Precious and the Mystery of the Missing Lion: A New Case for Precious Ramotswe

This eBook edition published in 2013 by

Polygon, an imprint of Birlinn Ltd

West Newington House

10 Newington Road

Edinburgh

EH9 1QS

www.birlinn.co.uk

Text copyright © Alexander McCall Smith 2013

Illustration and design © Iain McIntosh 2013

The rights of the copyright holders have been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form without the express written permission of the publisher.

eBook ISBN: 978-0-85790-580-2

Print ISBN: 978-1-84697-255-3

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

HE GIRL IN THIS PICTURE
is called Precious. That was her first name, and her second name was
Ramotswe, and when all this happened she was nine. Nine is a good age to be. Some people like being nine so much that they really want to stay that age forever. They usually turn ten, however, and
then they find out that being ten is not all that bad either. Precious, of course, was very happy being nine.

Like many of us, Precious had a number of aunts – three in fact. One of these aunts lived in the village in Botswana where Precious was born, while another lived on an ostrich farm almost
one hundred miles away. And a third, who was probably her favourite aunt of all, lived right up at the top of the country, in a place called the Okavango Delta. That’s a lovely name,
isn’t it? Try saying it. OKA-VANGO.

A delta, of course, is made up of small rivers spreading out from a bigger river, a little bit like a human hand and its fingers. Here’s a picture of one.

Usually deltas are on the edge of the sea – this one was not. The great Okavango River flowed
backwards
– away from the sea, to spread out into smaller streams that simply
sank into the sands of a desert. And where this happened, there were wide plains of golden grass dotted with trees. On the bank of the river itself, the trees towered high. That was a bit like a
proper jungle, and you had to be very careful when making your way through it. It was all very wild, and was home to just about every sort of wild animal to be found in Africa.

The aunt who lived up there was called Aunty Bee. Precious had been told her real name, but had forgotten it. Nobody ever called Aunty Bee anything but Bee. It was just the way it was.

Aunty Bee was not one of those aunts who scold you or tell you what to do. She was fun. She was also very generous and never forgot to send Precious a present on her birthday. And what presents
these were! They were all made by Aunty Bee herself, from things that she could pick up in the bush around her.

One year there was a hat made entirely out of porcupine quills. As you know, porcupines are very prickly animals that have coats made of extraordinary black-and-white quills. These are sharp,
and if anything tries to attack the porcupine all that he has to do is shoot out these quills. The animal attacking him then learns a very painful lesson: do not try to eat a porcupine! Indeed,
some say that this is the very first lesson that a mother lion or leopard teaches her children:
do not try to eat a porcupine!
Unfortunately, some of them do not listen, and this is what
happens:

The porcupine hat was made of quills that Aunty Bee had found lying around on a path. She picked these up and took them to make into a hat. This was the result.