The Elephant's Tale (17 page)

Earlier he’d spotted a red thread running along the bottom of some sections of the hedge, which appeared to show the way out. They were stealing along a cool green passage, feeling like mice about to be devoured by cats, when Ben tripped over a wire. Instantly the birdsong ceased. An unnatural silence descended on the valley.

“Oh. My. God,” whispered Martine. “It’s a recording. There
are
no birds in Moon Valley. I guess it
is
haunted after all.”

The sudden shutting off of the birdsong CD told the waiter that all was not well in the volcano and that something bigger than the okapi might be to blame for the ruined breakfast. He yelled for the gardeners. They came pounding into the maze, shouting and wielding sticks.

Martine and Ben clung to each other in panic. There was no escape route. Men were coming at them from both directions. They were trapped. The game was up.

From across the desert came the wail of an ambulance siren. It was approaching at speed. All sounds of pursuit ceased. The siren grew louder and louder until it was right inside Moon Valley, where it petered out with a squawk.

Ben peered through a hole in the hedge. “Martine, you have to see this.”

Martine crouched beside him. The ambulance men were carrying a stretcher up the forest paths to the white dome. A door opened and two men in white coats lifted out a bloodied figure, plainly unconscious. The paramedics laid him on the stretcher, checked his pulse, and then whisked him back down the hill.

The gardeners, the waiter, and the men in white coats gathered around the ambulance, watching with anxious faces as the paramedics attempted to stabilize the injured man.

“Ben, this is our chance,” said Martine.

Crouching low, they sprinted from the maze to the hatch. In the storage room below, Ben put on a white coat and used the sink to wash the volcanic dust off his face and hands. Martine was about to do the same, but he stopped her.

“I might be able to pass as a worker, but I don’t think a girl will.
But,”
he added hastily as Martine opened her mouth to protest, “I have a solution.”

He slid back the curtain on the trolley, removed a pile of towels, and shoved them out of sight beneath the sink. It was a tight squeeze, but Martine managed to wedge herself in.

The hatch opened and a man in a white coat slid down the ladder like a fireman down a pole. He was bald and wearing milk-bottle glasses. His hands were large and hairy. Ben closed the trolley curtain calmly.

“Who are you?” the man demanded. “Why are you wearing a white coat? Those are only for pod workers.”

“I’m the new cleaner, sir,” said Ben. “I apologize if I’m in the wrong clothes. I was still waiting for my instructions when I received an urgent call to mop up . . . to remove some
blood.”
He whispered the last word.

The man grimaced. “Good thing it’s less than twenty-four hours till they’re gone. Any longer and we’d have a dead body on our hands. If you want my opinion, the old man is losing control. He’s the real deal, but he’s not a magician.”

Ben filled the bucket with soap and water and whipped it into foam with a mop. “Losing control?”

“Of the elephants,” the man said impatiently. “What else? They’ve been cooped up so long they’re on the verge of rampaging.”

“T
he
elephants?
” Martine said, pulling aside her trolley curtain and trying to wriggle into a more comfortable position. Her left foot had gone to sleep. After the pod worker had helpfully typed in the keypad security code and held the door open for Ben, he’d rushed on ahead, leaving them to negotiate a long tunnel with solar lighting. “That means there’s more than two and there could be a whole herd. I guess we’ve found your Bermuda Triangle, only it’s a white dome in an extinct volcano with fake birdsong.”

“Shh,” said Ben, closing her curtain firmly. “I’m not sure this is a good idea. It would make more sense for us to try to get out of Moon Valley and get help. We don’t want to end up like the man on the stretcher.”

“Of course it’s not a good idea,” retorted Martine. “It’s a terrible idea. But we’ve come this far. We can’t turn back now. The elephants need us.”

The explosion they’d heard in the desert sounded again; only down here it was an express train roar, booming down the corridor. It didn’t last long, and when it was over they heard a discordant hammering. Then that too ceased.

For all her brave words, Martine was cold with fear. She and Ben had traveled thousands of miles and risked everything to try to uncover the truth about Angel’s story and investigate Reuben James’s business dealings. Faced with learning the answers, she realized they might be more than she could bear.

She focused on Jemmy. “I will get back to him, I will get back to him, I will get back to him,” she told herself over and over, like a mantra.

The trolley halted. She heard Ben take a deep breath. “We’re here,” he said. “Ready?”

Martine wriggled her toes in an effort to restore sensation to her foot. “Ready.”

Once, many years ago, Martine’s mum and dad had taken her to a gallery in London. The spirit-lifting paintings of Turner, Van Gogh, and other old masters had made such an impression on her that she’d briefly entertained the idea of becoming an artist, but one picture had depressed her—a vision of hell by Hieronymus Bosch. The artist’s name had stuck in her head because she couldn’t understand what sort of parents would name their child Hieronymus.

Peering through a slit in the compartment curtain, she was reminded of it. It’s not that it actually looked like hell. Far from it. Two-thirds of the vast dome had been transformed into the most remarkable indoor environment any desert elephant could have wished for. Whole dunes had been transported intact, and in between there were acacia trees, a small baobab hung with cream of tartar pods (an elephant treat), and a muddy pond for them to swim in. There was even an elephant play area, with colored balls, sticks, and bells. The roof of the dome had been painted sky blue and had wisps of cloud on it and a few painted birds.

It wasn’t the fake desert that caused Martine such anguish; it was the elephants. There were nineteen of them. All were shackled and all were exhibiting signs of distress. Some were swaying listlessly, eyes half-closed, as if they were lost in a world of their own. One was aggressively destroying an acacia tree, another was feeling every inch of the walls of the dome with her trunk in the vain hope of finding a way out. The rest were just shuffling back and forth in their shackles, variously bored, depressed, or agitated.

As Martine gazed out on the diabolical scene, a pair of white doors opened in the far wall. She caught a glimpse of a laboratory behind, with rows of test tubes and blinking machines. There was a horrible rattling and a steel cage was wheeled out by two white-coated workers. Inside was an elephant. One of the workers pulled a lever and the elephant burst out, was caught short by her shackles, and fell to her knees.

A gaunt man with fine features and caramel-colored skin rushed from the shadows and ran to her side. He was the only person not in a white coat, and his loose trousers and shirt were thin and worn. He stroked the elephant’s wrinkled gray-brown face and tried to soothe her. When a lab worker tried to approach, he sent him away. Gently, he urged the elephant to her feet.

“Gift’s father,” Martine breathed.

“W
e’ve got to get out of here and get help,” whispered Ben. “I’m not sure what’s going on here, but we’re in way over our heads.”

“Animal experimentation, that’s what’s going on,” Martine said furiously. It took all her self-restraint not to leap out of the trolley. “If we don’t find a way to stop it, that’s what Reuben James will be doing to Jemmy—experimenting on him. And Gift’s father, the so-called elephant whisperer, is involved.”

“You don’t know that.”

“What else would he be doing in this hideous place? It’s not
him
that’s being kept prisoner and tortured in the lab, is it?”

“Just because he isn’t in handcuffs, doesn’t mean he’s not a prisoner,” Ben pointed out.

“Oi, you? What are you looking at?” A short, stocky pod worker was striding across the dome. “Where’s your ID? What are you doing here?”

“Leave him alone, Nipper,” called the bald man. “It’s his first day on the job. Hey, kid, what’s your name?”

“Ben.”

“All righty, Ben, get your mop and head on over to the lab.”

“Yes, sir!” called Ben. Under his breath he said: “This is about to get very complicated.” He pushed the trolley forward.

Martine risked another glance through the curtain. Gift’s father was leading the traumatized elephant to the muddy pool. Her stride was uncertain and her eyes were locked on Gift’s dad, as if he were a lighthouse in a storm.

Martine realized with a shock that the second part of Grace’s prophecy had just come to pass. The circle—the Moon Valley volcano, that is—
had
led to the elephants. Now all that remained was the last part. “The elephants will lead you to the truth,” Grace had promised.
“Your
truth.” Now that she might be on the brink of discovering that truth, Martine wasn’t sure she wanted to know the answer. What if she didn’t like it? What if the truth was more painful than the not knowing?

One of the elephants trumpeted. The sound ricocheted around the dome and blasted Martine’s eardrums. The ailing elephant had collapsed again, only this time she wasn’t getting up. Gift’s father was cradling her head. All around the dome, elephants were straining at their shackles and flapping their ears or tossing their tusks, desperate to go to the aid of their fallen friend.

“Ben, we have to do something,” said Martine, forgetting to keep her voice down. Patience was not one of her virtues.

“Martine, if we run back down the tunnel, we might still be able to get out of here, expose this whole operation, and save all the elephants. If we stay here, we might not save any. We might not even—”

Martine hopped out of the trolley, staggering a little on her cramped, bloodless limbs. “Save ourselves? Is that what you were going to say? Well, right now all I care about is saving her. What’s going on here is like something out of the Dark Ages. We can’t just walk away.”

Ben glanced in the direction of the fallen elephant. The bald man and two other pod workers were preoccupied with the unfolding crisis. Another man had retreated to the safety of the laboratory. However, Nipper was staring at the intruders with intense interest. He took a cell phone from his pocket.

“Ben, go without me,” urged Martine. “Find Gift or call the police and come back for me.”

“Not a chance. We came into this together and we’re going to stay together. But I think one of the workers has just called security. We’ll have to move fast.”

Martine had the advantage of surprise. By the time Nipper had alerted the other pod workers that a thin, pale girl with flying brown hair and green eyes was racing across the dome, she was almost upon them.

She slowed to a walk. She didn’t underestimate what she was about to do. Her gift was her most precious secret. She’d first discovered she could heal animals purely by accident, on a class trip. Afterward, the children who’d witnessed her revival of an Egyptian goose had chased her through a forest, screaming, “Witch! Witch! Witch!”

Since then she’d been very careful to hide her gift from everyone but Grace and Ben, and even with them she played it down. Now she was about to attempt a healing in front of an audience. Nipper tried to grab her but the bald man stopped him.

“Wait. Let’s see what she’s going to do.”

Nipper folded his muscled arms across his chest and a smug smile came over his swarthy face. Ben, who was hovering anxiously nearby, noticed that his gaze kept shifting to the door.

Gift’s father was still cradling the elephant’s head. He lifted weary, hurt-filled eyes when Martine knelt down.