6. Cropcircle Farm

The white van slowed down, then reversed direction, to go back to the gate. None other than Beatrix stepped out. She walked to Hess and asked if he was alright.

“We moohst hurry,” yelled Kuku. She already exited the shed, but nobody followed. Not even her parents.

“See! Elize isn’t working with us—”

Kuku ran back inside.

Harry yelled something and stepped away from the trucks. He walked through the shed, as if it wasn’t there, and ran to the other side of the terrain.

Was that … was that a thumbs up from Elize? She could barely see it, and Elize didn’t dare give a big signal. Of course not. She didn’t even know where the animals were, as she couldn’t see the shed. And now Elize had to help load the trucks.

“This is the moohment! We go!”

Kuku left the shed again. She quickly passed the trucks and neared the gates. Hess kept Beatrix busy—and the gates open. He pretended to have accidentally fallen asleep there. His default tactic, apparently.

When Kuku started on the gravel path, however, she still didn’t feel other footsteps.

She looked back.

She was alone.

The other animals still hid inside the shed or the barn. Yelling at them would’ve been suspicious now. She stomped the gravel path and ran back again.

Elize had wiggled her way out of her duties loading the truck. And now she stood …

She leaned against the invisible shed.

“Where did this thing come from?” said her voice with a crack. “Did this shed always exist? No, right?”

She opened the door. Nearly fifty cramped animals looked back with fear.

“Go then! Go!”

Elize stepped inside. The animals stepped backwards, back against the wall.

“Harry will be busy for ten more minutes. The gate is open. Go! Flee!”

Chickens cackled. Pigs grunted. Horses snorted.

Kuku could only understand the cows: “She knows our secret hiding place! She’s betraying us! Flee!”

The howling animals stormed from the shed, as if Elize didn’t exist, pressing the fragile girl flat against the wall. She screamed in pain. Scared to death, she crawled away from them, nearly trampled beneath heavy cowsteps.

Kuku watched how all the animals neatly returned to their square meter inside the barn.

This was stupid. Her yell echoed across the entire farm: “Come to me! The gate is open!”

She stepped forward again, showing everyone they were free to leave. Slowly, some animals left their barn again. The pigs spoke with each other.

The truck driver scratched his forehead. “Seen lotta strange things on farms, but this …”

Elize stood with difficulty and felt the shed wall. She was wounded, but paid it no mind. She looked as if she’d never seen a building before in her life and her fingers tested if the wood was even real. If it wasn’t an illusion or dream.

They’d hesitated for too long.

The gate started to close. Hess ran to Kuku in a panic, Beatrix after him, clipboard in her hand as if she were about to throw it. He yelled something, but the words were in a language that Kuku had never heard.

When he reached her, he curled his front paw around her body and placed her on his back without effort. He ran back to the gate, which had narrowed to the point that Hess couldn’t fit through it himself.

“No! Hess! Not without my parents. Not without you!”

“I’ll make sure the others follow,” said the panting dog. Kuku believed he’d try; she didn’t believe he’d succeed.

Beatrix grabbed the dog. First with her hands, then a rope that Hess chewed to pieces easily, then with a sort of machine.

Kuku hadn’t seen it before. When the machine came close, Hess received an electrical shock. He ran for a bit, but slower, and slower, until he sunk through his legs and landed in a field of grain that Kuku didn’t even know existed.

They lay near the fence at the edge of the farm. Just behind them a car passed by on the asphalt.

The gate closed with a click and a clang.

“Sorry,” whispered Hess. “But she should not have done that.”

“Oh cow’s gods, are you going to take revenge?”

Kuku feared his revenge. If he wanted, he could fatally wound a human. He seemed furious—no, it was a mixture of fear and fury.

“She has revealed her true nature. Look where you are.”

The events on the farm were tiny dots at a safe distance. Here, amidst the grain and fences, it was peaceful and quiet.

Kuku felt around her. The field of grain had paths, like a maze. Why would you make a maze here? Why did the paths seem to travel in circles?

Hess led her to a hill at the edge, which had been further supported with rough rocks. From that height she could clearly see it. It wasn’t a path, it was …

“Crop circles.” Hess shook his head. “Humans go insane when they find one. They think some alien creature has visited and, for some reason, drew messages by creating lines in their grain. Or something.”

“And that is silly?”

“Of course! What do they think? That alien creatures build spaceships and reach Somnia with ease, and their only action is to create primitive drawings on farms?”

Hess narrowed his eyes. Kuku only saw Beatrix and Harry as vague splotches that met each other and shook hands again.

“Crop circles are obviously the result of spaceships that land here.”

“Mooh!?”

“Look. That circle is the exhaust pipe of the rocket. Those three lines are support pillars to stay upright. It’s a paw print, you see, but one made by a gigantic spaceship.”

“Why … why would those creatures come here?”

“Because I am here,” Hess spoke softly. “My real name isn’t Hess. It’s Hespry.”

That name sounded familiar. Hess continued with difficulty, as if the memory was hard to access. “Of all Heavenmatter, there was only one that lived. Me, the Hespryhound, Feria’s pet. I’ve never been glad about the title of heavenly object, but oh well …”

Kuku bend her front paws to bow to him.

“No, no, that’s not necessary. The gods are gone, the magic is gone. I am nothing more than a very unique, large, dog-wolf-like being.”

“Then why do they still want you?”

“That stupid prophecy of Guds. It predicted that the animal who’d collect all Heavenmatter would conquer the entire galaxy. It seems like one group has taken that seriously. And Beatrix is one of them.”

Of course. Beatrix had met Hess at the previous inspection. She had tried to capture him all the time. She had some sort of technology that didn’t belong to Somnia.

Hess jumped off of the rocks. A drop of several meters that he took with ease.

Kuku walked down more carefully. As long as they stuck to the grain circles, they’d be well-hidden.

“I don’t know what she discovered first. Me … or the Stone of Destinydust.”

“That thing is here as well?”

Hespry smiled. “Why do you think all the grass grows unnaturally tall? What do you think created an invisible and untouchable shed?”

They could walk close to the gravel road without being spotted. But Kuku could not walk this maze of grain forever. Where must she go now? Elize knew about the shed! Elize could see and feel it.

That meant … she had restored her connection with nature.

Wasn’t that a good sign? Now she was certain Elize should help with their next escape plan.

“I am deeply disappointed,” yelled Beatrix. “You have done nothing to renovate the farm. You only have a week left, you know that, right?”

“I am trying my best!” said Harry.

He tidied his appearance and continued at a softer and sweeter tone.

“We barely have money. And now my daughter is wounded! Maybe some mad cow’s disease lingers with our animals, why else would they attack her? Please, I ask support, and a delay—”

“Support? Delay?” Beatrix spoke the words as if they were foreign to her. Maybe the human language was foreign to her. “I am considering retracting my offer in the first place and closing the farm immediately!”

Harry didn’t speak again.

Beatrix looked out over the farm. She hesitated and twitched, then entered her van and left. Soon after, the trucks did the same.

“Dad, it hurts. It hurts a lot,” Elize spoke with difficulty. “I think I broke a rib or something.”

Harry roared. Kuku felt the heat of his anger at this distance. She thought she heard the straining of his muscles, ready to pounce like a tiger.

“I saw Kuku here, joined by Hess. I swear it! They flattened all my grain! We must catch them and show them what we do with troublemakers.”

He pushed the first grain stalks aside and entered the circle with them.