Through the Tiger's Eye (10 page)
Her voice was shaking and she knew she sounded scared. Rahel touched her arm but didn’t stop or say anything. Lucy tried to speak, but her voice had gone back to bed. By the time she’d woken it up again, they had rounded the bend at the end of the tunnel.
‘Stop,’ said Lucy, panicking. ‘We can’t just go marching in and tell the Bulls to open the gates!’
Rahel’s eyes flashed in the torchlight.
‘Do you believe I am stupid? There is a hole in the back fence. We have observed it through the bars. Toro and Ricardo will climb through. The guards neglect to check the fence or the back of the jail. They think we cannot get out. Besides, they sleep in a room at the front of the building and believe everyone is too intimidated to defy them.’
‘What about the ones near the fire?’
‘They are supposed to stay awake. But it is Saturday, the night they consume much alcohol. The Bull Commander travels to Telares City every Saturday and does not come back until late tomorrow. The guards, they enjoy it when he is away; they buy wine. They do not stop drinking until late at night, even the guards who are supposed to stay awake near the fire. The ones sleeping inside are the worst. Besides, on Saturdays, only two guards stay on duty at the fire.’
‘My dad says soldiers aren’t supposed to get drunk in uniform,’ Lucy said.
‘But these guards are not professional soldiers. They are just militiamen.’
‘Milisha-what?’
‘Militiamen. They don’t even have uniforms,’ said Rahel.
‘OK, but who’s the guy who smiles all the time? He’s got a uniform.’
‘That is the Bull Commander,’ said Rahel. Abruptly, she changed the subject.
A scene from the morning’s drama at the jungle jail played back in Lucy’s mind. Rahel was right. The smiling soldier did wear a brown uniform with that ugly picture of the horned bull on it. But this morning, at the jungle jail, the other guards had looked kind of mixed up. Their pants were all different colours, and some of them just wore T-shirts. One even had a long ponytail.
Rahel was still talking softly.
‘We will avoid the clearing at first, go around the back and Toro and Ricardo will climb through the hole and then open up the entry . . .’
‘What entry?’
‘The jail, it is rotting. They have put us in the strongest section but some of the wood in the walls was loose and my friends Carlos and Pablo have aggravated it but the guards don’t know. They extracted all the nails so the wood slides out. Toro can slip through with Ricardo’s aid. When he is inside, Ricardo will conceal himself and wait. Toro will help the smallest children climb out and Ricardo will hide them. Meanwhile, you and I will survey the guards in the clearing . . . and respond to any emergencies,’ Rahel finished abruptly.
Why did she talk like that? She used all those big words but she still made it sound as if they were just going shopping.
‘What do you mean, emergencies? They’ll kill us. They can run faster than us and they have guns!’
‘We will create a diversion.’
Rahel spoke calmly, with absolute confidence, and then, as though the conversation were over, walked on. Lucy watched, stunned, as the Tiger-cat leapt past Rahel, through the thick creepers and vines blocking the mouth of the tunnel. The creepers seemed to melt away. Lucy couldn’t think straight after that. She clicked out the torch and followed the others into the nightmare night.
Lucy glanced at the night sky. It was splattered with a million stars and the luminous full moon hung poised above the cliffs, ready to drop down out of sight. How did that happen? They must have spent a lot more time arguing than she’d thought. Then a bank of cloud washed over the moon and Lucy could barely see the track. The Tiger-cat padded forwards, the children keeping close behind so they wouldn’t lose each other in the shadows. Lucy kept T-Tongue on his lead.
In a few minutes she saw a glow through the trees and ducked down beside the others, lying on their bellies at the edge of the clearing. Below, two figures huddled near the blazing fire. One was sitting, the other lay curled on the ground. Neither wore a brown uniform.
The air suddenly grew brighter as the moon sailed out from a blanket of cloud. Rahel signalled to Toro. He moved like a silent shadow, sideways, away from the path. Ricardo didn’t have to be told to follow. Lucy was amazed. He didn’t look scared. He looked as though he was having a great time.
Lucy had seen him look like that before, playing with his friend Dario. Dad used to give them tea-towels for capes and called them the Caped Crusaders. Lucy called them the Crappy Crusaders: Derango and Retardo. They could play soldiers and pretend wars and super-heroes for hours but they were always incredibly noisy. Lucy could hear them miles away, even when they were supposed to be stalking each other. Now, as Ricardo melted into the jungle after Toro, Lucy wondered where elephant-feet little brother had learned to walk like a cat.
The Tiger-cat had vanished. Rahel stood cautiously and Lucy, not knowing what else to do, crept after her around the edge of the clearing, and circled the house, keeping well under cover. T-Tongue walked obediently on his lead, apparently understanding the gravity of their mission. He was behaving like a very grown-up puppy. No growling, no jumping around like a canine lunatic.
Rahel moved excruciatingly slowly, making hardly a sound. Lucy was trying desperately to copy her. She imagined she had padded paws, instead of feet, which did exactly what she wanted and landed softly in the right places. Was this how the Tiger-cat did it? In a moment of clarity she recognised what the Tiger-cat had felt earlier. She had thought it was hunger and it was – the hungry anticipation of a skilled hunter. Suddenly, Lucy was having fun. Fear melted. Hunting stirred in her bones.
Rahel halted abruptly. Ahead Lucy could just see the wire of the fence and a darker shadow looming up behind it. They were right beside the rickety old house. The boys were already at the fence and Toro slipped through the narrow opening, Ricardo on his heels. T-Tongue wanted to go after them but Lucy held him back.
Rahel gestured to Lucy. Time to go. On a sudden impulse Lucy tied T-Tongue’s lead to a tree and in a low voice told him to stay. He sat quivering but made no sound. Lucy followed as Rahel pushed further into the jungle, creeping right around the back of the building and along the other side. Then Lucy saw a blaze of light through the trees and realised they had reached the far side of the clearing, where the tiger had prowled earlier. Rahel, dropping low to the ground, inched relentlessly forward. Lucy was drawn after her, despite the rock of fear that had dropped into her guts.
They crawled as close as they dared to the edge of the clearing and lay in the grass and shrubs, watching the roaring fire. Massive trunks blazed, sending out a blast of heat that even they could feel. The guard lying down was snoring.
The one sitting up took swigs from a bottle, in between gazing into the fire, eyes narrowed. Lucy was close enough to see his expression: morose. Now and again he would mutter something to the guard asleep next to him, or perhaps to himself. He reminded Lucy of Uncle Fred, when he’d had too much of Grandma’s fruity Christmas punch and couldn’t get out of his armchair. He would watch TV,
even if it wasn’t turned on
, but he would think he was watching the cricket and start swearing at the umpire.
The guard was watching the fire as if it were TV. He kept muttering to himself as though he were swearing at an umpire too. Lucy could see something next to him, glinting in the firelight.
A gun.
Suddenly the guard lurched upright and staggered towards Lucy, then tripped and spun back to face the fire. He was swaying drunkenly, only a few steps from the girls. He had a long ponytail. He began muttering to himself in a strange language. Then he started singing. It was about as good as his walking.
Lucy could feel a giggle welling up, about to burst out loud enough to wake every guard in the camp, drunk or not. Then something happened that drove away all thought of laughter. The guard, still singing, lurched around towards them. He blinked, closed his eyes, opened them wider, blinked again . . . and began to stumble towards them with arms outstretched like a zombie.
Lucy and Rahel ran, plunging back into the jungle, creepers whipping their faces, not daring to look behind. After only a few steps, they heard a thud, followed by a horrified gurgle and a thrashing of branches . . . then silence.
Lucy forced herself to look back.
Illuminated by the fire, the frighteningly still figure of the guard lay near a tree at the edge of the clearing. A thick dark scarf was wrapped around his neck and upper body. As Lucy watched, transfixed, the ‘scarf’ began to move, like a living noose. A massive python. The guard had had his last drink, sung his last song.
Lucy turned to run but crashed into Rahel. Lucy couldn’t speak. She pointed at the guard and his deadly necklace. Rahel’s sharp in-breath told Lucy she understood, but she didn’t move. An awful fascination held them frozen as the python began to ponderously uncoil from around the guard’s body. It was as thick as Lucy’s leg. She stopped breathing. The snake slithered towards them.
‘This is it!’ Lucy thought. ‘
Run!
’ But her body would not obey.
She stayed frozen, even when the snake slithered smoothly over first her feet, and then Rahel’s. Taking its time, the long, sinuous form disappeared into the night, giving Lucy enough time to note the unmistakable gold diamonds on its back, glowing in the firelight.
Rahel held Lucy’s gaze for a long moment and then shook her head, as though to clear it. Then she was Action Woman again, darting into the clearing to crouch over the still-snoring form of the second guard. In one smooth movement, Rahel stood up holding a bunch of keys. In her other hand she held the gun. Simultaneously Lucy heard a rooster crowing in the jungle. She checked her watch: 3 a.m. That rooster had insomnia.
Rahel jogged over to the big gates. She found the right key, undid the padlock and slipped through, with Lucy on her heels. They crept up the stairs, onto the rickety verandah. Close up, it was somehow familiar. Why? Something tugged at Lucy’s memory. Then she saw something else that stopped her in her tracks – a naked mermaid adorning the battered front door. But she had no time to think about that. Rahel had turned the key in the lock and the heavy old door creaked open. In the hallway were two armed guards, sound asleep on the floor.
There was something about grown-ups lying on the carpet in the hallway, slumped on top of each other and snoring as loud as trains, that made Lucy want to crack up, no matter how scared she was. The sight of them, rolled on top of each other, still holding bottles of wine, with eyes closed and mouths open, was too much!
Rahel was already tiptoeing around the sleeping sentries and up the hall. She opened the first door on the right. Dodging the guards, Lucy just had time to notice the faint outline of a mermaid in the hall’s threadbare carpet before stepping into a scene that took her breath away. She was standing in a shabby replica of the ballroom in the mermaid house. The chandelier was gone, replaced by candles in wine bottles near the door and on the other side of the room, near a barred window. They cast pools of light over the floor and Lucy didn’t have to scrape too much dust away with the toe of her runner to see the faded blues and greens of a familiar ocean scene.
Then Ricardo stepped from the shadows, plastic Ninja sword raised importantly. ‘Put it away, doofus!’ Lucy spoke sharply without thinking. Rahel shook her head warningly. At the same moment, two boys moved into the light near the window; both were around her age, with tense, thin, dirty faces. The taller one had sharp, clever features. He was staring intensely at the gun cradled in Rahel’s arms. The other boy came close to Rahel and never took his eyes off her face. Lucy guessed they were the ones who had made the hole in the wall.
The insomniac rooster crowed again, and simultaneously Lucy became aware of a dull glow through the bars. The room was still dark, but outside the sun was coming up – hours and hours too early. Rahel said something quickly in her language. Both boys answered at the same time, and from the look on Rahel’s face Lucy guessed she wasn’t happy about the answer.