Through the Tiger's Eye (23 page)
She made a stumbling beginning.
‘Well, we met the Tiger-cat, I mean Eupherbia, on the stairs and she showed me a picture of you and you were crying . . .’
‘Mmmm, nnnggg, mbloow . . .’ Ricardo tried to speak.
Mrs Hawthorne looked at him with her eyebrows raised and then expectantly at Lucy.
‘. . . and I don’t know how, but we just kind of knew that you used to live in the Mermaid House, and . . .’
‘Mmmm, nnnggg, mbloow, mng!’
‘So we asked Grandma and she asked the Octopus Information Exchange and then the Tiger-cat sent a video of you saying ‘Little flower, little flower, little flower’, and the Octopus ladies told Grandma your name was Nina Hawthorne and you were at the Little Flower Nursing Home and so we knew it was you and we came.’
Lucy was out of breath.
‘I’m very glad you did,’ said Mrs Hawthorne. ‘But tell me, how is Euphoria?’
‘She’s good.’
‘He’s good.’ Ricardo had finished his mouthful. ‘Can I have some more?’
‘Yes, dear, but you must tell me – is anything else strange happening in the Mermaid House; anything at all?’
Those eyes again. Before she could stop herself, Lucy was talking about the rug growing a zoo in their bedroom and the horrible dreams she’d been having. Then Ricardo told her how they were dreaming the same things and . . . then they both shut up without either of them saying exactly what they had been dreaming about. They also didn’t mention Nigel Scar-Skull or the dragon chest.
There was silence when they’d finished, broken only by the sound of Ricardo masticating six more jellybeans, green this time.
‘Then it’s begun.’ Her voice sounded very far away.
‘What’s begun?’
The old lady refused to say anything else, except, with a sharp ginger look, ‘Are you sure you’re not leaving anything out? This could be very important’.
‘No.’
Well, she’d asked about weird things
in
the Mermaid House, not in the back yard, not in a tunnel and definitely not in another country. And they’d promised! Even Ricardo wasn’t dobbing, for once. Lucy broke the silence with a question of her own.
‘Does Euferbia come to visit you?’
‘When they forget to close the window, Euphoria comes. She likes you, you know? She likes you more than my nephew does.’
‘We don’t know your nephew. We made all that up about being related to get in.’
‘I know, dear – I do remember my relatives. Nevertheless, my nephew does know you. Nigel Adams, a real-estate agent. He told me he had rented my house to a mother and two children who could use a lesson in respecting their elders. But Euphoria certainly likes you and now I see those feline instincts were right. She hates Nigel, you know – used to hide whenever he visited before my accident. He’s never even seen her.’
‘He has now.’
And Lucy told Mrs Hawthorne about the dragon chest and Nigel Scar-Skull wanting it. The effect was instantaneous. The old lady went pale and her hands flew to her face. She looked just as scared as the day the Tiger-cat beamed that first picture.
‘You didn’t give it to him?’
‘Nah. Eufer – the Tiger-cat got rid of him and then we hid it.’
‘I can’t thank you enough. Now you must do something urgently for me.’
And Mrs Hawthorne undid the black bow of her frilly orange bed-jacket and lifted a long gold chain over her head. Swinging in the sunlight was a filigreed gold key.
It was ages before Lucy and Ricardo could get to the dragon chest. Grandma wanted to know all about Mrs Hawthorne but what could they tell her? – that she didn’t watch TV but she did watch feral cat? In the end Grandma gave up, and they got away and headed for the tunnel.
The key slipped into the ornate lock like an old friend and turned smoothly. They looked at each other solemnly and carefully raised the carved lid. A distinctive perfume wafted up, sweet and strong. In the bottom was a red leather pouch about the size of Dad’s wallet. Underneath was a large envelope, about as big as that weird green atlas, yellowed with age. In old-fashioned, faded black writing were the words:
Theodore Hawthorne
January 1942
Private and confidential
Ricardo grabbed the pouch and started to loosen the leather thong around its neck.
‘She said not to!’
Ricardo stopped reluctantly. They were under strict instructions from Mrs Hawthorne to open the chest but
not
to look at what was inside. She would explain when they brought everything to her.
‘I forgot.’
‘Yeah, right,’ said Lucy, eyeing the old envelope longingly. She picked it up. It was smooth and dry under her fingers.
Who was Theodore? The old lady’s father? Husband? Had she been married before she went crinkly? Lucy tucked the envelope and the pouch into her pack, locked the chest and hung the key around her neck. She had come to a decision.
‘Let’s go and tell the others.’
Sometimes, changing your mind was the easiest thing. This morning she was never going back to the clearing, now she was too excited
not
to.
Everyone looked glad to see her, when she burst into the clearing. Even Carlos waved and gave a funny half-smile. Lucy didn’t hesitate.
‘Someone’s selling Ten Star Jumbos in the Mall,’ she said, pulling the crumpled leaflet from her pocket. Rahel smoothed it, frowning, and read out loud. Pablo put down his tea and Carlos snorted at the bit about leather like elephant hide. When Rahel got to ‘trained technicians in our state-of-the-art workshops’, they all started talking at once. Ricardo butted in, wanting to know what they were talking about. Lucy still hadn’t told him anything about what had happened. All he could work out was that there was a stash of Ten Star Jumbos at the jungle workshop.
His small voice cut through the sunny afternoon.
‘We’ve got a Ten Star Jumbo at home. Dad bought it for us. It’s sick.’
‘Sick?’ queried Pablo.
‘Yeah, it’s cool!’
‘Sick is cool?’
‘Yeah, you know.’
‘Yeah, sick is cool,’ said Toro enthusiatically.
‘No,’ said Carlos, ‘sick is sick’.
Lucy was glad to change the subject. She told them how the Tiger-cat had helped them find Mrs Hawthorne and how she had given them the key to the dragon chest. Lucy pulled out the pouch and envelope.
Carlos got very excited and then freaked out. ‘Does this old lady know about us? Will she tell the authorities.’
Silence while the whole camp hung on the answer.
‘We didn’t tell her about you or the tunnel.’
Collective sigh of relief.
‘So open them, then,’ said Rahel.
‘No, we can’t. She said we have to take everything back to her tomorrow.’
Then she told them about Mrs Hawthorne calling the Tiger-cat Euphoria and how it visited her at the nursing home and showed her video clips. No one looked surprised.
‘It does that for all of us,’ said Carlos.
Trust him to know everything.
‘It talks to me,’ said Ricardo.
Everyone ignored him, except Toro, who nodded enthusiastically.
Lucy had never considered that the Tiger-cat might send videos to the others, apart from Angel, of course. She felt stupid and a bit jealous at the same time.
Rahel saw her face.
‘The Tiger-cat waits until we are alone and then . . . then it does things. It keeps showing me pictures of my parents. They are making rugs in a jail workshop too. And sometimes it shows me my aunt. She is waiting for me.’
Pablo confessed then. ‘It also shows me pictures of a dead fish.’
‘
A dead fish?
’ ‘I don’t know why.’ Pablo looked a bit ashamed that he didn’t have a more exciting story.
‘What sort of fish?’
‘Just a fish. A big pink fish. And then it shows someone’s hands with a knife, scraping off the scales and slicing it in to pieces.’
‘Any chips? Pineapple fritters?’ asked Ricardo.
Toro interrupted: ‘I see Ricardo and two Bulls and they are asleep.’
‘Who? Me or the Bulls?’
‘The Bulls sleep. You have your sword.’
‘See,’ Ricardo said triumphantly to Lucy, and then he ran around in circles saying, ‘I beat them, I beat them,’ followed by ‘I am the best. I am the best. I am the best’.
‘Tell me you made that up,’ Lucy asked Toro. He looked offended.
Frowning, Lucy turned to Carlos. ‘What does the Tiger-cat show you?’ she asked, secretly hoping it would be boring.
‘It shows me defeating you 5-0 in a penalty shootout.’
Everyone was silent, watching Lucy’s face. In the two seconds it took for her stomach to go
thump
, she saw the look on his face. At the same time everyone burst out laughing.
‘Hilarious. What does it really show you?’
He would not say.
Lucy was about to hassle him when she noticed the Tiger-cat lying on her back, with Angel stroking her tummy. The Tiger-cat rolled luxuriously and stretched, then opened its golden eyes wide and held Angel’s gaze. The little girl became very still and then, slowly, began to smile. Lucy could hear the Tiger-cat purring intensely.
‘Well, I don’t know what she shows Angel, but it works,’ she said and the others looked over. Watching them, Lucy caught the same expression on each face. First, a sharp, sad look, replaced by a kind of fierce protective tenderness, then a smile. What was it about Angel? It wasn’t just that she was cute. There was something about the way she looked at you. As if she was really
wise
. And because she was so little, it was even cuter.
Rahel broke the spell. ‘Listen, we must plan for our next raid. Lucy, we have not been able to talk to you since last night. Carlos says you know where the Commander keeps his drugs.’
‘Yes. The Tiger-cat made Sarong Lady beam a picture to me last night. I can’t explain it, it was weird, but I know they are in a dark bottle, on the table near her window and there’s a big tree right outside we can climb up. But we’re going to have to get there tonight, before the Commander, or get rid of him somehow, or wait till he’s asleep.’
‘And I say,’ said Rahel, ‘that we must ask Bucket Lady for help. We know where she lives. We must take the drugs and solicit her to put them in the Commander’s food.’
‘Yes and then she will go straight to the Bull Commander and we will all be captured,’ said Carlos – and then everyone started shouting at once.
The argument raged on, but in the end it was the Tiger-cat who solved it. She waited for Carlos to stop striding about the clearing and sit down on a rock, then she jumped onto his lap, just as she had done to Lucy this morning, placing a paw on each shoulder and staring into his eyes.
Carlos didn’t stop talking straight away and Lucy was delighted to see the Tiger-cat swing back a paw and bop him gently on the cheek.
Everyone laughed, but Carlos was so shocked that he shut up and the next second it was too late – he was caught in the spotlight of that golden gaze. Everyone went quiet. When the Tiger-cat finally relaxed and began washing its ears, Carlos stared into space for a while and then said the fateful words: ‘We must ask this Bucket Lady to help us’.
‘Well, duh,’ said Ricardo.
For once, Lucy agreed with him.
The argument about who should approach Bucket Lady didn’t take quite as long as the one about whether they should approach her at all, but it took long enough. Everyone wanted to go. Lucy, who considered herself an expert on old ladies after her encounter with Mrs Hawthorne, said too many kids would freak her out. Ricardo, who considered himself an expert on old ladies after his encounter with Mrs Hawthorne, said all old ladies loved little kids and so he and Toro should go. Everyone except Toro ignored him. Then Carlos and Pablo said they would go, but Rahel said Bucket Lady would think they had come to rob her and raise the alarm.
‘It is my view that Lucy and I should undertake this task,’ she said firmly. End of argument.
A short time later, Lucy and Rahel stood at the fork of the tunnel.
‘Something happens to my eyes in the dark!’ Lucy confided. ‘Is it happening to you too? Actually, I am not sure if it
is
my eyes, but . . .’