Through the Tiger's Eye (20 page)
‘Reprisal,’ hissed Rahel. ‘I told you . . .’ She had that look on her face, the one she’d had when she first told Lucy they were going back to rescue the others: extremely calm,
extremely determined
.
Lucy told them about the Commander firing at the ‘tiger’ on the way to the village. Toro and Ricardo made her tell it three times. Finally she got to describe the village and how the Commander seemed to be staying in Sarong Lady’s hut.
Then they got to the bit about the Ponytail Zombie and the stranger in the dark. Toro and Pablo both started talking at once about their own mission. They said they had been lying in the jungle near the clearing when something big came crashing towards them. Just when they thought they were about to get trampled by an elephant, it fell over and started singing. It was the Ponytail Zombie. He was clutching a bottle of wine and every now and then he muttered to himself about having to catch the ‘girl ghost’. He kept saying the ‘girl ghost’ had turned into a snake and chased him and how he was going to squeeze the ‘girl ghost’ around the neck. He made so much noise that the guards ‘on duty’ around the fire woke up.
Toro looked at Lucy and said very carefully, ‘I almost wetted myself’.
‘No,’ said Ricardo helpfully, ‘You almost wet yourself’.
‘I almost wet yourself,’ said Toro perfectly.
‘Great,’ said Lucy, much embarrassed, as everyone started to laugh – but she didn’t feel great about Ponytail Zombie wanting to
strangle
her.
Pablo kept going.
‘Then the militia arrested the Ponytail Zombie!’
‘Arrested him?!’ Mass personal jinx.
‘Yes!’
Everyone cheered.
‘The guards said the Commander had ordered them to arrest the Ponytail Zombie on sight,’ Pablo continued. ‘He had been missing since the breakout and the Commander blamed him for it. Besides, bottles of wine kept disappearing from the Commander’s own supply. They looked at the bottle in Ponytail’s hands and handcuffed him. Then the Commander arrived. He yelled at Ponytail so loudly, that we got very frightened.’
‘Yes, I almost . . .’ Toro said, but everyone shushed him.
‘But the Ponytail Zombie just kept muttering about the ‘girl ghost’ who had turned into a snake and pointing at his own throat,’ Pablo said. ‘And when the Commander
examined
his throat and saw all the bruises from the snake he told the guards to release him. But he really screamed at them all and said if they let one more rebel child escape they would be shot. They were really scared!’
Then Pablo dropped a bombshell: ‘The last thing the Commander said was that proper Bull soldiers would arrive soon to take over the jungle jail. He said he was sick of the militia and their carelessness and stupid superstitions. He said proper Bull soldiers would laugh at ghosts and not be afraid of tigers. Proper Bull soldiers would shoot the tiger and never let any children escape.’
That shut everyone up.
After a minute, everyone began arguing. Carlos was still going on about the gun and Rahel was still ignoring him. Lucy got sick of listening and looked about for Angel. She was playing under the tree, silently absorbed.
Lucy wandered over, and was surprised at how clever Angel had been. She had made a family of stick people out of twigs lashed together with vines, with gumnuts for heads, and she’d built a castle from creek mud. Three stick people, two tall, one small, were ‘standing’ on the mud castle’s roof. Nearby, were two more mud buildings, each surrounded by a stick fence. One was empty, the other had big stick people standing outside the fence and many tiny stick people on top. Lucy was amazed at the detail.
‘Cool, Angel! Can I play?’
But Angel gazed intently at her handiwork and didn’t reply. Then she picked up two big stick people from outside the first fence and ‘marched’ them to the mud castle, making harsh sounds in her throat, as though she were issuing orders. She climbed them up the castle wall and when they reached the top, charged them at the two other big stick people waiting there, making rumbling sounds in her throat. The attacking stick figures rolled their victims off the castle, into the dirt.
Angel pushed the two fallen stick people over to the empty mud building and ‘locked’ them both behind the fence. She took the smallest stick prisoner to the mud building where all the other tiny figures stood on the roof. She made a little stick prisoner jump from the roof and begin to gouge a hole in the mud wall. Then she picked up all the prisoners and charged them at the fence. They broke through and Angel directed a series of battles, holding a prisoner in one hand and a guard in the other. The fights lasted a few seconds each and the stick prisoners always won.
The game wasn’t over yet. Angel walked her victorious stick people to the second fence and knocked it down. She released the two fallen stick people inside, then picked up all the escapees and marched them to the castle, up the walls and stood them on the roof. Then, very carefully, Angel dismantled the fences and put them around the castle instead. Wearing an expression of profound but silent satisfaction, she examined the completed fence, then she picked up the defeated stick guards and trotted towards the fireplace.
‘Angel!’
Angel stopped, turned to look at Lucy, and then kept going, faster. Lucy ran. When she caught up, Angel was staring at the stick guards as they writhed and curled on the red coals, then burst into bright flame.
Angel’s game had been freaky. Once, when she was little, Lucy had tied up Mandy’s Barbie and cut its hair – she couldn’t remember why now – but she could remember the look on Mrs Hoffman’s face just before she rang Lucy’s mum to come and take her home. But Lucy had
never
staged a mass jail breakout of prisoner Barbies and then
burned
the guard Barbies! That was way over the top.
Ricardo had let her tie him to the clothesline once, after Dad had made them watch a movie about a German concentration camp. Ricardo was supposed to be a Nazi guard who Lucy had captured, except he kept getting it wrong and saying, ‘I don’t want to be a Nasty any more. Why can’t you be the Nasty?’ Mum had come out and said Lucy was being
really
Nasty and to untie him straight away.
Carlos’ raised voice distracted her.
‘. . . And the old lady who feeds them – if she was on
our
side she would
poison
all the guards.’
Rahel looked upset.
‘She is just an old lady! The Bull Commander
makes
her bring the food!’
Pablo looked anxiously from Rahel to Carlos and back again.
‘The old lady fed us too,’ he said. ‘We would be dead without her. And the others will be dead if the Commander does not let her feed them soon.’
Carlos drew an angry cross in the ground with his toe, but didn’t reply.
‘I have been thinking,’ said Rahel. ‘The drugs the guards give to the small children – if we could steal them and give them to the guards instead . . .’
Everyone began talking at once.
‘Bucket Lady,’ said Lucy. ‘We’ll get the drugs and put them in her buckets of food.’
‘The Commander keeps the drugs with him at all times,’ said Carlos. ‘I heard the guards talking about it.’
‘Then we’ll just have to get them from him,’ said Lucy.
Everyone went very quiet.
Then they all started arguing again.
By Telarian sunset, they had a plan. Ricardo and Toro had given up complaining about being chosen to mind Angel while Carlos, Pablo, Rahel and Lucy went back to the jungle jail. Rahel and Pablo were going to find out where Bucket Lady lived. That left Carlos and Lucy to check out Sarong Lady’s hut and try to steal the drugs.
When they trotted down the track to the pit, the Tiger-cat was waiting on the stairs. Lucy checked Grandma wasn’t in the back yard and then they swung down. As soon as she entered the tunnel Lucy was aware of that strange heightening of her senses. She stretched her mind and
listened
to the dark.
It was almost dark when they reached the end of the tunnel. Lucy decided to try something. She padded lightly, trustingly, towards the greenery, and it fell away, parting cleanly to let her pass. She shivered and grinned back at the others. Then the Tiger-cat took off, leading them into the gathering night. Close to the edge of the clearing they began to crawl.
Familiar sounds broke the peace – stamping boots, harsh words. The gang of kids stumbled in and were locked up. Again the Commander smoked a cigarette, while the militiamen stoked the fire.
Pablo and Rahel slipped away to hide on the other side of the clearing near the path, ready for Bucket Lady’s arrival. Lucy’s eyes were fixed on the Commander. Every now and again he glanced up into the jungle. Again she was reminded of a hunting dog, a predator. She shivered. When Bucket Lady hobbled into the clearing, bent nearly double under the weight of her buckets, he took his meal without a word. Once again Bucket Lady pointed at the second bucket and at the locked gate. Once again the Commander waved her away.
Lucy and Carlos slipped deeper into the jungle, behind the rickety old house. Every few minutes, Lucy would stop and place her palms on the ground. Somewhere up in front she felt the heavy, slow tread of Bucket Lady, followed by the double tremor of two lighter pairs of feet: Rahel and Pablo. When she checked again, further down the track, she felt a tremor behind, and whispered to Carlos, ‘The Commander has finished eating. He’s coming’.
He didn’t question her instinct, but led her deeper into the jungle, on a twisting path, until the lights of the village beckoned through the trees below. They waited a few minutes, listening and then Lucy heard a sound above and, looking up, saw the Tiger-cat in a tree. It was draped on a low branch, apparently completely relaxed, its eyes gleaming. Without thinking, Lucy sprang lightly up and climbed onto a strong branch with a good view.
In the centre of the circle of huts, a fire blazed. There was a flash of colour and Sarong Lady appeared on the steps of her hut. At the sight of her, the Tiger-cat uttered a low growl and padded along the branch, bending it until Lucy thought it would break.
The Tiger-cat growled again, concentrating fiercely on the scene below and Lucy suddenly felt as if her whole being was swept up in its feline intensity. A hot current pulsed through her and she felt charged and brightly connected to the Tiger-cat. She imagined herself lit up like a Christmas tree.
The Tiger-cat crouched lower, still staring at the young woman below and Lucy’s charged mind reached fever pitch. It was as though her breath itself flowed into the Tiger-cat’s bright gaze. At the same instant, the subject of the cat’s attention looked up in surprise, as though someone had called her name. She scanned the trees and an image flashed into Lucy’s mind, just before Sarong Lady turned, hurried back to her hut and climbed the stairs, urgency in every step. At the same time, the Commander appeared on the other side of the clearing, heading for her stairs.
The Tiger-cat relaxed and Lucy flopped against the fork of the tree, exhausted. Slowly the sweat on her body cooled. But she could not shake the image from her mind of a candle-lit room, and Sarong Lady placing a dark bottle on a table near a window, with the spreading branches of a tree just outside.
Lucy knew with absolute certainty that the Commander’s drugs were in the hut and that the tree was her ladder up. It was as if the Tiger-cat had plucked the image from Sarong Lady’s mind, like a goldfish from a pond. She felt the silken brush of the cat’s fur as it slipped past her, and after a while she gathered the energy to climb down, to find an irritable Carlos.
‘Why did you take so long? What did you see?’
‘Shhh! Sarong Lady was there again. And something weird happened. I can’t really explain it. It was as if the Tiger-cat used me to call her. I don’t know why, but I think she’s important.’
‘Call her? You didn’t call out.’
‘No, I know. It was something different. I can’t really explain it. But the Tiger-cat showed me where the drugs are. They’re in Sarong Lady’s hut, near the window and there’s a tree we can climb up. But the Commander is there. We’re going to have to get rid of him somehow.’
Lucy and Carlos padded back up the track, and soon the dark mass of the workshop was upon them. Lucy felt a double tremor in the earth again. Pablo and Rahel? She hoped so.
Carlos’ low whistle cut like a knife into the night’s inky skin. Silence. Then a wobbly return whistle came from the clearing in front of the workshop. Carlos whistled again and first Pablo, then Rahel stepped from the trees.
‘We found Bucket Lady’s house,’ Rahel whispered. She was holding the bunch of keys she had taken from the drunken soldier the other night.
‘And I think I know where the Commander keeps his drugs,’ breathed Lucy.
‘Shhh! Let’s get inside,’ said Carlos.
Rahel unlocked the workshop’s metal mouth and it gaped open. Lucy tried not to imagine she was walking into the belly of a metal monster, about to be digested.
‘Torch!’ whispered Carlos and Lucy flicked it on to reveal a series of frames along one wall, holding half-finished rugs. They all had the same distinctive, brightly coloured pattern, mostly scarlet, black and gold, but none was as beautiful as the tiger rug.