Cloner A Sci-Fi Novel About Human Clonin - By Emma Lorant Page 0,2

grasping the flailing wings. The furry wormlike body between them looked bloated, almost twice its normal width. Seb’s fingers trickled a yellow liquid as the body throbbed and broadened. Lisa gasped to see the butterfly appear to split in two. Brown-flecked wings twirled out and whirred.

‘’Utter’lee,’ Seb insisted, pulling his hands apart. He was holding a fritillary in each hand, wings beating, flapping against small fingers.

‘Let them go!’ Lisa cried out. ‘You’ll kill them, Seb,’ she said, lowering her voice, wondering why she was so distraught. The child must have chanced across a mating pair and separated them. She brushed aside the fleeting impression that both insects had been males as she irritably waved overhanging clouds of butterflies away. They seemed dense enough to cast shadows, almost obscuring the intense sunlight with their outstretched wings.

‘Let’s clean your fingers on this tuft.’ Breathing deeply to calm herself, Lisa used grass to clean off the worst of the yellow mess, then used her handkerchief on the rest. She pulled the little boy back to the meadow edge with her and sank down again, kissing his curls, cuddling him close to her.

A soft breeze stirred the grasses into graceful dance. Lisa looked up and around; a billow of woolpack cumulus crossed the blazing sun, darkening patches of meadow, saturating greens into viridian and jade. Yellowing willow leaves, first signs of autumn, feathered on to rhyne water, floated, then sank away to mud.

Seb twisted away from Lisa and teetered back into the meadow. She noticed a large rabbit near the child, standing on his hind legs, long ears erect, unblinking eyes. A buck, she supposed, he was so enormous. The eyes glittered bright, fixed steadily ahead, completely unafraid. As Lisa stared, astonished at how close the animal stayed, she noticed several more. All the same size, all simply standing there, staring with gleaming eyes. She felt a tremor of unease, a momentary fear.

‘’Unnies,’ Seb prattled, stretching a hand towards the furry shape nearest to him.

Lisa was nervous of his touching them. Those eyes glowed mean and, somehow, menacing. She clapped her hands to chase the animals off. At first they didn’t move, just glared at her. Then, relieved, she saw the whole warren scatter away.

Relaxed once more, Lisa sank back and looked around. Lush clover, beloved by the clouded yellow butterflies, was growing near her feet. Red clover heads swayed drunkenly above the fine sheep’s fescue and a thicket of trefoil leaves. Lisa tossed her sandals off and examined the leaves. Each one, three lobes of vivid green, seemed to wink at her. So fresh-looking, so healthy, she thought.

She looked past the barbed wire fence which separated the meadow from the field beyond and her eyes, bored with green, searched colour. Flecks of creamy white seemed to beckon to her as she became aware of slightly different vegetation - white-veined clover leaves, larger, almost gross, growing in clumps a little further off, right where the meadow edged on to Frank’s trial pasture. Lovely, unusual, she thought vaguely as she caught sight of an especially large clump of leaves growing by the barbed wire.

‘Look at the pretty clover, Seb,’ she called to her little boy, holding out her hand for his and pulling him towards it. ‘I think we’re going to find a four-leaf one. That’s for luck!’

And then she blinked, amazed, as the leaf she was now concentrating on turned out to have four lobes, not three. She could have sworn there were just three a moment ago, even though she’d been quite sure of finding one with four. Startled, delighted, sensing good fortune, she picked it eagerly to show Meg and Alec.

‘Look, Seb,’ she almost shouted, turning to him. ‘I’ve found one. A lucky four-leaf clover!’

‘Cloner,’ he lisped.

She laughed. ‘Clover,’ she said. ‘V. Clov-ver. Can you say that?’

‘Clowler,’ he smiled at her.

‘Very nearly right,’ she said. ‘Try again. Clo-ver!’

‘Cwo-ver,’ he mimicked her as best he could.

‘Watch,’ she turned to him, her dress swirling a circle in the grass. The red clover goblets above the streaked foliage seemed larger than the rest. She picked a flower and pulled the petals off in chunks. They were massed solid, tight as she’d never seen them before. Plucking some seemed to make no difference. ‘It tastes really good.’

Seb pushed petals into his mouth.

‘Don’t eat them,’ she grinned at him. ‘Just suck the nectar out.’

‘Well, fancy a townie like you knowing that. And how be ourn birthday boy?’

Lisa looked over towards the old-fashioned wooden gate Frank Graftley had