Through the Tiger's Eye (18 page)

‘I am making tea,’ he said proudly.

‘Where did you find tea?’

Pablo pointed underground.

‘Yuck. It must have been down there for about ten years,’ Lucy said.

‘Ricardo!’

Toro’s call came from the big rock on top of the waterfall. He was jumping up and down and waving his arms. Ricardo took off after him, clambering over the rocks like a two-legged goat.

Angel was asleep in a hammock slung in the trees, and Rahel and Carlos the Zombie were standing knee-deep in the pool.

‘Hi,’ said Lucy.

‘Welcome,’ said Rahel.

Carlos nodded. Maybe he was going to be less of a zombie.

He noticed the soccer ball under her arm. ‘Do you play soccer?’ she asked.

He was scornful: ‘Of course!’

‘So do I,’ Lucy said.

‘Girls don’t play soccer.’

‘Well, that’s funny,’ snapped Lucy. ‘I don’t know who was playing in last year’s Grand Final if it wasn’t me and my friends.’ Zombie.

‘What good is a girls’ team?’

This was war!

‘We play in mixed teams! There were boys in our team and on the other team!’

‘Boys who have to play with girls are no good.’

‘Crap, only the good ones get in our team. You have to go through selections and everything. I’m in because I can run fast and tackle hard and I’m good at penalties.’

Lucy would never find out what Carlos was about to say because Rahel poured a pot of pond water on his head. Lucy’s burst of laughter was cut short by the same treatment.

‘Both of you will desist! Carlos, just because girls aren’t allowed to play soccer at home doesn’t mean they don’t play soccer here. Lucy is helping us and you are discourteous to her all the time. Lucy, you must stop fighting with Carlos. He doesn’t mean it. He . . .’

She looked as if she wanted to say something else but didn’t know if she should.

Carlos looked stormy.

‘I do mean it. We don’t need her help. I don’t need any of you. If you would tell me where you hid that gun, I would shoot the Commander and rescue the others myself.’

He stormed off, vanishing up the creek.

‘What is
wrong
with him? I haven’t done anything to him but he hates me!’

‘Ask Pablo,’ Rahel said.

The three of them sat around the fire, Pablo drinking his antique tea. Rahel spoke softly.

‘Carlos has been in the jail longer than any of us – for more than a year. We grew up together. His mama and papa and mine were friends before . . . before . . .’

Pablo whispered.

‘Before the Bulls killed them.’

The clearing was terribly quiet. Suddenly a crow cawed in the trees like a warning, and Lucy shivered. She didn’t know what to say.

‘Carlos’ papa used to coach the Telares Tigers,’ Rahel went on, ‘the best soccer team on the island’.

Pablo interrupted. ‘The best in the Pacific! They thrashed Burchimo the year before the invasion 4-0, in front of the Tongan royal family. My papa said they invaded to pay us back!’

Rahel jumped in again.

‘After the invasion, they didn’t stop people playing soccer but they made the Tigers change their name. They passed a law against speaking our language and we all had to speak Burchimese at school. We weren’t allowed to mention the word “Telares”. You could be sent to the jail just for saying it in the street.’

Pablo broke in again. ‘You’re supposed to be telling her about the Tigers.’

‘I am! They made Carlos’ papa change the Tigers’ name to the Burchimo Bears. Everyone hated it. At home nobody ever called them the Bears, but in public we had to. So at the big matches in the stadium we would have to chant out “Bears, Bears, Bears”, but in our hearts we knew we were going for the Tigers. And they were still the best team on Telares.’

Pablo took over the story. ‘The best? They were the greatest. The Tigers won every game. They defeated the garrison team three times! Three times!’

‘What’s a garrison?’

‘It’s where all the Bull soldiers live in Telares City. They had their own soccer team called the Burcho City Bulls – they changed the name of Telares City to Burcho City but it is the same thing – and the Bulls played in the All-Island League. Everyone hated them and would hiss when they scored -’

‘Which was hardly ever!’ said Pablo.

‘. . . and they knew everyone hated them and it made them play worse than ever. But the Bull referees would give all our players red cards – for nothing! – and send them off. Bull soldiers would come to all the games with their weapons because they feared a riot. It was indeed frightening!’

Pablo took over again.

‘And at the last Grand Final it became very serious. Almost everyone on the whole island went to the match. People from the mountains walked for days to get there. The crowds flowed up the streets for hours. There were more Telarians in one place than the Bulls had ever seen. And everyone hated them! They could feel it and they were scared!’

‘It did not feel like a soccer match,’ said Rahel, ‘and deep down everybody knew it was much more. Papa said it was a chance to show the generals that they had not won, that we were still undefeated. They might have taken over the country but not our hearts. But Mama would not let me go to the game. She said people would get hurt. She didn’t want Papa to go but he did anyway.’

‘My mama would not let
me
go but I went anyway,’ said Pablo. ‘With Carlos. At half-time the score was Tigers two, Bulls zero. It should have been much higher but the referee disallowed a Tigers’ goal. The crowd hissed for about five minutes and the Bull soldiers went onto the field and pointed their rifles at the crowd.’

Rahel jumped in, ‘Then, in the second half —’

‘How would you know? You were not there,’ complained Pablo.

‘Everyone knows. Papa told me this story so many times. In the second half, three Bulls players tackled our striker and knocked him out. He was carried from the field but they did not even get a yellow card. Then, ten minutes from the end, when everyone knew the Tigers had won, the referee gave our goalie a red card -’

‘A red card!’ said Lucy. ‘What for?’

‘For stopping a penalty.’

‘That’s what he’s supposed to do!’

‘Not that day! The referee found some excuse to give him a red card and that was that. He was off the field.’

Pablo went on, ‘And that was when Carlos’ papa picked up a megaphone and stood on the sideline facing the crowd and began to chant “Tigers, Tigers, Tigers”. There were Bull soldiers all around him, but he did it anyway. Then everyone stood up and began to chant with him. The soldiers fired into the air but everyone kept chanting.’

‘What about the ref?’ asked Lucy.

‘You could tell he wanted to run away but he blew his whistle and the game started again. But they still could not score. The Tigers defended like, like . . .’

‘TIGERS,’ said Rahel. ‘From home we could hear the roar from the stadium. We could hear “Tigers, Tigers, Tigers”, and it sounded like ten thousand tigers growling. We heard the shots and Mama panicked. We were listening to the radio and the commentator said the Bulls had only fired in the air, but we were really scared.’

‘Then the Tigers scored again!’ said Pablo, his eyes sparkling.

‘Rafael, our best player, tackled a Bulls player in midfield, got the ball, and just . . .’ Pablo stood up, swung his leg back and executed a perfect blast which sent Lucy’s ball careering into the bush on the other side of the creek. ‘The ref just stood there with his mouth open. And then the full-time siren sounded and the crowd went mad.’

‘It was like a hundred thousand tigers! That night there were parties all over town, but the biggest one was at Carlos’ house. All of us went. And that’s when it happened.’

‘What?’ said Lucy nervously.

‘The Bull soldiers came and arrested the entire Tigers team, including Carlos’ papa. They hated him for starting that Tigers chant. But they took Carlos and his mama too! The next morning, Carlos was taken to the camp, and the day after that his parents’ bodies were dumped in the street outside their house. It was a warning to everybody else. But it didn’t work! That is when my mama and papa joined the rebels. They had lost their best friends. Just for winning a soccer match.’

‘They did the same thing all over the city,’ said Pablo. ‘Many people died that night. And after that, no one wanted to see soccer matches. The All-Island League was dead.’

There was a cough behind them

‘Talking about me?’ said Carlos. He was holding Lucy’s soccer ball.

No one answered.

Carlos looked challengingly at Lucy: ‘Penalty shootout?’

They picked two big trees for goalposts. Lucy was to be in goal for five shots, then Carlos. Carlos tried to send his first shot whizzing close to the left-hand tree but Lucy was onto him, diving spectacularly. A heavy frown descended on his face and he marched, muttering, back to the penalty spot. Whatever he said to himself must have worked. Lucy did her best but couldn’t stop him pounding the next
four
home.
He might be skinny but he was good!

Lucy’s turn. She bent to take her runners off, because Carlos wasn’t wearing any.

‘Leave your shoes on,’ Carlos said and his condescending tone made her even more determined to take them off. And a few seconds later Carlos got his first shock. Lucy dummied and slammed the first goal home. And the second. But Carlos, frowning as he walked back to the goal line, must have have cottoned onto her technique because he stopped the third triumphantly. Now the pressure was on! If Lucy missed again Carlos would be king of the camp. That’s how it felt, anyway. And it really hurt, kicking without shoes!

‘Think like an iceberg,’ she told herself. That was what her very first coach, Mrs Morias, used to say when she was teaching them to kick penalties and boys from other teams stood on the sideline, jeering and laughing.

‘Get cold and icy,’ she would say. ‘If you let them turn you into a puddle of water, you will miss. Think like an iceberg!’

At first Lucy hadn’t known what she meant but once, when the goalie was grinning and pulling faces at her as she lined up the shot, whispering, ‘Girls can’t kick’ so only Lucy could hear, she tried it. It worked! She let his grins and taunts bounce off her ice-hard skin and pounded the ball home before he knew what hit him.

Lucy took a deep breath, went icy and
bamm
’ the ball shot through the gap on Carlos’ left. Carlos frowned. She lined up the next shot, felt the ice – and booted the ball to his right. Four all! Game over.

Then, to their own surprise, they both started laughing. Rahel made Carlos and Lucy shake hands and then raised both their fists in the air while Pablo cheered. One minute they hated each other, the next they were planning a full-on match with everyone playing and Ricardo and Toro had scrambled down off the rocks and wanted to start
now
. But then Carlos began to cough. Lucy watched, shocked, as his thin frame shuddered, as though coughs had taken over his whole body. And when he finally stopped coughing he looked angry again and walked off on his own.

Rahel and Pablo had gone very quiet.

‘He should go to a doctor,’ said Lucy. Then she remembered how complicated this all was. Suddenly the pool looked great. She dived in without another word, swimming underwater until it hurt. Surfacing behind the waterfall, she climbed up into the cave, towards the shaft of sunlight at the back. The hole it shone through in the rock platform above was quite large, and she could haul herself up, and then clamber out, above the waterfall.

‘We can use this to get the bedding into the cave without getting it wet,’ she said aloud.

They’d have to watch it when it rained, but most of the cave would stay nice and dry. Lucy dropped down and swam back to tell the others. Carlos was back, and still grumpy, but he cheered up when he saw the cave.

‘There is room here for many people,’ he said.

Everyone got excited then, but it still took ages to get the cave set up because they had to haul everything up over the rocks and across the creek. Toro and Ricardo weren’t much help because they kept jumping off the waterfall instead. Lucy heard Rahel going off at her little brother. She didn’t understand the words but wondered if it was anything like what she had just finished saying to Ricardo, most of which Mum wouldn’t have liked. Rahel rolled her eyes at Lucy and they both laughed.

They swam again and sat on the hot rocks to dry off, devouring the contents of Lucy’s pack. Then Rahel reminded them they were supposed to be planning a jailbreak. Ricardo suggested they give the guards notes from their mothers telling them they had to go home because they had forgotten their lunch.

Carlos said he thought they shouldn’t do anything on a Saturday night ever again, because the Bull Commander would probably be there next time. Pablo agreed the guards would be more wary now. They wouldn’t be drunk any more.

Carlos got grumpy again. ‘If you would give me that gun, I could shoot some of them and scare the rest off.’

Rahel shook her head impatiently. ‘Don’t you see? There should be no guns on Telares. We were happy before the Bulls came with their guns.’

‘Yes, and now we have to take their guns from them,’ Carlos said ominously.

But Rahel just shook her head again. ‘Besides, one gun against so many is not enough. If we start to shoot at them and hurt one of them . . .’ Rahel cut her own throat with a pointed finger before saying in a deathly voice, ‘
Reprisals
! They will kill the others’.

‘But then who would make their stuff for them?’ asked Lucy.

‘They have lots of children at the workshop,’ said Rahel.

‘How many?’

‘Perhaps a hundred,’ said Carlos.

‘A hundred! I thought you said there were only about twenty more. And why don’t they sleep with you at the mermaid house?’

‘We sick make their thoughts,’ said Toro.

‘Huh?’

Rahel explained:

‘The other children are from the local village, near the camp. Their mamas and papas are not rebels, or if they are, the Bulls don’t know yet. So the children are allowed home at night but their families know they must deliver them every morning or they will be arrested. But they don’t let us talk to the village children.’