he panted.

  ‘Why? Where you going?’ asked Hubba.

  ‘No time to explain!’ shouted Iggy as he ran off, ducking under the trees, and disappeared from sight. Hammerhead, Hubba and Umily did their best to round everyone up and calm the panic, though the thundering booms from Old Grumbly didn’t help much. Moments later they caught sight of Iggy. He was coming down the river, paddling some sort of wooden craft with a stick twice his size. It was a raft made of a dozen logs lashed together.

  ‘You got to be joking!’ groaned Hubba.

  Iggy jumped into the water and began pulling the raft towards the bank.

  ‘Get them on! Quick!’ he urged. The current was moving fast and it took all his strength to prevent the raft from being carried away.

  ‘It’ll sink! You’ll drown us all!’ shouted Umily.

  ‘No, it’s safe! Get on!’ Iggy yelled back.

  Clinging to a bit of wood wasn’t Umily’s idea of safe, but then neither was running from waves of fire. The Urks were huddled on the bank, too terrified to move.

  ‘Come on!’ cried Iggy impatiently. ‘Chief, you tell them.’

  Hammerhead made up his mind. He was too out of breath to run any further so he might as well take his chances with drowning. He waded into the water, yelling at the Urks to follow. Another boom from Old Grumbly persuaded them he might be right. They plunged in, splashing towards the raft. There wasn’t enough room for everyone, but they crowded on anyhow, piling on top of each other while the raft dipped lower in the water. Many of the men had to cling to the sides, hoping for the best. Iggy looked for the last time at the valley and the angry volcano, then pushed off with his stick. In seconds the raft was borne away on the strong current at alarming speed. The Urks howled and clung to each other in fright as the raft tipped, spun and scraped against rocks. Chief Hammerhead was curled in a ball with his eyes shut, praying that the gods would take him quickly. Past Giant’s Rock the crowded raft swept downstream and turned the corner, leaving the Valley of Urk far behind.

  Chapter 11

  The High Life

  Morning came and the raft was drifting slowly in a quiet stretch of the river. Iggy groaned. His body ached all over. He had no idea how many miles they’d travelled or how they’d survived being tossed and spun around like a twig in a whirlpool. By some miracle they were all alive, though it was true that most of them looked sick as dogs. He struggled out from the tangled heap of bodies and looked around. The Valley of Urk was nowhere to be seen. The only trace of it was a column of grey smoke in the far north, coming from Old Grumbly.

  Iggy guided the raft towards the bank with his stick. The other Urks were rousing themselves with weary groans, grumbling at those on top of them. In twos and threes they slipped off the raft and waded to the bank, where they stood blinking in the weak sunshine.

  ‘Where on Urk are we?’ asked Hubba.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Iggy. ‘But wherever it is, at least the world hasn’t ended.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Look around you. This isn’t so bad. We could stay here.’

  Hammerhead was wringing dirty water from his furs.

  ‘We’re Urks,’ he grunted. ‘We live in the Valley of Urk. We’ll go back as soon as I can work out where we are.’

  ‘Look!’ Hubba’s cry made them all turn. He was pointing along the river to where the bank jutted out, creating a shallow pool. It was clogged with debris from the volcano that had been swept downstream during the night. There were burnt lumps of wood, dirty bones, broken branches and even an animal skull that had once sat on the head of a Noneck warrior. But that wasn’t what had caught Hubba’s attention. A tree trunk floated in the shallows and slumped on top, half in the water, was a person. Hubba and Iggy waded into the river and dragged the soggy creature to the bank. When they laid him down, he spluttered, coughed and opened his eyes.

  ‘Snark!’ said Iggy, recognising the big ugly nose.

  ‘Run! Run!’ croaked Snark, gripping his arm and trying to escape.

  ‘Snark, it’s me,’ said Iggy. ‘You’re safe now.’

  The Urks crowded round, staring at the newcomer as if he’d landed from outer space. Snark was certainly a strange sight. His face was black with smoke. His hair stood on end and was singed down the middle, so that he resembled a startled badger. His furs were torn and ragged, with a large rip at the back leaving his bottom open to the wind. He sat up, looking at them wildly. Hammerhead came over and crouched in front of him.

  ‘Snark, what happened? Where’s Borg?’ he asked.

  ‘Gone,’ croaked Snark.

  ‘And the others? The Nonecks?’

  Snark shook his head. He hadn’t seen them in the fire but they couldn’t have escaped.

  ‘What about the valley? The caves?’ asked Hammerhead. ‘There must be something left.’

  Snark stared at him dumbly. ‘Gone. All gone,’ he moaned. ‘Everything burned.’

  Iggy thought he could imagine what would have happened. Waves of scorching red lava sweeping down the hill into the valley, burning everything in their path. It was a miracle that Snark had escaped.

  Hammerhead was swaying slightly, trying to take it in. The caves, the Standing Stone, his prize flint collection – all gone, wiped out in a matter of seconds. It made his head spin. How was the tribe going to survive now? Where would they go? And more importantly, would he have to go without supper?

  The Urks stood speechless, none of them knowing what to say. They couldn’t go back. There was no valley to go back to. They were homeless, rootless, Urkless. It was Iggy who eventually broke the stunned silence.

  ‘It might be all right,’ he said, looking about him. ‘It’s got the river. And there’s probably a forest somewhere.’

  Hammerhead stared at him. ‘What are you yammering about?’

  ‘Here,’ said Iggy. ‘We could live here.’

  ‘How? There’s no hill.’

  ‘That’s good,’ said Iggy. ‘We won’t have to trog up and down it every day.’

  ‘And what about caves?’ demanded Mum. ‘Where we all gonna sleep?’

  Iggy hadn’t thought of that. Dry, roomy caves wouldn’t be so easy to find – especially ones that didn’t contain bears. There were no mountains or rocky hills here, only wild grass, bushes and trees with branches reaching up to the sky. If we were a flock of birds, he thought, this place would be perfect. He put his head on one side, the way he did when he was having an idea.

  ‘Hubba,’ he said, ‘help me drag that boater from the water.’

  It took six of them and a lot of grunting to drag the raft up the bank and over to the foot of one of the trees. It was even harder (and took more grumbling and cursing) to haul it halfway up the tree and wedge it between two thick branches. Finally it was in position, forming a wooden platform high above the ground.

  ‘Well?’ said Iggy, perched on the high deck. ‘What do you think?’

  Hammerhead and the others squinted up at him from below.

  ‘What the Urk’s it meant to be?’ asked the Chief.

  ‘Isn’t it obvious?’

  ‘Not to me,’ frowned Hammerhead.

  Iggy grinned, spreading his hands wide.

  ‘It’s our new home!’

  ‘Home?’ said his dad. ‘It’s a tree!’

  ‘Yes. Exactly!’

  ‘We’re not flamin’ monkeys, boy. We live in caves.’

  ‘But this is much better,’ said Iggy. ‘It’s perfect, don’t you see? It’s got a floor and we can make a sort of roof thing to keep off the rain.’

  Dad shook his head. ‘Talk sense, boy. You can’t live in a tree!’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Well . . . you’d fall off.’

 
‘No you wouldn’t,’ said Iggy.

  ‘Anyhow, there’s no room,’ argued Mum.

  ‘There’s plenty,’ said Iggy. ‘Come up here and see!’

  They took a great deal of persuading, but finally Mum and Dad clambered up to join him. They were followed by Hubba and Umily, who were used to climbing trees, and Chief Hammerhead, who wasn’t and needed a bunk-up from three of his men.

  They huddled on the platform, glancing nervously at the ground below. Hammerhead was feeling rather dizzy and out of breath.

  ‘It’s amazing!’ said Iggy. ‘You can see for miles! Look, there’s a forest over there where we can go hunting.’

  Dad looked up. ‘There’s too much sky,’ he grumbled.

  But Mum was beginning to warm to the idea. ‘It is dry,’ she said. ‘And there’s not so much dirt as a cave.’

  Dad scowled. ‘Nothing wrong with a bit of dirt.’

  ‘And we could hang skins up here to dry,’ said Mum, pointing to the branches.

  ‘We’d be safe from bears and wolves,’ said Iggy. ‘And at night we’d look up and see the stars!’

  ‘Deadly!’ said Hubba.

  ‘What do you think, Hammy?’ asked Dad.

  They all turned to the Chief, who had just found the courage to stand up. If you kept hold of the branches and didn’t look down, it wasn’t so bad. He looked at the others.

  ‘The boy’s been right before,’ he said. ‘He’ll make a good Chief.’

  ‘And we’ve got to live somewhere,’ agreed Mum. ‘This’ll be a new start.’

  ‘But what about the others, Iggy?’ asked Hammerhead. ‘We can’t all squash on here.’

  ‘That’s no problem – we can build more,’ said Iggy excitedly. ‘There’s plenty of trees to go round. We’ll build enough for everyone and call them . . . um . . .’

  ‘TREE CAVES!’ cried Hubba.

  ‘Yes, tree caves!’ laughed Iggy.

  It was a brilliant idea. Who could tell, one day maybe everyone would live like this!

  Bloomsbury Publishing, London, Berlin, New York and Sydney

  First published in Great Britain in April 2011 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

  36 Soho Square, London, W1D 3QY

  Text copyright © Alan MacDonald 2011

  Illustrations copyright © Mark Beech 2011

  This electronic edition published in 2011 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

  The moral rights of the author and illustrator have been asserted

  All rights reserved

  No part of this publication may be reproduced or

  transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying

  or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher

  A CIP catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN 978 1 4088 2518 1

  www.bloomsbury.com