Lionboy (25 page)

“We are lions, Charlie,” the oldest lion said softly. “We hunt. We eat.”

Charlie stared at him.

Everywhere he looked in himself, he found fear.

“But we are not stupid,” the oldest lion continued. “We eat at leisure. Not when we are escaping with our lives. We do not eat humans, on human territory. We are not stupid.”

Charlie gulped. He was fooling himself if he thought he was in charge of anything here.

“Onward,” said the oldest lion.

 

Just by the stern of the
Circe,
a lumbering, spitting shape was emerging from the dark, cold water, shattering the reflections of streetlights and circus lights into a thousand wet shards across the surface. His white hands clutched the stone blocks lining the quay, and he pulled himself heavily out of the water. His leather coat was soaked, and his face furious. His movements were stilted: One of his arms was weak, and in its hand he clutched a small clump of something wet and dark . . . a tiny handful of golden fur, sodden with the canal water.

As he came to standing, he wiped his pale face with his good arm, and then touched the bad arm. Even in the dim light, he could see on his fingers that the water dripping off him was mixed with blood.

“Troy!” he bellowed. A big slathery dog lolloped up to him, whimpering and limping from a wounded back leg.

He held out the clump of soggy fur to the animal’s twitching nose. “Fetch,” he said, and his voice was grim.

 

Charlie climbed slowly back onto the young lion’s back. Though the lion was sure-footed, the towpath was narrowing and the water seemed just too close now. As the lion loped along, the black water raced past, just beneath his right legs.

Between the road bridge and the metro bridge a metal spiral staircase led up to street level to the left. A group of people went past on the road up there, laughing and playing around. Charlie and the lions ducked swiftly under the black, industrial-looking girders of the metro bridge. Had they been seen? A pigeon, confused by their presence there so late at night, flew suddenly out, flapping and flustering. Some small, black, fluttery shapes moved in the darkness. Bats.

Another small gap of sky, and then there was the third and final bridge over the canal: much bigger, more modern-looking—more of an overpass, a great concrete construction, twentieth-century probably, and the noise from it was thunderous as vehicles roared by overhead. The towpath continued underneath, and as they followed it out to the river, Charlie realized that he had made a big mistake.

The young lion and Elsina stopped abruptly.

The oldest lion, just behind, caught up with them.

The towpath, when they finally turned the corner and emerged from under the concrete overpass, led to a narrow ledge at the base of the great, high wall that separated the overpass from the river, and the ledge led not to the bridge over the river, the bridge they had to cross, but on and on as far as the eye could see, stuck between the deep mobile water of the Seine on the right and the forty-foot sheer wall sloping up to the left.

It was about a foot wide.

The bridge they needed, the bridge that crossed the river, was only a couple hundred yards away, but it was also a couple hundred yards above them, and there was no way up.

Charlie stared at it. The lions stared at it.

Charlie remembered again how his dad said it was good not to swear, because that way you kept the swear words for when you really needed them.

Charlie swore.

The mothers knew exactly what they were doing. The silvery lioness headed back the way they had come: onto the
Circe
and off down the mooring rope on the bow, then along the water’s edge to the tunnel leading under the Bastille metro, back into the Canal St. Martin. When she reached the third skylight, only dimly lit by the streetlights from above, she paused, and breathed, and waited.

The bronze lioness went across the park until she came to the high wall. She sloped alongside it, passing the mysterious iron gates and doorways till she came to one that was open. She slunk in, and from within she climbed carefully onto the top of the door, where she paused, and breathed, and waited.

The yellow lioness, with blood on her claws, raced down to the lock, but she was too late to reach Charlie and the others. They had been here: She could smell them. And if
she
could, that dog would too. The yellow lioness flicked her whiskers, squatted down, and then she peed, a lot. She stared through the gloom, trying to make out the other side of the canal, but she couldn’t see clearly. Then, elegantly, carefully, she picked her way across the slender top of the lock gate: cold, deep water on one side, twenty-foot drop into cold, deep water on the other. At the other side she checked—yes, a huge, rusty, spiked metal barrier bolted into the wall blocked the towpath on that side. Clearly, people were not meant to use this side. She flicked her whiskers again.

She had seen locks before. Her plan would work. She shivered, and she paused, and breathed, and waited.

 

They couldn’t go back. They couldn’t stay here. They couldn’t do nothing. There was no time to think.

So were they going to swim? Charlie looked out at the Seine: wide, rushing, and undoubtedly cold.

He looked at the wall.

He looked at the ledge.

He thought of all that Sigi had taught him about balance and agility and trusting your body.

I have done handstands in the rigging of the
Circe,
he thought. I can do this.

“Come on,” he said, and he started to lead the lions out.

“One moment,” said the young lion. “Take my tail.”

So the young lion led, and Charlie held on to his strong, wiry tail. Elsina and the oldest lion followed behind, treading carefully on their sensitive cat feet and using their tails to balance. Way above and beyond them the whole of the great city of Paris was carrying on, its lights and its people, its busy roads and its chattering restaurants, its trees and its late-night shopping, its cars and bars and trains and parties, its hospitals and stations and harbors and circuses, and all alone, in the heart of the city, this little procession of lions and boy walked slowly, carefully, invisibly along an eight-inch ledge between the water and the wall, and nobody knew they were there.

 

Way beyond Paris, at this very moment, though Charlie could not know it, his parents were being taken from a huge parking lot, through a beautiful, moonlit subtropical garden full of palm trees and huge rounded rocks with a stream trickling over them, into a large, complex low-lying building. Not that Magdalen and Aneba could see it—they were still blindfolded.

“Hi there!” exclaimed a pretty, smiling receptionist in the entrance hall. She had a plant on her desk and her eyes were blue and round, and her clothes extremely clean. She didn’t seem to notice that the two guests were handcuffed and blindfolded, or that the three men from the personnel department were propelling them at gunpoint. She didn’t even seem to know that it was the middle of the night.

“Hi there! We have an appointment with the Chief Executive,” smiled one of the personnelguys. “New staff arriving!”

“Hey, welcome to the Corporacy Gated Village Community, where we embrace our aspirations!” the receptionist said cheerfully. “And you are . . . ?”

Aneba and Magdalen said nothing. They couldn’t—they were still gagged.

“It’s Professor Start and Dr. Ashanti!” said the other personnel-guy.

Magdalen was wondering why they were talking in exclamation points, why the air smelled so sweet and cold, why such cheerful people didn’t care about blindfolds and gags and guns, and what they were all doing at work at this time . . .

Aneba was trying to identify the smell in the air. His nose twitched and his brain ran through its enormous knowledge of chemicals, plants, and aromas.

“Great! The asthmaguys!” the receptionist cried, and picked up the phone.

“He’ll see you now!” she trilled. “He sounds so pleased to know that you’re here!”

 

The lights twinkled above and far away.

The lion’s tail was firm and rough and warm in Charlie’s hand.

The cold river air rose up to his right. The hard, cold, steep concrete wall stood immovably to his left.

The dark water was right there beside him.

Step by step, carefully, slowly.

He looked at the young lion’s back. Not at anything else.

Not the necklaces of light on the far, far riverbank.

Not the great, high bridge, growing in height as they drew nearer to it.

Step by step.

He wanted desperately, desperately, to look behind him and see if the mothers had caught up with them. But he couldn’t. If he looked anywhere other than at the lion’s back, he would fall. It was that simple.

Step by step.

He had to place his feet a little closer together on each pace than he would naturally, because the ledge was so narrow. It made him feel slightly as if he were going to lose his balance.

Step by step.

Watching the lion’s back.

Breathing.

Tall.

Strong.

The bridge loomed up in front of them, white and calm. The overpass to his left had swooped down now behind its great wall. The ledge continued, and so Charlie and the lions continued as well, under the bridge they so longed to cross.

As they came out the other side, the ledge widened a little and Charlie found the courage to look back up at the bridge. There was nothing they could climb to get onto it. How were they going to get up there?

There was another bridge, way ahead upriver. Even if they could get onto that one, it was too far away. They had a train to catch, and maybe an angry guy with a big dog chasing them. Now Charlie could see the great iron and glass curve of the roof of the station, just there across the river. So near—only a few hundred yards. For a second he looked down at the water that separated him from the station. He shivered.

Then the young lion stopped. Charlie let go of his tail in surprise. The lion flicked it, once this way, once that.

“Charlie,” he hissed, over his shoulder.

“Yes,” whispered Charlie.

“There’s an entrance here—a small tunnel. We could go in. What do you think?”

 

Troy was at first confused by the scents of the three lionesses going in three different directions.

Rafi stood dripping on the quayside by the
Circe,
glaring at him.

“Find the scent, Troy,” he said in a dangerously polite tone. Some last stragglers from the audience noticed him, and stood for a moment looking on in curiosity at the sodden, angry youth. He jerked his head back and gave them such a filthy look that they fled, chattering.

Troy ran to and fro, whining and snuffling at the ground. Here, there . . . Then he picked up the scent of the yellow lioness, whose fur he had been given to smell, and raced swiftly down the basin after her. When he came to the lock, he balked at following the scent across the narrow gate-tops, but with Rafi yelling at him from behind, he had little choice. Rafi followed him, nimbly, considering he couldn’t move his arm.

The lioness was perched motionless on top of the remote lock control. In the dark she just looked like a lump. Troy knew he was close, but he had no idea how close.

The beam that passing boats had to trip to operate the lock shone out invisibly just beneath her.

As Rafi and Troy reached the safety—as they thought it—of the other side, she let her tail droop.

Flicked it slowly across the beam.

Yes.

A creak and a shudder warned that the lockgates were beginning to open. A growl and a leap and a thwack in the face with a golden tail were enough to confuse Rafi and Troy. Another leap—onto the gates as they began to swing open, and from one gate to the other—yes—just before they swung too far open for the gap to be leaped.

And there they were. Rafi and Troy on the far side of the canal, with no way back till the slow-moving lock closed again in, oh, twenty minutes. The yellow lioness gleaming her teeth at them from this side.

She gave a short, sharp roar.

The silvery lioness heard her, and using the same trick, set off the lock at the other end of the basin. It wouldn’t start to work till the first lock was closed again, but for now Rafi and Troy were cut off, and however they tried to cross back, it would take much longer. Then the silvery lioness and the bronze lioness left their hiding places and swiftly, quietly hurtled down to join their friend.

 

“We should go in,” said the young lion. “It might lead somewhere, and anywhere is better than here.”

“Okay,” said Charlie, glad that someone else had made the decision. He called back to the others what they were going to do, and then took the lion’s tail again as they plunged into the darkness of this tiny riverside tunnel. It led directly into the bank.