Through the Tiger's Eye (26 page)
‘
Discriminating
,’ said Lucy, but Carlos was off again.
‘I tell you, she is one of us!
Forever Telares!
It is the rebel slogan. How does she know this? Where is she now!’
Lucy was downcast. Why hadn’t they asked Blue Uniform where she’d gone? How dumb was that?
She remembered the red leather pouch. In it was a small silver casket with a hinged lid, decorated with tiny stones in the shape of a tiger, orange, white and black. Its eyes burned: two tiny jewels, the same vibrant, rich red as the jewel on the rug elephant. Something rattled inside. Lucy swung open the casket to reveal another key, the same shape and size as the dragon-chest key.
‘It must be the key to the Commander’s chest!’ exclaimed Carlos. ‘He made the militia search the whole jail for it, but they could not find it.’
Suddenly Ricardo began jumping up and down. ‘The pig,’ he shouted, and bolted out of the clearing, with T-Tongue in passionate pursuit.
Everyone looked at each other and shook their heads, but they were all too preoccupied with the tiger casket to wonder what Ricardo was up to. They passed it around, admiring the jewelled tiger.
Finally, Lucy opened the Theodore Hawthorne envelope. A heavy, folded sheet of paper fell open, revealing ruby red, forest green and brilliant gold. Everyone gasped. Golden eyes gazed up at Lucy. It was the tiger rug, painted like Lucy had never seen it, with glorious animals and birds in every corner and cranny and tiny turquoise butterflies twisting between them. There were too many new animals for Lucy to count, but the tiger still held pride of place. The painting was just how the tiger rug must have looked when it was new; just how the Bull Commander wanted the one in the jungle jail to be.
‘It is the pattern!’ breathed Rahel, awed.
‘The Bull Commander, he would kill us to get his hands on this,’ Pablo said in a hushed tone.
‘Give it to me,’ demanded Carlos.
But Angel trotted up to Lucy and wordlessly, held out her little hand. Surprised and curious, Lucy gave it to her. Quick as a flash, Angel darted over to her favourite tree and sat down with the map on her lap.
‘Angel, bring it back!’ Lucy laughed. But the little girl looked up, shook her head and went back to examining the map and its menagerie.
Then Ricardo burst back into the clearing carrying the pink piggy bank he had found on their first day at the mermaid house. ‘The contents of my pig may be of some use to you.’
Of
course! Ricardo was already removing a cork in its tummy and coins clattered onto the kitchen rock. Cool! Two, four, six – $20 in $2 coins. T-Tongue sniffed them excitedly. There were many strange silver coins. Carlos twisted one in the light. It bore the image of a crouched tiger on one side, and on the other a man’s head.
‘Telarian silver sovereigns!’ he crowed. ‘Enough to buy food for a month for all of us! We will need them if we are going to get Angel back to her grandparents in Telares City.’
Lucy had forgotten all about that mission. Everyone got serious then, thinking about what had to be done tonight. To Ricardo and Toro’s disgust, they were voted out of the action
again
. Lucy had to go because she knew where the drugs were. Carlos and Pablo would create a diversion, giving Lucy time to climb the tree. She would give the drugs to Rahel, who would take them to Bucket Lady. And tomorrow night, after the Commander and the militiamen had eaten, the real action would begin. It was a good plan, and it
definitely
didn’t need Ricardo’s special touch.
At the end of the day, Lucy and Ricardo trotted down the path into the welcoming light of the kitchen.
‘Lucía! Ricardo!’
They were swamped in the hugest hug from Dad.
T-Tongue went berserk.
Dad had got back from China this morning and was going to stay the night because Mum had been called to Sydney again on another emergency.
Of course they had pizza and Coke for dinner. Then they made Dad play indoor soccer up and down the hall (even though he was really tired), until the ball bounced too close to one of the dragon vases and they all froze and Dad said
oops
, and made them stop.
He’d bought them a new soccer training video, so they stayed up late watching it and then did a bit more training in the hall before he tucked them into their sleeping bags. Lucy could tell Dad would be asleep before her. Jet lag had made him greyer and more ghostly than ever. But he was happy to see
them
.
It seemed like only a few minutes later that Lucy woke up with the Tiger-cat’s fishy breath on her face and a soft paw patting her cheek. She got up quietly, dressed and headed for the back door. She checked her watch. Midnight. That made it 3 a.m. Telares time.
She followed the Tiger-cat and T-Tongue up the path. The waning moon briefly lit up the faces of the three Telarian children gathered at the stairs. Wordlessly, they swung down into the pit and entered the tunnel. For a few seconds the enormity of what she was about to do swept over Lucy and she stopped walking, frozen to the spot. But the brush of fur on her legs and the rumbling purr of the Tiger-cat brought that hunterish feeling rushing back. She trotted down the tunnel after the others, senses stretching into blackness.
As they stepped into the Telarian night, the Tiger-cat made a strange growling meow, trotted a few steps, and turned back as if to make sure they were following.
‘We’d better do what she says,’ Lucy said.
There was just enough moonlight to illuminate the Tiger-cat’s white ear spots. The creature led them purposefully along a network of narrow animal paths, winding ever deeper into the jungle. Soon they stood hidden in the trees, gazing at what could only be the round walls of Sarong Lady’s hut. A candle burned in a high window, framed by the branches of the tree Lucy had ‘seen’ the night before.
Carlos and Pablo melted away, working their way around towards the other side of the village. The Tiger-cat padded to the tree and leapt into its branches, disappearing. Rahel touched Lucy on the shoulder as if to say ‘Good luck’, and she felt that hunterish feeling flood her veins. She signalled to T-Tongue, who dropped to the ground. Lucy prowled silently forward and leapt gracefully into the tree. She climbed higher and higher, following the Tiger-cat. The tree was huge. Among its great spreading branches she was in a sailing ship, riding through the stars. The sight of the Telarian moon low in the sky sobered her up. It would be sunrise here soon if she didn’t hurry up.
Then she was straddling a thick branch which grew right up to the window, peering through a fringe of leaves, right at Sarong Lady’s back. The Telarian woman stood away from the window, holding a candle up to see something hung on the far wall of the hut. Lucy saw that distinctive lonely seagull shape: a map of Telares. Why was Sarong Lady up in the middle of the night, looking at a map?
Then Lucy noticed a man lying on a mat on the floor, under a curtain of mosquito net. Her heart almost stopped beating. Even asleep, the Bull Commander was scary, that vicious scar distorting his face in a gruesome leer. If he were awake, he would be looking straight at her.
Next to the mat was a familiar shape: a carved wooden box. The other dragon chest! But that was not what Lucy had come for. Over near the map, on a low table against the wall, was a tall dark bottle with a medicine cup next to it. That must be the sleeping drug. But how on earth was she going to get it with Sarong Lady wide awake, standing right next to it?
The Tiger-cat brushed against her skin and Lucy felt that white-hot feeling grow in her body. She closed her eyes and let it happen. It began as a warm glow in her fingers and toes, and then the fever swept over her and she was pulsing with that same white-hot intensity again. She opened her eyes and found herself staring at Sarong Lady’s back. She heard a low purr, and at the same time Sarong Lady turned around and faced the window. Lucy could not move, she could only sit in the tree feeling as though she must be glowing in the dark. Then Sarong Lady picked up the medicine bottle and the measuring cup and walked slowly, purposefully towards her. She placed the medicine on the table by the window, only centimetres from Lucy’s face, turned and walked casually back to the map.
Lucy’s electric pulse slowed. Had the Tiger-cat made Sarong Lady do that? Should she take the bottle now, or wait? What if the Commander woke up? She broke out in a cold sweat at the thought.
Then an ear-splitting howl made the hair on the back of her neck stand up. It rose higher and higher until she got goosebumps. She had never heard anything like it.
There was a scream from out near the fire. As another howl rose to the moon, Sarong Lady ran outside. Lucy heard the urgent rustle of the mosquito net and the Bull Commander jumped to his feet and thumped out the door, calling out a harsh command. As he pounded down the stairs, Lucy reached for the bottle.
Then she was climbing stealthily down the tree. Many voices shouted in the clearing. The Tiger-cat appeared below and T-Tongue, who had shown enormous restraint in all the commotion, stepped shivering from the shadows and licked Lucy’s hand. Rahel moved from behind a tree and gestured, ‘Time to get out of here’.
They melted into the jungle. It was none too soon. A gunshot from the direction of the village wrenched an involuntary cry from both girls and a whimper from T-Tongue. They froze. Another shot cracked the night open, and the shouts in the clearing grew louder. The Tiger-cat gave an urgent low growl and the girls sprinted after her on the narrowest of trails.
In a few minutes Lucy smelt fresh water again and then they were racing across the wooden bridge over the creek to Bucket Lady’s hut. The Tiger-cat jumped through the open window and Bucket Lady opened the door, beckoning, ‘Come in, come in’.
Lucy didn’t have to understand Telarian to know the old lady was telling them to hurry. Lucy just had time to give her the bottle of medicine before more shouts came from somewhere close to the hut. Bucket Lady tore a curtain aside at the back of the hut, revealing an open window. Lucy threw T-Tongue out as the shouts grew closer. Rahel and Lucy jumped together, landing outside just as heavy boots thumped over the wooden bridge. They darted into the jungle to the sound of heavy fists hammering on Bucket Lady’s door.
In their fear and panic, it was all the girls could do to keep track of the Tiger-cat’s white ear spots. It led them on a track so overgrown and dense that Lucy had to crouch low to the ground. Her heart was pounding but the sounds of shouting and running feet gradually slipped away.
They were exhausted by the time they reached the pit. The girls sat on the pile of rubble and waited for the others. It seemed an eternity before Carlos and Pablo emerged, grinning.
‘That,’ said Carlos, ‘was very much fun’.
‘No,’ said Lucy and Rahel together, ‘it wasn’t!’
‘But we sent them crazy!’ said a delighted Pablo. ‘We pretended to be ghosts and the villagers panicked. The Commander called the militia, but they were scared too. We led them everywhere but they did not even know what they were chasing.’
‘Yes, Lucy,’ said Carlos with an unexpected smile, ‘your Ponytail Zombie was too scared even to hunt. We saw him hiding from the Commander behind a bush’.
‘Finally the militia caught something,’ said Pablo. ‘It was some animal, I think, but it was not us!’ The boys burst out laughing.
By the time Lucy stumbled into her room, she was so tired she didn’t even bother getting into her sleeping bag. She was so tired she didn’t notice Ricardo wasn’t in his bed.
Lucy awoke to the smell of smoke. She looked across at Ricardo’s bed but saw only his empty sleeping bag. His sword was gone from his bedside table, which meant he had gone to the base without her. Dad poked his head in the door.
‘Good morning, Lucía! You and T-Tongue slept in late. Can you smell the smoke? There’s a bushfire down south. Deliberately lit, the radio said. They’ve declared a total fire ban.’
Total fire ban! The campsite. If Pablo or one of the others started a bushfire . . . Lucy didn’t even want to think about that.