It was a howl. It was a howl of such intensity, loneliness, and longing that Charlie’s hair stood on end. It sounded like the end of the world, like losing your mother, like looking in the mirror and not knowing your own face. It sounded like the loss of all you held dear. Tears came to Charlie’s eyes, and terror to his heart, at the sound of it. What could make so sad a noise? Who could be that sorrowful?
But if Charlie was shocked by the sound, the lions were more so.
The lionesses stopped stark still and listened. The three lions with Charlie stopped dead, dropped low to the ground, and turned their heads in the direction it was coming from—across the square to the right. They were baring their teeth and wrinkling their noses; their whiskers were quivering, alert to every vibration. The young lion started to growl, a low, mean, motionless sound that Charlie had never heard before. They were all terrifying.
Charlie desperately wanted to say something, to calm them, to change the situation. He’d calmed them in the Moroccan’s chamber, perhaps he could now too . . . He started to speak, but the oldest lion flashed his eyes and gave a tiny, authoritative twitch of his ear that left Charlie in no doubt that he was to do nothing, say nothing, and probably even think nothing.
Up by the bridge, the lionesses began to run.
The howl came again—lower than the first one, but longer, and if anything, sadder and more piercing. The lions’ ears twitched. Charlie knew that lions can judge distances from noise, and if two noises come from the same direction, they can tell which comes from nearer and which from farther away. Were they doing that now?
Their faces showed total concentration. As they were now, free, desperate and united, he could imagine them in the wild, hunting in a pack, alert to every movement on the African plain, hearing things he couldn’t hear, running faster than he could ever run, leaping and slaughtering.
The young lion was looking to the oldest lion. The oldest lion held his concentration, thinking, considering. Finally he blinked.
He turned to the young lion and said, “You stay and guard our friend and your sister—”
At this the young lion’s eyes flashed green and furious, and he tried to contradict his father, but the oldest lion raised his head the tiniest amount and gave his son a look of such haughty scorn that the young lion immediately fell back and turned his head a little to one side . . . but you could see he didn’t like it.
Charlie said: “Sir—what is it?”
The oldest lion didn’t reply. He merely twitched his ear again, and then he was gone, his tail hanging on the air behind him as he picked up speed, bounding like an uncoiling spring into the darkness toward the direction of the noise. For a moment he waited for a gap in the traffic, then he flashed across the road and across the bridge, a quick shadow in the night, a streak of darkness.
Charlie went to the edge of the bridge. The young lion and Elsina had hidden themselves—only a low growl called him to where they were lurking in a tiny patch of park on the corner. He sat down against the wall, suddenly exhausted. What was this thing? Why were the lions so upset about it? And how long was it going to take? They didn’t have that long to find the train, and find a way on.
The night was cool, and the ground was cold beneath him. Maybe there was a change in the weather coming. He shivered.
Elsina prowled over and arranged herself beside him. She felt warm and comforting, and he was pleased to be able to be near her without having to hide their friendship from Maccomo or anyone else. The young lion still stood, his face in the direction of the howl—alert, mysterious, both scared and scary.
“What’s down there?” asked Elsina quietly.
“Well, I don’t know,” said Charlie. “I thought you knew—the way you all reacted.”
“I don’t mean what’s making the noise,” she explained. “I mean what thing, or place, is there. You’ve been looking at maps—you know where things are.”
Charlie ran his mind back. “The Jardin des Plantes is down there,” he said. “It’s a park. And the museums of natural history and so on, and—and the zoo.”
“The zoo,” she said softly.
“But that wasn’t—that wasn’t just an animal, was it?”
“I don’t know what it was,” she said.
Charlie wanted to call the young lion. He wanted to know what
he
thought. But the young lion was a million miles away from him—not in space, but in spirit. He was pure animal at that moment, pure watching animal. Charlie felt that he wouldn’t even hear him if he called.
“Do you have an idea?” Charlie asked. “You must have an idea. Why did it upset you all so much?”
“It upset you too,” said Elsina.
“Yes,” said Charlie, and he shivered again as he thought of the belly-curdling, tear-making cry. “But not as much.”
“Because it’s not your—” She broke off.
“My what?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know.”
She laid her chin on her folded paws and lay still, eyes open, no longer available for conversation. Charlie felt very alone.
Several minutes passed.
We’re going to miss the train, Charlie thought, and a great fear and worry came over him. But anyway, how could they take it without the mothers? Why had the oldest lion gone rushing off without explanation? Had Charlie been wrong to trust them? He could hardly believe so . . . they were all in this together. But why hadn’t the lion explained before he left? Charlie didn’t like it when the grown-ups who were meant to be with him just went off without saying where or why. Even if they didn’t mean to.
Charlie turned over sadly, and found himself snuggled up with Elsina. She didn’t mind; she patted him absentmindedly with her tail. But she, like her brother, was fully occupied, silently watching and waiting.
After another few minutes, Charlie lost his patience.
He jumped to his feet.
“Everybody else seems to have forgotten,” he said, “but we have a train to catch, and if we don’t catch it, then who knows what’s going to become of us, and I for one don’t want to risk it, so would you please, one of you, go and get the grown-ups so we can get a move on?”
The two lions turned and stared at him—but whatever they were going to say in response will never be known, because at that moment the howl came again, much, much nearer, and an immense form came bounding out of the darkness toward them, from the direction of the Jardin des Plantes. Behind it, looking small in comparison, low and slinking against the river wall, came four lions.
The young lion and Elsina leaped out to block the form’s way. The oldest lion and the lionesses moved up behind it to make a circle. Charlie stood back in horrified fascination. Were they hunting it? Were they going to kill it?
And quite apart from that, what was it?
The creature at the center of the circle of lions was—well, it was a lion. Charlie had no doubt about that. But it was like no lion that Charlie had ever seen. For a start it was enormous—nearly twice as big as the oldest lion. Its forequarters were taller than its hindquarters, hugely powerful and muscular. It had short, strong legs and a long head sloping into a long neck; its back sloped down rather like a hyena’s, and its tail was short and stumpy-looking. Its eyes were flat and defensive, but its face gave an impression of fear, anguish, and deep exhaustion. However, Charlie hardly noticed that, because this face also bore something else, something rather more immediately impressive.
This lion had a set of saber teeth. The phrase came straight into Charlie’s mind as he looked at them. That’s what they were. Two big, long, strong, sharp teeth, gleaming white and hard in the darkness, curving down and back from the creature’s upper jaw, like tusks, so big, they could never fit inside his mouth. Saber teeth. The creature looked across at Charlie, and bared them at him.
Charlie took one look and screamed. He screamed and screamed.
The sound broke the standoff between the lions.
The creature turned as if to leap on Charlie—provoked no doubt by this sound of weakness, he forgot for a moment that he was the victim of the rest of the lions.
The oldest lion roared, and leaped over to Charlie to protect him. The young lion roared, and pounced, and tried to bite the creature’s leg. The lionesses all jumped on top of the creature. The creature howled again.
“No no no!” yelled Charlie. “Stop it! People will come! Shut up and stop! Stop stop stop stop!”
He was yelling, of course, in Lion.
His lions, amazed that he should be so bossy to them, stopped for just long enough to stare. The creature, no doubt having never heard a human speak Lion, was so astounded that he suddenly cringed, and in that moment all the fight and the running away and the attacking and defending went out of him. He slumped down on the pavement and just lay there, his great teeth reflecting the lamplight, his great mouth uncloseable. And though, as Charlie knew, lions don’t cry, it seemed as if there were tears in his eyes.
Surrounded by this troupe of wild beasts, Charlie for a moment understood what Maccomo must feel in the ring. He had controlled them—he felt strong and powerful. But how could he communicate with them? Could they really understand him? Now that they were free, and out of the artificial environment of the circus, could he and they really be a team? And who was this new thing? Was he an enemy?
Charlie pulled all his courage and intelligence together, and spoke. “Into the park!” he said. “Get invisible. Now!”
The animals slunk swiftly into the shadows.
Charlie spoke quickly and urgently to the oldest lion. “Sir,” he said, “we have a train to catch. Has our plan changed?”
The oldest lion eyed him. Then: “No,” he said.
“You’ve brought someone. Is he joining us?”
The great creature raised his head and looked at Charlie, and at the oldest lion. The oldest lion twitched his whiskers.
“Quickly!” ordered Charlie. “Someone could appear at any moment.”
The creature bowed his head again, and spoke in a low, harsh, difficult voice.
“Yes,” he said.
Charlie breathed out a long sigh of relief.
“Lionesses,” he said. “What happened?”
“There’s no time now—” said the oldest lion, glancing around, but Charlie interrupted.
“Where is my enemy?” he asked. He desperately needed to know that Rafi was—what? Alive? Dead? Off their trail?
“He’s coming after us,” said the yellow lioness. “We only delayed him. He’s got our scent and he’ll be along as soon as the lock opens again.”
The fear returned. Rafi could cause a commotion; Rafi could ruin their escape. Charlie wasn’t afraid of him, but he was afraid of what he could do.
“Then let’s get a move on,” said Charlie. “We’ve no time to lose.”
The front of the station was bright and busy, so they skirted around to the back. The tracks, Charlie knew from the map, led out behind the facade they were approaching, so they took a dark, quiet street down the side. The strange new creature fell in behind them, keeping to the dark corners and the walls as the others did.
The houses were dark. The lions sloped from garbage heap to closed-up snack cart, from dim doorway to darkened stairwell, landing in shadows, being shadows. The street led into the freight yard, where the lions found some mail carts and lay quietly beneath them, out of sight, panting a little as they rested. The creature found a separate one. No one was talking. Charlie was reasonably sure that the fight wouldn’t break out again while he went ahead to check out the best way to get to the Orient Express.
He strolled back around and into the station. He wanted to run, but he didn’t want to draw attention.
He knew it was supposed to be at platform one.
There it was.
He strolled up the platform. His legs were tense and his feet heavy.
The train was fine and high and long—so long that the front of it extended beyond the end of the platform. Beyond that, the tracks faded into darkness, to be lit only by the headlights of the trains passing beside them. And just beyond that darkness was the freight yard, dark and closed now, where the would-be stowaways were waiting. All they had to do was come around through the darkness to the front of the train, and get on board on the far side, hidden from the light and crowds of the platform side. There was no train on that far side. No one on the platform. With just a little luck, nobody would notice them at all. There was no time to spare.
Charlie hurried back to the lions, who hooded their eyes again. The timing was good: twelve-twenty. “Quick!” Charlie called, low and hurried. “Before another train comes. Good luck! Quick!”
Yellow eyes flashed. Charlie flipped himself onto the youngest lion’s back with all the skill of a trick rider, and they were off, hurtling out and across—speed gave them invisibility. All the time Charlie’s mind was flicking over the things that threatened them: Who is this new creature? Does he put our plan in danger? Where would Rafi and Troy be by now?
The freight yard led directly to the tracks, gleaming beneath the lions’ paws. They lifted their feet high to avoid the cold metal, stepping over onto the wooden slats.
Huge and dim in the darkness with the station lights behind it, the train looked tremendously tall. Charlie hoped and hoped that he had not underestimated the height, and that the lions had not overestimated their strength and prowess. And anyway—they were all tired by now.
First, the engine and fuel car. Then the luggage car: their destination. No one would be there to hear them as they jumped aboard.
Go go go!
Charlie urged, silently, in his head as he hopped down from the young lion’s back.
The lionesses went first. One, two, three, they slunk along in the darkness by the wheels, seemed almost to halt as they swayed back on their haunches, and then took off in the great curving leap that brought them silently and magnificently onto the roof of the train. How could he have doubted them—these fabulous animals whom he had seen bounce all over the ring cage? Of course they could do it.