The Secret Kingdom (7 page)

Birds and monkeys took up the call. ‘Gabar! Gabar! Gabar!’

The answering grunt that Timoken longed for didn’t come. It wasn’t until nightfall that a weary, reluctant sound drifted towards him.

The camel was sitting in a patch of moonlight. When Timoken approached, Gabar batted his long eyelashes, but gave no hint that he was pleased to see the boy.

‘Gabar, are you ill?’ Timoken sat beside the camel and patted his neck.

Gabar chewed on a thick leaf. He didn’t like the flavour, but everything in the forest tasted bitter. ‘My head throbs,’ he said, ‘my stomach churns and my feet hurt.’

Timoken sighed. ‘I’m sorry, Gabar.’

‘Sorry?’ queried the camel.

‘I am sad for you,’ explained Timoken.

‘No,’ said the camel. ‘You are sad for your sister who is gone. But you are not sad for me. If you were, you would leave the forest.’

‘I can’t,’ moaned Timoken. ‘It is the custom of my people to grieve in the forest. I can’t leave just yet. I am grieving for my sister.’

‘Custom?’ snorted Gabar. He got to his feet. ‘It is my custom to walk on sand, and so I shall leave you and find the desert.’ He began to walk away.

‘Gabar, no,’ wailed Timoken, running beside the camel. ‘Please stay with me.’

‘If I stay here, I shall die,’ Gabar snorted.

‘You are my family,’ cried Timoken. ‘I thought I was yours.’

‘Goodbye, Family,’ said the camel.

Timoken realised that he had no choice. If he didn’t want to be alone he would have to follow Gabar. All the camel’s senses were leading him back to the world he knew. Timoken promised himself that he would grieve for his sister another time. ‘I will never forget you, Zobayda,’ he muttered. ‘But Gabar is all the family I have.’

The forest was beginning to thin. The heat of the sun intensified. Soon they would be out of the trees. The animal noises were changing. Not so many monkeys here, not so many birds. Even so, the silence, when it came, was very sudden.

Timoken was aware of a sound slicing through the air above his head, so fast it could hardly be heard. There was a strangled roar of pain and then a profound hush.

The forest held its breath, and the skin of Timoken’s neck prickled with fear. Caught in the silence of the trees, he could hardly breathe. All at once, he was running.

The camel trotted after him.

They came to a clearing and Timoken scanned the undergrowth. Was it here? Was this where he was meant to come? That muffled, desperate roar had led him here. Or was it fate? A movement caught his eye, in the shadows behind the sunlit trees.

Timoken gasped. The rotting branch resting against a tree was, in fact, a creature. Tall and reed-thin, its green hair dangled in vine-like strands over its slimy body. A quiver of arrows hung from the belt around its waist, and its root-like fingers rested on the end of a large bow. A viridee.

Sounds reached Timoken at last. The forest had woken from its trance. He could hear snarls and whimpers and the crunch of bones. Behind the viridee hunter, a pack of hyenas was tearing at the carcass of a small gazelle.

Timoken felt the viridee’s gaze upon him. Its eyes were red, like embers without the black dot of a pupil, without a heart. Pitiless, they bored into his very bones.

Timoken took a step back and, as he did so, he glimpsed another body: a female leopard lying on her side. There was an arrow sticking out of her neck, the tip deeply embedded. The leopard’s eyes were glazed. She was obviously dead.

Anger and disgust made Timoken’s stomach lurch. The viridee hunter had killed the leopard, and yet he was prepared to let hyenas eat the leopard’s prey. One of the animals carried a piece of meat to the hunter, but the tall
green figure did not take it. Still gazing at Timoken, he caressed the hyena’s head.

This was no place for Timoken. The hyenas repelled him, and the rotting, green figure gave off an overpowering scent of evil. The boy turned his back and began to run.

With the dreadful scene still burning in his mind, Timoken was blind to the creeper strung across his path. He tripped and fell, landing in a tangle of undergrowth. There was a weak hiss, and a tiny growl. Timoken turned his head and looked into the eyes of three small leopard cubs. They were huddled together behind a tangle of vines hanging from a fallen tree, only an arm’s length from his face.

The cubs gave tiny defiant cries and, instinctively, Timoken put out a warning hand. ‘Hush!’ He used a leopard’s voice. ‘You are safe!’

The cubs stared at him with troubled eyes and then, one by one, approached and rubbed their heads against his cheeks. As Timoken stroked their dappled fur, he was consumed by a rage that he had never known. He felt it, almost before he knew the reason for it.

These small cubs would soon die. Without their mother, they were helpless. She had been carrying the
dead gazelle when she was shot. And it was her prey that the hyenas were gorging on.

Timoken pulled the moon cloak from his shoulders and wrapped it around the cubs. They gazed at him, but did not attempt to shake off the web. Their wide grey eyes followed the boy as he stood up and took out his pearl-handled knife.

‘What are you doing, Family?’ Gabar asked nervously.

‘Shh!’ warned Timoken. ‘I am going to get some meat.’

‘I hope not,’ grunted Gabar.

‘Shh!’ Rage filled Timoken’s throat.

Gabar had never known the boy to use this kind of voice. Never. The sound puzzled him. Afraid of what would happen next, the camel fell silent. Motionless, he watched the boy creep soundlessly through the trees, back to the hideous scene from which he had just fled.

The viridee had already seen him. Red eyes tracked the boy’s movements as he stepped into the glade. Two of the hyenas looked up from their feast and snarled. Facing those long teeth, Timoken knew his little knife could not protect him. But he did not lower it, and he did not stop or back away. The hyenas were all looking at him now, their snarls and screams filling the air.

Timoken began to speak. He hardly knew where the words were coming from, but he was aware that he was using the voice of an animal. He spoke of the hyenas’ children, of horrible pain, of the end of life.

The hyenas lowered their heads. Meat slid from their bloody jaws and their snarls turned to whimpers. Timoken stepped closer. Any fear he might have felt had been replaced by his unflinching will. All at once, to his astonishment, the whole pack turned their backs and ran, whining, into the trees.

But the hunter stayed where he was, red eyes flashing. With one fluid movement, his long fingers reached for an arrow.

For a fraction of a second Timoken was afraid. Could he grab the gazelle before the arrow reached him? As the hunter lifted his bow, the boy had his answer. Pointing his ringed finger at the treetops he cried out to the sky.

The answering crack of thunder startled the hunter, but it did not deter him. He fitted the arrow to his bow and drew it back. The second crack of thunder came with a blinding flash. A shaft of lightning struck the tree beside the viridee. Before he could move, the tree
crashed to the ground, crushing the viridee beneath its flaming branches.

Fire snaked along the fallen tree and crackled in the undergrowth. Seizing the gazelle, Timoken carried it through the forest, while the fire snapped and hissed behind him. He heaved the length of meat towards the cubs’ hiding place and laid it before them. Three small heads appeared between the hanging creepers. Cautiously, the cubs crept from beneath the moon cloak and sniffed the meat. Excited by the smell, they began to eat, tearing, chewing and whimpering with hunger and delight.

‘Look! Look, Gabar,’ Timoken said joyfully. ‘I got the meat. I’ve fed them, and they will live!’

Gabar had taken several paces away from the scene. What he saw worried him. He had never liked the smell of raw meat, and it unsettled him to see these three dangerous creatures tearing at it.

‘Aren’t you proud of me, Gabar?’ Timoken asked. ‘I wish you had seen those hyenas slink away.’

‘There is a fire,’ the camel grunted. ‘Soon we will all be burnt to death.’

Timoken leapt up with a gasp. ‘I forgot!’ Seizing the
moon cloak he whirled it in an arc above his head, again and again. His calls rose through the forest and the rain answered him. It poured through the leaves and splashed against the trees, extinguishing the fire in seconds.

Timoken wrapped the moon cloak around his wet shoulders and laughed with pleasure. The rain stopped, but the cubs, now wet through, continued to eat. Even when their bellies were full they went on gnawing, their fear of hunger driving them on. When their sleepy eyes began to close, Timoken pushed the carcass into the hollow beneath the tree, and the cubs crawled in after it. In a few minutes they were fast asleep. Timoken covered them with the moon cloak and went in search of Gabar, who had wandered off.

He found the camel drinking from a stream. Timoken untied the bag of food hanging from the saddle, and pulled out some millet cakes.

Gabar turned his head and looked at the boy. ‘You will have to kill,’ the camel said. ‘Those cubs will grow. They’ll eat you and me, unless you feed them.’

‘I’ll steal more carcasses,’ said Timoken. ‘I’m not afraid of hyenas.’

‘Hmf!’ The camel chewed a long twig. ‘It won’t be enough. And what about milk?’

‘Milk?’ Timoken looked at Gabar. ‘Do you mean …?’

‘Don’t look at me,’ said Gabar. ‘I shall never be a mother.’

‘But those cubs might need someone’s mother, that’s what you’re saying. They might need milk as well as food.’

The camel blinked in agreement.

‘I will find a goat,’ Timoken said blithely. ‘There’s bound to be a goat somewhere.’

Unconvinced, Gabar pursed his rubbery lips.

While the cubs slept, Timoken lay on the fallen tree above them. In more than a hundred years of travelling he had never saved a life. The experience had changed him. If he had lived like an ordinary mortal, he would be dead by now. And so, it followed, would the cubs. Fate had brought them together, and now he felt bound to the small creatures he had saved. ‘Forever,’ he murmured to himself.

Timoken closed his eyes and began to devise a way to carry the cubs. Nomads had given him a small bag for water, and now the big goatskin bag hung empty from the saddle. The cubs could be carried in it.

Timoken chewed a millet cake, and then drifted off to sleep. He woke up to find Gabar’s nose in his face.

‘Family,’ said the camel, ‘you have forgotten something.’

‘What?’ Timoken answered drowsily.

‘You never sleep without a cover. The viridees will come back. The forest is not safe.’

Timoken smiled. ‘You are right. But first, the cubs.’ He lifted the curtain of creepers and looked into the dark hollow where they slept.

The moon cloak now covered the cubs completely. It had wrapped itself around them, and billowed gently with their heartbeats. The shining threads seemed to embrace the cubs, as though the web was claiming them for its own. One cub lay on his back; the others were curled on each side of him, their heads pressed against his. Seen through the veil of spider silk, the markings on their fur appeared like a scattering of stars.

Timoken drew in his breath and sat back.

‘What?’ asked Gabar.

‘They have become …’ Timoken didn’t know how to describe what he saw to the camel.

Gabar waited patiently for the rest of Timoken’s answer.

‘Enchanted,’ said Timoken, hoping that the camel would understand.

He did.

There were five of them now. ‘A family of five,’ Timoken liked to say. But the camel did not agree. He was not entirely comfortable when the leopards were close.

They were travelling through grassland that was neither forest nor desert. Gabar was happy on the dry, flat earth. There were waterholes and streams and sometimes a low, tasty tree. And the camel knew that Timoken could keep dangerous animals away with the loud sounds he made, in languages that Gabar couldn’t begin to understand.

The cubs enjoyed riding in the big goatskin bag. Sometimes, they would peek above the rim and watch the world go by. But as soon as they caught the scent of a big cat, they would duck down into the bag.

Whenever they passed a group of nomads, Timoken
would exchange dried fruit for a bag of goat’s milk.

The first time the cubs tasted goat’s milk, they pronounced it very good.

‘As good as your mother’s milk?’ Timoken asked the cubs.

‘No,’ said the biggest cub. Timoken called him Sun Cat. His coat was darker than his brothers', the markings larger and closer, and in certain lights his spots took on a shade of sunset red. One of his brothers had a hint of orange beneath his chin, like a small flame. Timoken named him Flame Chin. The smallest of the three had a coat as pale as a star. He was always the last to approach Timoken, but it was this cub that he loved best. He called him Star.

Every night, Timoken slept under the moon cloak with the cubs curled beside him. In the morning, he would tie the goatskin bag to Gabar’s saddle and lift the cubs into it. But one morning, they struggled when Timoken lifted them, and begged to be set free.

‘We will follow,’ said Sun Cat.

‘We will watch,’ said Flame Chin.

‘We will listen,’ said Star.

Reluctantly, Timoken climbed on to the camel’s back
and left the cubs to run beside them. After a while they fell behind, and when Timoken looked back they had vanished. He didn’t know what to do.

‘Stop, Gabar,’ he commanded, pulling on the reins. ‘The cubs are lost.’

‘No,’ grunted the camel. ‘You cannot see them. They are not lost.’

‘How do you know?’ Timoken demanded. ‘Can you smell them, hear them, sense them?’

Gabar gave a grunt that was more like a sigh of impatience. ‘Leopards are not seen,’ he said. ‘They must not be seen. You should be proud that they have learned this so quickly.’

‘Oh!’ Timoken was always being surprised by the camel’s vast knowledge. ‘I am proud,’ he said. ‘Very proud.’

Timoken did not see the cubs again all day. But that night, while he lay sleepless with anxiety beneath the moon cloak, three shadowy forms crept out of the long grass and crawled in beside him.