Oh, Mom, I wish you were here now. . . .

He wasn’t really scared anymore. At first it had been almost too much to bear. He had gone stiff with terror. But it was tiring being scared, and it had slowly worn off, so that now he felt numb. And he was bored.

How long had he been lying here? A tiny bit of light could get in through holes in the sack, and he could see enough to know that it was dark now. Grown-ups were too stupid to light fires or use solar lamps or even flashlights. They had forgotten everything.

He hoped that they were asleep, because then maybe he could try to get away. He wasn’t tied up or anything. All he had to do was slip the sack off and make a run for it.

Once he had gone on a school trip to a farm. He had seen sheep and cows and pigs and chickens and he had wondered why they didn’t try to escape. It looked easy. But the thing was, back then the animals were stupid and the humans were clever.

This was different. These grown-ups were stupid and he was clever. Yes, he was only small, but he was cleverer than they were.

He smiled.

He was going to escape.

He would wait a bit longer, though, until he was really sure it was safe.

He started to count, not too fast and not too slow. He reckoned that when he got to a thousand, if he hadn’t heard any movement, he would take the sack off and have a look.

One, two, three, four, five . . .

Twenty-five, thirty, thirty-five, forty . . .

Counting to a thousand was taking much longer than he had thought; it seemed to go on forever. He got fed up at 420 and stopped.

It had been ages since the grown-ups had made any noise. They must be asleep. Or maybe they had gone out hunting again and left him alone?

Slowly, ever so slowly, he started to wriggle out of the sack, trying to make tiny movements. Every few seconds he would stop and listen, and once he was sure it was okay, he would go on.

Little by little the sack came off, until it cleared his head. Now he was lying on his side on a sticky, stinking carpet.

He looked around without moving his head. At first it was too dark to see anything properly. He could just make out that he was in a long room with windows all down one side. There was a pale stripe of bluish gray against the black.

He waited, unmoving, as his eyes got used to the light, and gradually bits and pieces of the room came into view.

He could see six grown-ups nearby. The mother and the others who had captured him, as well as two others—a fat old father with a bald head, and a younger one with a straggly beard. They were all fast asleep and snoring and snuffling.