Lionboy (13 page)

“I don’t know,” said Charlie. “They were working on lots of things.”

“Do you miss them a lot?” said the young lion. “I have heard that humans have strong emotions . . .”

Charlie blinked. “Very strong,” he said shortly, and lifted his chin.

The young lion watched him thoughtfully. Then he said: “And the other thing . . .” Perhaps he had noticed Charlie’s embarrassment.

Charlie turned back to him, meeting his eyes between the thick iron bars of the cage. “Yes, the other thing,” he said.

“You have to help us,” said the young lion simply. “I have to trust you. If you betray us, then—I don’t know. But we can’t go on like this. You saw how”—here he said the name of the oldest lion, which I can’t write. I shall just say “the oldest lion” when any lion says the name in Cat. Of course they were talking in Cat throughout—“the oldest lion is. How tired and sad. He always used to be planning and dreaming about escape. But now—I don’t know. It’s as if he’s given up. The mothers mostly just follow him—they’re so used to obeying him, and not making him angry, that they’ve forgotten how to think for themselves. Elsina—the girl—she’s brave but she’s young. So I have to do something. And you have to help.”

“Okay,” said Charlie. He didn’t even ask what help was needed, or what the lion wanted him to do. He just said okay. This could have been very foolish of him. There are a great many stories about what happens when people promise to do something before checking what it is they’re promising, and it always turns out to be “Kill your friend” or “Give me your kingdom,” and then it’s too late to turn back. But Charlie trusted the lion. He remembered the look in the lion’s eyes when he first spoke Cat to him. He trusted the lion, and he liked him. If he could, he would help him.

“We need a plan to escape,” said the young lion. “We need a human who can help us get off the ship. We need to trick Maccomo and Major Thibaudet. We need help to hide us on our journey. We’re going back to Africa.”

“Africa!” said Charlie. “Wow.”

“Are you African?” asked the lion.

“Yes—my dad is. From West Africa, by the sea.”

“We are West African too!” said the lion. “From Morocco, where the desert and the mountains come to the sea. That’s where we are going.”

“Dad’s from farther south,” said Charlie. “From Ghana.”

“We are brothers,” said the lion. “African brothers. You speak our language. You don’t have to come all the way home with us. We’ll see where your people are being taken, we’ll find a route that works for both of us. We’ll help you too.”

Charlie liked the sound of that. He liked it very much. It had crossed his mind, the question of how a single boy could rescue grown-ups from other grown-ups—from whoever it was Rafi had hired, or whoever had hired Rafi. He hadn’t wanted to think about it, but he wasn’t stupid. If the kidnappers had been easy to beat, his parents would have beaten them and escaped already, wouldn’t they? (For a moment his heart jumped—perhaps they have! Perhaps they were on their way to rescue him, right now!) But a single boy
with a group of lions
could surely scare off kidnappers, however tough they were. A single boy with a group of lions could give Rafi Sadler the shock of his life . . .

In exchange for helping the lions to escape, Charlie would get them to help his parents escape. Simple and brilliant.

Charlie had an idea.

“Would you do something for me now?” he said to the young lion.

The lion inclined his head to suggest yes, of course.

Charlie smiled to himself as he fished his phone out of his pocket.

He looked up Cocky Slimy Git in the address book and dialed the number.

“When I tell you, roar!” he said to the young lion. “It’s the guy who stole my parents!”

The young lion’s eyes gleamed.

Charlie had assumed he would get Rafi’s voice mail. He didn’t—he got Rafi.

For a moment he was shocked into silence. Rafi on the street, at the fountain, with his mum . . . with
Charlie’s
mum, maybe. Then as Rafi said “Yeah? Charlieboy?” he launched into action.

“Yeah, you know who I am,” he shouted. “You don’t know
where
I am, though, do you? You don’t know what I’m doing. You know
nothing
and I couldn’t be
less
scared of you! If anything I’ll be coming to get
you
soon, Mr. Swanky I’m-so-cool jerk! So
you’d
better
watch out,
and you had better
leave me alone!
” He made a frantic face at the young lion, and held the phone out to him.

The young lion, grinning, uttered a low, threatening, echoing, blood-curdling roar. Charlie knew it was a roar of laughing and being naughty; he knew too that Rafi would hear it as any normal human would—absolutely terrifying.

He swiftly pressed the disconnect button and collapsed in laughter. Yes!

Five sailors banged on the door of the lionchamber.

“What’s going on?” they shouted. “Are you okay in there?”

Charlie opened the door, still giggling.

“It’s fine,” he said. “Fine. No trouble. Sorry. Lion’s a bit boisterous, that’s all. Sorry.”

They went away.

Charlie felt good.

 

Rafi did not.

“You sniking, cheeky little graspole,” he said. “What the—how the—what was that!”

He was scared by it. It curdled his stomach. He didn’t understand.

“You little . . .” he yelled, and dialed his phone.

 

Charlie’s phone rang.

He stared at it, sitting in his hand. COCKY SLIMY GIT lit up the face.

The young lion stared at it.

Charlie said, “Roar again,” and pressed the button.

The young lion really let it rip.

The sailors came back.

The phone didn’t ring again after that.

Charlie felt good.

 

Rafi dropped the phone.

“I don’t understand,” he whispered. He was shaking now. Fear and anger make a dangerous combination.

 

“So how about the others?” Charlie said, growing serious again. “Do they agree?”

The young lion flicked his whiskers. “Elsina will agree. She is ready and impatient for the day. The mothers will do what the oldest lion does. And the oldest lion . . . he will agree, if his spirit is not too low.”

“So how can we raise his spirit?” asked Charlie, getting straight to the point.

The young lion gave a kind of lionish smile, lifting his whiskers and showing his delicate, ferocious teeth.

“The spirit of an old lion is not for bossing,” he said. “But there are ways. And there is something that must be done first of all, and we must start to do it now.” Then he drew Charlie closer still to the bars, and whispered in his ear, and Charlie nodded, taking it all in, and together they worked out how Charlie would start the process of raising the oldest lion’s spirit and saving the lions from captivity. After that, Charlie went back to his ropeshelf and thought about his parents, and Rafi, and planned ways of righting what was wrong.

 

Ahead of them, approaching Le Havre, the marmalade cat on board the
SharkHawk
had managed to swipe a pen from Winner’s jacket pocket, and was attempting to push it under the door of the cabin in which Aneba and Magdalen were incarcerated. The paper had been easy—he had ripped it from Winner’s ship’s logbook, with one vicious swipe of his claws, and carried it in his teeth. The pen was a little harder. It was difficult to get a grip on, and kept rolling away when he dropped it. Plus now it didn’t want to fit under the door.

The cat thought. The cat had an idea. The cat took the pen in his mouth, and crunched down on it with his sharp, strong little teeth. The plastic casing split and shattered, and the little central cartridge full of ink fell away. Quickly, with his paw, like a kitten batting a ball of wool, the cat batted the ink cartridge under the door. Then he started up a horrible yowling and meowing, aimed through the same crack.

It was Magdalen, who liked the cat, who woke, and stretched, and said: “Oh shut up, puss.” And when he didn’t, it was Magdalen who said: “I can’t let you in, sweets, the door is locked, as you may have noticed.” It was Magdalen who came to the door, to speak kindly to the distraught-seeming cat, and it was Magdalen who stepped on the ink cartridge, noticed the piece of paper, picked them both up, and set to wondering.

The next morning, when Sid brought in the prisoners’ breakfast, and the cat swerved in swiftly between his legs, it was Magdalen whom the cat started bothering, pushing the pen toward her, rolling on the paper in a meaningful fashion, and saying “Meow! Meow! Meow!” over and over again, and, it must be said, rather irritatingly . At least, that’s what Magdalen heard. Actually, the cat was saying: “
Write. The. Letter. Write. The. Letter.
Oh for goodness’ sake, woman, get a move on. How hard is it to work out? Pen. Paper.
Write the letter!
”

And Magdalen murmured: “This cat’s trying to tell me something.” (“Yes dear, bravo,” sighed the cat.) Which made her think of Charlie, not that she ever
wasn’t
thinking about him, but it made her think about cats telling
him
things, and him telling cats things, and she looked at the marmalade cat’s face, staring at her so intently, as if willing her to understand . . .

And she understood. Sitting with her back to the two-way mirror, she wrote:

Aneba was looking over her shoulder.

“That’s good,” he said. “But how are you going to get it to him?”

The marmalade cat leaped onto her lap and stretched out his furry orange neck with its little purple flea collar. Magdalen folded the scrap of paper small, and tucked it firmly into the buckle, held in place by the pin.

“Looks secure, I think,” she said.

Aneba was looking at her.

“Sweetheart,” he said, a note of doubt in his voice. But at that moment the door opened as Winner came to take their breakfast away, and the cat, pausing only to give them a tiny but definite wink, zapped through it.

“What?” said Aneba. “What? Really?”

“He brought me the paper and pen,” whispered Magdalen. “If he can be the stationery shop, why shouldn’t he be the postman too?”

Aneba smiled. Magdalen smiled. He gave her a big kiss. For the first time in days, they felt almost a little bit happy.

“Don’t know what you’re looking so sniking chirpy about,” said Winner. “You’re soon going to be reaching your destination. Not much for you to laugh about, I wouldn’t of thought. All right for me an’ ’im, we’ll just be handing you over and getting our fee, and then I have a plan for a week or two in the sun with Mrs. Winner. But you, now, you’ll be meeting the gentlemen from Personnel, and they’re not very nice gentlemen, frankly, and then if I’m not mistaken you’ll be hauled up to meet the Chief Executive . . . Oh, dear,” he said exaggeratedly. “There was me about to let slip about the Chief Exec . . . Ooops! There I go again. When he’ll be so keen to explain your new duties to you ’imself. He’s a very particular man, from what I hear. A very particular man. I’m particularly glad that I don’t work for him. Sooner you than me any day.”

Winner went off with a nasty look on his face.

“Personnel?” said Magdalen.

“Duties?” said Aneba.

“I don’t like the sound of that,” said Magdalen.

 

Charlie was kicking himself. How stupid to have called Rafi! How self-indulgent! And twice! Now that Rafi knew Charlie had received his messages, he might send more. Now that Rafi knew that Charlie was in a place with lions—well, that narrowed the field. And now Rafi would be even more annoyed with him. Stupid!

It had been fun, though.

CHAPTER 11

I
t was mid-afternoon when the great crimson ship came through the electricity farm—ranks of ocean windmills, like an army of giant propellers on sticks—into the harbor at Le Havre. Charlie found that he was very glad to see land again, although he had hardly noticed missing it. As soon as they were docked he ran down the gangplank onto the big concrete quay, desperate to find a cat with some news. As he landed, his legs jarred horribly—how very solid the ground seemed after his days at sea!