The White Giraffe

by Lauren St. John

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Author’s Note

  I AM GOING TO FIND OUT THE TRUTH.

  Upstairs, Martine sat on her bed watching rain lash the window. It was pitch dark outside. Tears ran down her face. She’d lost count of the number of times she had cried since she had moved to Africa. She wished she could be back in England with Miss Rose and Mr. and Mrs. Morrison, but somehow she knew in her heart that she was exactly where she was meant to be—in this wild, amazing place with its strange, hostile people.

  “Everything,” her father had told her, “happens for a reason.”

  Martine couldn’t for the life of her imagine what that reason could possibly be, and right now she didn’t care. She just knew that she needed a friend.

  Outside, the wind slapped and banged around the house and the thunder cracked as if a thousand boulders were breaking across the heavens. Lightning split the sky. Martine gasped. A white giraffe was standing beside the water hole and it was looking straight at her! For a split second, their eyes locked, the small, sad girl and the slender young giraffe, and then the sky went dark. Martine pressed her face to the glass, desperate to see the white giraffe again, but it was impossible. There was no moon and the rain was coming down in sheets. Had she seen the giraffe or hadn’t she? Could it have been a trick of the light?

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Young Readers Group, 345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

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  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue,

  Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Registered Offices: Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England First published in Great Britain by Orion Children’s Books, 2006 First published in the United States of America by Dial, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 2007 Published by Puffin Books, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 2008

  Text copyright © Lauren St. John, 2006

  Illustrations copyright © David Dean, 2006

  All rights reserved

  THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HAS CATALOGED THE DIAL EDITION AS FOLLOWS:

  St. John, Lauren, date.

  The white giraffe / by Lauren St. John;

  illustrated by David Dean.

  p. cm.

  Summary: After a fire kills her parents, eleven-year-old Martine must leave England

  to live with her grandmother on a wildlife game reserve in South Africa,

  where she befriends a mythical white giraffe.

  eISBN : 978-0-142-41152-0

  [1.Animals, Mythical—Fiction. 2. Giraffe—Fiction. 3. Orphans—Fiction.

  4. Game reserves—Fiction. 5. Wildlife conservation—Fiction.

  6. South Africa—Fiction.]

  I. Dean, David, date, ill. II Title.

  PZ7.S77435Wh 2007 [Fic]—dc22 2006021323

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume

  any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  For Sophie, aged 10,

  who, like me,

  loves horses and shy giraffes

  Turn the page for a preview of Lauren St. John’s next book, DOLPHIN SONG

  1

  People like to say that things come in threes, but the way Martine looked at it, that all depends on when you start counting and when you stop. For instance, she could say that one bad thing happened along with three good things, but the truth was that the one bad thing was the very worst thing in the whole world, another was so small she didn’t really notice it at the time, and something else that she first thought was bad luck later turned out to be the best kind of fortune anyone could wish for. Whichever way you added it up, though, one thing was certain. The night Martine Allen turned eleven years old was the night her life changed completely and was never the same again.

  It was New Year’s Eve. At the time, Martine was asleep in bed and she was dreaming about a place she’d never been to before. The reason she was so positive was because it was too beautiful ever to forget. As far as the eye could see, there were lawns lined with exotic flowers and trees. Behind them, rising into a clear sky, was a mountain made majestic by granite cliffs and lush green forests. Children were laughing and chasing moths through beds of dusky-pink flowers and, in the distance, Martine could hear drums and soaring voices. But for some reason she felt apprehensive. Dread prickled her skin.

  All at once, the sky began to boil with a turbulent violet light and a thick tablecloth of steel-gray cloud raced down the mountain. The day turned from sunny to sinister in seconds. Then one of the children shouted, “Hey, look what I found!”

  It was a wild goose with a broken wing. But instead of helping it, some of the children began tormenting it. Martine, who could never bear to see any creature hurt, tried to stop them, but in the dream they turned on her instead. Next thing she knew she was on the ground crying and the injured bird was in her arms.

  Then something very peculiar happened. Her hands, holding the wild goose, heated up to the point where they were practically glowing, and electricity crackled through her. She saw, in a swirl of smoke, black men in horned antelope masks and rhinoceroses breathing fire, and heard voices as old as Time. She knew they wanted to speak to her, but she couldn’t hear what they were saying. Suddenly, the bird stirred. Martine opened her palms and it shook out its wings and flew into the violet sky.

  In the dream, she looked up smiling, but the other children didn’t smile back. They stared at her with a mixture of horror and disbelief. “Witch,” they chanted, “witch, witch, witch,” and they began to chase her. Martine fled sobbing up the mountain, into a dark forest. But her legs were unimaginably heavy, hooked thorns tore at her ankles, and she was losing her way in the cloud. And all the while it was getting hotter and hotter. Then a hand grabbed her and she began to scream and scream and scream.

  It was the sound of her own screams that finally woke Martine. She shot up in bed. It was pitch dark and it took a few seconds for her to realize she’d been asleep. None of it had happened. There was no mountain and no bird. She was safely in her bed in Hampshire, England, with her parents sleeping soundly across the corridor. Heart pounding, she sank back into the pillows. She was a bit dizzy and she still felt very, very hot.
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  Hot? How could it possibly be hot? It was midwinter. Martine’s eyes flew open. Something was wrong. Frantically she fumbled for the bedside lamp, but for some reason it wasn’t working. She sat up again. An orange light was flickering beneath the bedroom door and gray ribbons of smoke were drifting up from it.

  “Fire!” yelled Martine. “Fire!”

  She leaped out of bed, caught her foot in the blankets, and crashed to the ground. Tears of panic sprang into her eyes. She wiped them away roughly. If I don’t think clearly, she told herself, I’ll never get out alive. The corner of the door turned molten red and broke away, and a plume of smoke poured in after it. Martine began coughing violently. She clawed at the floor for yesterday’s sweatshirt, discarded there when she put on her pajamas. Almost cheering with thankfulness when she found it immediately, she tied it around her face. Then she scrambled to her feet, heaved up the window, and leaned out into the starless night. What was she supposed to do? Jump?

  Martine stood paralyzed with terror. Far below her, the snow glinted mockingly in the darkness. Behind her, the room was filling with smoke and fumes, and the fire was roaring like a factory furnace. It was blisteringly, murderously hot—so hot that she felt as if her pajamas were melting off her back. The window was the only way out. Swinging her legs over the sill, she reached out and grabbed a clump of ivy. It was as wet as lettuce and came away in her hand. Martine almost toppled after it. She tried again, this time knocking away the packed snow and groping behind the vine for a pipe or a crevice or anything at all that would give her a handhold. Nothing!

  Martine’s eyes streamed. Moments remained between her and disaster, but she jumped back into the room, snatched the sheets off the bed, and knotted them together, tying one end to the bed leg nearest the window. There was no time to test it. She just had to hope that it would hold. As fast as she dared, she climbed out of the window, clinging to the sheet-rope with both hands. She knew very well that it wouldn’t reach the ground, but it might get her a little closer.

  She was still high in the air when her hands, stiff as frozen fish sticks in the gusting Arctic wind, lost their grip and she crashed into the snow. Martine dragged herself upright, shivering, and hobbled along the side of the house to the front, but as soon as she rounded the corner, she no longer thought about that. She was too busy taking in the appalling scene before her. Her home was a raging inferno. Flames leaped in every window and coils of smoke billowed into the night sky. A crowd had gathered on the lawn and all along the street, doors were opening and more people were rushing to join them. Sirens announced the rapid approach of the fire department.

  “Mum! Dad!” yelled Martine, and she ran around the side to the front of the house.

  Shocked faces turned in her direction. There was a collective gasp. The Allens’ elderly next-door neighbor opened her mouth when she saw Martine rushing across the lawn, but no sound came out. Mr. and Mrs. Morrison, who lived farther up the street, were also rooted to the spot, but Mr. Morrison, a burly former rugby player, shook himself into action at the last moment and managed to catch Martine as she flew by.

  “Let me go,” sobbed Martine, but even as she spoke she knew it was too late. The walls of the house were collapsing in a molten heap. Within minutes, there was nothing left. The fire department had arrived, but the most they could do was put the flames out.

  Mrs. Morrison put her arms around Martine and held her tightly. “I’m so sorry, my dear,” she said. “I’m so sorry.” Others came over to console her, and Mr. Morrison gave her his coat to put on over her pajamas.

  Through the screen of Martine’s tears, the still-glowing embers and bubbles of the firemen’s foam shone like rubies and diamonds in the fading night. Only a few hours ago, she’d been enjoying a birthday dinner with her parents. They’d made pancakes and filled them with almonds, bananas, and melted chocolate and shaped them into cones they could eat with their hands. Martine and her mum had laughed at her dad, David, who was talking so much that he hadn’t noticed that his pancake was leaking chocolate down his shirt. Only one thing had happened that Martine now thought strange.

  They’d been on their way up to bed. Martine’s mum had kissed her and gone on ahead and Martine was walking up the stairs with her dad. When they reached her bedroom door, he hugged her good night, ruffled her hair, and told her he loved her, just as he always did. But then—almost as if he sensed something was going to happen—he said something odd.

  “You have to trust, Martine. Everything happens for a reason.”

  And Martine had smiled at him and thought how lovely her parents were even if they were sometimes a little weird, and she’d gone into her room, not knowing that they were the last words he would ever say to her.

  Not knowing she would never see either of her parents again.

  2

  It was Mr. Grice from Social Services who told Martine that she would be moving to Africa. Cape Town, South Africa, to be precise.

  “South Africa!” cried Martine. “Why South Africa?”

  “Well,” said Mr. Grice, “it seems that your only surviving relative is, in fact, living on a game reserve in South Africa. A Mrs. Gwyn Thomas, who, I’m told, is your grandmother.”

  Martine was stunned. “I don’t have a grandmother,” she said slowly.

  Mr. Grice frowned. He reached into his pocket for his glasses and consulted his file again. “No, I assure you there’s no mistake. I have her letter here.”

  He handed Martine a sheet of cream writing paper.

  There was something about the tone of the letter that bothered Martine. Her grandmother didn’t seem at all enthusiastic about the prospect of taking her on. Quite the reverse. From the sound of things, she expected Martine to be a burden. She couldn’t even face the prospect of buying her a few summer clothes. She had clearly adored Martine’s parents, but that didn’t mean she wanted to be stuck with Martine. And what about her grandfather? There was no mention of him.

  Martine handed the letter back to Mr. Grice. “I’m not going,” she said. “She doesn’t want me and there’s no way I’m going to live with somebody who doesn’t want me. I’d rather stick pins in my eyes.”

  Mr. Grice looked at her in consternation. It had been a trying morning and he had a feeling that it was about to get worse. What was the matter with his supervisor that she was always giving him the difficult jobs?

  “But Mrs. Thomas is your legal guardian,” he tried.

  “I’m not going,” Martine repeated stubbornly, “and you can’t make me.”

  Mr. Grice gathered his papers together in a messy bundle, knocking over a glass of water in the process. “I’ll be back,” he told Martine, ignoring the puddle and the ink turning to watercolor on his documents. “I have to make a phone call.”

  Martine sat staring at the smoke-stained wallpaper in Mr. Grices’s office feeling much more afraid than she’d let on. The past few weeks had been a blur. For the first nightmarish five days after the fire she’d stayed with the Morrisons, until their sons returned from a college rugby tour. Then she’d moved in with a friend of her mother’s who was unable to cope with a grieving child. Finally, she was driven off to the house of Miss Rose, her English teacher, who was going to take care of her until her future was decided. Everywhere she went, people wore over-bright smiles and were full of helpful suggestions. But as soon as she left the room, she could hear hushed conversations in which the words orphan and all alone in the world were frequently used.

  Martine was too dazed and heartbroken to care. Most of the time she walked around with a crashing sensation in her head, as if she were falling into a well with no bottom. She couldn’t eat, she couldn’t sleep, she couldn’t cry. The question she kept asking herself over and over was why? Why had she been saved and her parents hadn’t? It seemed so unfair. The firemen had praised her bravery and told her she’d done the right thing. They said if she’d opened her door even a crack to try to get to her parents, she would have been swallowed by the
blaze. But it was hard not to feel guilty. And what happened to her now? Was she really going to be sent away to a stranger in South Africa?

  It was then that she spotted a cream envelope on Mr. Grice’s desk. There was something familiar about it. She picked it up and studied the return address. It was written in neat blue pen: Gwyn Thomas, Sawubona Game Reserve, Cape Province, South Africa. Martine searched her memory. Where had she seen that handwriting before? Then it came back to her. She’d watched her mum opening these envelopes every month for as long as she could remember. Nothing had ever been said about them, but Martine had always detected a change in her mum after she’d read the letters. She seemed to smile more, to laugh more easily. To Martine, sitting abandoned and confused among Mr. Grice’s dusty files, it was all the more upsetting that her mum had never told her that the letters came from her grandmother, or even that she had a grandmother at all. Why was it such a secret?

  Martine thought about the signature on the letter: Gwyn Thomas. It sounded so stern. She found it difficult to grasp that such a person might be her grandmother, let alone that she might have to call her Grandmother or, worse still, Granny. She couldn’t even think of her as Gwyn. For some reason the whole name—Gwyn Thomas—stuck in her head.

  Mr. Grice returned to the office shaking his head. “I’m afraid your options are extremely limited,” he said. “I’ve managed to find you a bed in the orphanage in Upper Blickley—”

  “It’s okay,” Martine interrupted, “I’ve decided I’ll go to South Africa after all.”

  Mr. Grice heaved a huge sigh of relief. “Well,” he said, “that settles it.”

  Right from the start, it was obvious that everyone around Martine was much more excited about her new future than she was. “A game reserve in Africa,” said Miss Rose in awe. “Just think, Martine, it’ll be like spending your life on safari.”

  Mrs. Morrison seemed to be convinced she’d be eaten by a tiger. “You’ll have to be vigilant,” she told Martine. “But oh, what an adventure it’ll all be!”