Lionboy the Chase

Published by the Penguin Group
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Postscript

Acknowledgements

PUFFIN BOOKS

‘A new star has appeared in the children’s literary firmament’ – Independent

Acknowledgements

Thanks again to Fred van Deelen for his beautiful maps and diagrams, and to Paul Hodgson for presenting the music to match.

And thanks to all the Puffin ladies with their continuingly beautiful footwear, especially Sarah Hughes, Adele Minchin, Kirsten Grant, Elaine McQuade, Shannon Park, Lesley Levene and Francesco Dow. And to Tom Sanderson for our dramatic new look.

And the agents: Linda Shaughnessy, Rob Kraitt, Teresa Nicholls, Anjali Pratap, Sylvie Rabineau. And Derek Johns, the perfect agent, sine qua non.

Special thanks again to Robert Lockhart for writing us a gorgeous evocative soundtrack. If you want to hear them all, or learn them on the piano, there is a book of the tunes. They are quite easy – even I can play them – and come with a CD of the music played by a small orchestra, so you don’t even have to play it yourself. It is called Music from Zizou Corder’s Lionboy, by Robert Lockhart, and published by Faber Music. You can get it from music shops or online from www.fabermusic.com.

Chapter One

It is a curious thing for a boy to be stuck on a train in an Alpine snowstorm, in a bathroom with six homesick Lions and a huge unidentified sabre-toothed creature. More curious still to know that bustling around next door in his purple silk dressing gown is a friendly Bulgarian king called Boris, and his security chief, name of Edward, who makes a point of knowing everything there is to know, and perhaps a little more.

If you were a boy whose parents – clever scientists – had been stolen by a villainous lad from your neighbourhood in London, on behalf of you’re not sure who, but almost certainly because they have invented a cure for asthma, you might be happy to think that these Lions and this king were on your side. If you and the Lions had run away from a Floating Circus and a nasty, mysterious Liontrainer, you might take the chance to relax for a moment, knowing that neither he nor the villainous lad – who has anyway been savaged by one of the Lions – could make it through the snow to get you.

If the Oldest Lion said to you, ‘We are warm and dry, and we have eaten, and we are together. Someone else is going to mend the train that will roar us through this mysterious dangerous weather to the place where your parents are, closer to our home. But now – now we are safe’ – if he said that, you might feel warm and cheered up and happy.

This is exactly how Charlie Ashanti felt. Charlie felt as close to safe as he had felt in weeks. The beautiful Lions were lying in a pile around him: the three Lionesses resting after their chase, the Oldest Lion calmly triumphant at their escape, Elsina the young girl Lion still weak from their adventures on the train’s roof but so excited to be out in the real world, and the Young Lion, Charlie’s friend, fast asleep with his head in Charlie’s lap. Next door was King Boris in his glamorous carriage, promising help when they reached Venice. Rafi Sadler and Maccomo the Liontrainer were safely stuck in Paris, and the snow was covering the train like a huge snuggly duvet.

‘Now,’ Charlie said to himself, ‘is the time to sleep and eat and relax, so we will be fit and strong for the troubles ahead.’ Because, without a doubt, there were going to be troubles ahead.

Charlie’s parents, Dr Aneba Ashanti and Professor Magdalen Start, were in big trouble already. You wouldn’t necessarily think it, to see them sitting at opposite ends of the social club in the Corporacy Gated Village Community. The Club Room was long and low and comfortable, with a glass wall looking out over a beautiful subtropical garden, full of palm trees and huge rounded rocks with a stream trickling over them. At least, Magdalen had thought it was beautiful until she noticed that every rock was the same shape exactly, and made of some kind of plastic. She peered carefully at the trees. Were they fake too?

She was sitting with a group of women all talking about how fat they were. They had dishes of crisps and glasses of wine in front of them. ‘Oh no, I shouldn’t,’ they cried, as they stuffed their faces with food that was bad for them. A lot of them were smoking, too.

Magdalen wondered why you should hate somebody just because she has pretty skin. She wondered why these women were worried about getting wrinkles from smoking but not about cancer. She wondered why they could only talk about how fat they were, when they weren’t particularly fat anyway, and if they were really worried about it why didn’t they stop eating the crisps and drinking? And if they wanted to eat crisps and drink wine, why did they keep telling themselves off for doing so? Why not just enjoy it?

She felt very tired. She couldn’t quite remember how they got here, to tell the truth – Rafi Sadler tricking them had faded from her mind somehow, and so had the long journey to this place by submarine and boat and truck. She didn’t think they’d been here very long. She knew she didn’t like it. She wanted to be left alone, to not listen to this rubbish. She wanted to see her son and be with her husband and get some work done. Her brain was turning to mushy gunk here. She knew she was meant to be somewhere else, leading a different life. She felt very tired. I just thought that, she thought. What’s wrong with me?

Looking up, she caught a glimpse of Aneba across the room. He didn’t look very well. His skin, normally gleaming black, had an ashy tinge to it. The whites of his eyes were a little yellow. His big muscular shoulders, normally so broad and straight, seemed to have sagged.

‘You’ve put on a bit of weight yourself, haven’t you?’ said one of the women to Magdalen.

At the other end of the room, Aneba was watching football on television with a group of men. Aneba liked football, but this was the fourth match in a row. The men were complaining about how bad the players were, and the managers, and the referee, and the linesmen. They were drinking beer and eating peanuts and saying they could do much better themselves. Under the cigarette smell there was another flavour in the air. He half recognized it. Didn’t like it.

After one of the matches, the news had come on. The Empire soldiers had had to shoot up a city in the Poor World, and lots of civilians had been injured and there were no medicines available. There were pictures of children with dirty bandages on, looking terrified and hungry. The men looked up briefly, and said, ‘That’s terrible,’ then went back to complaining. ‘Nothing you can do though, is there?’ said one. Aneba could see that the man felt bad, and liked him for it.

Aneba knew there was something else he ought to be doing but he couldn’t really remember what.

Looking up, he saw Magdalen on the other side of the room. She didn’t look very well. Her red hair wasn’t curly and chaotic as usual. It had gone flat.

Soon they’d be due back at the Wellness Unit for their Motivational Management Therapy.

If Charlie had seen his energetic, intelligent parents like this, he would have revised his opinion that they were not in any immediate danger. He would have been shocked.

Trouble had already announced itself at Thibaudet’s Royal Floating Circus and Equestrian Philharmonic Academy (also known as Tib’s Gallimaufry or The Show). Major Maurice Thibaudet (pronounced Tib Oh Day), the Boss, Ringmaster and Maestro of the Circus, had been lounging in his cabin on board the giant circus ship Circe, wearing a pale-green robe that matched the carved panelling, and drinking a glass of brandy and soda. The Show’s opening night in Paris had been fabulous, and everybody had said so. Major Tib and most of the circusguys had stayed up late afterwards, drinking and congratulating themselves. The others were all still in bed with bad heads (except for Pirouette the Flying Trapeze Artiste, and the Lucidi Family of acrobats, who always got up early to practise, no matter what). Major Tib himself was too tough for hangovers, but even so he didn’t really expect to be entertaining visitors at such a moment. His visitor, a gentleman from the French Railway, was a little embarrassed.

‘The Lions!’ he drawled in his lazy Southern Empire voice. ‘What do you mean? Ain’t no problem with our Lions. Mighty early in the morning to come round complainin’ about something that ain’t a problem, don’t ya think?’

‘Monsieur,’ said the visitor delicately. ‘Last night a very peculiar tale emerged. There was an English boy trying to stop the Orient Express from leaving the station. He was very wet and crazy and saying there was Lions in the train; stolen runaway Lions and a young thief who has stolen them. He said that one of the Lions has attacked him, and that the Lions are from your Circus, and somebody throw him in the Canal St Martin down by Bastille … Obviously this is nonsense and he is very crazy, so we send him to the secure hospital. But in the dawn the hospital calls me and says this boy has serious hurts on his arm and shoulder like some big thing is bitten him. Big thing. No mosquito, you know. The boy is bloody and angry and wet and crazy but, yes, he has this big bite on him, and the hospital says, well, it could be Lion bite, most likely dog or something, and maybe he get rabies and that’s why he so crazy, but you know … the boy said the Lions are from here, belonging to your famous trainer, Monsieur Maccomo. So I have to check. I am sorry. You understand.’

‘You’re saying I’ve let crazy Lions with rabies escape from my Circus and bite people?’ said Major Tib. ‘That what you’re sayin’? You better be sure, Monsieur, because that’s pretty serious.’

‘Sure,’ said Major Tib. He leapt to his feet, his robe flashing out behind him. He was very tall and thin, and crossed the cabin in a second to fling open the door. ‘Come on!’ he said, with a grin.

Major Tib strode across the deck, the Railway Gentleman scurrying along behind him. ‘Morning, Sigi!’ he cried, to the father of the Lucidis, upside down in the rigging between the Big Top and the funnels. ‘Seen Maccomo this morning?’

The Lioncabin was on the same deck as Major Tib’s, the other side of the Circe’s on-board Big Top. It took them only a moment to get there. And only a moment to fling open the door, and less than a moment to see that all the Lioncages were empty. Where six Lions should have been dozing or gazing, there was nothing. Where Maccomo should have been sleeping, rolled in his beautiful cloth, there was nothing.

Then: ‘Probably in the Ring, exercising,’ he declared, with a flash of reassuring smile. He knew they weren’t. They never exercised till mid-morning, when they’d had a chance to warm up. Pirouette would be in the Ring at this time, and the Ringboys clearing up after last night. ‘Why don’t you go wait in my cabin while I locate Monsieur Maccomo?’ he suggested. ‘I’ll send you over a coffee.’ He was still smiling.

‘As you wish,’ he said, and belted out of the Lioncabin to the ropelocker just next door, where the boys slept.

Julius the clown’s son and Hans the boy who trained the Learned Pig leapt up in fright, and each bumped his head on the shelf above, and each cried out.

‘Where is he!’ roared Major Tib. ‘Where is Maccomo! Where are my damn Lions!!!’

‘Maccomo went out last night,’ said Julius. ‘He went for dinner with Mabel Stark. The tigertrainer.’

‘Mabel, my dear,’ he said suavely. ‘I’m so sorry to call you so early on this beautiful mornin’, and I do hope you don’t find my inquiry indiscreet, but do you happen by the slightest chance to have the slightest idea where Maccomo might possibly be?’

‘Well, no, of course not, Ma’am, and I’m sorry to … Mabel, honey, he ain’t here, and his boy ain’t here, and I’m just a little perturbed …’

‘OK, honey,’ he said. ‘You call me. OK?’ He clicked the phone and turned to the Railway Gentleman.

‘Says they had dinner last night and she ain’t seen him since … There been any other reports of Lions being seen?’ he asked suddenly.

‘Get up, boys, and search the ship,’ cried Major Tib. ‘Find Charlie. Find Maccomo. Find the Lions, or any sign of where they’ve been. Get the Ringboys out to help. Any sign.’

All this took place while Charlie had been meeting and making friends with King Boris, during which time the snow had begun to fall and the poor Lions, riding (for purposes of discretion and not being spotted) on the roof of the train, had been caught in the snowstorm. They had nearly caught their deaths of cold before Charlie went up on the roof in the dreadful gale and brought them down. At just about lunchtime – the time when Charlie slammed the trapdoor shut on the eddying, whooshing, icy snowstorm outside, and started to warm up the poor frozen creatures with hot water and his mother’s Improve Everything Lotion – Maccomo walked up the Circe’s gangplank.

He looked very different from the calm, enigmatic man whom Charlie had first met weeks ago, the man whose calmness spread over everybody in his vicinity like a numbing sludge. Now his white African pyjamas were scuffed and dishevelled after his night out, his unshaven chin showed nubs of white stubble against his dry, grey-looking dark skin, and his hands were shaking. Nevertheless, anyone could see that he was still a man of character, with his barrel-like chest and the curious flash in the depths of his eyes.

The Ringmaster knew how to shout – of course he did. So he shouted, for about ten minutes.

‘You’re creakin’ sacked, Maccomo – you’re sacked! And you won’t be working again in Circus, don’t imagine you will. And don’t think you’ll be paid – you’ve lost me a valuable asset here –’

‘The Lions are mine, sir,’ said Maccomo, with the flash in his eyes more like his old self.

Major Tib laughed. ‘Then you’ll be facing the police charges about letting them run off? And you’ll be paying the fine? And what will you be doing about my reputation, Maccomo? How you going to make up to me for making my Circus look so bad? You gonna go round tellin’ everybody it was your fault and your mistake? You gonna tell the police that?’

The Railway Gentleman sat quietly. ‘The police are on their way,’ he said mildly.

‘You gonna take responsibility for Charlie, then? He’s disappeared too. And what about that English boy they savaged?’

The Railway Gentleman went with Maccomo to the Lioncabin. Calmly Maccomo looked around. He gathered together some things in a bag. ‘The police will want to take me, I suppose,’ he said. The Railway Gentleman didn’t really know what to say.

‘Excuse me,’ said Maccomo, gesturing to a small door at the back of the Cages. ‘I should look …’ He pulled a lever, the door opened, and he peered through. The Railway Gentleman smiled politely.

Maccomo was down the Lions’ special secure tunnel to the Ring before the Railway Gentleman even realized the door led anywhere, and he was off the Circe and heading for the station by the time the Railway Gentleman got back to Major Tib’s cabin, where he told the police and Major Tib what had happened. By the time they had put out the message to apprehend him, Maccomo, like Charlie, was hiding out in a train bathroom, where he shaved, changed into a suit, and put on a smart hat and glasses. He looked a different man.

‘Charlie Ashanti,’ he murmured. ‘Rafi Sadler.’ He didn’t know which of these two Englishboys had stolen his Lions. He had been about to sell Charlie to Rafi! So had Rafi stolen the boy and the Lions? But Rafi had been savaged, and the Lions certainly weren’t with him now … He wished he had had more time to find out what had happened.

He could understand Rafi wanting to steal the boy and the Lions. That was Rafi’s line of business: stealing people and selling them. But what if Charlie had stolen them? Sentimental Charlie would be trying to help them. Charlie the Catspeaker. Maccomo’s mouth tightened.

He pushed his dirty pyjamas into his bag. As he did so, he felt the big bottle of Lionmedicine that he had grabbed as he left. For a long time he had used this medicine to keep the Lions docile in the act. He had brought it with him when he fled because it was illegal and he didn’t want the police finding it.

What he didn’t know was that for weeks now Charlie had been feeding this medicine to him, instead of to the Lions. While the Lions’ heads had been clearing, preparing for escape, Maccomo had been growing more dim and confused, weakened.

He opened the bottle and sniffed it. His body had grown used to the medicine and liked the smell of it. He shivered, and poured a glass of water from the little basin, and scattered two or three drops of the medicine into it.

Part of him knew that he shouldn’t take it – knew it would do him harm in the long run. But his body wanted it, and his mind was already too weak to resist.

He sat back on the loo and closed his eyes, while the train rattled him south towards Spain.

Where were they all now, he wondered, those foolish creatures who thought they could get the better of Maccomo?

Rafi Sadler was lying on a narrow hard bed in a cold tiled room in the secure hospital. The ceiling was too high and the walls were pale green. A tough nurse had washed him and taken away his clothes, including his leather coat, which, although it was damp and scummy with green slime from the canal, was still his leather coat, and he criking well hoped he was going to get it back. An uninterested doctor had put on a pair of rubber gloves before coming over to treat him. She had taken one look at the circle of deep cuts around his shoulder, red against the yellow and grey bruising on his skin, and stepped back again.

‘Says he’s been bit by a Lion at the Gare d’Austerlitz,’ said the nurse, who was keen to end her shift and go home to bed.

‘Ugh,’ said the doctor, and poured some more antiseptic over the wounds. She lifted Rafi’s arm gently.

‘ L’épaule s’est cassé,’ she said. ‘Shoulder’s broken. You can set it, nurse, drain the wound and give him a rabies jab, HIV jab, smallpox and feline encephalitis, arnica, antibiotics …’

‘Can’t you talk English?’ said Rafi. ‘I need someone to talk English.’ His face was greyish-white and he was still cold, though they told him he had a fever. It’s true he was sweating. He looked hardly any better than when he had been yelling at Charlie through the carriage window as the train drew out.

The doctor stared at him. Still these English people couldn’t be bothered to learn any language other than their own. Pathetic.

‘And painkillers,’ he said. ‘I’m in a lot of pain here. It hurts. IT HURTS. OK? Hurts. PAINKILLERS. Quelque chose pour le PAIN.’ He made a face of pain and tried to put on a French accent. Unfortunately for Rafi, ‘ pain’ in French means bread.

‘Be quiet,’ said the doctor. ‘Tais-toi. You’re making a disturbance.’ She’d been working all night too.

Rafi lay back. His head was swimming and his whole torso throbbed. The nurse sat him up again and started to feed him pills. Then she turned him over and gave him his injections. Rafi lay with his head in the thin pillow, muttering filthy threats against Charlie. After a while he fell asleep, a tossing, restless, sweaty sleep in which he dreamed that he was very small and everybody was laughing at him.

Outside the hospital Rafi’s horrible big dog, Troy, lay thin and miserable on the dusty earth beneath a municipal shrub. Though Rafi was a mean owner, Troy was a loyal hound, and it didn’t occur to him to do anything but wait.

Not far away, a mangy black and white cat with a bald bottom was having a dreadful fight with a bunch of bigger cats who had called him names. He had been lurking by his new den in the bins at the back of a restaurant, quietly enjoying the remains of a thrown-out lobster, when they had come up behind him, circling him, and making comments about how of course a scrawny bald-bottom like him would have to eat out of bins because no decent humans would keep such a horrible specimen …

The mangy cat stared at the luscious morsel of lobster for a moment. He was a peaceable cat as a rule – gobby, given to insulting people and not known for saying nothing, but he was not violent. He detested violence.

So he turned round and let rip in words. I’m afraid I can’t tell you what he said because it was mostly swearing, but it included a lot about their cathood, their lovability (or lack of it), their ignorance, and how they were a bunch of festering bliddy sniked-up graspoles whose own mothers would pay to have their whiskers minced. And worse. Luckily, because this was a North of England cat with a deep Northern English accent, these Parisian cats didn’t understand everything he said. But they got the gist of it. And they all jumped on him.

Now the cat – his name was Sergei – may have detested violence, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t any good at it. He was, it has to be said, very good at it. He fought them off by all the dirtiest means – biting, scratching, leaping, coming up and under with his fangs agape. And he made the most appalling noise – caterwauling, shrieking, wailing like a banshee. Although there were four of them and they were bigger than he was, the Parisian cats really didn’t like the way he fought back, particularly when the chef, Anatole, stuck his head out of the kitchen door and joined in the shrieking. The Parisian cats ran off.

As they ran, one turned back and shouted out something that was not a simple insult. He yelled, ‘Yeah, you think you’re so clever, but at least we know where your precious scientists really are, which is more than you do, nyaaah …’

What exactly did he mean by that? The scientists were in Venice somewhere. That’s what he’d been told. Admittedly he’d got the information off a cat who hadn’t really wanted to talk to him (snobby twagglers, these Paris cats). He didn’t like the sound of ‘where they really were’.

It didn’t take him long to catch the cats up. They’d stopped for some more scavenging beside a restaurant in the next street. Sergei waited, and after a while the group broke up and the cat who had yelled moseyed back up the street.

It was the work of a moment to jump out, land on his back and pinion him to the ground, hissing in his ear, ‘OK, then, where are they?’

The cat who had yelled yelled again. Sergei showed his claws, and described what exactly he would do with them if the cat yelled any more. The cat shut up.

‘OK, then,’ said Sergei again. ‘If they’re not in Venice, where are they?’

‘Vence?’ Vence! Sounds like Venice – had he just misheard? ‘Where the snike’s Vence?’

The cat was so scared that he blurted out his answer: ‘Proper cats don’t like Allergenies,’ he said.

‘Proper cats,’ said Sergei dangerously, ‘aren’t prejudiced bigots. Now – are you lying to me?’ With this he tweaked the cat’s ear.

‘Because if you are,’ said Sergei, ‘I’ll get a gang of Allergenies to come and show you exactly how proper they are – you don’t mind fighting four to one, do you? No, I didn’t think so. Or do you mind when it’s them that’s the four and you are the one? It’s different then, int’it?’

The cat agreed that it was, but by then Sergei was just fed up and rather sickened by the whole thing, and he let him go. The cat ran off with his tail down, looking back every now and then to see if Sergei was following him.

He wasn’t. He headed back to his den outside Anatole’s and just sat there, still shivering a little from the exertion and feeling sick and cross with himself for having got into a fight, and cross with the cat for being so stupid and small-minded, and, above all, sick at heart that he might have sent Charlie to the wrong place.

His piece of lobster was still lying there, greasy and pink in the gutter. He sniffed it, and ate it, but he didn’t enjoy it much.

Ever since the Catspeaking boy had tucked that note into his collar, he had felt changed. It had taken a little time to find out where the Humans were, but he had found them, and got the letter to them. That had felt good. If only those big lugs hadn’t been there, carting the humans off, he could have hung around and got a reply off them to take to Charlie.

Through the kitchen door, open and emitting delicious fish smells from the wood-grills, he could see Anatole in his white apron and check trousers, working hard.

Sergei remembered how carefully Charlie had written his letter, almost in code, so no one but his parents would understand. He thought Charlie was very brave and tough. He thought his parents very clever. Their cure for asthma would help all cats, and above all it would help the Allergenies. And now he, Sergei, had loused things up for them.

At that moment Anatole shouted at someone inside, and seconds later a bucketful of water came shooting out of the kitchen door into the street, right on top of Sergei, along with some concise French insults, along the lines of ‘Get out of here, you mangy useless cat’, only a lot ruder.

Sergei spluttered, his whiskers frisking. He had had enough of being a mangy useless cat. In the time it took for that bucket of water to soak him, he made up his mind. He was no longer going to be the kind of cat who people throw water over.

He couldn’t just go to Venice and tell Charlie – he might be sending him on a wild goose chase. He would go to Vence, and find out for himself.

Back on the frozen train, stuck and swaddled in snow, deep in the mountains, Charlie and the Lions were approaching King Boris’s private carriage. This meant Charlie first smiling nervously at King Boris’s immense bodyguard (His Majesty had a constant fear of assassins) and then knocking smartly on the polished panelled door. (The Lions, of course, were not scared. They didn’t know how to be.) If the bodyguard was surprised to see six Lions arriving to visit his master, he was far too well trained to show it.

‘Come in, come in!’ cried an excited voice. The King was so looking forward to meeting the Lions that he didn’t even wait for Edward to get the door; he just bounced up and flung it open himself. And then bounced back into his seat with shock.

The Lions came trooping into his ornate and formal saloon carriage, their noble profiles high, their strong delicate feet pacing along his beautiful Persian carpet. Only a dim, greenish light made it through the iced-up windows. The effect was most peculiar.

‘Golly gosh,’ said the King. He was staring and staring. ‘Oh my. Magnificent. So quiet. Extraordinary. Extraordinary.’

The Lionesses settled themselves on the floor, arranged around Charlie’s feet like the train of a queen’s long dress. The Young Lion and Elsina sat upright, one on either side, and the Oldest Lion stood by, proud and quiet like an old emperor. They stared at the King, at Edward, and then the Lionesses laid their heads on their huge paws and pretended to go to sleep. Charlie found himself rubbing the Young Lion behind his ears. Edward goggled. Charlie quickly removed his hand.

‘Magnificent,’ he said again. And then something in Bulgarian. It took him a moment or two to compose himself. Edward, meanwhile, observed the scene from the corner of the carriage, watching quietly, looking from the Lions to Charlie with great, if well-disguised, interest, trying to maintain his mask of really not taking much notice of anything. He had had lots of practice at this over the years but never had he found it so difficult.

‘Why don’t they …’ said the King, searching for words and not finding them because they were a bit too scary.

‘They are trained,’ said Charlie. Though King Boris was largely in his confidence, and knew all about the escape from the Circus, and the kidnapped parents, there was one thing that Charlie had not revealed. He had not mentioned that he spoke fluent Cat. He had always, instinctively, kept this fact quiet. He just somehow knew that people might be odd about it. He mightn’t believe it himself if someone said they’d been scratched by a wounded leopard cub as a baby, and in the swapping of blood they’d somehow swapped languages too.

So as King Boris didn’t know that Charlie and the Lions talked to each other, he couldn’t know that they were true friends who had been through a lot together and were travelling together now as allies and brothers, bound to help each other and loyal through thick and thin.

‘Very well trained,’ said King Boris faintly. ‘Are you sure it’s all right?’

‘It’s fine,’ said Charlie. ‘Honestly. They’re sensible creatures. They don’t eat their friends. Anyway, they’ve had their tea.’

King Boris took in their smooth, tough skin, their long tails, their calm eyes. He looked at the Oldest Lion’s shaggy, wild mane, and the Lionesses’ long, strong bodies. The Lionesses, he realized, were slightly different colours: one silvery, one more bronze, and one definitely with a yellow sheen to her fur. He noted the determined flick and twist of the Young Lion’s ears, and Elsina’s big floppy paws. He knew that retracted inside those paws were claws the size of a man’s finger, sharp as knives.

They were so beautiful. And whatever Charlie said, they were wild. King Boris was not stupid. He could see that they were wild.

‘I would be honoured,’ said the King, ‘to offer you the hospitality of my little pad on the Grand Canal, and the services of Edward and my staff there, for the duration of your stay. I think it’s fantastic. Look at them. Can I take a picture?’

Edward was dispatched to get His Majesty’s camera and take some shots of the King with his arm, finally, after much nervousness and ‘Can I really?’ and ‘Are you sure?’, round the Young Lion’s neck.

He was blushing with pleasure. The Lions, Charlie could see, thought it all rather foolish – at least the Oldest Lion and the Lionesses did, but the Young Lion and Elsina thought it was quite funny and got the giggles. Charlie could see that these two youngsters were itching to play around (they had been stuck on this train for a long time now), to tickle the King or do some other naughty thing. He gave the Young Lion a reproving look, and the Young Lion gave him a very cheeky look back. Then the Young Lion murmured, ‘I think – Yes, I think I’ll just flick this King’s bottom with my tail … Just a quick little flick …’

‘Go on, then, Charlie,’ said the Young Lion – to the other humans it just sounded like a little mrowling noise. ‘Go on, tell me off – ha ha, you can’t! Because they’d hear!’

‘I’d better get them back, Your Majesty,’ Charlie said. ‘They’re still tired from being stuck on the roof in the storm.’ (As if! They’d perked up no end once they’d eaten and rested a little, and had some of Magdalen’s medicine.) Giving the Young Lion a very stern look behind the King’s back, Charlie ushered them out.

Chapter Two

You may have noticed that only six Lions went to visit the King. The immense sabre-toothed creature who had, in a mad rush, joined their escape from Paris, stayed behind. This creature, they all knew without even talking about it, was something too strong and strange to be just shown to people. Besides, he was very tired and needed to sleep.

When Charlie and the Lions went back to the bathroom, Charlie found himself staring at him again. How very strange he is, thought Charlie.

First there was the size: half as big again as the Oldest Lion. Then the flat-topped head, the massive shoulders and long flat neck. Then the strong short back legs, the feet small and stiff compared to the Lions’, with their long flexible ankles and wide-spreading paws. The stumpy tail. And then there were the teeth. The Lions’ teeth were quite big enough, but these – these were astonishing: huge, gleaming, curved, sabre teeth.

But he was clearly a Lion. Charlie found that he was shaking his head as he looked at him: he had never ever seen such a creature. What was he? Charlie wasn’t the only one to wonder. The Young Lion and Elsina, though they had spent more time with him, were wary too.

As Charlie was staring, the creature looked up. His eyes, still sad, had a little gleam of pity in them.

‘Ask, boy,’ he said in his rough low voice, like old leather and tattered soot. ‘I will tell.’

Charlie was immensely curious, but even with the creature’s permission he felt shy to ask. This creature had a story, he could see – reasons why he was the way he was. Charlie realized that he was still scared of him.

And for a while time stood still, as the creature began to talk. In the steamy, misty, ornate bathroom, with its pink frills and shepherdesses, and the snow outside, the strange animal told its tale.

‘I am Smilodon fatalis,’ said the animal, in his smoky, leathery voice. ‘I have no reason to be here. Until I met my – cousins –’ he gestured to the Lions as he said this – ‘I did not know my name, or my purpose, or my nature. I did not know my family or my self.

‘I should be dead. I was dead. I have always been dead. Personally. Personally, I don’t exist. God did not make me. Nature did not make me. My mother did not bear me – I have no mother. I have no father. I am dead. And as a member of my family, I am – I am extinct.’

He stopped for a moment. Charlie half-expected him to sigh, but he didn’t. He simply stopped for a moment, as if to consider the enormity of what he had just said. The Young Lion and Charlie glanced at each other.

‘I have learned this in those past hours on the roof with your friends, who are so like me and so unlike me. Your friend –’ here the creature gestured with his eyes to the Oldest Lion, who bore an expression of deep concern on his grizzled face – ‘has told me this. I am glad to know the name of my family. I am Smilodon fatalis as you are human. But no mother gave me a name of my own.

‘But you see me before you. I exist, I breathe, I speak. You ask yourself, how can he be dead? I ask myself a similar question – how can I be alive? And I answer myself. I do not know.

‘I opened my eyes in a bright hard room. I lived behind a hard, invisible wall. I was fed by distant hands. No one spoke to me. No one touched me. I had little space. I was warm, my food was sufficient. I grew. I had a … a memory of something else. Of a larger, open place. I had an idea that things could be different from this hard place. Many things were done to me: humans came, all the time, not many but very frequent, and they put things in me and took things out of me. They stuck me with needles, and they wrote down everything I did. They never spoke to me. There was no one else like me. I don’t know how I can talk. I feel blessed to talk now, like water after a long thirst.

PUFFIN BOOKS

Contents

PUFFIN BOOKS

Acknowledgements

Chapter One

Chapter Two