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
Books by Zizou Corder
LIONBOY
LIONBOY: THE CHASE
LIONBOY: THE TRUTH
Praise for the Lionboy, Lionboy: The Chase and Lionboy: The Truth:
‘A new star has appeared in the children’s literary firmament’ – Independent
‘Simply absolutely brilliant’ – Disney’s Big Time
‘A cracking pace and excellent jokes’ – Guardian
‘Vivid and engaging’ – The Times
‘One of the best books of the year’ – Mail on Sunday
‘The itch to know what happens next is strong’ – Daily Telegraph
‘Stunning’ – Daily Express
‘Fabulous’ – Observer
‘Thrilling moments and dangerous scrapes … We give this read a big paws up!’ – Funday Times
‘An evocative, suspenseful tale of betrayal and courage’ – Sunday Times
‘Sparkling in wit and fantasy’ – TES
PUFFIN
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA
Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)
Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)
Penguin Group (Australia), 707 Collins Street, Melbourne, Victoria 3008, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)
Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi – 110 017, India
Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, Auckland 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)
Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, Block D, Rosebank Office Park, 181 Jan Smuts Avenue, Parktown North, Gauteng 2193, South Africa
Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
penguin.com
First published 2006
Published in this edition 2007
Text copyright © Zizou Corder, 2006
Illustrations copyright © Fred van Deelen, 2006
Music copyright © Robert Lockhart, 2006
The moral right of the author and illustrator has been asserted
All rights reserved
ISBN: 978-0-141-93595-9
To Jack and Ralph Jeffries,
top boys
Thanks yet again to the usual honorees: Fred van Deelen for his beautiful maps and diagrams, and to Paul Hodgson for presenting the music to match.
The lovely Puffin ladies, with their everlastingly lovely footwear, specially Sarah Hughes, Adele Minchin, Tania Vian-Smith, Kirsten Grant, Elaine McQuade, Lesley Levene, Shannon Park and Francesco Dow. And the Puffin gentlemen, Tom Sanderson, for our glamorous and dramatic new cover look, and Matt Phillips.
And the agents: Linda Shaughnessy, Rob Kraitt, Teresa Nicholls, Anjali Pratap, Sylvie Rabineau. And Derek Johns: is he totally without flaw?
And to Melanie Phillips for helping design San Antonio.
Special thanks again to Robert Lockhart for writing us a gorgeous evocative soundtrack. Most of the tunes are available in a book written for the piano, 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.
In a cool high room in a hot, hot country, a sleeping boy wriggled and twitched his nose. Charlie Ashanti, Lion-rescuer, shipwreck-survivor, Circus veteran, son of asthma-cure-inventing scientists and Catspeaker, had been asleep for three days – out of sheer relief. He had, in recent months, been chased across Europe, delivered six escaped circus Lions back to their African home, rescued a cloned prehistoric creature, assisted in a revolution, punched his enemy and watched him run away and, finally, found the kidnapped parents for whom he had been desperately searching. In other words, he was a very happy boy, just beginning to stir and stretch in his bed after a most well-deserved and refreshing rest.
And as he stretched, he realized that his feet were far nearer the end of the bed. They used to sort of float about halfway down and not touch the end unless he wriggled down that far on purpose. He’d grown. He was delighted.
‘Mum!’ he called. ‘I can reach the end of my bed!’
Charlie and his parents had reunited, after all their adventures, at a particularly beautiful hotel called the Riad el Amira, in the town of Essaouira on the Barbary Coast of Morocco. It was now about six in the morning, and Charlie had been woken by a light finger of low, early sunshine on his face.
‘Mum!’ he called again.
From the other bed came the unmistakable snuffly sound of a mother who is fast asleep and not prepared to wake up for any lesser reason than the house being on fire, in which case she’ll see what she can do. Dad was snoring. The whole place, actually, was vibrating gently with the strength of it.
‘I need measuring!’ he called. ‘I’ve grown!’
‘Bnnffmmmmfffbbbrrr,’ said his mum.
Typical, thought Charlie. We haven’t seen each other for months, we’ve been through all this stuff, and now they just want to sleep. Hmph. (Having been asleep, he didn’t know that they had been checking on him regularly and affectionately, longing for him to wake and tell them his adventures, but unable to be so mean as to wake him.)
Charlie got up anyway, and went over to look at his parents asleep in bed. How sweet they looked, all snuggled up. Magdalen and Aneba, heads on the pillow. He smiled at them. They had been through a lot too.
Plenty of time, he thought cheerfully, deciding not to wake them. Instead he got dressed – someone had laid out for him a new pair of britches and a T-shirt – and, as it was chilly, he slipped into the battered circus jacket that he’d been wearing ever since the night he and the Lions had run off. The gold braid was salt-tarnished and half the buttons were missing, and he liked it very much. He and it had been through stuff together.
He went down to the hotel’s deserted courtyard. He was starving. Also he wanted to find Sergei, his mangy Allergenie cat friend, who, though he was not half as evil as he looked, looked so evil that he had been banned from the hotel. Charlie hadn’t had a chance to see him for – well, how long had he been asleep? Must be days. They would have to go to a café for breakfast. Charlie wanted to go to the one where the chameleon had spoken to him in Cat.
Sergei was outside in the narrow alley, scratching himself on the corner of the building. He looked as if he’d been up all night. In a bar. With villains. His black fur was lank on his skinny body, his ear was wonky (though that was Charlie’s fault – he’d fixed it on badly in Venice, after Sergei had lost it in a fight) and his tail looked even balder than usual in the early morning sunlight.
‘Hey, Sergei!’ cried Charlie.
‘Monsieur awakes!’ Sergei responded in his cheerful yet sarcastic North of England voice. ‘How are yer then, Sleepin’ Beauty? Had yer kip? Feelin’ all right? How are your esteemed parents? All in one piece, are they? Thanks for takin’ the trouble to keep me up to date, as it were, on the developments within this illustrious establishment where-from I am banned. Not that I’ve been prowling pathetically around the joint yearning to partake of your bulletins. Obviously, having just traversed Europe by boat with you and your band of ex-performing felines, the last thing I need is to be told what’s goin’ on …’
‘Stop moaning, Sergei,’ said Charlie, giving him an affectionate ruffle on his skinny, scarred head. ‘Nothing’s been going on. I’ve been asleep, my parents are fine.’ Here he gave a big grin. His parents were fine! He was fine! The Lions were home, Sergei was here, Rafi Sadler had scarpered with his tail between his legs – as it were. Of course, Rafi didn’t actually have a tail. Yes, everything was fine!
‘Well, I’m glad to hear it,’ said Sergei, and he was because, although he affected a grumpy and sarcastic manner, Sergei was a loyal, true and brilliant cat. ‘What’s for breakfast then?’
‘Omelettes, pastries, mangoes, chocolate croissants, cakes, honey, pitta bread, argan oil, more mangoes, yoghurt …’ said Charlie hungrily.
‘Fish heads,’ said Sergei firmly. ‘I’ll just nip down the harbour and pick something up. See you at the caff in a minute.’
Magdalen was still snuffling sleepily when she realized that Charlie had been talking to her.
She rolled over and looked across to the other bed. ‘Charlie? Oh my god, where is he?’
She hurtled out of bed, Aneba called downstairs, and in five minutes she was at the café, where Charlie was deep in conversation with a small green chameleon who sat in a creeper on the terrace, talking about why on earth a chameleon would be able to speak Cat. ‘I am very chameleon,’ the creature, whose name was Ninu, was saying. ‘Not just colour but everything!’
‘Charlie,’ said Magdalen, her red hair all mussed and her shirt on funny. She looked like she’d just got out of bed (which, of course, she had). She didn’t notice her son’s tiny companion.
Charlie leapt up and flung his arms round her. ‘Hi, Mum!’ he said. His smile felt too big for his face. She wrapped her arms round him too and held very tight.
‘We must get back to the hotel,’ she said. ‘It’s not safe to be running around. Come on.’
Charlie squinted up at her.
‘Enemies, Charlie?’ she said quietly, pulling him into the shadows. ‘Rafi? The Corporacy? I know we’ve seen them off for the moment, but they do all still exist. Come on …’
Put that way, he saw what she meant. Rafi could still be here. Perhaps a café terrace on the main square was not the best place for Charlie to be, even if it was only just after sunrise.
‘Yeah,’ he mumbled. ‘Sorry.’
He gave Ninu a longing look. The chameleon seemed to grin at him with his long, wide mouth. He had a frill round the back of his neck and googly eyes that went in different directions independently.
‘Come on,’ said Magdalen, taking Charlie’s arm and giving the waiter, who had come out to take Charlie’s order, an apologetic look. She knew what these small towns were like. Everybody noticed everything.
‘Charlie,’ she said as soon as they were safely on a side street, heading back for the hotel. ‘We’ve got to be careful. All of us.’
At that moment scrofulent Sergei reappeared by Charlie’s shin. ‘All right, don’t wait for me then,’ he complained. ‘Ignore me for three days, come out to breakfast with me and then stand me up, why don’t you?’
‘Oh, do be quiet, Sergei,’ said Charlie affectionately.
Magdalen looked down. Of course she knew Charlie talked to cats, but she never got used to it.
‘Um … hello, Sergei,’ said Magdalen. ‘Wow.’ She smiled at him. Sergei had found her and Aneba in the Corporacy Community to which they had been taken when they were kidnapped. He had led them out – rescued them. She wondered how to address him. Charlie had told her that cats could usually understand human, but even so …‘Wow,’ she said again.
‘Mraow,’ said Sergei, flicking his whiskers. It sounded very like ‘wow’. Magdalen smiled.
Back at the hotel, Aneba folded Charlie in his huge arms. He felt his son’s strong heartbeat, and noticed his added height and bigger shoulders.
‘Hello, boy,’ he said. ‘Nice to see you up, but please could you manage to stick around and not immediately disappear again? Now that we have you back?’
Breakfast was waiting for them in the courtyard.
‘Coffee,’ said Magdalen.
‘And explanations,’ said Aneba, giving his son a smile the size of a house.
There was so much to tell. Charlie went first, all in a rush as his parents’ jaws dropped.
‘Well,’ he said. ‘Rafi Sadler stole me, and so I escaped and I came after you because you’d disappeared, and I ended up on the Circe, this circus boat going to Paris, and I made friends with the Lions, who were being drugged by this evil Liontrainer guy called Maccomo, and I helped them to run away and we all got on a train to Venice, because that’s where I thought you were, and we met the King of Bulgaria and went to stay in his palazzo, only his guy Edward got a bit funny and gave us – me and the Lions – to the Doge, who’s like the King of Venice, so we had to run away again, and the gondoliers helped us because they were trying to get rid of the Doge anyway, and Sergei – you know Sergei – yeah, well, him – he turned up again from Paris, and Primo – the sabre-toothed extinct Lion, we met him in Paris too, he’d been cloned from a fossil – Edward gave him artificial wings so all the Venetians thought he was St Mark’s Lion and he’s still there, with Claudio, he’s the gondolier, and he got us the solarboat and we came here in it, only we were shipwrecked, and Maccomo and Rafi were after us, but I found out about the Allergenies and how you were kidnapped because of inventing the asthma cure …’
Magdalen was staring in amazement. ‘You what?’ she said. ‘Slow down.’
Aneba was more precise. ‘How did you find out about the Allergenies?’ he asked.
‘Don’t know,’ said Charlie. ‘Worked it out – somehow some cats were much more allergenic than others, and making all the children asthmatic again, and the cats were all fighting between themselves because cats were being turned out of their homes, because people couldn’t afford the medicine for their kids – then it turned out Sergei was one … But what happened to you?’
‘Rafi tricked us,’ said Magdalen, looking a bit embarrassed. ‘We were carted off on the submarine, then on a truck. We were brought to … Do you know about the Corporacy, Charlie?’
‘Of course,’ said Charlie. ‘They’re the ones who tried to stop you using your asthma cure. They had Rafi kidnap you.’
‘How do you know that?’ said Aneba, amazed.
‘Cats told me,’ said Charlie.
‘Do the cats know?’ said Magdalen eagerly. ‘Do they know all about it?’
‘Of course,’ said Charlie, wondering how his parents could be so dim. ‘They know about the Allergenies being created, genetically modified, to make the kids asthmatic again, because there aren’t any cars any more to make them asthmatic, and they know about you and the cure – you’re heroes! They think you’re fantastic!’
At this point, a beautiful red-haired woman appeared behind his mother.
‘Good morning, Mabel,’ said Aneba. ‘Did you sleep well? Look, Charlie’s awake at last!’
At the sight of the woman, Charlie was more than awake. He was in shock.
‘What the –!’ cried Charlie. ‘What –! What’s she doing here?’
‘Cats told you?’ Mabel said. ‘Cats told you?’ Her eyes were gleaming and she’d fixed him with her stare.
Charlie stared back. He was completely confused.
‘Charlie,’ said Magdalen. ‘This is your Aunt Mabel.’
Charlie blinked. Aunt Mabel? She wasn’t an aunt – she was Mabel Stark, world-famous tigertrainer, and Maccomo’s kind-of girlfriend.
‘She’s my sister,’ said Magdalen. She watched Charlie carefully, noticing how he took the news.
Charlie blinked again.
‘Can you really talk to them?’ Mabel was asking.
‘Do sit down, Mabel,’ said Magdalen. ‘He’s had a shock. Do you want some coffee?’
Charlie was having a big problem adjusting to this development. Last time he’d seen this woman, she had been hanging out in a very friendly fashion with his two great enemies, Maccomo and Rafi. How come she was suddenly here – and his aunt? How come his mother was offering her coffee, and he was evidently to have breakfast with her? And he wished she’d stop staring at him like that. He shot his mother a pleading glance.
‘Mabel!’ said Magdalen. ‘Get a grip. Coffee? And give him a break.’
The spell that seemed to have been holding Mabel snapped.
‘Oh – oh yes, please,’ she said. ‘Black. Thank you.’ She pulled a chair up to their table and sat between Magdalen and Aneba.
‘You can tell her,’ said Magdalen. ‘It’s all right.’
Charlie didn’t usually tell people about his special gift. He had always known that it was not something to show off about. But if Mum said it was all right, and if Mabel was his aunt … even if she did use to be Maccomo’s girlfriend …
‘I can talk to them,’ he said.
Mabel’s green eyes flashed a little wider. Maccomo had told her Charlie was a Catspeaker, but she had hardly dared to believe it.
‘Tell me about it,’ Mabel said intently. ‘How did it come about?’
Even as she said it, Charlie realized something. She was jealous – like Maccomo had been when he had realized. It made Charlie feel strong – grown-ups envying him. It also made him feel nervous. If they wanted what he had, might they try to get it off him?
‘I was scratched by a baby leopard when I was little, in Ghana,’ he said. ‘Some kind of freak genetic exchange happened, with his blood and mine. Don’t know why.’
‘Can you talk to tigers?’ asked Mabel greedily.
Charlie suddenly tired of her questions. He wanted to say, ‘Back off!’ but he was too polite. Instead he burst out, ‘Well, how come you’re my aunt? You never used to be my aunt.’
Though, come to think of it, she did look like Magdalen: red hair and ice-white skin. Charlie hadn’t noticed it before, when he’d seen her at the Circus with Maccomo. He’d just thought she was beautiful, with her laugh, and her famous tiger act, and her white leather catsuit.
‘I –’ said Mabel, and then stopped. Magdalen was watching closely to see how she’d put it. ‘I – I ran away from home, Charlie, when I was very young, to join the Circus. I ran away and never told anyone where I’d gone, and the first time I saw anyone from my family was when Magdalen turned up on the Circe, looking for you.’
Now it was Charlie’s moment for amazement.
‘Crike,’ he said. ‘Why did you do that? Was Grandma horrible? I always thought she was really nice – she was nice to me …’
Mabel was making funny little movements with her mouth. She looked upset. Aneba touched her knee kindly. Magdalen was very still, looking at Mabel.
Charlie, looking at the grown-ups, could not make sense of the feelings going on between them. To be honest, it rather embarrassed him that they were having feelings at all.
‘Yeah, well,’ he said, wanting to change the subject and put them out of their misery. And also wanting to know what had happened to his parents – apart from acquiring this unlikely aunt for him. ‘So, Dad, where did the Corporacy take you? I know it was near Vence, because someone got it wrong and sent me to Venice instead …’
‘We were in one of their Gated Communities,’ said Aneba, ‘and they were brainwashing us like they do everybody they get their hands on, telling us how marvellous everything was, and then your friend Sergei turned up. He saved us. He woke me up with a great scratch across my face, and led us through the smelliest rubbish chute I’ve ever experienced. Then we – um –’
‘You stole a car,’ said Charlie, who knew because Sergei had told him.
‘Well, er,’ said Aneba.
‘You stole a car,’ repeated Charlie.
‘Yes, well, we stole a car …’
‘Ha ha!’ laughed Charlie. ‘You stole a car!’
‘Yes, well, we went to Paris –’
‘In your stolen car,’ interrupted Charlie.
‘Shut up, Charlie,’ said Magdalen.
‘You stole it too!’ Charlie retorted.
‘Enough,’ said Aneba firmly, and, tempted though he was to carry on, Charlie recognized from his father’s tone of voice that trouble was just one more cheeky answer away, so he let it drop. Reluctantly.
‘We found the circus boat,’ Aneba continued, ‘and your friends Julius and Pirouette and Madame Barbue, and Mabel.’ He didn’t mention how much she and Magdalen had fought to start with, or how Mabel had been loyal to Maccomo. ‘Mabel worked out that you’d be bringing the Lions here, and we followed. But – where is Maccomo? We expected him to be here too.’
Charlie hesitated.
Maccomo was tied up under a tree out in the Argan Forests, where the Lions lived. He was the Lions’ prisoner. Charlie felt in his heart that Maccomo’s fate was fair and not unreasonable, but he wasn’t sure the grown-ups would agree. He’d worked out the fate with the Lions, who were extremely tough and straightforward when it came to things like revenge and punishment. They didn’t have any human delicacy. Perhaps his parents would want to take Maccomo to the police station or something respectable like that. In the old days the police, apparently, were who you relied on to sort out crime problems, and his mother could be very old-fashioned at times … but nowadays everybody powerful had a police force of their own. Security, they called them.
Also, he wondered how Mabel felt about Maccomo now.
But he had to tell them.
‘He’s with the Lions,’ he said at last. ‘It seemed only fair.’
Mabel gasped. Charlie knew what she was thinking: how would the Lions, his former prisoners, treat him now that they were in charge, in their own territory?
He gave her a straight look – as if to say, ‘So? Your tigers, who you love so much – would they harm you, if you lost your power over them? And if they would, what does that tell you?’
Magdalen and Aneba glanced at each other.
Then: ‘Good riddance,’ said Aneba. ‘We’ve got better things to worry about.’
Magdalen didn’t look quite so convinced, but she let it pass. It didn’t matter anyway. Charlie knew that no humans would take the Lions on, unless they were prepared to fight to the death – or unless they had Charlie to negotiate for them.
Mabel was quiet.
‘Speaking of which,’ said Magdalen, ‘do we need to worry about Rafi? Where’s he gone?’
‘Exactly,’ said Aneba. ‘A bad arm and a punch in the face aren’t going to get rid of him forever.’
‘Well, anyway, we shouldn’t stay here,’ said Magdalen. ‘Rafi knows we’re here. He can tell the Corporacy. He might have told them already. We should go home and report all this and get some government protection and get back to work – there’s still a lot to be done on the asthma cure –’
‘Oh,’ said Charlie. He reached into his pocket. ‘Here.’
The piece of paper he handed his mum was battered and travel-stained. His feeling of pride at giving her back her asthma cure formula was pure and strong and joyful.
She blinked at it. ‘Bless you,’ she said, and gave him a blinding smile, followed by another blinding, passionate hug. ‘We just need to get back to normal …’ she said, and she drifted into silence.
Aneba was giving her a long, sad look.
‘What?’ she said.
Charlie understood. ‘He means there isn’t any normal any more,’ he said.
Magdalen thought about their little house in London, their yard with its honey-scented plants, their neighbours. How safe and long ago it seemed. ‘Oh,’ she said.
‘If we go home to London,’ said Aneba gently, ‘the whole thing can just start up again. How could we live and be safe? I really think we should go down to Ghana, and take some time, and from there we can get in touch with people in London and see what’s going on without returning to our usual haunts.’
For a moment Charlie imagined them all as ghosts, haunting their house and the market and the fountain where the schoolkids played football. He didn’t want to be a ghost. He’d kind of thought it would all be over once he found his parents. They would take charge again, they’d all go home, and everything would – yes, he too had thought everything would go back to normal.
But now there was no normal. He could see that. There could be no normal until Rafi was definitely stopped and got rid of … But how can you definitely stop and get rid of someone? Kill them? He didn’t want to kill anyone. And, more importantly, there could be no normal until the Corporacy was stopped and … But you can’t get rid of something as big as the Corporacy. The Corporacy had business all over the world, it made and sold medicine all over the world, it had its weird Gated Village Communities all over the place, full of people living Corporacy Lives. People loved the Corporacy – it made the people inside feel safe. It was so big and powerful. Yeah, thought Charlie, it’s so big and powerful, it thinks it can just steal people and make them work for it.
How were his parents ever going to get away from that?
It made his head spin.
‘I think you’re right,’ said Magdalen. ‘We’ll go south. How about you, Mabel?’
‘I’d really like to be with you all,’ she said, ‘and have a rest, which is what you certainly need. A lovely holiday … but I know that’s not really on. No. I must go back to the Circus. I can’t leave my tigers with Major Tib and Sophie forever.’
Charlie felt a pang of disappointment – here he’d just acquired this rather mysterious and glamorous aunt, and now she was disappearing again before he could even get to know her. And he wasn’t sure he trusted her, even if his parents did. He felt bad as well about Major Tib, the tall, magnificent Ringmaster with his high boots and velvet tailcoats. He knew Major Tib was furious about the Lions escaping, but he liked him and respected him, and he meant him no harm.
‘Tell him …’ he said.
‘Tell him what?’ said Mabel in an amused tone.
‘Tell him – tell him I was for the Lions, not against him,’ said Charlie. ‘Tell him I’m kind of sorry. And send my love to Julius and Hans and Pirouette and Madame Barbue and Sigi and everybody.’
Mabel smiled. ‘OK,’ she said. She recognized something in Charlie then. She had known already that he loved the Lions – that was obvious, by what he’d been through with them – but now she knew that he loved the Circus too. He was a good kid. Family. Her smile was a little wobbly.
Charlie stared at her. She still made him nervous.
She was glancing across at Magdalen.
‘Magdalen,’ she said. Then she took a big breath and sighed. And, abruptly, she said, ‘Oh, snike it, so what – listen, all of you. This is it. What happened. Mag –’ She breathed in a huge breath. ‘Mag, I had a baby.’
She’d gone white, like an egg. Then she went pink.
Magdalen stared at her.
‘I was pregnant and I took off and Mum didn’t know and I had it adopted.’
Silence.
‘It?’ said Magdalen very quietly.
‘Please don’t judge me,’ said Mabel. ‘Him. I had him adopted. It seemed the right thing to do. Then everything was different for me and I couldn’t go home and I never went home and I’m glad to be with you now. Please don’t judge me.’ The words tumbled out, a waterfall of words over sharp, difficult stones. ‘I don’t need to talk about it, or want to, but you need to know. I’m very, very sorry for deserting you.’
Charlie was confused.
‘Surely if you’re having a baby that’s just when you need to stay home?’ he said.
The women looked at him.
‘Yeah,’ said Mabel. ‘I know that now. It looked different then.’
‘Need to think about this,’ said Magdalen. She looked a little ill.
Not having any brother or sister, Charlie didn’t know much about that kind of family life, but he could easily see that if you had a sister and she’d just disappeared, you’d be a bit upset.
‘Nothing to think about,’ said Aneba, sitting up. ‘It was long ago and you’re both here now. Take some time to get used to each other again – Mabel, don’t go yet. You and your sister need to hang out together.’
The two women were holding hands. Charlie caught Aneba’s eye and Aneba winked at him and stood up, saying, ‘So, Charlie, we’re going to Ghana. See Grandma. Swim at Labadi Beach and Mile Thirteen. Go and watch the Starlets …’ The Starlets were Charlie’s favourite football team, the national juniors, and they’d been doing incredibly well recently, beating all the top junior teams.
Would Rafi and the Corporacy follow them to Ghana?
Still, at least Maccomo was dealt with.
Essaouira lies between the thunderous Atlantic, which pounds its dark red ramparts and purple rocks with huge waves, day and night, and a long, low, scraggly forest of argan and thuja trees, which grow out of the sand and smell delicious when you rub their tough spiny leaves. The forests used to cover most of the area, but the thuja wood when polished made pretty boxes and picture frames which smelt as bittersweet as the leaves, so every year there was less and less forest, and more and more pretty souvenirs for visitors. Luckily, a hundred years or so before, some carpenters had noticed that at this rate their grandsons would have no wood to make boxes from, and started replanting the forests. There was enough forest now for some parts of it to be forgotten and wild again, rough and thorny, inhabited only by snakes and lizards and owls and runaway goats – and Wild Lions.
It was from here that Charlie’s Lion friends had been kidnapped and was to here that they had returned. (Only Primo, the ancient creature who had been created, not born, stayed behind in Venice, loved and adored by the Venetians.) The Oldest Lion had found that his mother was still alive, the three Lionesses had greeted their sisters, and the Young Lion and Elsina, who had both been born in captivity, shyly began to make friends with the wild cousins that they had never met. At night, they all lay together. Elsina’s eyes were as round as the moon as she lay wakeful under the African night. She had never slept out of doors before leaving the Circus. She had hardly even been out of doors. The adventure – running through Paris with Charlie, hiding on the train roof through the dreadful snowstorm, their time locked up in the courtyard in Venice, the long trip on the solarboat – all that had been exciting and terrifying. But this was something different. This was meant to be home. This was, apparently, where she belonged.
She gazed up at the moon. The moon gazed down at her. She snuggled closer to her brother. He at least was unchanged.
The Young Lion snuggled back. He too was having trouble sleeping. Every night he kept one eye and a tiny portion of his mind always turned to the big tree to the east, where the Liontrainer Maccomo, their former master, was tied up. For years Maccomo had kept the Lions prisoner on board the Circe, drugging them with those scented drops he put in their water, forcing them to do tricks in the Ring, keeping them in that cabin … Now it was his turn. He was their prisoner, and they were drugging him.
The Young Lion had wondered how a bunch of Lions could give drugs to a human, but it wasn’t hard. In the first place, Maccomo had developed a taste for the drops after Charlie had started giving him the medicine to make him dopey, way back on the Circe. So when the Oldest Lion stood in front of Maccomo with the bottle between his feet, and his paw lazily lifted, studying his long, terrible claws, revealing them and then sheathing them, and giving Maccomo a look, it didn’t take long for Maccomo to get the idea. The Lions wanted him to drink the drops. Fair enough. He was so tired and shocked and terrified that he couldn’t even think about what a dreadful situation he was in. Taking drugs to blur his mind seemed to him like a very good idea. Well – to part of him. The part of him that was blurred already …
‘Poor, stupid Maccomo,’ said the Oldest Lion, looking at him with contempt.
‘Father,’ said the Young Lion. ‘Two things worry me. He might drink it all and kill himself …’
‘That worries you?’ said the Oldest Lion. ‘How would that be a problem?’
Looked at Lionishly, of course, it was not a problem.
‘You’ve been too long with Charlie,’ said the Oldest Lion. ‘That’s a human thought, a human fear. Lions don’t care about other things dying.’
He’s right, thought the Young Lion. I’ll have to think about that.
‘Your other point?’ the Oldest Lion was saying.
‘What do we do when it runs out? Won’t he become strong again, and try to escape?’
‘He will never be healthy, living here, eating the bits of flesh we give him. This life in the Lions’ place will make him weak, just as life in the human place made us weak. We need not fear him.’
But the Young Lion was not sure. Even tied to a tree, suffering with the heat of the sun in the day and the cold of the forest nights, even weak, and drug-addled, and badly fed, Maccomo was still Maccomo. He was still a clever, calm, mysterious man, a man with a bad, selfish, cunning heart. He was not to be underestimated.
Far away in Venice, Primo was sad. He felt safe, living with the pale statues and the tall lamps in the great courtyard of the Doge’s Palace – well, what had