Through the Tiger's Eye (13 page)
When Lucy was little she’d asked what an astronomer did. Dad had said he looked for dead and dying stars.
‘A star doctor,’ Lucy said, and everyone laughed. Dad was so clever he found stars no one had ever seen before. Once he even went to Hawaii to look through a huge telescope. Other scientists said he was famous. In his family, he was most famous for forgetting to eat, sleep and keep the lounge room sort of tidy – so you could walk from the kitchen to the television without having to take out life insurance. He just didn’t notice.
He was always so tired from working that he looked grey – but happy. He never yelled at them. He always stayed up late to watch international soccer matches, and let the kids stay up too. They
did
have to ask him things four times before he even heard them, but then he would smile, say sorry and do whatever they wanted – even let them drink Coke for breakfast. Mum went psycho when she caught him.
Then the fights started. He became grey and worried. Grey like a ghost. Mum shouted one day that she was sick of living with a ghost. She wanted someone who was married to
her
and not to some star he hadn’t even found yet. She said Dad loved whatever he saw at the end of his telescope more than the people in his own lounge room. Lucy was terrified then and wanted to throw up or cry, but she didn’t do either. She just yelled at Ricardo.
Now, holding the strange book, Lucy wished he would hurry home from China.
Grandma’s voice snapped her out of it.
‘That’s a beautiful old book, dear! Where did you get it?’
‘In the hall.’
Well, the strange green leather atlas wasn’t Grandma’s. Lucy kept looking in the index of Auntie Alice’s one. She tried B for Burchimo. Bingo! There it was: a cluster of red-brown islands with a big fat one in the middle. They were in the Pacific Ocean, way up to the north-east of Australia.
Lucy looked in vain for Telares. She looked carefully at the cluster of red-brown islands that made up Burchimo. Then one caught her eye. It was the same colour but sat like a lonely seagull in the ocean, much further east. It had no name but a distinctive shape: two halves joined like the outstretched winds of a soaring gull. It was right near a dotted line called – Lucy had to squint to read the tiny writing – International Date Line. But it wasn’t Telares. According to the map, it was definitely part of Burchimo.
Just then, Grandma looked up and said: ‘What was that suburb you asked about, Lucy, love?’
‘Telares, and it’s not a suburb, it’s a country.’
‘You’re a good girl doing homework in the Christmas holidays. A country, eh?’
Lucy didn’t bother trying to explain to Grandma that you didn’t get Christmas holidays homework, especially when you were never going back to primary school again. She knew it was useless because Grandma had got that thinking look on her face. Lucy imagined a little ticking clock on her forehead, like the icon on the computer when the hard drive was busy. But Grandma didn’t have the right software installed. She shook her head.
‘Telares. No. I don’t know it. It’s ringing a bell, only I can’t remember why. Strange.’
And she went back to her crossword.
Lucy closed Auntie Alice’s atlas and opened the mysterious old green leather one. When she turned the heavy, yellowed pages to the index, the name Telares jumped out immediately. She turned to page 17 and there it was, the nameless, lonely seagull of an island that she had seen in the other atlas, massively enlarged. She could clearly see the two ‘wings’, joined like a V at the bottom. The surrounding ocean was beautifully painted in glowing greens and blues. Dolphins and whales cavorted in the water, and schools of fish swam close to the sandy shores. The island was ringed with golden beaches. At the top of the page, in gold writing, was a date: 1600 AD. Faintly, on the left of the page, was the rough ink outline of a familiar cluster of islands: Burchimo. Telares had pride of place in this atlas!
As Lucy stared at the map, a rushing and roaring filled her ears. The solemn greens and browns of mountain ranges, valleys and plains rippled, and the black dots of cities and towns shook and shifted. The sea boiled and frothed, surging onto golden beaches, swamping plains, roaring through the valleys, flooding all in its path, until only the tallest mountains remained. The island was sinking under the sea! The roaring intensified, like a giant shell held to Lucy’s ear. Suddenly she realised that her head was so close to the atlas she was almost lying on it. As she lifted her head, the sound of the sea retreated and she watched the map resolve itself again into ordinary greens and browns. The sea resumed its innocent calm blue.
Lucy shook her head. She couldn’t escape the overwhelming sensation that Telares had almost disappeared before her eyes.
Lucy flicked back a few pages. There was Telares again, that same unmistakable stretch of wings and golden beaches. But the date was 1300 AD! And the name of this island was Za Zu. Lucy looked in vain for the cluster of islands that made up Burchimo. But what she saw instead on the left of the page was the undeniable shape of the east coast of Africa. Za Zu looked like Telares but it was off the coast of Africa!
Lucy looked back further. There it was again: an island called Akala, shaped just like Telares, but parked off the coast of South America and dated 900 AD. Another called Guan-zhi, near China, dated 500 AD, with fierce dragons painted in the sky around it. What was going on?
She turned to the first map in the atlas. The same shape again, up near the North Pole. There was no date on it. She turned the next page . . . and the next. Each showed the same island, only in a different part of the world. There was one right near England! Lucy counted back. The dates started at the third map and kept rising, sometimes 100 years, sometimes more.
But after a while, the pages became blank. Disappointed, Lucy turned another, and another – all blank, about twenty of them, until she reached the index. In fact, Telares, on page 17 was the very last map.
Lucy picked up Auntie Alice’s atlas again and looked for islands shaped like Telares near the North Pole, Africa, South America, England and China.
Zero, zilch and zip.
Where had they gone?
All of a sudden, the full import of it hit Lucy. She was clearly going nuts and should just go back to bed for the rest of the holidays. She dropped the atlas and went to her bedroom, with T-Tongue trotting cheerfully at her heels. She jumped into bed and pulled the covers over her head. T-Tongue wasn’t having any of that. He nuzzled his way under the blankets and tried to lick her neck.
Lucy sat up and examined the rug morosely. It didn’t help. What she had thought, at first glance, were fresh signs of another snaky growth spurt, was something quite different. She was gazing at a faint but unmistakable trunk. The trunk of a beautifully dressed elephant, with a jewelled headdress and what looked like a little caravan on its back. And that dark smudge next to it. Was that a . . . bat?
Lucy pulled the blankets back over her head.
‘Are you OK, Lucy?’
Grandma knew something must be wrong if Lucy was in bed in the holidays.
‘Yes, Grandma. I’m just a bit tired,’ she mumbled from under the blankets.
‘You might be getting sick. You’d better stay inside today. And no more homework! Just read a book or something.’
Lucy sat bolt upright.
‘I’m fine, Grandma. Really! It’s the holidays. No one gets sick in the holidays. I can’t stay in bed. I just didn’t want to do the dishes.’
That was feasible enough to get Grandma off the scent. Phew. She bustled off to see if Ricardo had similar ideas. Thankfully, she didn’t have her glasses on so she hadn’t noticed the new additions to the rug.
Lucy followed her outside to where Ricardo stood near the old shed. It had a big yard around it, fenced with tall wire and completely overgrown with grass and vines.
‘Can we get chickens, Grandma? Today? Please?’ Ricardo begged.
‘Come and wash up and we’ll talk about it. Does your mum want chickens? I always like having a chook or two around myself. At least you know they’re not being locked up in those horrible little battery cages. And the eggs taste so much better. We’ll get the kind Grandad liked: silky bantams. Fluffy ones. We’ll go down and see Joe’s friend at the produce store, but you’ve got to wash up first . . .’
Lucy would never tell him, but she secretly admired Ricardo for thinking of the chicken plan. They could at least feed the kids eggs. Next, they needed clothes. She made an excuse not to go to the produce shop, even though she liked the idea of choosing chickens. As soon as Grandma and Ricardo left, she rifled through her clothes. Between her and Ricardo, they had heaps of shorts, T-shirts, jumpers, jeans and tracksuits. They would have to do. Everything would be too big for Angel, but anything was better than an old sack. Next she raided the old lady’s room and filled a big backpack near to bursting with blankets.
Lucy knew she had time for one quick trip down the tunnel before Ricardo and Grandma got back. She grabbed whatever she could from the kitchen and flew up the path. She could see the Tiger-cat on the top stairs but it jumped into the pit when it saw her coming. Swinging down that rope was getting so much easier, even with a heavy pack on her back. And T-tongue didn’t freak out at all. Despite the smiling soldier and everything weird that was happening, Lucy suddenly felt fantastic. So what if she didn’t understand? This was fun.
She made double-quick time down the tunnel, even though the batteries in her torch were getting weak again. It was as though her feet knew the way and the dark air didn’t seem so oppressive. Her eyes seemed to penetrate its velvety blackness better. Maybe she just wasn’t so scared.
When she opened the door, Angel and Toro were huddled asleep on the lounge. Rahel, Carlos and Pablo looked as though they were holding a council of war around the lone candle on the table. They stopped talking in their language when Lucy appeared and she felt awkward . . . the odd one out. Their expressions were very severe, as if they’d been arguing. In that instant, framed by the doorway, they looked like adults. Small and skinny, yes, but their faces looked just like people on television, talking about wars and elections and the stock market. The boys wore that same expression Lucy had noticed on Rahel near that horrible frame Angel had been chained to – as if they knew too much: serious and old.
‘I’ve brought clothes and blankets and food.’
‘Thank you,’ Rahel and Pablo said at once.
‘Personal jinx!’ said Lucy.
‘Personal jinx?’ asked the same two voices at once.
‘Personal jinx! You say it if someone says something at exactly the same time as you.’
Rahel and Pablo looked puzzled, then they both smiled. It was amazing how different they looked. But Carlos was looking at her as if she had crawled out of a long dark hole in the ground. Well, she had really. But so had he.
‘Well, I’ve got to go. Mum’s going to be home soon,’ Lucy said, unpacking her bag. Rahel and Pablo called goodbye as she headed for the door but Carlos ignored her. With a quick glance at Angel fast asleep on the lounge, Lucy was out of there.
‘Ricardo, get into that room
right now
and
mess it up
!’
‘NO! Grandma didn’t say!’
‘I didn’t say clean it up, I said
mess it up
!’
Lucy had called in an expert. She propelled Ricardo into the room and showed him the new additions to the rug menagerie. The batty smudge was now clearly a bat, and the elephant was even brighter than before. Gold chains secured a large red jewel in the middle of its forehead, it was wearing a fancy coat and the little caravan on its back was painted brightly.
Grandma was outside telling the new chickens exactly how many eggs they had to lay. Lucy was desperate to get the zoo covered up before she came back inside. She knew she could rely on Ricardo. By the time he had finished you couldn’t tell the room had a floor, let alone a rug. It was a remarkably simple procedure.
1 Block doorway with dirty washing and several soccer balls. Adults unable to enter room without falling over. (Discourages clean-up attempts while child is eating or at the movies.)