Lionboy: the Chase

by Zizou Corder

  When they reached the edge of the dry, scraggy forest, the Young Lion stopped.

  ‘You’re on your own now,’ he said. ‘I can’t come out there – I’d be seen.’

  Side by side the boy and the Lion looked out over the great rolling dunes – part desert, part beach – to where the town of Essaouira lay on the shore below them, seeming to hover between land and sea.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Charlie.

  ‘Mmm,’ said the Lion.

  Charlie thought perhaps he should just say, ‘Bye, then,’ and run off across the dunes.

  The Young Lion was thinking he should just turn and stroll back through the forest.

  They turned to each other, and at the same moment they cried out. Charlie cried, ‘I’ll never forget you, I’ll come back and see you, you’ve been so great, you’re the best and I’ll never ever forget you’; and the Young Lion cried, ‘I’ll never forget you, Lionboy, any time you need me just send for me, you have been the best human friend a Lion could ever – no, you’ve been the best friend …’

  They stared at each other for a moment, horrified by the reality of what had to happen, promising their eternal friendship silently, with their eyes.

  ‘You could wait, and then when Mum and Dad …’ said Charlie.

  The Young Lion smiled at him. ‘What’s the point?’ he said. ‘We’d just be putting it off.’

  Charlie knew he was right.

  ‘Give Elsina a kiss from me,’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ said the Lion.

  Then Charlie just turned and ran off across the dunes, and the Lion turned and ambled slowly through the forest, his head low. Neither looked back. They couldn’t bear to.

  Charlie was panting, sweaty-browed and dry-throated by the time he got to the gates of town. Sergei was waiting for him. He’d just had a spat with a man who had a stall selling leather slippers, and the man had thrown a bucket of water over him, so he was angry and spitting. Couldn’t this guy see that he was a reformed character, a cat of integrity and purpose, not a cat to chuck water at?

  Charlie wanted to sit a moment, catch his breath, find a drink of water, and make a plan. Sergei said they should head straight on.

  ‘Just let me get my breath back!’ panted Charlie in English, more to himself than to Sergei.

  ‘I am not stopping you,’ said the slipperseller, with a funny look.

  ‘Not you,’ said Charlie, with a grin. ‘Sorry. Do you have any water?’

  ‘Just dispensed all my water on a dirty cat trying to eat my slippers,’ said the man. ‘You want slippers?’

  ‘No, thanks,’ said Charlie – though they did look very nice, all different colours like flavours of sherbet: cherry, tangerine, lemon, pistachio, blueberry, blackcurrant and melon.

  Sergei was giving him a fish-eyed look and squawking, ‘Come on, boy! We’ve got to find them before that other bird notices Maccomo’s gone and starts making a fuss! Come on! On your bicyclette! Time is passing!’

  Only when the slipperseller began looking around for more things to throw at Sergei did Charlie pull himself to his feet and start through the shadowy arch of the gateway into the town.

  Mum and Dad, he thought, and the thought gave him strength. It didn’t matter that he was hungry and thirsty and hadn’t slept since he couldn’t remember when. He was on his way.

  He’d had a chance to wonder where they would go, if they were here. He’d thought that they’d find out where he was, and go there. But how on earth would they find out where he was? Only Maccomo knew, and Maccomo had been dealt with.

  ‘So where did you see them, Sergei?’ he asked.

  ‘The Riad … the Riad el something,’ Sergei replied.

  ‘El what?’ asked Charlie.

  ‘El I can’t bliddy remember!’ said Sergei. ‘Anyway, it’s not far.’

  ‘Where?’ said Charlie.

  ‘Erm …’ said Sergei.

  Charlie looked at him.

  ‘You know what riad means, Sergei?’

  ‘Noo …’ said the cat.

  ‘Kind of … hotel’

  ‘Oh,’ said Sergei. ‘Um … Sorry.’

  Well, they’d just have to find it … Charlie, with Sergei sort of following but looking as if he was just skiving about, walked as calmly as he could towards the Place Prince Moulay El Hassan, where all the cafés were, where he would buy an orange juice and, without attracting too much attention, get gossiping.

  First he went to the patisserie and bought an apple turnover, a croissant and a little rice cake rolled in paper. The girl working there knew nothing about any red-haired woman or big English African man.

  ‘El Omali?’ said Sergei.

  ‘Omali is a kind of pudding,’ said Charlie. ‘I don’t suppose they’re staying at the Hotel Pudding, do you?’

  ‘Er, no,’ said Sergei sheepishly.

  Charlie walked over to the orange-juice cart and bought a big glass. The orange-juice guy had seen a red-haired woman and a big African man who certainly had a European look to him, but he didn’t know where they were staying.

  ‘El Arbah?’ said Sergei. ‘It’s near here, anyway.’

  Charlie just looked at him.

  ‘Hotel the Four?’ he said.

  They went on to the café they had been to the night before.

  ‘Salaam alecum, hungry boy!’ cried the waiter. ‘How were your kebabs?’

  ‘We alecum el salaam,’ said Charlie automatically. ‘Big cup of milky coffee please and water.’

  He sat down out the front, under a creeper dripping with dark-purple flowers, and began to eat and drink, stuffing his face and thinking: They’re here. They’re not far from where I am right now. They could just walk past. Stay calm.

  The same beautiful tune was playing on the radio.

  The waiter brought his coffee.

  ‘I wonder,’ said Charlie, loud enough for the other people in the café to hear as well, ‘if anyone has seen a woman with red hair and a huge black man?’

  The waiter’s face seemed to be saying ‘No’, and various of the men in the café looked round, though they had nothing to say, to see who was asking. But Charlie heard a voice behind his shoulder, saying, ‘Oh yes. The pale red-haired ladies and the black man-mountain? They are staying at the Riad el Amira.’

  ‘Amira!’ said Sergei. ‘It was on the tip of me tongue.’

  Charlie turned quickly. A swivel-eyed chameleon was staring straight at him from a branch of the creeper. He was bright green like the leaves among which he lay. No one else heard – who would listen to a small reptile when there is gossiping to be done? Anyway the people in the café didn’t understand him, they didn’t think chameleons could talk.

  And Charlie was so happy that he didn’t notice he had been spoken to in Cat by a reptile. Or that the reptile had said ‘ladies’.

  ‘Riad el Amira?’ he said. The chameleon rolled one of his eyes to the right. ‘That way,’ he said.

  ‘Thanks,’ said Charlie.

  His breath was coming short again. He was too excited. Too happy. Too scared in case it could go wrong again, even now.

  He reached into his pack and took a couple of puffs on his medicine; he did some breathing exercises.

  Then he leapt to his feet, flung down some money and, with a last wink at the chameleon, roared off down the street.

  The waiter watched him go. ‘Funny boy,’ he said.

  The chameleon blinked, and moved on to another branch, where his left leg and half his tail turned slowly purple, because they were on one of the flowers.

  Charlie only had to ask three times where the Riad el Amira was. The first two people he asked were very helpful. The third, standing in the dimness of a doorway, was also quite helpful. He said, ‘It’s right here, you’re on the steps.’ Then he said, ‘I knew you’d turn up, running after your mummy like a little baby. What, did you think I’d forgotten about you? Did you forget about me? Did you think I’d just go away? Well, I sniking well haven’t, Charlie bliddy runaw
ay Lionthieving Ashanti …’

  Charlie was as shocked as you are. He was prepared for joy and reunion, not for his enemy. How dare Rafi turn up now, of all moments, and try to trample on his happy ending?

  ‘Oh, shut up!’ he yelled, and then he did something that always surprised him when he thought about it later. Overwhelmed with fury and not knowing his own strength, he just punched Rafi right in the face.

  Rafi hadn’t been expecting it either. He punched Charlie right back, and then he tried to grab him and get his arms round his chest. But Charlie was having none of it. He’d grown since he last saw Rafi – grown, grown up, and changed. He wasn’t the same young boy whose parents had been taken away. He was a friend of Lions, a survivor of shipwreck; he’d escaped from a Venetian palazzo and helped a revolution; he’d rescued the Lions from a snowstorm; he’d travelled the sea and made difficult decisions and Rafi wasn’t about to spoil his moment of glory. Never mind that Rafi was older and bigger, Charlie was cleverer and he was in the right.

  He thrust his elbow hard into Rafi’s belly, pulled away from him, and gave him a strong roundhouse to the shoulder. The hurt shoulder. Rafi winced, and roared with the pain. He lost his temper then, and rushed towards Charlie.

  (A small crowd of cats, watching, mewed in alarm. Only one, with amber eyes, was silent.)

  Charlie let him come, then at the last moment he turned, dipped and tripped him over.

  He jumped on top of him, Rafi struggling and moaning. ‘You can’t just carry on forever getting away with things, Rafi,’ Charlie hissed as he pulled at Rafi’s leather coat, looking for the pockets. ‘You can’t just carry on helping yourself, as if the world is your toyshop. Some things, Rafi, are NOT YOURS!’

  As he spoke the words, he found what he was looking for. Crumpled up and the worse for wear, but still itself – his mother’s formula.

  Charlie smiled, and shoved it in his own pocket.

  Rafi took the opportunity to scramble to his feet, and for a moment Charlie was unsure what to do. Then he realized that he didn’t have to do anything. Rafi was clutching his hurt arm, green in the face from the pain.

  ‘You little …’ he started to say, but then he just ran off, stumbling.

  Do I follow him? Charlie thought. I should finish this off.

  He didn’t get as far as thinking what finishing it off might mean, because Sergei was there at his feet, mewing.

  ‘What?’ asked Charlie, still bemused and breathless. He’d fought Rafi! And won!

  ‘Nice work, nipper,’ said Sergei. ‘But … erm …’ He gestured through the archway.

  Inside, the beautiful courtyard was full of people having their breakfast.

  Among them was a red-haired woman, in clothes that showed she hadn’t been to bed the night before, weeping over an untouched cup of coffee. Holding her hand across the table was a man, his broad shoulders slumped, his head gently shaking. You could see that he was saying kind and encouraging words to her, words he was trying hard to believe himself, and that she was not comforted.

  All the air went out of Charlie’s chest. His legs went weak.

  ‘Off yer go, then,’ said a voice.

  He walked into the courtyard, his legs almost buckling beneath him.

  He went up to the table.

  He breathed deeply.

  ‘Hello, Mum,’ he said. ‘Hello, Dad.’

  Postscript

  Charlie stayed awake just long enough to eat another breakfast – the happiest of his life – and introduce his parents to Sergei. Then he slept for two days in his mum and dad’s bed, with them sitting beside him, standing over him, stroking him, whispering in his ear would he like anything to eat, and hugging each other madly.

  When Charlie woke up he realized he was five centimetres taller. Soon after, he met his new aunt, which gave him such a shock he nearly fainted.

  He told Aneba and Magdalen everything that had happened.

  They told him what had happened to them too.

  The next boat back to London wasn’t for two weeks. They couldn’t decide what to do. Mabel thought they should stay there and have a bit of rest and holiday. Magdalen just wanted to get home – couldn’t they go overland to Casablanca and back through Spain? Then back in England they could report the whole thing, find out what the police had been up to, get Rafi arrested. But Aneba, now that he was here, was feeling the pull of Africa. Home in London might well not be safe, and meanwhile Ghana, he pointed out, was just the other side of the Sahara. They could get a truck, or some camels …

  Charlie smiled.

  But that was because he didn’t know what was about to happen. He didn’t know that what was about to happen would be worse than everything that had happened so far.

  The End of Part Two

  or

  The Beginning of Part Three.

  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.

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  First published 2004

  Published in this edition 2005

  Text copyright © Zizou Corder, 2004

  Illustrations copyright © Fred van Deelen, 2004

  Music copyright © Robert Lockhart, 2004

  All rights reserved

  The moral right of the author and illustrator has been asserted

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN: 978-0-141-92914-9