Through the Tiger's Eye (5 page)

An intense memory of crawling like a snake overcame Lucy. She hauled Ricardo down to the ground, and they lay flat and watched. Lucy’s mind was racing. Where were they?

Kurrawong couldn’t be far away but this place was nothing like Kurrawong, and it was so much like her nightmare it was spooky. The thought that human eyes might be looking out from that house made her tummy hurt. She wanted to turn and run back up the path and along the tunnel as fast as she could, flat torch batteries or not – until she saw a little black dog trotting out of the bushes on the other side of the clearing, white-tipped tail waving like a flag.

‘T-Tongue!’ squeaked Ricardo. Lucy clamped her hand fiercely over his mouth. What if soldiers came running? A strange piercing birdcall split the silence in the clearing and Lucy had an idea. She risked a soft whistle. T-Tongue pricked up his ears and to her relief trotted obediently over. It was possibly the first time he’d obeyed her in his entire short life!

Finding their faces at licking level, he yelped with pleasure and got on with the job.

‘Shhh,’ breathed Lucy in his ear, terrified that soldiers might arrive at any moment and bring her nightmare to life.

‘Let’s get out of here!’ whispered Ricardo, but Lucy was staring at a coil of rope near the gate. Just what they needed to get out of that pit.

‘Hold T-Tongue,’ she said, thrusting the squirming puppy at Ricardo.

She pulled herself forward on her elbows, belly flat to the ground like the soldiers in the TV ads for the Army. The rope was a million Ks away. The sun burned down and her head felt as though it would melt like a candle. Sharp sticks gouged her T-shirt through to the skin but she kept going.

Lucy reached the rope just as a gut-wrenching sound reached her ears: a familiar shouted command.

And marching feet ever closer
.

No time to think, let alone crawl. She grabbed the rope, scuttled desperately back to the cover of green and threw herself down, just in time. She lay panting as the smiling soldier and his men marched a column of children into the clearing. She tried to control her breathing. If the soldiers hadn’t been yelling at the kids, they might have heard her.

She heard another shouted order and the kids lined up at the barbed-wire gate.

‘This is not happening,’ Lucy told herself; but T-Tongue, growling low in his throat, clearly thought something was happening. Lucy opened her eyes and gave the hand signal for ‘drop’ she’d learned at his first and only obedience class (he had failed), and miraculously he dropped down on all fours. He must have known it wasn’t a game because he stayed very quiet, quivering, waiting for her command.

Lucy longed to be able to slide backwards up the track, right out of the fix they were in, but the soldiers were too close. She and Ricardo would have to sit it out – if lying with your face buried in the dirt was sitting it out. Half of Lucy’s instincts said freeze, the other half said run. She chose freeze, partly because her legs had turned to stone again.

The smiling soldier unlocked a padlock on the gate, barking another order, and the sad parade of children passed through the gate and up the stairs of the rickety house. The heavy door slammed shut behind them.

Then the smiling soldier crouched, examining the ground where the rope had been. Lucy felt sick: there were her footprints in the dust.

A brightly coloured flock of birds burst shrieking from the trees above, and Lucy seized her chance. She began to inch backwards. Ricardo found it harder, as he was grasping T-Tongue, who was starting to make take-onthe-world noises. Semi-Superdog – ready to take on four armed soldiers.

Then a loud, gurgling, throaty cough came from the other side of the clearing. Lucy had an instant overwhelming impression of muscular power and lethal speed. What happened next unfolded so fast, Lucy felt she was still dreaming. A tiger leapt from the undergrowth, knocked the closest soldier to the ground with one mighty swipe of a striped paw, pivoted, and was gone, springing into the trees before the others could even raise their weapons.

The soldier on the ground writhed as blood sprang from the vicious claw marks on his face and neck, but no one moved to help him. The other soldiers just danced on the spot yelling at each other. They were obviously terrified, even though they were armed.

Lucy was struck by the smiling soldier’s reaction. He was very still. Then he turned and scanned every corner of the clearing, smiling the whole time. For a few seconds he studied the patch of scrub where Lucy, Ricardo and T-Tongue hid. His hand crept to his face and for the first time Lucy saw the livid scar that snaked down his left cheek to his mouth, lifting his lip in a permanent leer. It was the scar that made him appear to smile all the time.

Then he burst into action, spinning around and firing into the trees where the tiger had disappeared. He shouted at the other soldiers in another language, gesturing wildly. The soldiers fanned out and padded nervously towards the scrub, away from Lucy and Ricardo. At another command they began firing into the jungle.

That was enough for Lucy and Ricardo. They slid backwards as stealthily as they could, staying hidden in the thick bushes. They got around the bend in the track, stumbled to their feet and charged back up the forest track. The crackling of gunfire seemed to go on forever behind them.

They didn’t stop until Ricardo tripped over a body on the path. The body was a little boy. He looked dead. So did Ricardo. He just lay there. T-Tongue began licking the little boy, who opened his eyes and screamed. Like a shadow, a dark-haired girl appeared out of the bush and clapped her hand over the little guy’s mouth. All four humans just stared at each other. Lucy saw terror, surprise and recognition flicker over the girl’s face like a rapid-fire PowerPoint display. Lucy knew her own face must be doing the same, because she was staring at the girl from her nightmare, the one the Tiger-cat had beamed into her mind a little while ago. Ricardo stood staring at the little kid on the ground, who sat up and stared back in disbelief.

‘You got away,’ said Lucy and then she thought,
How stupid was that? If the soldiers talk another language, she probably does too
.

‘Yes,’ said the girl in English.

A fresh volley of gunfire blasted close by and the four kids jumped.

‘Quick! Let’s get out of here! Can he walk?’ hissed Lucy. The other girl didn’t answer. Skinny as she was, she hoisted the little guy up onto her back.

‘I’ll carry him,’ said Lucy, but the girl just stumbled off up the track.

‘Where are you going?’ Lucy asked, running to catch up.

If she knew, she was panting too hard to tell. Lucy and Ricardo looked at each other. They both knew what the other was thinking.

‘We know a hiding place,’ they blurted out together.

The girl half-dropped the boy and turned to face them, her eyes filled with tears. Lucy grabbed the little boy under his arms and picked him up like a baby. He was much lighter than Ricardo and she could still piggyback
him
around Kurrawong if she had to. There was another volley of gunfire, closer this time, and Lucy took off up the path, Ricardo and the girl following. The path had almost disappeared and if Lucy hadn’t noticed the red scrunchie she would have missed the faint track leading to the tunnel.

‘Grab the scrunchie,’ she hissed to Ricardo.

‘Forget it,’ he said, but the girl must have known what Lucy was worried about because she grabbed the scrunchie and dived after her through the undergrowth and into the mouth of the tunnel. Lucy had never been so relieved to see a black hole.

Pounding boots getting closer made them freeze just inside the entrance. But the boots charged past and on, and when the kids opened their eyes again, the creepers blocking the entrance to the tunnel were thick and unbroken, as though no one had passed that way for forty years. Lucy didn’t quite know how it had happened, but she wasn’t arguing. Darkness was just fine with her.

8
The Cubby

‘What do we do now?’ asked Ricardo

‘Walk!’

‘Where?’

‘I don’t know, but we can’t stay here.’

Holding the little boy with one arm, Lucy pulled the torch from her pocket and passed it to Ricardo. In the faint beam she could see that the little boy’s eyes were closed and he could barely hold his head up. His bones stuck out like chopsticks.

Lucy realised she still had the rope from the clearing coiled over one shoulder. She couldn’t remember putting it there. It was as though she had just watched an action video but when she hit Rewind, it was frozen. She tramped deeper into the darkness, the torch barely lighting the ground beneath her feet.

The air in the tunnel got colder and Lucy began to shiver. It had been so hot out there! She could feel the dried sweat and mud on her face and arms. Then the torch batteries finally died. There was no choice but to keep going.

‘Ricardo, drag your fingers along the wall so we don’t miss the fork in the tunnel,’ Lucy said.

And that was how they found the door. If they’d been using the torch, they probably would have missed it.

‘Hey, here’s a handle! Wonder if it . . .?’ Ricardo’s wondering was brought to an end by the unmistakable creaking of disused hinges.

Lucy shuffled back towards Ricardo’s breathing and felt for the opening with her hand.

‘Where’s the light switch?’

Exhausted as she was, Lucy started to giggle at Ricardo’s question. That got Ricardo going and then they both began laughing uncontrollably at the idea of a light switch halfway to the centre of the earth. A scraping sound and a brilliant flash shut them up. The flash illuminated the face of the strange girl, holding a glowing match. In the brief moment before the flame flickered out, Lucy saw a room with tables and chairs, like a lunchroom, a candle stub in a beer bottle on the table, and cups and a thermos. A second later a match flared again and then Lucy and the strange girl were staring at each in the candlelight. Lucy suddenly realised how thirsty she was. She grabbed the thermos and shook it. Water? Ten-year-old tea? Gross. Hands shaking, she unscrewed the lid, poured some liquid into it and tasted it. Water. She had no idea how many years it had been there but right now it tasted fantastic. She handed a cup of water to the girl, who drank thirstily before putting her arm shakily around the little boy and holding the cup to his lips. He gulped some down and handed the cup to Ricardo.

‘We have to get you more water and food,’ Lucy said to the strange kids.

‘Yeah. We’ll get you Cocoa Puffs and red cordial,’ said Ricardo.

They looked at him blankly.

‘Please don’t inform anyone of our whereabouts,’ said the girl, turning to Lucy.

‘What?’ said Ricardo.

‘Duh! She means don’t tell anyone where they are.’

‘As if!’ Ricardo said.

‘Not as if. You tell Mum everything. You even dob yourself in!’

Lucy turned back to the strange kids.

‘We’ll be back soon. Come on Ricardo, let’s go.’

Together they scraped their way towards the fork in the tunnel, trying not to think about tigers, snakes, rats or soldiers. It seemed to go on forever, much longer than before.

When they finally reached the tunnel entrance, they found the Tiger-cat, perched on top of the pile of rubble, observing them impassively with golden eyes. Overhead, the biggest tree’s branches were bent low as though ready to scoop them up into its arms. Lucy just had time to register that the leaves were the right dull green again, before the Tiger-cat sprang out of the pit in one graceful leap and disappeared from view. It was an incredible distance for such a small creature to jump. She began knotting the rope at intervals, the way she had been taught at school camp. Then she scrabbled around for a lump of clay. She squeezed the dense, sticky goo into the shape of a donut, threaded the rope through the hole and flung it over the lowest branch, right at the edge of the pit. The weight of the clay donut carried the rope over and back down to her feet. She repeated the process, looping the rope a few more times and hauling on it to make sure it held. Then she climbed up her home-made ladder, clawing from knot to knot, bouncing off the sides of the pit. Made it! She scrambled over the edge and looked back. Ricardo and T-Tongue seemed a long way down

‘What will we do with T-Tongue?’ called Ricardo.

T-Tongue cocked his head from side to side, as if to say, ‘Yeah! What
are
you going to do?’

Lucy raced down to the clothesline, checked to see Mum wasn’t around, grabbed a towel and streaked back up the hill. She tied both ends of the towel to the rope to make a little hammock, and tossed it down. Ricardo tucked T-Tongue in and told him to ‘Stay’. Lucy hauled him up before he had time to panic and jump out. Then she dropped the rope and Ricardo climbed up like a little monkey. He swung out of the pit just in time to see Mum charging up the path towards the steps.

‘Where have you
been
,’ she demanded fiercely. ‘I’ve been calling you for ages!’

‘Just exploring,’ said Lucy, squinting.

How come the sun is shining right in my face, when at the jungle jail it was above my head?