Danger! Tiger Crossing

by Lin Oliver

  With my heart beating fast, I dove for the opening of the cave. My head went in fine, and I was even able to wedge my shoulders through. But my middle got stuck. I sucked in my stomach, wishing I hadn’t had that tuna melt for lunch. I kicked my feet and pushed against the ground, but my body wasn’t going anywhere. I thought I felt the tiger’s hot breath on my legs.

  “Pull my arms,” I called to Luna.

  “I’m trying,” she said. “I’m just not strong enough.”

  Suddenly, I felt another pair of hands grab me, pulling with such force I thought my arms might just pop out of their sockets.

  One pull.

  Two pulls.

  On the third pull, my middle scraped through the opening. In one smooth motion, the rest of my body followed.

  I was inside the cave, looking into the eyes of the hairy creature.

  Chapter 7

  It wasn’t a creature. It was a human, a teenage boy kneeling on the ground next to Luna. He was very skinny, with brown curly hair that was so long, it shot out in every direction. He was dirty from head to toe. His shirt and pants were so ripped up, I could barely tell that he was wearing clothes. He had patched up the holes with leaves and mud and animal fur.

  “Who are you?” I demanded.

  “Well, that’s not very friendly,” he answered. “You might say thank you. If it weren’t for me, you’d be that tiger’s dinner right about now.”

  “Thank you for saving Tiger’s life,” Luna said to him.

  “Tiger?” He laughed. “What kind of a name is that?”

  “My real name is Tyler,” I explained, although I didn’t much like him laughing at my name. “Tiger’s a nickname.”

  “I have a nickname, too. My parents used to call me D.D. It’s my initials.”

  Luna and I exchanged shocked looks.

  “D.D.?” she said slowly. “As in . . . David Dots?”

  Now it was the boy’s turn to look shocked.

  “How do you know my name?” he asked.

  “Your mother told us.”

  “My mother! How do you know her?”

  “We live right next door to her in Los Angeles,” I said.

  “Impossible,” David answered. “There’s no house next door to her. Just empty lots on both sides.”

  “I’ve lived in my house since I was born,” Luna said. “So it’s been there for at least ten years, I can tell you that.”

  David looked confused, but I was beginning to understand what was going on.

  “I think a lot has changed in the fifty years since you disappeared,” I told him. “Your mother says that’s how long you’ve been gone.”

  David got a faraway look in his eyes.

  “I remember the day,” he said. “My mother was making me practice the piano. I always wanted to play drums, but she insisted I learn piano. I remember the piano was next to that new frame my parents had just brought home.”

  “Yes,” I said. “The fantastic frame. With the rabbits and owls and grapes.”

  “And don’t forget that weird gold clock with the birds.”

  “You mean the broken clock with the birds?” I asked. “Not to brag or anything, but I fixed it.”

  “It worked fine back then,” David said. “I remember it was exactly four o’clock when all the crazy stuff happened with the painting.”

  “Wow,” Luna said. “You have a great memory to remember the exact time.”

  “You don’t forget a thing like that,” David told her. “It’s not every day you get swallowed by a painting.”

  The moment David said those words, it hit me. The hour of power. Could the frame’s hour of power be from four o’clock until five o’clock? That would make sense. Maybe that’s why the clock started at four and the hands stopped at five. Of course! That was the magical hour, the hour of power!

  My mind was racing. But David’s was still way back in the past.

  “The next thing I knew,” he was telling Luna, “I was being tossed around in a storm. Then I flew through the window of some ancient castle. I must have passed out after that, because I had a dream about a fat orange pig wearing a bow tie.”

  I had a feeling Chives wouldn’t like being called fat. After all, pigs are supposed to be pudgy.

  “You got sucked into your mother’s painting,” Luna explained to David. “She’s been looking for you ever since, doing one painting after another. We saw them. There was one of yellow haystacks.”

  David smiled, like he was remembering a happy memory from a long time ago.

  “Yes, I was there,” he said. “Golden haystacks in the French countryside. I stayed there from morning to sunset. It was so peaceful.”

  “And there was another painting of a navy-blue sky with wild-looking swirling stars,” I said.

  “I was there, too,” he remembered. “It was a field of dark twisted trees and the moon was such a bright yellow.”

  He got up and started to pace around the cave.

  “I’ve been to hundreds of places since then,” he said. “Italian villages, castles in Spain, a desert filled with melting clocks. Don’t tell my mother, but I’ve even spent some time with a lady who hardly had any clothes on.”

  “The one in the clamshell,” I said. “We saw.”

  “But if I’ve been gone for fifty years, living in paintings, why haven’t I gotten any older?” he wondered out loud.

  “Viola says that people in paintings don’t change,” Luna said. “She says art is ageless.”

  David pushed his wild hair back from his forehead. I could see that this was a lot for him to think about. At last he said, “This means that you two are from the future.”

  “Yup,” I said. “We live in the twenty-first century. Maybe you can come back with us . . . That is, if we ever get back.”

  David looked at me suspiciously.

  “What if you’ve come here to trick me?” he asked. “Do you have any proof that what you’re saying is true?”

  I didn’t blame him for doubting us. It’s not every day that two kids fly through a painting into a jungle.

  “We can tell you all about the world we live in,” Luna said. “It has computers and mobile phones and electric cars and 3-D movies. I saw this really scary one last week about a three-eyed monster—”

  “Luna,” I interrupted. “I think he gets the point.”

  “Those things aren’t proof,” David said. “You could have read about that stuff in science fiction stories.”

  Then it occurred to me. I did have proof. Right there in my soggy pocket. I reached in, pulled out my helicopter, and set it on the floor of the cave.

  “That doesn’t look like any helicopter I’ve ever seen,” David said.

  “It’s an Apache Longbow,” Luna told him. “That thing on the top, by the rotors, is a radar pod.”

  Wow, that was a surprise. Girls who collect bird feathers don’t usually know much about helicopter radar technology.

  “How do you know that?” I asked Luna.

  “My dad’s in the army,” she explained. “He’s a helicopter pilot overseas.”

  David had moved closer and was inspecting the helicopter.

  “Watch this,” I told him. “I bet you never had remote control radio transmitters for your toys.”

  I took the remote out of my pocket. It had gotten pretty soggy in the river, so I hoped it still worked. I pushed up on the throttle. The blades started to twirl; slowly at first, then they sped up. The helicopter lifted off. I moved it forward and back, up and down, and in a complete circle. Then I let it hover right in front of David.

  I could see the amazement on his face.

  The whirring sound of the rotors echoed loudly throughout the cave.

  “Uh-oh, Tiger, look behind you,” Luna whispered. “I don’t think our striped friend
likes the noise.”

  I heard a growl and turned around to face the mouth of the cave. The small opening was filled with the tiger’s paw. He was digging at the ground, trying to get a grip underneath the boulder.

  Tigers are strong. But are they strong enough to shove large rocks aside to get to their prey?

  I didn’t know the answer. All I knew was that we were trapped inside that cave with a hungry tiger trying to get in. It was no longer a safe place for us.

  Chapter 8

  “We have to get out of here,” I told Luna and David.

  “I’ve been running from that tiger for a while now,” David said. “He doesn’t give up easily.”

  “How have you escaped him?” I asked.

  “All kinds of ways. Once, I climbed a tree that was so high, the branches at the top couldn’t hold him. He gave up and climbed down. Another time, I hid in a troop of wild monkeys. Once, an eagle swooped down and distracted him. He chased the eagle, and I ran in the other direction.”

  “That was lucky,” Luna said. “But we can’t count on a bird showing up just when we need one.”

  “We can hatch our own bird,” I said.

  “How exactly do we do that?” David asked. “Unless you’re sitting on an egg you haven’t told us about.”

  “Luna, give me your hat,” I said.

  “I think I know where you’re going with this,” she said with a little smile.

  She took off her hat and handed it to me. The feathers were wet and muddy from the river, but that worked well for my plan. I put the helicopter in front of me and wrapped the hat around it.

  “Does that look anything like a bird?” I asked.

  “It will when I’m finished with it,” Luna said.

  She arranged the feathers carefully, bunching some of them to look like wings. Others, she shaped into a tail. Then she took a brown clip out of her hair and snapped it on the front.

  “It can’t be a bird if it doesn’t have a beak,” she said.

  “I hope this thing isn’t too heavy to fly,” I said.

  I picked up the remote and pressed the throttle. The whirring started up, and slowly the helicopter rose into the air.

  “We have liftoff!” I cried.

  The feathery thing circled the cave. It wasn’t the most real-looking bird I’d ever seen. But it wasn’t bad, either.

  “Do you think this will trick the tiger?” Luna asked me.

  “We have a shot. Maybe to tiger eyes, this will look like a delicious turkey dinner.”

  The sound of the whirring had excited the tiger again. His paw clawed even faster at the ground. The boulder wiggled a bit. He was making progress.

  “So here’s the big question,” Luna said. “How do we get out of the cave and launch this thing without the tiger snatching us?”

  We were quiet. That was a tough question. Then David got up and took the controller from my hand.

  “You mind if I try operating this?” he asked. “It looks like fun.”

  “This isn’t really the best time to be playing with toys,” I told him. But by that time, he already had his hands on the throttle. The birdlike helicopter zoomed wildly in the air. It looked like it was going to crash into the cave wall.

  “You have to control it,” I said. “Press the throttle to the left. Now right. Now down. Good, go easy. Just hover two or three feet off the ground.”

  “I’m getting it,” David said.

  “That’s good. Now maybe you should stop playing with it. We have to figure out how to get out of here.”

  “I already have,” David said. “Here’s the plan. I’ll go out first. I’ll hover the helicopter right in front of the tiger’s nose. Then whoosh . . . I’ll send it flying in the air. With any luck, he’ll take off after it. You guys can sneak out and run in the opposite direction, back to the river.”

  “What about you?” I asked.

  “Don’t worry about me,” he said. “I know my way around this jungle. I’ll meet up with you.”

  “Maybe we should wait until it’s dark out,” Luna suggested.

  “We can’t,” I said, looking at my Batman watch. “It’s almost five o’clock.”

  “So? What happens then?”

  “Well, if my theory is right, that’s when the magic hour ends. The hour of power.”

  “Tiger, what are you talking about?” Luna asked.

  “Remember when Viola talked about how the frame had an hour of power? I think it’s from four to five o’clock. That’s why the frame’s powers got active when I set the clock to four. And I bet at five, they’re over.”

  “Hmmmm.” Luna rubbed her chin like she was thinking hard. “And after that, whoever is left inside the painting stays inside.”

  “That’s what I think.”

  “That would explain what happened to me,” David said. “I was tossing about for hours in that storm. When I finally woke up in the grand hall of the castle with all those strange paintings around me, it was way past five.”

  “But if we’re back at the very spot where we landed . . . at five o’clock . . . then maybe we’ll be able to go back into the painting and return home,” I said. “It’s our only hope, anyway.”

  “Do you know what this means, David?” Luna said. “If Tiger’s theory is right, you can come home with us.”

  Luna broke into a big smile and threw her arms around him. That was a brave thing to do, considering he hadn’t taken a bath in fifty years.

  “Let’s just get out of this cave first,” was all he said.

  I pointed to my watch. It was nearing five o’clock.

  “We don’t have long. We have to move fast. David, are you ready?”

  “Let’s fly this thing,” he said.

  He took the helicopter and placed it at the mouth of the cave. The tiger had removed his paw, but I could hear him sniffing at the entrance. He smelled human flesh.

  “Good luck, everyone,” David said.

  He stuck his head out of the opening. Then, quick as a cheetah, he squirmed out of the cave. As soon as he was out, I heard the whirring of the helicopter.

  “We have liftoff!” David yelled.

  I crept over to the opening and peeked outside. I saw the helicopter hovering in midair a few feet from the cave entrance. The tiger was tracking it with his eyes. David was behind one of the boulders, his hand clutching the controller.

  “Okay, boy,” David whispered. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”

  He pushed his thumb on the throttle, and the helicopter zoomed through the air. The tiger followed it with his glowing yellow eyes. All at once, he sprang to his feet. Turning his powerful body in the direction of the helicopter, he took off running.

  The chase was on.

  Chapter 9

  Luna poked her head outside the cave. “I can’t see them,” she whispered. “It’s all clear.”

  She crawled out of the opening and reached back in to help me out.

  “Think skinny and get out here,” she said.

  I wished I were as thin as David, but then, he probably wished he’d had a tuna melt for lunch. I tried going out feetfirst this time, and it worked better. I wiggled and squirmed my way out of the cave, with only a little help from Luna.

  The rain had stopped. Some sun filtered through the trees. I looked around for signs of David or the tiger. There weren’t any.

  “Look,” Luna said. “Over there.”

  Two sets of footprints led off into the jungle. One set was human, the other was tiger. They were headed in the opposite direction of the river.

  “Now is our chance,” I said. “Let’s go. We only have a few minutes.”

  “I can run like the wind,” Luna said. She took off into the grove of trees. We sprinted across the soggy jungle floor and soon we were at the river. We jumped in and swam
fast, all the way to the other side.

  “Now where?” Luna asked as we pulled ourselves onto the shore.

  “We have to head back to the exact spot where we landed,” I said. “Can you get us there?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I remember what it looked like in the painting. Tall grass, a big blue-green tree surrounded by a clump of red jungle flowers. And a tiger crouched near the tree.”

  “I was hoping you wouldn’t remember that part,” I said. “I’m not happy about seeing him again.”

  We took off running across the jungle floor. The rain started up, coming down in heavy silver streaks. Soon, we passed the thicket of tall grass where we had stopped to rest.

  “There are the red flowers,” Luna said, pointing to a clearing up ahead. “And that’s the tree where the tiger was crouching when we landed.”

  We bolted for the spot. When we reached it, I checked my watch. It was two minutes to five.

  “Okay, we’re here. Now what?” Luna asked.

  “Now we wait until five o’clock. Then we see what happens.”

  “We have to find David,” Luna said.

  I put my hands up to my mouth and called out.

  “David! David! We’re over here. Come here, and hurry!”

  There was no answer.

  “David!” I called again.

  I heard a whirring sound nearby. I looked up and saw the helicopter, hovering next to the big dark tree where we stood. But where was David?

  Then I saw him. Still clutching the controller in one hand, he was starting to climb up the trunk of the tree. The tiger was approaching the tree, growling at the feathery helicopter.

  “David! You can’t go up there!” Luna called. “You have to come with us.”

  “I’m going to the top,” he called back. “The tiger knows not to follow me there. I’ll be safe.”

  “But you’ll be out of the picture!” I called to him. “There’s no top of the tree in the painting.”

  “Yes, but there is a tiger in the painting,” he called. “And he’s ready to pounce, just like this one. If we copy the painting exactly, that will get you home.”