by Ian Whybrow
“I don’t think they’ve seen us. They must be asleep,” said Skeema.
“Then wave! Make them look!” insisted Mimi because they were flying past them fast. And since the others couldn’t see the point of waving, Mimi decided to do it herself. She shrugged the baby-carrier off her back. “Hold the baby!” she ordered and thrust him into Skeema’s arms. Trouble rescued the two little bottles of spray from the bottom of the bag, holding one tightly in each front paw, before Mimi whisked the bag away. Then she was up and leaning over the side of the basket.
As anyone who has ever waved a pair of leopard-print knickers will know, they are just the job for attracting attention. But sad to say, Griff and the lionesses, having eaten well, were far too sleepy to notice anything much, and the balloon passed overhead without them ever knowing.
But at least one pair of sharp eyes turned in wonder and astonishment to gaze at the sky. Shadow had just left Green Island. He had clambered over the low rocks scattered at the edge of it. He had begun to jog purposefully homeward across open country, when something made him duck back and crouch out of sight behind a low boulder. He had seen many wonderful sights on his walkabout. Yet he never expected to see anything quite as breathtaking as this.
He saw a basket, held up by some sort of rippling, giant red bubble, drifting silently across the sky on the stiff breeze – and rapidly losing height! There was something in the basket, moving restlessly. Was it the head of a leopard? No, it was a piece of cloth that was marked with spots like a leopard. But what was holding it? Not a meerkat, surely? It was! And look! There was another meerkat peeping over the top of the basket… and another…
Ayeee! Shadow was at once delighted and shocked. He knew those faces! How strange. How wonderful. And how alarming. Where were all these brave little creatures flying to?
He lifted his gaze then and saw, riding on the wind just above the flying puffball, an escort of graceful flamingos. Then he noticed with alarm something else circling silently, even higher! It was a bird of prey, an eagle owl, its great wings spread.
It was The Silent Enemy!
“At last!” The Silent Enemy said to himself. “The waiting is almost over. Fearless, their uncle, has escaped me twice now. Twice he has made me suffer. Those fat little meerkats are in my power. They will serve nicely as my supper and my sweet revenge!”
Chapter 13
Mimi was still waving at the lions when Little Dream picked out Green Island over to his right. He remembered Green Island well. It was the place where the pawprints had led him and his brother and sister, denting the powdery crust of the dry salt pans. He had hoped that the prints would lead to where his lost mama would be waiting. Instead, the kits found Griff the lion cub, lost and starving and in need of their help.
“It’s no good,” said Mimi with a sigh. “Nobody can see me.”
The wind had shifted slightly and the basket was tilting now. Green Island was shrinking away and the cloud-hopper was dropping lower and lower, gliding fast in the direction of another island… a pink one!
A pink one?
“I didn’t know they had pink islands,” said Little Dream. “You don’t suppose it’s going to come up and crash into us, do you?”
Before any of the kits (or even Trouble, who wasn’t really of an age to think about anything much) could answer, there was a loud commotion in the sky ahead of them. Curving round in a wide rosy arc from somewhere high above and behind them, hundreds of flamingos were lining up, two-three-four-abreast, so that they could head into the wind for landing. Their destination was not an island at all, but a lake formed by the recent rains that filled The Great Salt Pan.
“Honk!” cried the first wave of them as they realised that they were on a collision course with a big red flying elephant. “Honkhonk! Mind out, you great lump! Give over! Shove out the way! Can’t you see you’re in our flight-path?”
“Brace yourselves!” ordered Skeema, taking charge. “Some of them might hit us!”
Mimi put her arm behind her, grabbed Trouble and pulled him tight to her, and Little Dream curled up like a porcupine. As for Skeema, who had the heart of a lion, he had the presence of mind to pop Snap-snap into his mouth to sound a challenge and a warning – SKWEE! SKWEE! SKWEE!
“Use the eye-protector, Dreamie!” he called. “See if you can get it to flash and scare the blighters off!”
Up jumped Little Dream, boldly facing the rushing mass of swirling pink. There was no flash, sadly, only a weak little Whirr noise, not loud enough to out-shout a mosquito. Still, he stood firm, shoulder to shoulder with Skeema, certain that any moment the first wave of birds with their enormous, hooked black beaks would crash into them, punch the stuffing out of the canopy and send the kits in the basket plunging down to splatter like rare raindrops on the desert sand.
The balloon was now flying low enough for everyone to be able to smell a dreadful stink. Skeema turned his gaze downward and was astonished to see thousands of flamingos standing together on their stilt-like legs, their heads upside down in the water and sweeping from side to side. The lake smelt so bad it made his eyes water. And that, thought Skeema, is where we are all going to end up – in that filthy mess – drowned!
Chapter 14
Luckily, a stiff wind is a fickle thing. One minute it’ll be heading for The Great Salt Pan, teeming with the newborn shrimp and algae that give the millions of flamingos their fabulous colour as they feed. Next minute it’ll change its mind and breeze off in quite another direction.
“Phew!” said Skeema. “That was a close one.”
But they were far from out of danger as it was only now, when he saw that they were at their most helpless, that The Silent Enemy decided to make his move.
He folded his wings and dropped out of the sun like fizz-fire. He gave no cry; he made no sound. Surprise and silence were his best weapons.
As he dived closer to the basket, he leaned back, stretching out his feet and opening his wings a little, so as to slow himself down. He wanted to make sure he aimed his talons bang on target.
“Oo-hooo!” he gloated to himself. “I’m longing to see the fright in their eyes!” He knew that they would freeze with fear, like all the other kills he had made. They would give up and let themselves be snatched away. Look at them clinging together! he thought. I shall take all three at once!
It was true; they did see him (all except Trouble, who had taken cover in his baby-carrier) as they clung to each other in terror. They saw his terrible eyes, they saw his terrible pointed ears, heard his screech of triumph. They couldn’t take their eyes off the sharp curves of the claws that reached for them. It flashed across Skeema’s mind that The Silent Enemy’s powerful chest had an almost- perfect pattern of spots and bars on it. The only thing that spoilt it was an untidy cluster of feathers that refused to be preened into place. Right on his breastbone there was an untidy battle-scar. That was where Uncle Fearless had sunk his teeth.
And that was exactly where Shadow’s arrow struck home with a thwack!
Little Dream was sharp enough to hear the twang of Shadow’s bow. His eyes widened as he caught a glimpse of a two-legged creature standing close to a spreading acacia tree, still holding the bow in his outstretched arm.
Next thing, a tangle of brown and white was spinning towards the ground.
Bubo Africanus, The Silent Enemy, was dead.
“The Silent Enemy!” cried Little Dream. “That creature saved us from him!”
“What creature?” cried Mimi and Skeema, looking over the edge of the basket where Little Dream was looking. But the boy was nowhere to be seen.
As the kits turned back from the edge of the basket, they realised they had no time to celebrate. They were hardly more than a giraffe’s neck from the rock-scattered ground beneath, and they were rushing towards six great, red ebony trees that stood like giants watching over the vast desert sands.
“Red Ebony Point ahoy!” called Captain Skeema. “Hang on to me and brace yourselves, ch
aps!”
“Look out!” screamed Mimi, as first they bounced and skidded over the top of a low acacia tree. The rattle of the twigs across the bottom of the wicker basket was terrifying. Then came an ear-splitting racket from a colony of weaver birds who felt the tremor run through their dangling nests, thatched apartments that hung just underneath the shady top.
Still the balloon raced on – but disaster lay just ahead. “Help!” screamed all of the kits at once. There was no avoiding the enormously tall, red ebony tree right in front of them. With a deafening crash, the canopy was slashed to shreds by tearing branches and instantly, the basket swung on its ropes and was smashed against the trunk.
In a few seconds, two of the gas cylinders had burst, and the basket was awash with liquid propane, the whole thing exploding in a massive ball of fire.
Shadow was close enough to feel the heat of the explosion when it came. He flung himself flat on his face and in that way avoided being shot through with bits of twig and branch that flew like arrows at him.
When he looked up, he had to raise his arm to shield himself from the awful heat. The upper branches of the ebony were crackling with flames. Soon the whole tree was blazing like a torch and sending up a plume of smoke thick enough for any creature within thirty miles to see.
Of his brave little meerkat friends, there was not a sign.
The pickup was less than a mile away at the time of the explosion. By driving like a madman, Professor Clutterbuck had almost caught up with the runaway cloud-hopper. He and Daniela Pipistrella had been watching its progress anxiously for the last five minutes, only too aware that it was losing height fast.
They could hardly bear to watch as they saw the balloon head straight for an enormous, red ebony tree.
“Oh, no! Please, no!” wailed Daniela and clutched the professor’s arm.
As the fireball blossomed in the sky just over the ridge, the professor swung the driving-wheel, jammed his foot on the brake and brought the pickup to a grinding halt. The cloud of dust that had been following the pickup caught up with it and everything disappeared in the choking cloud.
That included Fearless, Radiant and the babies. As soon as the professor hit the brakes, they’d been shot into the air… right over the cabin of the pickup. Luckily, they had a soft landing in the middle of a tsamma-melon bush.
When the dust cleared, they looked about anxiously, not even taking time to dust themselves down. More than anything else, they hoped to see that the flying Blah-blah nest had landed softly on the ground. But to their bitter disappointment and misery, what they actually saw was a gigantic tree on fire and the last shreds of red material being eaten up by hungry flames among its top branches. As for the nest carrying the kits and their precious baby – it had vanished like smoke.
Chapter 15
In fact, the meerkat kits had been catapulted out of the basket of the burning balloon – first on to the lower branches of the ebony, then into a driedoring bush, and then on to the desert sand.
For a while they lay silent, stunned and still in the burning sun. Then they picked themselves up, as they knew they must, and ran together to get under the sheltering branches of the acacia tree that they had so nearly crashed into.
When a colony of weaver birds is upset, they let everybody know it. They get into a flap. “This is bad. This is a bad time! No more visitors!” they cried, dozens of them whistling past the ears of Skeema, Mimi, Little Dream and baby Trouble. “First we have snakes moving in among the egg-sitters in the darktime! Swallowing our eggs! Snatching our fledglings! Then along comes a big noise, then this fire, this smoke! And who invited them? Not us! Not us! Chirroo! Chirroo! So we don’t want you! Shoo!”
Never mind that these visitors were badly battered and fearfully frit, and all they needed was a place to recover from their fall and shelter from the coming dark and all the enemies it hid… The meerkat kits got buzzed, they got bombed and they got threatened. Chirrrrooo! Keep out! Scram!
That’s weaver birds for you. But weaver birds don’t worry meerkats. Noisy as it was under the spreading branches of the acacia tree, they were safe here for the moment.
“Everyone OK?” panted Skeema.
“OK,” said Trouble, peeking out nervously from behind Mimi. The others were stunned into silence for a moment, but meerkats can’t afford to waste time feeling sorry for themselves. They checked to see if any bones were broken. No. Bruises didn’t count.
In a daze, the kits looked about them for cover. They were quick to see a hollow among the roots at the base of the tree.
“Why don’t we get in there?” suggested Little Dream, still trembling.
“Not yet,” said Skeema. “There might be something living down there already. There could be a rock-monitor or anything. I suggest we just lie low here until we get our strength back.”
He knew that to be out in the open with no bolthole to run to is not the meerkat way. The Silent Enemy might be dead, but that still left plenty of room for a martial eagle or a goshawk. And apart from the branches above them, there was precious little beyond in the way of bushes or thick grasses or other ground cover – only some remarkably tall ebony trees, one of them black now and still smoking. Thankfully, the other trees were not standing close enough for the fire to be able to jump on them. Not that that was much comfort. Not to a small mob of little meerkats far from home. Their heads were full of cheetahs that might come sprinting at them, and swarming packs of jackals or hyenas.
Then Trouble began to mew with hunger. Having sicked up his breakfast, he was starving.
“Want Mama! Hungry!” he cried sadly.
“Where are we? What are we going to do?” said Little Dream quietly.
“Hush, everyone!” whispered Skeema. “You never know who’s listening!”
And indeed somebody was listening, and watching them too. It was Shadow.
Shadow was kneeling by a thorn bush not far away. He had recovered his arrow from the body of the eagle owl he had shot down and was now intent on tying the creature’s legs together with twine made from woven grasses.
He had almost finished this task when the cries from Trouble made him jerk his head to see where they came from. The bright white of his eyes and teeth lit up his shining face. So his little friends had not been blown to pieces when their flying-machine had exploded! And there was a baby with them. A painted baby!
Some time ago, in Green Island, he had entered the cave sacred to his ancestors and painted a picture of himself on the wall. He had also drawn these meerkats because they were special to him. And now, very gently, he spoke three words of friendship to them in his language, the language of the San people. The words he spoke were, “Go, safe, home.”
Of course, meerkats cannot speak the language of any Blah-blah, from any tribe. But the San language is full of gentle clicks, and the Really Mads had no fear of a gentle click or two. They stood quite still and watched the boy as he reached into his leather bag and drew out a handful of nuts, berries and still-wiggling grubs. He placed some in his own mouth and chewed eagerly to show they were safe. Then he laid the rest in a small heap in front of him on some fallen leaves.
Having offered this gift, his next moves were smooth and silent. He pulled a feather from the limp body of the eagle owl and blew it into the air as a sign that he wished the little meerkats luck next time they went flying. Then he slung his kill over his shoulder. He was planning to roast The Silent Enemy for his supper. He picked up his spear and his bow, stood upright and took a deep breath.
He had a long way to go. He had worked out that before he arrived home, he might need to light three campfires for himself – perhaps four. But then he would be back among his people. He would share the family-fire, the family-feast, and then he would sing the story of the magic meerkats. He would sing of the little warriors who could tame lions and who knew how to fly. He would dance them being blown to pieces and he would dance them back to life again!
He was ready. He had no mor
e business here. In three clicks he was off and running.
“Go. Safe. Home.”
It was Little Dream who ran over and picked up the feather. His keen nose caught not just the scent of The Silent Enemy. There was another scent that he had smelled in the cave on Green Island.
“Do you remember the shapes we saw on the wall?” he asked his brother and sister. “We saw shapes in the cave on Green Island that looked like meerkats. And there was another shape that looked like a young Blah-blah. That was him! Don’t you see? We found him – or he found us!” He got no reply, so he added, “He was the one that saved us from The Silent Enemy!”
But the others weren’t listening. Their minds were concentrated on the food spread out on the table of dry leaves. They sniffed the offerings and found them good.
“Go ahead,” said Mimi. “Try one of these, Trouble. They’re lovely.”
“Ubbly,” said Trouble, and tried three.
“Come on, Dreamie, come and eat!” said Mimi with her mouth full.
“Shhhh!” ordered Skeema. He sat up, ears cocked, nostrils twitching. “I can smell something! There! The wind’s blowing it from that direction.” He was pointing to a rise beyond the scattering of drie doring bushes.
Trouble let out a squeal as Mimi grabbed him between her teeth and ran like the wind to take cover under the bushes. The others dashed alongside, hissing “Quiet! Quiet, Trouble! You’ll give us away.”
When they were safely out of sight and the baby was hushed, Skeema sneaked to the top of the ridge to spy out on the land.
It only took him a moment for his eyes to confirm what his nose told him. He dashed back to the hiding place with the news.
“What is it?” whispered Mimi.