Run! The Elephant Weighs a Ton

by Adam Frost

  ‘What do you mean “remembered”?’ asked Sophie.

  ‘Well, you know that elephants have incredible memories,’ Grandad said.

  ‘I know – an elephant never forgets,’ said Tom.

  ‘Well, it really doesn’t,’ said Grandad, wiping a bit of pizza off his chin. ‘Memory is vital to an elephant. When I was out in Africa, there was a terrible drought. None of the elephants could find water. However, I saw one matriarch leading her herd towards a small group of hills. She looked very determined. I was intrigued so I followed them and, lo and behold, there was a small waterhole at the bottom of one of the slopes. Locals said that it had been fifty years since a pool had formed there. But this old elephant remembered. And saved her whole family.’

  ‘Wow, that’s amazing,’ said Sophie.

  ‘She was one of my favourite ever elephants,’ said Grandad. ‘Now, do you want any more spicy beef? No? No? All the more for me then. Anyway, another time, she stopped at a sand dune for about ten minutes. The rest of the herd stopped too. They were very quiet and seemed to be feeling the sand with their trunks. My local guide told me one of her brothers had died there thirty years before. The elephant recognised the spot. And stopped to think about him. It was just a patch of sand. No trees, no shrubs, no grass. But she remembered.’

  ‘So hang on,’ said Sophie. ‘Maybe Shaurya was frightened by something he remembered.’

  ‘Something that triggered a bad memory,’ said Tom.

  ‘But what?’ Sophie wondered. ‘We’ve got to look at that video again!’

  ‘Hold on,’ said Grandad. ‘Before you go, can you show me how to change the television channel? I can’t stand this American rubbish!’

  But Tom and Sophie were already in their parents’ bedroom, looking at the video footage on Mr Nightingale’s computer.

  ‘Go to the bit where Shaurya got upset,’ Sophie said.

  Tom clicked on fast forward and stopped at the part where Shaurya was backing away from the crowd. Tom and Sophie concentrated on what he was looking at.

  ‘I can’t work out what he’s seen,’ said Sophie.

  ‘Neither can I,’ said Tom.

  ‘It’s just a row of people,’ said Sophie.

  ‘Maybe it’s that weird noise that’s freaking him out,’ said Tom.

  ‘What weird noise?’ said Sophie. ‘I can’t hear anything.’

  ‘Not now, I mean when I was fast-forwarding,’ said Tom.

  He rewound and this time he turned the volume right up. Then he pressed ‘Fast-Forward’ and rewind and ‘Fast-Forward’. The elephants were zipping backwards and forwards around the arena.

  ‘Can you hear it now?’ Tom asked.

  Sophie nodded. As well as the sound of the crowd – which had become a squeaking, chirping noise – a low, booming rumble was audible. ‘And you know what?’ she said.

  Tom shook his head.

  ‘I think that deep growling noise is coming from Laila.’

  ‘Really?’ said Tom.

  He watched the screen attentively.

  ‘Blimey, you’re right,’ he said.

  ‘Remember what Jane said,’ Sophie said. ‘Elephants communicate in these low noises that we can barely hear. Remember how you can record their voices and speed them up to hear them. That’s what we’ve done.’

  ‘So Laila is telling Shaurya something,’ said Tom.

  ‘I bet she’s telling him to be careful,’ said Sophie.

  Their grandad had appeared in the doorway.

  ‘That’s a noise I haven’t heard in a long time,’ he said. ‘An elephant’s warning signal. One elephant telling another to be on the lookout.’

  ‘So it’s not Shaurya remembering something,’ said Tom. ‘It’s Laila!’

  ‘We’ve been focusing on Shaurya all this time,’ said Sophie, ‘but really it was Laila that saw something she didn’t like. SHE told Shaurya, and HE reacted.’

  ‘So it’s something Laila remembered,’ said Tom.

  ‘But what?’ Sophie said.

  They watched the video again, this time at normal speed. Now they were focusing on what Laila was looking at and where she was moving.

  ‘This is where she starts to make that noise,’ said Sophie.

  ‘I must say, this is very clever,’ said Grandad. ‘You two must teach me all about computers.’

  ‘Laila’s not looking at anything in particular,’ said Tom, ‘except maybe that old tyre propped up against a tree.’

  ‘I don’t see why she’d be warning Shaurya about that,’ said Sophie.

  ‘She’ll have her reasons,’ said Grandad. ‘Elephants understand cause and effect, you know.’

  ‘What do you mean, “cause and effect”?’ Tom asked.

  ‘Well, they know that A leads to B which leads to C,’ said Grandad. ‘For example, in the wild, elephants often trample on lion cubs. Because they know they’re going to grow into lions. And lions attack baby elephants.’

  ‘That’s pretty clever,’ said Tom. ‘Bit rough on the lion cub though.’

  ‘Look, we’re definitely going to need Jane’s help,’ said Sophie. ‘We have to pick her brains. It sounds as though Laila went through this whole thought process. She was thinking about something that MIGHT be dangerous. And that means we need to know what could have scared Laila in the past.’

  ‘Well, Jane won’t know much about Laila’s past,’ said Grandad. ‘Jane can only be about twenty-five years old. And Laila’s at least thirty.’

  Tom and Sophie looked downhearted.

  ‘You’ll need to talk to someone who knew Laila as a calf,’ said Grandad. ‘Someone who was at the zoo twenty years ago. Someone who kept notes on all of the animals he looked after.’

  ‘All the keepers look too young,’ said Tom sadly.

  ‘You pair of simpletons!’ said Grandad. ‘I’m talking about me!’

  Tom and Sophie both went, ‘Ohhhhh!’

  ‘I was Chief Vet, remember,’ said Grandad. ‘Come on, let’s hop over on to my barge. See if we can’t solve this mystery once and for all.’

  The three of them leapt out of The Ark and trotted across the marina.

  Half an hour later, they were in the living room of their grandad’s barge, surrounded by folders, ring binders, scrapbooks, photographs, diaries and notebooks.

  Grandad had one pair of glasses on – and another pair balanced on his forehead.

  ‘No, not that folder,’ he was saying. ‘That’s all about lions and tigers. Give me the blue one, Tom.’

  Tom handed Grandad the blue folder.

  ‘It says Regent’s Park on it, Grandad,’ said Tom, ‘not Whipsnade.’

  ‘Well, the elephants used to be in Regent’s Park,’ said Grandad, ‘till people like me campaigned to change it. Elephants need space, and at Whipsnade they have space.’

  He opened the folder.

  ‘Bingo!’ he said.

  ‘Is it about the elephants?’ Sophie asked.

  ‘No, it’s about Bingo,’ said Grandad, ‘one of my favourite sea otters. Let’s try the yellow folder.’

  Sophie took it down from the shelf.

  As she opened it, a wedge of paper dropped out on to the floor. Photographs of elephants went everywhere.

  ‘At last!’ exclaimed Tom.

  They soon found the section on Laila.

  ‘Wow, is that her when she was born?’ Sophie asked.

  They were looking at a picture of a baby elephant.

  ‘I think that’s her brother,’ said Grandad. ‘He ended up going to the zoo in Berlin.’

  ‘Why didn’t he stay with Laila?’ asked Tom.

  ‘Because in the wild, boys get to a certain age, then leave the herd. Go off on their own. It would have been unnatural to keep him here.’

  ‘So . . . so . . . Shaurya will be taken away?’ Tom asked.

  ‘Not till he’s fourteen or fifteen,’ Grandad said. ‘You’ll be in your twenties by then. You can follow him wherever he goes.’

  He pointed a
t a sheaf of papers. ‘This is what I was looking for,’ said Grandad, ‘my medical notes.’ He pored through them.

  ‘Bruised trunk at three months . . . cut her foot at six months . . . at eighteen months, head stuck in a tyre . . . at twenty months, got her head stuck again . . .’

  ‘Hang on, Grandad, say that again,’ Sophie said.

  ‘Which bit?’

  ‘The thing about the tyre.’

  Grandad repeated the last part.

  ‘That’s it!’ Sophie said.

  Tom was nodding, his eyes wide.

  ‘She was staring at a tyre,’ Tom said.

  ‘Making a warning sound,’ said Sophie.

  ‘Because she remembered how her head got stuck in one,’ said Tom.

  ‘I remember now,’ said Grandad, his eyes getting misty. ‘She was stuck for over an hour. Goodness knows how she got her head IN.’

  ‘This is it, Tom, this is it,’ Sophie said.

  ‘We’ve got to tell Jane,’ Tom said. ‘I KNEW Shaurya wasn’t scared of ANYTHING,’ he added.

  ‘Well, Jane won’t be at Whipsnade now,’ Grandad said. ‘It’s after nine. Time for one last slice of pizza and then bed.’

  ‘Then we have to go FIRST THING in the morning,’ said Tom.

  ‘Yes, Jane said she was on the early shift tomorrow,’ said Sophie. ‘That means she’ll be there at six. And so will we.’

  ‘Six o’clock?’ said Grandad. ‘Ah, I don’t know about that.’

  ‘Come on. It’ll be an adventure,’ said Sophie.

  Grandad’s eyes lit up. ‘I suppose it will. In fact, it definitely will. OK, you two. You’re on. Meet you back here in exactly . . . hmm . . . eight hours, ten minutes and thirty-one seconds!’

  Chapter 10

  At 6.10 the following morning, Tom, Sophie and Grandad were in the elephant house. Jane was next to them, holding a spare tyre.

  ‘So you’re sure about this?’ Jane asked.

  Tom, Sophie and Grandad all nodded.

  ‘A tyre,’ said Jane. ‘A rubber tyre?’

  Tom, Sophie and Grandad nodded again.

  Jane walked into the elephant house holding the tyre. Tom, Sophie and Grandad followed her.

  Jane crunched across the straw to where Shaurya and Laila were standing.

  As soon as she got within ten metres of the two elephants, Laila snorted and spread her ears to make her head as big and threatening as possible.

  ‘It’s just a tyre, darling,’ Jane said. ‘Just a harmless tyre.’

  But Laila was standing between the tyre and Shaurya, stamping her feet and flapping her ears.

  Jane backed away, looking over her shoulder at Grandad with an astonished look on her face.

  ‘Who’d have thought it?’ she said.

  ‘So now you know what caused it,’ Tom said, ‘Shaurya can appear in the next demonstration.’

  ‘I wish it was that simple,’ Jane said. ‘We can’t let Shaurya out without his mother, and we can’t let Laila out till we’ve convinced HER that tyres aren’t scary.’

  ‘But can’t you just make sure there are no tyres in the arena?’ Sophie asked.

  ‘We can’t take the risk,’ said Jane. ‘After all, the tyre she saw wasn’t meant to be there. Obviously, it was left there by one of the keepers – maybe they’d been cleaning out the chimp enclosure and left it there, intending to pick it up later. Wouldn’t have known about Laila’s phobia.’

  ‘But we have to go back to school next week,’ Tom said. ‘We really want to see Shaurya in a demonstration again.’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Jane, ‘but we’re going to have to show Laila a tyre every morning for weeks – big tyres, small tyres, pink tyres, blue tyres – till she doesn’t see them as a threat.’

  ‘Are you SURE Shaurya can’t go onstage without his mother?’ Tom asked. ‘He is very brave.’

  Jane shook her head.

  ‘But listen,’ she said, ‘what you did was amazing. Amazing. Laila would thank you if she could. You took the time to work out what she was saying. To find out what was distressing her. To study her childhood. We’re not technically allowed to do this, but I think you should join us for our morning walk.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Tom asked.

  ‘Well, it’s dawn,’ said Jane, ‘we often take the elephants out to see the sunrise. Have you ever ridden an elephant across a field before?’

  Tom and Sophie looked at each other.

  ‘Er . . . ah . . . I haven’t,’ said Sophie. ‘How about you, Tom?’

  ‘Er . . . ah . . . no,’ said Tom.

  ‘Watch me then,’ said Jane. She gave the command for Laila to left her right foot. Jane put her own foot on Laila’s knee. Then she grabbed the tough roll of flesh at the top of Laila’s ear. As Laila lifted her leg up even higher, Jane was swung round on to the elephant’s back.

  ‘See? Simple,’ Jane said. She slid down and said, ‘Now it’s your turn.’

  So that morning the elephants were led out across the hills behind Whipsnade.

  They grazed on the low trees and roamed through the long grass.

  They drank water from streams and squelched across muddy ditches.

  The elephants stood watching the sunrise, curling their trunks around each other and making low, contented rumbling sounds.

  On Laila’s back, you could see two children silhouetted against the morning sun.

  After a few minutes, the children gave the ‘Forward’ command, and Laila moved off, rocking her passengers back and forth as she strode through the fields and led the herd back home.

  Chapter 11

  Three weeks later, and Shaurya was back in the arena.

  It was term time for Tom and Sophie and they were back at school in London. But they came up to Whipsnade specially to watch Shaurya. And he didn’t put a foot wrong. The audience loved him.

  Two weeks after that, Tom’s music teacher, Mrs Purcell, asked Tom if he would play a solo in this summer concert. Tom, without thinking, said yes.

  At home that night, panic set in.

  ‘I can’t do it, I can’t do it,’ he said to Sophie.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ asked Sophie. ‘You’re even better than you were last year. And last year, you were great.’

  ‘No, I wasn’t,’ said Tom. ‘Don’t you remember? I played all the wrong notes.’

  ‘I know that’s what you heard,’ said Sophie, ‘but it’s not what we heard. Maybe you can hear really low frequencies – like Laila.’

  Tom smiled.

  ‘Besides, you’ve got to get over it,’ said Sophie. ‘You can’t let one case of stage fright ruin your life. Look at Laila and Shaurya.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Tom asked.

  ‘Practise the piece every day,’ said Sophie. ‘Play it in front of Freddy. Play it in front of us. Play it in front of your class. Till you’re sick of it.’

  Tom groaned. ‘Sounds too much like hard work to me.’

  ‘OK, well you’d better tell Mrs Purcell you don’t want to do it then,’ said Sophie. ‘Tell her you’re scared of other people, you’re rubbish at the trumpet and you want to play the triangle instead.’

  ‘No way!’ Tom said.

  He had left his trumpet on the armchair. Sophie picked it up.

  ‘Then play me the piece,’ she said, handing the trumpet to her brother.

  She sat on the armchair and folded her arms.

  Tom looked at the trumpet.

  ‘Come on,’ Sophie said, ‘scaredy-cat.’

  Tom frowned and started to play.

  He got to the end without fluffing any notes and looked up at Sophie.

  ‘That was beautiful,’ Sophie said. ‘Play it again.’

  ‘Nooo,’ Tom howled.

  ‘Chicken,’ said Sophie. ‘Coward.’

  Tom sighed and started again from the beginning.

  For the next few days, Tom practised and practised. He played for his parents and his grandad. He staged a small concert in the marina where he stood
on top of the barge and played to the other houseboat owners. He played outside the supermarket on Camden High Street and earned £3.17 from passers-by.

  On the night of the concert, he was still nervous.

  He was standing backstage with Freddy.

  ‘I’m going to do what I did last year,’ said Freddy, ‘and just pretend to play.’

  ‘But Mrs Purcell rumbled you,’ said Tom.

  ‘She won’t this year,’ Freddy said.

  He pointed to a small speaker that he had taped inside the end of his oboe. Then he lifted an mp3 player out of his pocket. He pressed Play and his oboe appeared to be playing itself.

  ‘Neat, eh,’ Freddy said.

  ‘But that’s not the song we’re playing,’ said Tom.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Freddy said.

  ‘That’s “Jerusalem”,’ said Tom. ‘We’re playing “Food, Glorious Food”.’

  ‘Oh man!’ Freddy said, prodding frantically at his mp3 player, ‘I haven’t got that on here. Who’s it by?’

  ‘I dunno,’ said Tom. ‘Oliver Twist, I think.’

  ‘OK, everyone,’ Mrs Purcell announced, ‘one minute to go.’

  ‘You’ll be fine, Freddy,’ said Tom, ‘you’ve played it fifty times. And anyway, if you play a few wrong notes, it doesn’t matter, does it? It’s only mums and dads out there. Just think of it as a great opportunity for showing off.’

  Freddy nodded and looked sadly at his oboe. A wire was hanging out of the end. ‘It took me hours to set this up,’ he said.

  And then it was time to go on.

  Tom and Freddy were both excellent. Freddy decided to twirl his oboe around and play it as loud as he could, as if he was a rock star with an electric guitar. Mrs Purcell frowned but the audience laughed.

  Then it was Tom’s solo.

  He played the first two notes perfectly. The third note was a bit wobbly.

  Everything seemed to slow down as he thought about playing the fourth.

  Sophie was in the audience. She could see Tom’s face dropping.