Through the Tiger's Eye (6 page)
‘Exploring! More like coal mining. You’re filthy. Come and have breakfast. I’ve got an appointment at nine o’clock and it’s already eight,’ Mum said, coming up to the top stair. ‘Gosh! You haven’t been down there, have you?’
The kids turned in panic, but the walls of the pit were smooth and unmarked. All they could see was a tree with half its roots exposed. Lucy and Ricardo looked at each other, their mouths open. Then Lucy noticed the plaque where she had dropped it half a lifetime ago and walked down the stairs to retrieve it.
Mum was still scolding: ‘You’ll break your necks swinging off that rope. I should get someone up to have a look at the hole. I should get it filled in . . .’
‘No!’ said the kids in unison.
But Mum was already marching down the hill and didn’t notice when Lucy and Ricardo turned at the bottom of the path, something tugging at their minds. There, sitting on the top stair washing itself, was the Tiger-cat.
Lucy looked down at the plaque still in her hands. It wasn’t telling her anything.
She looked back at the Tiger-cat and met its golden eyes; it wasn’t telling her anything either.
‘We’re moving out! I’ve found gold!’
Lucy stared at the plaque in her soapy hands. Where she’d rubbed at the blackened metal it glowed dull yellow.
T-Tongue was thrilled. He tried to climb up on the sink – a brave act for a puppy who hated water.
‘I don’t think so, love,’ said Mum, dryly. ‘More likely brass. Let me have a look. Brass goes black when you don’t look after it.’
Mum took the plaque to the kitchen door to catch a direct blast of sunlight.
‘Yes. It’s brass. It doesn’t rust, but looks terrible if you don’t care for it. This will clean up OK. We’ll get some of Grandma’s special stuff. Be good as new.’
Then she remembered.
‘Now don’t go wasting too much time on it. You kids are supposed to be scrubbing the bathroom today. It’s just a bit of old junk from the garden.’
‘But Mum, it’s got writing on it. It could have been buried for a hundred years. I could use it in a history project or something.’
‘Yes – when school goes back! The bathroom needs doing
today
.’
‘And the Tiger-cat found it for us,’ piped up Ricardo, chomping through his second huge bowl of Cocoa Puffs.
‘Shut up, Ricardo!’ mouthed Lucy silently. Ricardo opened his mouth again and Lucy realised she was going to have to act fast to stop him blurting everything out. She walked casually to the table, placing herself carefully between Mum’s line of sight and Ricardo’s bowl, picked up the box of Cocoa Puffs, and poured another huge pyramid of cereal into his bowl, staring into his eyes.
Ricardo dropped his gaze and an incredible sight overwhelmed him: his big sister pouring first one, then two, three – he stopped counting after that – huge spoons of sugar into his bowl without Mum noticing. He was struck dumb with delight. Lucy seized her chance.
‘Is Grandma coming today?’ she asked. ‘Can I ring her and ask her to bring the brass-cleaning stuff?’
It worked. Mum remembered she had to ask Grandma to bring something else, so she rushed off to tell her how creative and cute and imaginative Ricardo was these days. Lucy stayed right where she was to tell Ricardo what a dork and a big mouth he was these days. He was too busy stuffing his face with sugar sprinkled with Cocoa Puffs to care.
By the time Mum got off the phone, they had almost finished the whole box. Ricardo had eaten twice as much as Lucy.
‘What is going on with you pair? Look at you!’ said Mum, exasperated. ‘You’re filthy, covered in coal-dust, and Lucy, you’ve torn your T-shirt. And neither of you can stop eating. What did you do up there?’
‘Just climbed trees and stuff, swung on the rope, looked for enemy bases . . .’
Mum looked relieved. Lucy knew what she was thinking. Good old-fashioned make-believe was better than TV, even if they were filthy.
‘Be careful. You can play as much as you like up in the bush but stay away from that hole. The edges will be unstable. We can move the rope to another tree.’
‘But Mum . . .’
But Mum wasn’t listening, she was shooing Ricardo towards the shower and muttering about how late she was.
Lucy cracked six eggs into the frypan.
‘Six!’ said Mum, horrified. ‘After all that cereal?’
‘But they’re . . . we’re starving,’ stumbled Lucy, and was glad to hide her face in the fridge while she looked for the bacon.
‘Well, I’ll do some more shopping this morning. We might have to be like Grandma and get some chickens of our own. That chook run in the back yard looks all right, it should keep out dogs and foxes.’
‘Would it keep out tigers?’ asked Ricardo, walking into the kitchen dripping and completely naked. ‘Can I have bacon and eggs?’
‘What is this, the naked café? Kurrawong’s bottomless restaurant?’ protested Mum. ‘Get some clothes on!’ But they were all laughing as Ricardo’s bare bum disappeared out the door.
When he returned, dressed, Lucy said they would clean up the kitchen and Mum looked at her as though she had grown the wings of an angel. Ricardo looked at her as though she had gone completely nuts. Then Mum ran out the front door, yelling over her shoulder that Grandma would be over later to check on them. Lucy listened to the Mazda’s dodgy engine drive up the street and . . .
‘Now!’
She grabbed the bacon and eggs on Ricardo’s plate before he could eat them, scraped it with her own into a lunchbox, and hunted in the huge old fridge for apples and oranges. Ricardo grabbed another packet of Cocoa Puffs, bowls and spoons. A carton of milk was next.
What else did they need? Torch batteries. Lucy looked in the second drawer near the kitchen sink. Bingo! How come everyone always kept useful things like batteries and birthday-cake candles and bits of string in the second drawer near the sink? But there was no time for trivia. Lucy darted off to get her school backpack, candles and matches from their bedroom.
Walking between the dragon vases, she saw something was different: the tiger rug. Even with Ricardo’s undies and a T-shirt lying on top of it, Lucy knew something had changed.
The tiger corner looked brand-new
. The tiger’s stripes were clear and strong and its golden eyes burned out at her. The monkey was still faded and dull, just like before. One more weirdo event to think about. Lucy looked for T-Tongue’s lead instead.
Back in the kitchen, Ricardo had packed a bottle of juice and some two-minute noodles.
‘How are we going to cook them, goofball?’
‘I eat them like that!’
It would have to do. They took off up the path to where the Tiger-cat still waited, asleep in a sunny patch on the top stair. It opened one eye and then jumped delicately down and began purring and rubbing itself against their legs. It sent no video clips for Lucy but left her in no doubt they were doing the right thing. The only trouble was – the tunnel was blocked. When Lucy peered into the pit, all she saw was a smooth mud wall. She looked at the Tiger-cat. It was sniffing T-Tongue’s nose and the puppy had dropped low to the ground, quivering with excitement, or was it fear? Then the Tiger-cat twisted, crouched and leapt, its body soaring in a graceful marmalade curve, then landed efficiently on the pit floor and sprang towards the wall where the tunnel used to be. As Lucy watched, astounded, the pile of wooden dinosaur bones materialised, with the gaping entrance to the tunnel behind it. No magic commands, no secret machinery – just there again, like a special effect in the movies!
Lucy swung herself down and threw the rope back for Ricardo. He followed and then they realised they’d forgotten T-Tongue. He was whimpering, running up and down the pit’s edge. The Tiger-cat growled fiercely from inside the tunnel and that was too much for T-Tongue! With one last desperate, high-pitched bark, he leapt, landed hard, scrambled up and promptly tried to lick everyone, including the Tiger-cat. Lucy snapped his lead on and picked her way carefully over the rubble. The Tiger-cat had already entered the blackness, tail lashing. Lucy switched the torch on, took a deep breath, and for the second time that day entered the unknown, with T-Tongue trotting at her side.
It felt safer this time because they were following the Tiger-cat. Reaching the fork, it looked back to face Lucy and Ricardo, its eyes glowing red in the strong torchlight. Then it leapt into the up-sloping tunnel and disappeared. Lucy and Ricardo stumbled on until they reached the door, where the Tiger-cat clawed impatiently at the wood, making a strange yewling growl.
‘It’s us,’ said Ricardo, opening the door and bouncing inside. ‘We got you Cocoa Puffs!’
The torchlight revealed the two kids huddled on the lounge, the boy’s head on the girl’s lap. Their eyes were wide open and scared.
The Tiger-cat padded over and sniffed the boy’s face. He shrank away. Maybe he had never seen a cat, let alone one like this, thought Lucy. In the candlelight the Tiger-cat looked even more like a miniature tiger.
‘He won’t hurt you,’ ‘She won’t hurt you,’ said Ricardo and Lucy at the same time.
Neither of the kids on the lounge looked convinced.
The Tiger-cat jumped up on the table where the stubby candle spluttered and began to wash coal-dust from its face and ears. The girl helped the boy sit up. He leaned groggily against her but looked interested when Lucy produced the lunchbox. She gave them the bottle of juice first and they slurped thirstily. The room was oppressively dark with just one candle burning. Lucy didn’t like the dark corners. It was bad enough knowing they were this far underground. She took some plates from the bench against the wall and melted wax onto them and lit all six candles from her backpack. That was better.
Lucy served up the food: dry bacon, cold eggs and soggy toast. The kids ate as if it were their first meal in days. Maybe it was. Ricardo poured out bowls of Cocoa Puffs. The strange kids didn’t even wait for spoons but drank it like crunchy soup.
Lucy remembered the Tiger-cat and put some milk in a plate on the table. The cat just looked at her and kept on washing itself.
‘It doesn’t eat, goofball,’ said Ricardo, ‘it’s magic!’
Lucy ignored him and tried to work out what they needed. The kids couldn’t stay here without blankets – it was freezing. She remembered all the stuff they’d found in the house that first day. They had put it all in a spare room. There were blankets, mattresses, kitchen things, clothes and pillows – heaps of stuff: everything they needed to hide a couple of kids from the smiling soldier until . . . what? Until she could get them somewhere safe. Like where?
Lucy had a sinking feeling that she was out of her depth. She tried to ignore it, but deep down, she knew something weird was going on, something too weird to wrap her head around. One thing she did understand: these two kids might not be safe at either end of the tunnel.
Like an action replay, something Lucy had seen once on the news at Grandma’s flashed into her mind. A boat full of refugees – the man on the news had called them ‘illegals’ – had been sailing to Australia, but the Prime Minister had sent the Navy to stop them. The Navy had made the boat captain turn around and head back out into the middle of the ocean. Mum and Grandma had had a big fight about it. Grandma felt sorry for the people on the boat because they were running away from a war, but Mum said the government had done the right thing. Lucy still remembered the looks on the boat people’s faces. A woman holding a little baby was crying. Some people looked angry and were shaking their fists at the news helicopter, others sat hunched on the deck with their heads in their hands. There were kids too! They looked really scared.
Grandma said Lucy’s mum didn’t know what it was like to be in trouble, which made Mum really mad! She said Grandma didn’t know what she was talking about and working all night at the hospital for crap money was no picnic. And Grandma told her not to say crap in her house and Mum said Grandma still treated her like a baby. Then Mum turned off the TV and sent Lucy to bed.
‘You’re treating me like a baby,’ said Lucy, but it had no effect.