Lionboy: the Chase

by Zizou Corder

  Inside the hammam, Sergei was shredding the oranges with his claws and putting them in the Lions’ mouths, trying to squeeze their great jaws together, trying to get some of the juice into them. He didn’t much like putting his paws inside the great pink caverns of teeth; he didn’t especially like the idea of one of the Lions waking up and biting his leg off by mistake, but he didn’t at all like the idea of them just lying there asleep until Maccomo came back for them.

  He shredded, he squeezed, he talked, he cajoled. ‘Come on, come on,’ he murmured. He went back again and again to Charlie, licking his face, squeezing oranges in his mouth. ‘Come on!’

  Twice in one day! he thought. Couldn’t these snikin’ creatures stay awake for half an hour on end?

  But he was worried.

  What to do? Should he carry on trying to bring Charlie round, or should he … maybe … go back to the Riad el whatsitsname and try to attract the attention of his parents?

  But Maccomo was there.

  Sergei stared at Charlie. His scraggy ears twitched back and forth and his whiskers drooped.

  Suddenly he jumped on to Charlie’s tummy, pummelling at it, his claws in Charlie’s shirt, his paws pulling and pushing.

  ‘Wake up wake up wake up wake up!’ he caterwauled.

  And Charlie did.

  If he was surprised to find his mouth full of raggy bits of orange, he didn’t say so. He just shook himself, threw up, and then stuck his head under the pump.

  ‘I feel horrible,’ he announced.

  Then he saw the Lions, and remembered some of what had happened.

  ‘It was the water,’ said Sergei.

  Charlie picked up one of the bottles, and sniffed it. He wrinkled his nose.

  ‘We must have been pretty thirsty not to have noticed that,’ he said. ‘It’s the Lionmedicine.’

  ‘Thought so,’ said Sergei.

  ‘Which means,’ said Charlie, turning a little green again …

  ‘Yeah,’ said Sergei. ‘That snike. I saw him. ’E was waiting outside for you all to become totally comatose, then he took off with a lad from the town, so I follered ’im. ’E’ll be back for yer. For all o’ yer.’

  ‘Is he there now?’ cried Charlie. ‘Sergei – look out of the window!’

  Sergei peered out.

  ‘No sign,’ he said.

  ‘We must get these guys awake and scarper as soon as possible,’ said Charlie. ‘Before he comes back – but where’s he gone? Why would he risk losing us, after all the trouble he’s taken?’

  ‘It’s not that simple,’ said Sergei. ‘Charlie—’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘I saw …’

  ‘What?’ said Charlie.

  ‘Er – yer esteemed mum and dad,’ said Sergei.

  Charlie stared at him.

  ‘Here?’ he asked cautiously.

  ‘Here,’ said Sergei. ‘Here, and free.’

  ‘Mum and Dad …’ Charlie’s face was flushed and he couldn’t let himself believe it. Here? Now? Free?

  ‘Yes, Charlie, Mum and Dad, Professor and Mrs, Doctor and Mr, Aneba and Magdalen – them. Yer very own parents. I am acquainted with them, you know. We shared precious moments in a rubbish tip, remember?’

  Charlie’s breath was coming a little short.

  ‘Take me,’ he said simply.

  Sergei looked at him with great sympathy in his milky eyes. But he didn’t move.

  And, ‘Oh,’ said Charlie, after a moment.

  ‘Of course,’ he said, as he thought a little longer.

  Charlie knew he had to sort the Lions out before he could go to his parents. The Lions were in great immediate danger.

  But his parents!

  For a second he let himself imagine seeing them, running to them …

  And how good would it feel, if he knew he‘d let the Lions down? Soon it would be getting near to dawn. If they didn’t get home tonight, there would be another whole day for Maccomo to make his move.

  Sergei was watching him carefully. ‘You’ve brought ’em home,’ he said. ‘You’ve done what you said you would. You can leave ’em now, if yer choose to. Yer can do what yer like.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Charlie, with a tight little smile. ‘Thanks, but – you know I can’t.’

  Sergei shrugged. ‘Come on, then,’ he said.

  Charlie looked round at the unconscious Lions.

  ‘Got to wake them up first,’ he said. Then he had an idea. ‘Sergei,’ he said. ‘How far away are Maccomo’s lodgings?’

  Luckily for them Maccomo was still canoodling with Mabel when they climbed up to the balcony of his chambers. While they were clambering through his window, he was retreating with her to her private sitting room, with Aneba and Magdalen following at a safe distance, their nerves and muscles tense with the effort of being invisible to him. While Charlie was pocketing his last bottle of Lionmedicine, Maccomo was whispering to Mabel how the boy and the Lions were nearby and would soon be unconscious from the drugs he had fed them, and Magdalen and Aneba were desperately listening at the door, trying to make out the murmurings within. While Charlie and Sergei were shinning down to the ground again, Maccomo was still declaring his love, and Charlie’s parents were sitting desperately in the corridor, their backs to the wall.

  Magdalen was almost weeping. ‘My sister!’ she was saying, oh so quietly, over and over.

  Aneba was for rushing in now and forcing Maccomo to take them to Charlie.

  ‘And what will Mabel do?’ hissed Magdalen. ‘Am I to watch my husband killing my sister over my son? Or my sister and her boyfriend killing my husband? We must wait, and follow him back!’

  Aneba dropped his head and thought quickly.

  ‘We’ll need disguises,’ he said briefly. ‘I’ll go and find something. Stay here.’

  ‘I’m going nowhere,’ she murmured, misery all over her face.

  Fifteen minutes later, Aneba was back with two burnooses, hooded robes he had found in the hotel laundry downstairs, and they tried to settle down to wait.

  Ten minutes after that, Maccomo left Mabel’s room by the other door, which led to the other side of the hotel, and an exit to a different street.

  ‘They’d better have woken up by now,’ panted Charlie as they hurtled back to the Lions and the hammam.

  They hadn’t. But they were a lot more responsive to oranges, prodding and cold showers than they had been. By the time Maccomo reappeared outside the hammam they were up, strong and furious, ready and waiting for him.

  ‘Don’t kill him,’ Charlie said.

  The Lions looked at him as if to say, ‘Why ever not?’

  ‘It’s our nature, Charlie,’ said the Oldest Lion. ‘It is who we are.’ It seemed the closer they were to their home, the wilder they were becoming.

  Only the Young Lion seemed to understand. ‘It’s not Charlie’s nature, though,’ he said. ‘Charlie can’t let us do it because he is a human – a good human. Good humans don’t like to kill – not even their enemies.’

  The Lionesses looked to the Oldest Lion, who thought, twitching his whiskers impatiently.

  ‘You are our friend,’ he said finally. ‘You could have left us in Venice, you could leave us now to go to your parents, but you are loyal to us until the end. Because of this, we will honour your nature, even though to do so we must deny our own – which may be a mistake. We will see. These matters must always be addressed when different peoples work together. We will honour you.’

  The Lionesses channelled their disappointment into their anger, and when Maccomo sidled through the entranceway, with ropes on his back and a knife in his teeth, they were ready for him. There was no contest – a man who thought his prey was asleep and just needed tying up versus six livid Lions, a young boy mad as hell, and a sardonic, irritated streetcat.

  The Lions pounced, and if it hadn’t been for the promise they had made Charlie, they would have eaten Maccomo there and then. They knocked him about all right, patting him easily like a cat pla
ys with a mouse, bruising him and terrifying him, and the Oldest Lion held him down with one magnificent unfurled paw, while Charlie tied him up. Maccomo was astounded. He couldn’t believe what was happening. Charlie was shocked by the strength of the fight, but he was proud too. The Lions showed no feeling. They were just doing what they do.

  ‘Hang on,’ said Sergei. ‘Give ’im some of this to keep ’im quiet.’

  Charlie took the medicine bottle and said to Maccomo, ‘Open wide.’

  Maccomo didn’t want it. He’d stopped taking it – it wasn’t a hugely addictive drug but it had still been hard fighting the urge to sink into its lethargy. Now, offered it again, he looked as if he were more likely to spit. But then the Young Lion opened his claws and showed them, curved and nasty in the dim light. The trainer knew he had no choice. He glugged down the drug.

  Charlie strapped him on to the Silvery Lioness’s back, face down and lolling with shock, horror and Lionmedicine. Then the boy scrambled on board the Young Lion, feeling again the warm smell of his fur and the ripple of his powerful muscles.

  ‘You coming?’ he called to Sergei.

  ‘Not as such,’ the cat replied. ‘As in, not on yer nelly. Lions yer know are one thing, Lions yer don’t are another kettle of poissons. I’ll see yer back ’ere.’

  ‘Sergei,’ said the Oldest Lion, ‘thank you.’

  Sergei sniffed. ‘Yeah, well,’ he said, and began to scratch his bum.

  So, in the darkness before daybreak, Charlie and the Lions scrambled out of the hammam, out of town, racing against the dawn across the rolling sand dunes under the crescent moon and the morning star. Branches of broom scratched at them and left their sweet scent in the air. Ahead of them lay the low, dim Argan Forests and Lionhome.

  Chapter Eighteen

  ‘There’s no more talking,’ whispered Aneba.

  ‘I know,’ replied Magdalen, shaking her head.

  Then she looked at him.

  ‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘Come on. Let’s just do it.’

  They crashed the door open and burst in. Mabel was standing in the middle of the room – alone.

  Aneba spotted the other door, flung it open, and cursed.

  Magdalen shouted at Mabel.

  Mabel took it calmly. Then when Magdalen ran out of breath, Mabel said, ‘I am lying to him. He knows where Charlie is. He will take me to him tomorrow. I may have been a bad sister and a foolish woman but do you really think I am going to sit around and let him sell a boy! A Catspeaker at that! And my nephew!’

  Magdalen was just about to go off on one, shouting that Mabel had never cared about her nephew before, and what, so, she wouldn’t care about him now if he wasn’t a Catspeaker? – but she didn’t. She stared at her sister for a second, and then she burst into tears, and fell into her arms, saying, ‘Really? Really? Will you really help?’

  And Mabel said, ‘Course I will, Mags,’ which is what she used to call her when they were children, and made Magdalen cry all the more.

  Aneba watched, smiling. Thank god for that, he thought. He knew as well as the sisters did that everything between them was far from resolved, but at least for now they could get on with rescuing Charlie.

  ‘So where’s Maccomo gone?’ Magdalen cried, mopping her face.

  ‘I know where he’s staying,’ said Mabel. ‘He’ll be back first thing. We mustn’t do anything to alarm him or make him think I’m not on his side. Tomorrow morning he’ll be back.’

  ‘No way,’ said Aneba. ‘We’ve waited long enough.’

  ‘Maccomo doesn’t even know you’re here,’ Mabel said. ‘If he so much as saw you he’d panic. He doesn’t know Charlie is family to me … he thinks he’s safe.’

  ‘I don’t care, frankly,’ said Aneba. ‘Where is he keeping our son?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Mabel insisted. ‘He’ll tell me tomorrow. He’ll be back in the morning.’

  Aneba shook his head in disbelief. ‘Yeah, well, sweet dreams,’ he said, and, chucking one of the burnooses to Magdalen, they swept out into the night. They weren’t going to stop looking until they found their boy.

  Rafi wasn’t sleeping either. He had crossed over from Spain, and he was having trouble with the sand that blew about on the Moroccan roads, and camels that pouted and spat at him as he tried to pass them, and the herds of sheep that panicked when he tried to drive through them at speed. Five times he had fallen off the bike into a woolly sheepy pile. He wasn’t hurt, but he was in a hurry. The Corporacy people kept on calling him, and he had given up answering because he had no further news. He had to get to Maccomo, and he had to get that sniking boy.

  But he’d ridden all night, and he was nearly at Essaouira – he’d be there by dawn. It was incredibly cold riding at night, but at least there were no sheep and camels – though the moonshadows were strange, and it was hard to see the road ahead of him. There, for example – what was that? A group of six or seven shadows, or animals, or something, streaking across the road, out of one bank of low woods and into another, disappearing among the curiously shaped trees.

  Rafi shivered, and roared on by.

  When they arrived at Lionhome, it was dawn, and the sun was already starting to burn off the cold of the night. The sunlight sloped in shafts across the golden landscapes, casting long shadows from the spiky trees on to the dry grass and dusty paths. The morning was going to be bright and lovely. Birds were singing, and little invisible insects made crackling noises.

  Charlie could not see the Lions’ family. He could not see their home.

  But they could, and as they grew nearer they ran faster, the Young Lion bounding along beneath Charlie like a – well, like a Lion that smelt his home.

  Their home smelt them too. Suddenly, from the golden grass between the trees, golden heads began to rise, golden eyes staring. Then golden bodies, golden limbs stretching and coming to their golden feet, black whiskers twitching, ears going to and fro.

  An immense male, shaggy and magnificent, stepped forward and stared.

  Charlie’s Lions stopped.

  The Oldest Lion stepped forward, and flicked his ear.

  The Other Lion swayed his head.

  The Oldest Lion blinked slowly.

  The Other Lion shivered his whiskers.

  ‘Is that it?’ whispered Charlie.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said the Young Lion.

  ‘Why not?’ said Charlie. ‘I mean, this is your place – these are your people.’

  ‘Yes,’ said the Young Lion, ‘but …’

  ‘But what?’

  ‘I’ve never been here before,’ said the Young Lion softly. ‘I was born in captivity.’

  Charlie gasped – he hadn’t realized. But of course – neither the Young Lion nor Elsina had ever seen the wild.

  ‘Oh, my word,’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ said the Young Lion. ‘I don’t know what it will be like. I’m so, so excited.’

  Charlie rubbed his ears affectionately. He knew it would be OK. Challenging and interesting and perhaps difficult, but OK. And he knew that he couldn’t know about it – it was wild stuff, to do with being wild. A human could never understand.

  This knowledge gave him a pang.

  It was just then that he realized all the Other Lions were looking at him.

  Charlie glanced quickly at the Oldest Lion – whose job was it to explain? He was in Lion country now, and he had to go by Lion habits and Lion manners.

  The Oldest Lion pulled himself up and shook out his mane.

  ‘Brothers and sisters,’ he announced, with a little growl of happiness, ‘we have returned. Many of you will not remember us. Perhaps we have been forgotten altogether. We are your family. We were stolen. We have returned …’

  As he spoke a rustling and whispering started up among the Other Lionesses. It didn’t sound entirely friendly. But then a creature rose up at the back of the group. It was an old old Lioness, whose fur was thin and her limbs lean and weak. She came forward, calling a name that c
annot be written in English.

  ‘Is it you?’ she said. ‘My son? My son?’

  The Oldest Lion did not seem so old after all as he bent down to lay his head on the floor before her. Charlie swallowed several times.

  ‘Grandma!’ shouted Elsina. ‘Are you my grandma?’ and she bounced over to the Old Lady, nudging and shyly kissing her, her tail flicking and her face a big lioncub grin.

  The Old Lady stood on her thin legs and smiled.

  After that, everything fell into place. The Lionesses moved slowly round to the group of staring Lions behind, touching noses here, baffing paws there. Elsina ran round and round in circles, and soon found some other cubs. In moments, they were larking and gambolling. The Oldest Lion and the Young Lion together and in turns started to tell the pride the story of all that had happened.

  And Maccomo?

  Charlie took him, unconscious, from the Lioness’s back, and laid him out on the ground to pour a little more medicine in his drooling mouth. The Other Lions looked at him with curiosity – was he dead? He looked dead, but he didn’t smell dead. Should they kill him?

  The Oldest Lion said, ‘He it was who stole me and the Mothers. He is our prisoner.’

  ‘Lions don’t take prisoners,’ said a young Lion. ‘You’ve been among humans too long.’

  The Oldest Lion snapped. ‘He is our prisoner!’ he roared. ‘We do not kill him, we do not eat him. We give him this –’ here he gestured to the bottle of medicine Charlie was holding – ‘and we keep him prisoner. That is all.’

  Charlie looked down at Maccomo, lying tied up on the dusty ground, half-unconscious, his eyes rolling, an idiot grin on his face.

  Goodbye, Maccomo, he thought. Good riddance.

  Then he looked over at the Young Lion. Much as he would have liked to stay at Lionhome, he had family and business of his own to attend to, and he could hardly wait.

  It was hard saying goodbye to the Lionesses. It was harder saying goodbye to the Oldest Lion. It was almost impossible to say goodbye to Elsina.

  The Young Lion touched his arm. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Off we go.’

  The run back to town seemed quicker – because it was light, and because Charlie knew where they were going. But in a strange way he didn’t want it to end. He knew he was racing to his parents – but he knew as well that this was probably the last time he would cling to the Young Lion’s golden back, smell his warm fur, share the adventure with him. The thought made him blink. He pretended it was just the air whipping swiftly past his eyes, but he knew it wasn’t.