The Promised One (3 page)

While Clare was in the school library learning about the pineal gland, Lucy was having another chat with Tibbles. As she used her new faculty she was becoming more proficient in controlling it and she could talk to Tibbles even with the window open simply by shutting the other voices out. She could, she found, even pick out one of those voices to concentrate on if she wanted, and shut Tibbles out. There seemed to be a receptor or receiver that she could shut off when she wanted, and a separate ‘transmitter’ or outward beacon that animals could detect.
She remembered that Clare had been interested in what Tibbles thought about owls and asked the cat if she ever spoke to them, after first politely enquiring about her sore paw.

‘I have seen the nightbanes during sunsleep, hunting scurripods and coneybanes,’
Tibbles replied,
‘but I have never dared speak to them. They do not come here very often and I think you will have to go to the great woods.’
Lucy knew she couldn’t go alone to any woods so she started to hatch a plan for a family outing. She resolved to get Clare’s help in organizing it.

That evening Clare brought home some homework from Mrs O’Grady, Lucy’s new form teacher.

‘Mrs O’Grady asked me to see her,’ she announced. ‘She said that while you are convalescing you should try and catch up a bit on the work you’ve missed. It’s mostly reading, apparently, but Miss Anther would like you to write up a topic for your course work.’ Sheila Anther taught biology – Lucy’s favourite subject. She looked through the file and found the biology page.

‘I’ve got to write on “The woods in autumn” and “The pros and cons of zoos” – whatever that means,’ said Lucy.

‘Pros and cons means things for and things against,’ explained Clare, ‘so you have to say what’s good and bad about zoos and farms and keeping pets. Sounds quite interesting but it’ll be frustrating for you not to be able to say what the animals could
tell
you about being captive.’

‘I’ve got an idea,’ said Lucy suddenly. ‘Why don’t we ask Mum to take us to Richmond Park or Wimbledon
Common at the weekend? The doctor said I should get some gentle exercise and they say it’s going to be sunny. I can pretend to make notes about the woods for my project and try to talk to an owl.’

‘OK,’ said Clare, ‘but it’ll have to be Sunday because I’m going shopping with Hannah in Kingston on Saturday.’ As Clare agreed she found herself, for the umpteenth time, wondering if she was in a dream. Here she was calmly discussing a plan for her sister to go and have a chat with a wild owl. Maybe they were both on some kind of trip! But in her heart she knew that Lucy had turned into something very special and that she had to support her through this amazing experience.

‘Greetings, O Moonwraith.’

Lucy was standing in a small clearing in the woods on Wimbledon Common. She was speaking to an owl and had decided that nightbane, the name Tibbles had used, sounded a bit rude. Clare had diverted her mother and Sarah to see some toadstools on a tree stump and though still in sight they were far enough away to leave her undisturbed. Lucy had wandered into the clearing and, while pretending to make notes in a small notepad, had ‘switched on’ her beacon. She had heard a bewildering array of voices – many of which were quite new to her – and then sent out a clear thought for an owl to respond. She had immediately received a new signal in reply and
within a minute a tawny shape had swept effortlessly through the glade and landed in the fork of a nearby oak tree.

‘Greetings, She Who Speaks. What is your desire?’

The owl replied to Lucy’s salutation in a ‘voice’ that was surprisingly deep and masculine. Lucy wasn’t quite sure how you started up a conversation with such an impressive-looking creature but she felt intuitively that it couldn’t do any harm to start off with a bit of humility, even if they did all think she was the new mistress of creation, or whatever.

‘Er, I am sorry if I disturbed you at rest,’
she began,
‘but I find I can speak to all creatures and wish to find out more about how this can be, and why you are all being so helpful to me.’
She immediately thought that she sounded stupid and should have spent more time in advance planning what she wanted to say. The owl, however, appeared not to notice her confusion and replied gravely:

‘I am deeply honoured, O Promised One. If I had known you were to come I would not have slept for many suns. I will carry out anything within my power that you command, but fear I cannot give you the knowledge that you seek. Although I am large and my talons are feared by all the creatures of the field and forest, I am but a fledgiquill and have only the mind of a fledgiquill. If you seek enlightenment concerning The Promise, you must talk to others with greater minds than I. It is told that there are Hairy Tailless Ones imprisoned in the City of the Great Clock and they have much knowledge. The Little Great Ones are also said to possess much wisdom: they breathe the air but live like gillifins
in the Great Salt. Fare thee well in thy quest.’

‘Lucy, Lucy, come on, we’re going to the pond!’ She heard Sarah calling and turned to see her mother and sisters waiting.

‘Fare thee well also, Great Moonwraith!’
she said, and went to join the others.

‘Well, what did he say?’ said Clare eagerly when she and Lucy were alone for a few moments while Joanna helped Sarah climb on a fallen tree. ‘Did you ask him if he had delivered any mail to Harry Potter?’

‘No, I jolly well didn’t,’ said Lucy. ‘I actually found him a bit scary, if you must know, even though I realize that I’m the one they all hold in awe. I couldn’t make some stupid joke he wouldn’t understand, could I?’

‘I was only teasing,’ laughed Clare. ‘How did it go?’

‘Well, not very well actually,’ said Lucy a little glumly. ‘He basically said he was only a bird and didn’t know much. It’s funny really – we’ve always been told how clever owls are, but if you think about it there’s no reason why he should be any wiser than a pigeon or a duck, is there? He did help a bit, though. He said I should see the Hairy Tailless Ones – whatever they are – or the Little Great Ones. They live in the sea but breathe air, so I suppose they’re mammals of some sort.’

Clare replied after only the briefest pause:

‘I think the Hairy Tailless Ones are apes – which would make sense as they are the closest relatives to humans, and the
Little
Great Ones must be dolphins – the Great Ones are presumably whales.’

‘Cool!’ said Lucy. ‘You’ve completely cracked it. Thanks. Now I’ve just got to think how to get to speak to some of them.’

As they strolled back towards the car they stopped to admire a new baby in a pram. The mother was a few yards away helping a toddler to clamber on to the trunk of a fallen tree. Suddenly a horse appeared from over a slight rise ahead of them, racing along the path straight towards them. It was riderless, with its mane flying and eyes and nostrils flared. It pounded nearer and though the mother screamed and rushed towards the pram clutching her toddler, the horse was already within a few yards of the pram which lay directly in its path and there was no way in which anyone could reach the baby in time. Suddenly the horse stopped; it was as though it was running on electricity and somebody had switched the power off. It skidded to a halt and reared on its hind legs just short of the pram – the baby gurgling happily in blissful unawareness of what had happened – just as a rider ran
into view, her riding coat torn and her hat askew.

‘Pegasus!’ she cried, and the horse turned to look at her. ‘Thank heavens I’ve found you!’ Then she saw the pram and the toddler and an expression of horror crossed her face. ‘Is the baby all right – did he hurt anyone?’ Once she had been reassured that no harm had been done, she explained that a car exhaust had backfired on the nearby main road and startled the inexperienced horse, who had thrown her and then galloped off in terror. She remounted, apologized once again and rode away.

On the way home their mother could talk of nothing else but the horse episode.

‘The lucky coincidences that occur in life really are quite amazing,’ she said. ‘I’m sure that it was seeing that pram that stopped the horse: he obviously thought it was an immovable object. If it hadn’t been there he would have stampeded right through us – poor Lucy could have been hurt again. Just think, that pram could even have saved our lives.’ Lucy and Clare looked at each other in the back seat
and grinned. They both now realized that all animals did as the Promised One bid them and knew that Lucy’s urgent request – inaudible to the other humans present – had brought the runaway horse to an immediate stop. One day, perhaps, they would tell their mother what had really happened that day.

Later, when they were alone, Lucy asked for Clare’s advice on how she could arrange to speak to some apes or dolphins. Clare thought for a moment, then her face lit up.

‘I’ve an idea and I think it’s one you’re going to like. You know you can’t go back to school while you’re convalescing;well, why don’t you go and spend some time with Grandma and Grandpa down in Littleporkton? While you were ill Grandpa told me that they’ve just refurbished the dolphinarium down there, so you could spend all the time you want talking to some dolphins.’

‘What a great idea,’ said Lucy. ‘And it fits in perfectly with my homework project. Let’s go and ask Mum.’

Her mother told them that her parents had already suggested that Lucy should spend some time at the seaside and immediately rang them to fix it up. At Lucy’s request she also rang the school the next day to ask if Miss Anther could write a letter to the director of the dolphinarium explaining that Lucy had been ill and asking if she could do a special biology project at the dolphinarium during her convalescence.

The following weekend Grandma and Grandpa came to stay and when they returned to the seaside they took Lucy with them. She told them about the project she wanted
to do on the dolphins and Grandpa promised to go with her to the dolphinarium when it reopened the following week.

T
hree months to the day before Lucy’s accident a meeting took place, thousands of miles away in South America, that was to have a profound effect upon her life and the lives of many others.

On that day Alf Sawyer rose as dawn was breaking and went for a dip in the private pool of his villa. As he swam, the sun rose from the sea and bathed Rio de Janeiro in a brilliant rosy glow. The ‘Cidade Maravilhosa’, or Marvellous City, with its stunning backdrop of mountains and miles of golden beaches, sat like a jewel on the edge of the Atlantic Ocean. But this jewel was not without its flaws. A considerable number of drug barons, thieves and assorted war criminals spent their ill-gotten gains here on villas, beautiful gardens, exotic swimming pools and servants, and made themselves feel respectable.

A self-made man, Alf – ‘Chopper’ to his friends and associates in the illegal logging business – had risen from humble beginnings in south-east London to sit at the head of a multi-million-pound company making a fortune from drugs and illegal gold mining. The organization operated under the cover of a legal timber company which was run by a network of Chopper’s henchmen, who kept the
company’s activities apparently on the right side of the law while ruthlessly exterminating any person or rival company that got in Chopper’s way.

Despite the origins of his wealth, Chopper had never been caught by the police or even charged with any crime. He always put on a show of outward respectability and with financial success he had indulged himself to the full. His extensive villa and grounds looked out over its own beach, and a sophisticated security system ensured that his spoils could not be shared by others, for he strongly disapproved of any criminality directed against himself.

The decorating and furnishings of the villa had all been executed in the worst possible taste and comprised a collection of the most expensive trash that money could buy. Chopper was particularly proud of his large collection of gold-plated garden gnomes, specially made to illustrate his own career and interests, and arranged in a variety of little scenes depicting criminal activities.

Chopper was the eldest of four brothers, all criminals, and he was by far the most successful of the bunch. The next in age, Sam, was his deputy in the company and had no talent other than mindless violence. The other brothers were twins and Chopper had not seen them for over five years. He knew they had gone to jail somewhere in the Far East but since then had heard nothing until they had contacted him out of the blue a week earlier and requested a family meeting to discuss ‘business’. Chopper had immediately suspected that they had heard of his success and were anxious to tap into his fortune, but could hardly
refuse to see them. They were due to arrive with a business colleague, Mr Song, that very morning, and Chopper had arranged a business meeting in the villa boardroom for 11 a.m. He now sat on a lounger on the patio overlooking the swimming pool, basking in the morning sunshine. It would be a long day for, following the arrival of the twins and the family meeting, he would be holding the annual board meeting for his timber company in the afternoon and there was to be a family reunion dinner in the evening. He wondered what exactly his brothers wanted and where they had been during the past five years, apart from jail.

Chopper had been six when Sid and Fred had been born. They had been criminals since early childhood. Starting with cruelty to animals at a young age, they had terrorized first their schoolmates, then their teachers and then their entire neighbourhood. After several convictions for car theft and mugging with extreme violence they had eventually ended up abroad as ‘minders’, protecting the boss of an organization that sold animal parts for use in Asian folk medicine. Their new career turn had happened by chance and came about because of their being arrested by customs officials in the Far East when returning from a package trip, the package in this instance being two kilograms of drugs.

The twins had been convicted and jailed for life, having only narrowly escaped death sentences. On being imprisoned they had found themselves in a small compound containing fifty or so other criminals ranging
from petty thieves to murderous cut-throats. Within a few weeks these inmates were divided roughly into two groups: those who had in some way offended the twins – a group readily identified by their limps, makeshift crutches and a variety of interesting dental and facial disfigurements – and the rest, who avoided becoming members of the first group by supplying the twins with extra food, cigarettes and the best places in the shade. For a training in survival in an unfriendly world, the playgrounds of south-east London and residence in a number of Her Majesty’s correctional institutions were clearly more than a match for the backstreets and crowded bazaars of the Orient. This interesting social observation did not escape the notice of a certain Mr Song, a fellow prisoner who had made certain he remained on the right side of the twins. One day, after they had left a particularly vicious and sneaky thug called Saddhu the Sadist looking even more unattractive than he had looked before stepping accidentally on Sid’s toe, Song had approached them.

‘I like your people skills,’ he said. ‘I could use you boys in my outfit if we ever get out of this place. The money, by the way, is good.’ The twins were immediately interested. They had already noticed that Song’s scam, whatever it was, was extremely lucrative, for he bribed the guards generously for various favours including an endless supply of cigarettes for Sid and Fred. Mr Song, they learnt, ran an organization which slaughtered tigers in the wild, selling their skins to the fur trade and their body parts for use in a wide range of Asian folk medicines. Tigers were a
protected species and the trade in tiger parts was illegal in India and had been banned in China in 1993 and in Japan – an end-market for the products – in 1999. There was a thriving underground market, however, and the prices that could be obtained for such products were enormous. Song and his men paid villagers near the few remaining jungles in which tigers survived to trap or poison the animals. These poor villagers received what was only a pittance compared with the money Song would eventually receive for the animals, but for them the pay seemed handsome and well worth the risk of illegal hunting. From a single tiger Song could make hundreds of thousands of pounds. The skin alone was worth a fortune and there seemed to be no part of the animal that was not used in traditional medicine: the meat to treat nausea; the whiskers for toothache; the bones for rheumatism; the fat for leprosy; the nose for dog bites; the brain for spots; the eyeballs for epilepsy, malaria and cataracts; the teeth for asthma, rabies and fevers; the tail for skin disease; the claws for sedation; and the skin for mental illness. Song had bases in Madhya Pradesh, Bengal, Nepal, China and Bhutan, smuggling the tiger parts across the various international borders to his base in Hong Kong where, under the guise of a butcher’s shop, they were sold from under the counter. In a back room the bones and teeth were ground into powder, ‘diluted’ with chalk to increase the volume, and then sold around the world to a variety of dealers in folk medicine. It was ironic that Song was not in jail for conducting this dreadful trade, but had been arrested for evading tax on his
cover trade, the butcher’s shop. While he was in jail his lucrative tiger business, long the envy of other animal dealers, was being run by his son but was under threat from a number of rival gangs eager to share in the rich pickings from the illegal trade, and Song felt that the twins were just what he needed to preserve his empire.

Shortly following this discussion the president of the small country in which they were imprisoned died suddenly from food poisoning (the twins were never quite sure if this news came as a complete surprise to Song’s organization), the government was overthrown and an amnesty was declared for all prisoners.

Following their unexpected release from jail the twins took up Song’s offer of employment and for two years Song’s terrible trade had continued under the protection of the twins and wreaked havoc on the tiger populations of the countries in which they worked. With the supply of tigers running out, however, and the governments of those countries coming under increasing pressure from animal organizations and the media to put an end to the killing of rare and threatened species, Song had finally decided to hold a crisis meeting to discuss the future of the business. During that meeting the twins had happened to mention their brother in South America and Song’s fertile brain had immediately worked out a plan to rescue his organization. He had persuaded the twins to arrange a meeting with Chopper and the three of them were even now in a taxi speeding from Rio airport towards Chopper’s villa.

Chopper’s thoughts as he sat by the pool were suddenly interrupted by the maid.

‘Excuse me, Senhor,’ she said. ‘Your guests have arrived. Shall I show them to their rooms now and call you later?’

‘No,’ said Chopper. ‘They’re late and I’ve got a company board meeting this afternoon. Show them straight into the boardroom and give them coffee.’

‘Very well, Senhor.’ She turned and left to do his bidding. Chopper heaved his massive bulk out of the lounger and went in to change. A few minutes later he strode into the boardroom and greeted his brothers and Mr Song.

Mr Song bowed slightly and said:

‘I am delighted to meet you and see your beautiful home – but please call me Sing – it is the nickname your brothers seem to have given me and I am very happy with it.’ Despite his sinister appearance, his voice had a soft, musical quality.

‘Thank you, Sing,’ replied Chopper. ‘Now,’ he continued, ‘let’s sit down and get straight to business. What’s all this about?’

Sing began by explaining the tiger business that he had built up and which the twins had helped him with during the last two years. Then he came to the point.

‘Unfortunately all good things must come to an end, and we are going to have to stop all our operations in Asia.’

‘Why?’ asked Chopper.

‘The supply of tigers is running out,’ said Sing in a resentful tone, as though these magnificent creatures had been put on the planet solely for the benefit of his business.

‘But I thought there were millions of tigers in the jungle,’ said Chopper.

‘No, there are probably fewer than five thousand left in the world,’ said Sing. ‘That’s enough to keep us going for a while but international opinion and, in particular, the Wildlife Protection Society of India, is making our life so difficult that we feel the business is no longer economic.’

‘Where do I fit into all this?’ asked Chopper.

‘As the tigers are becoming extinct,’ Song explained, ‘the demand for their bits and pieces is higher than ever; the rarer they are the higher the price goes.’ Chopper nodded; that certainly made sense. ‘Jaguars, however, though they are also declining rapidly in number, still live in such remote areas that if we can get into those areas we can probably continue in business for as long as we all need to become rich, without the authorities ever noticing. We think that jaguar parts will be just as good as tiger parts and, in any case, the market we are selling into isn’t exactly
high-tech. They won’t be doing DNA tests on the teeth and other organs we give them, as long as they look like tiger bits. So, what we are proposing is to move our supply service from Asia to South America. We’ll still sell the stuff into the Asian market where we have a network of dealers who’ll be delighted to find that we’ve got a new source of material. When your esteemed brothers’ – he glanced at Sid and Fred – ‘told me that their brother ran a large lumber business in the Amazon, everything fell into place. If you can give me a base in one of your remote camps we’ll catch the jaguars and give you a percentage on each animal – remember, each specimen is worth a significant amount by the time I’ve finished with it. A well-cured skin alone can fetch up to a million dollars and a skeleton worth ten thousand dollars is worth many times that amount when ground up into powder for medicine.’

Chopper was looking more interested every minute.

‘There’s been a recent development which makes things even better,’ continued Sing, who had originally trained as a vet. He went on to explain how he could operate on the jaguars to insert a tube through the skin into the liver from which bile – highly sought after in oriental medicine – could be collected in a plastic bag every day for several months. He showed Chopper a diagram on his laptop computer and pointed to the screen.

‘You just keep emptying the bag – it’s like collecting liquid gold. When the animal eventually dies you can still sell all its other bits: skin, teeth, glands and so on, but by then you’ve already made a small fortune out of it.’
Chopper leant forward, his piggy eyes gleaming.

‘How do you catch the jaguars?’ he asked. ‘Aren’t they very dangerous?’

‘They are, but the local tribes have techniques for catching them. We’ll bribe the villagers with drugs and guns and, if they don’t co-operate, burn down their village. The method seemed to work quite well in India and Malaysia and I’ve no doubt it will here.’

Chopper looked at the vile man with growing respect. Here was someone who had got it all worked out and would be ruthless in implementing his plans.

‘It so happens,’ he said, ‘that I’m opening a new secret camp close to Colombia. It will have an airstrip because certain … hmmm … trading commodities are going to be flown in there from across the border. If we’re hacking a bit of jungle down I don’t see why we can’t hack a bit more out for your zoo.’ He leant forward and shook Song’s hand. His grip was like a vice.

‘You’ve got a deal. My brother Sam will sort out the percentages with you later.’

‘When can we start?’ asked Song, rubbing his pale, numb hand with the other.

‘The camp is already being cleared,’ replied Chopper. ‘We’re going to call it Cayman Creek. I suggest the twins start out for there tomorrow with a list of what you need and stay there until it’s ready. They can start catching jaguars as soon as the compound is secure. You can go out there to operate as soon as there are enough cats to make your trip worthwhile.’ His face relaxed into a crocodilian
grin. ‘Well, I think that just about wraps things up for the time being. After lunch I’ll tell the board why we’re adding zoo-keeping to our other activities.’