by Tamara Gray
Zach said: ‘Maybe forty days is too long, Levi. He’s a runt of a kid. He could starve or be eaten by one of the feral creatures out here.’
Jeb threw his head back and laughed like a deranged hyena.
Levi rolled his eyes. ‘And your point is?’
‘How much are you going to pay me?’ Caleb asked again. He wanted to keep them talking in the hope that they’d change their minds about abandoning him to almost certain death.
Zach grinned. ‘Yeah, Levi, if he survives the forty days without his mommy, how much are you going to pay him?’
Levi mentioned a sum so large that Caleb gasped. It was more than his mother’s bakery earned in a whole year.
Levi jingled his car keys as Jeb stamped out the fire. ‘There’s a condition,’ he told Caleb with an evil smile. ‘You have to be alive to collect the money. If you’re dead, it doesn’t count.’ He climbed into the Land Rover, still laughing.
An hour after they’d driven away and left him in the eerie dark of the mountains, freed from his bonds but with nothing but his matches and bottle of water to sustain him, the cruel jeers of the three still echoed in Caleb’s ears. He had no hope of being rescued. Apart from the occasional hunter, nobody ever came to these mountains. Few people were wealthy enough to afford an electric four-wheel drive vehicle capable of making the climb and there’d be no other reason to visit such a barren, hostile place. Unless his captors had an uncharacteristic attack of conscience, he was on his own.
Caleb sniffed, dried his eyes on his sleeve and looked up at the rocky outcrop above him. In amongst the crags and scrub were several caves. For as long as he could remember, there’d been rumours among the townspeople that feral and mutant predators—some from the old zoo—stalked the mountains. He would have liked to use a cave to shelter from the night wind, but dared not risk it. Instead he stoked up the remnants of his tormentors’ fire and lay down beside it. In spite of the extreme cold and his very real fear that he could die of hypothermia or be attacked by wild beasts before morning, he was asleep and dreaming almost instantly.
In the dream, he was an observer in a post-apocalyptic, Middle Eastern landscape of unrelenting bleakness. Apart from a hot breeze sifting through the dust, nothing stirred. Out of nowhere, a boy of about thirteen appeared. He walked away down the main street, his back to Caleb. He was small for his age but very strong, and clad only in a loincloth and dusty sandals. A sleeve of arrows was slung across his shoulders.
Some invisible enemy began to throw stones at him. Without looking round, he deflected them with the palm of his hand. The stones were followed by arrows, but the boy never used his own to fight back. He simply continued his calm, purposeful walk. Even when gunfire shattered the silence, the boy never broke his stride. He deflected bullets and, later, missiles, as effortlessly as a character in a video game. They glanced off the palm of his hand. Eventually, the biggest bomb on earth was sent to destroy him. The boy dispatched it as if it were nothing.
He’d now reached the end of the street. All was still and quiet. As Caleb watched, the boy sat down on the steps of a ruined building. Over the roofs behind him came a tiger. Against the beige of the surroundings, its burnished burnt-orange and jet-black-striped coat seemed to blaze like a naked flame. Caleb tried to yell a warning. The boy had survived every weapon that the world could throw at him, but he was no match for the tiger stealing up behind him.
The tiger jumped onto the step. The boy reached out and put his arm around the beast and cuddled it, and Caleb realized with awe that the tiger was the boy’s friend. It was then that Caleb had a premonition. He saw that in the future tigers would once again roam the earth and he would walk among them, unafraid.
* * *
So real was the dream that when Caleb woke to find a tiger looking down on him, he just smiled and murmured: ‘You’re as magnificent as I always imagined you’d be.’
The tiger snarled and snapped at Caleb’s jugular vein in a way that caused his heart to stop beating for at least a minute before it started up again, irregularly. He had time to think, ‘So Levi and his dad lied about killing the tigers—or at least one of them,’ before the tiger grabbed him by the belt and began hauling him up the mountain. Bumping along the gravel in the rosy glow of dawn, Caleb felt peculiarly unafraid. The dream had left him peaceful. If the tiger was planning to eat him, there was not a lot he could do about it.
The cave had a leathery, mossy smell to it. Once inside, the tiger did not eat Caleb right away but lay down and contemplated him with a slightly puzzled air. Caleb, for his part, lay unmoving, drinking in the beauty of the animal: its strength, its grace, its huge paws, green eyes and dramatic colouring. He did not pray to be spared by it. Rather he prayed that he would live as long as possible so he could savour every second he spent in its presence.
An hour went by and nothing happened. The tiger watched him and he watched the tiger. But as the temperature rose, he became increasingly hungry and thirsty. He thought of his bottle of water. Could he get it without being attacked? He stood up. The tiger bared its fangs but did nothing more. Caleb set off down the mountain, followed at a distance by the tiger. Beside the ashes of the fire, he found his bottle of water. It had been broken in the night by marauding beasts, possibly attracted by the meat bones. Caleb knew very well that without water, he’d be dead in days.
He looked at the tiger. ‘Where do you drink?’ he asked her. ‘Where do you find water?’
The tiger growled, but it was not a growl of rage. It returned to its cave, with Caleb following. Together they spent a long, quiet, hot day. However, Caleb was used to those. He thought about his mother and hoped that Levi had done as he promised and she wasn’t worrying. In the afternoon, the tiger got up and climbed the mountain, keeping to the shadows. Caleb went after her. She entered a narrow space between two rocks and set off along a dank, claustrophobic tunnel. Suddenly the space widened and became lighter. Caleb’s mouth dropped open in amazement. They had entered in a vast cavern illuminated by a shaft of sunlight. In the centre of it was a spring that fed a clear pool.
The tiger immersed herself in the water. After a moment’s hesitation, Caleb did the same, drinking his fill as he did so. Thirst quenched, he and the tiger lay studying one another. Caleb would willingly have drowned in the sacred green depths of the tiger’s eyes. It was beyond his comprehension that Levi and his father could have taken the life of her mate.
When darkness fell, they returned to the cave. The tiger disappeared for a long while and reappeared with a rabbit she had killed for food. When she had eaten her fill, she seemed to have no objections to Caleb taking the rest. She watched as he built a fire at the cave entrance and cooked it. The eating of meat, of flesh, was repellant to him, but he knew it was his only chance of survival.
The tiger enjoyed the warmth of the fire. The flames lent a fiery sheen to her coat. When Caleb grew tired, he lay down beside her, resting his face against the silken fur of her muscular shoulder. In his dreams he thought he could hear her purring.
For forty days and forty nights, this was the pattern of their existence. They swam, they ate, they slept, they enjoyed one another’s company. Caleb marked the passage of time with small stones. When at last a plume of dust signaled the return of the Land Rover, he wept not with fear—he knew he would never be afraid again—but because the most magical month of his life was almost over. He and the tiger hid in the darkest corner of the cave. Outside, he could hear the teenagers arguing as they searched for him.
Levi said: ‘I don’t know why we’re even bothering to look for his bones. That little runt couldn’t have survived a storm in a teacup. Let’s tell his mother he was abducted by water raiders and hasn’t been seen since.’
The tiger growled.
‘What was that?’ asked Zach, alarmed. ‘It sounded like a wild cat.’
Levi marched into the cave, the twins following reluctantly behind. ‘Well, it won’t be anything larger than somebody’s missing mogg
ie,’ he assured his friend. ‘My father and I have shot everything else.’
The tiger gave a savage roar. She would have clawed the three in an instant had Caleb not kept a soothing arm around her. The roar echoed around the cave, causing the teenagers to scream like girls.
‘Calm down,’ Caleb instructed from the shadows. An idea had come to him.
‘Caleb!’ cried Levi looking around frantically. ‘You nearly scared the life out of us. Why are you making that hideous noise? Where are you? I can’t see a thing in here.’
The tiger snarled again. ‘You mean, why do I sound like a tiger?’ Caleb asked. ‘Simple. After you left me here to die, my body was inhabited by the spirit of the tigers you killed. You remember them, don’t you, Levi? You had at least one of them stuffed and mounted, and it’s hanging on a wall in your home. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, Levi, but the spirit of that tiger wants revenge.’
Jeb cried: ‘Didn’t I tell you that them stuffed tigers always look at me funny?’
Levi went white. ‘You’re lying, Caleb,’ he accused. ‘I don’t know how you’re still alive, you little weasel, but when I get my hands on you, you’ll be sorry.’
Caleb lit a match. He’d positioned himself so that his head was concealed by the tiger’s. When the yellow light flared, Levi and the twins saw a tiger’s head on a boy’s body.
There were more screams. The match went out.
‘It was my dad, not me,’ cried Levi. ‘He shot one of the tigers and wounded the other one and I guess it probably died from its injuries. We bought an extra tiger skin on the internet. I’m sorry, tiger spirit. I’m so, so sorry. Please don’t hurt me. Caleb, ask it to eat Jeb instead. He has more meat on his bones.’
‘What does it have to do with Jeb?’ Zach said angrily. ‘He didn’t shoot any tigers.’
‘Yeah, I don’t wanna be no dinner for no tiger,’ protested Jeb.
The tiger pulled from Caleb’s grasp and let out another blood curdling roar.
Levi burst into tears. ‘Make it stop,’ he pleaded with Caleb. ‘What does it want? What do you want?’
‘We only want what’s fair,’ replied Caleb. ‘The tiger spirit wants to be left in peace on this mountain, with no one disturbing her ever. As for me, I want the money you promised my mother…’
‘It’s in the Land Rover,’ interrupted Zach. ‘Levi tried to get out of bringing it on the grounds that you were likely to be dead, but I told him a promise was a promise. I said that if you survived forty days in this hellhole, you’d have earned it.’
‘Take the money,’ Levi sobbed. ‘It’s all yours.’
‘That’s not all,’ said Caleb. ‘I also want my school fees and books and I want you and your two thugs to agree never to hurt or bother anyone passing through Shadow Alley ever again.’
‘Fine,’ sniffed Levi.
‘Agreed,’ said Zach.
‘Uh huh,’ grunted Jeb.
Under cover of darkness Caleb hugged the tiger, pressing his face to her silken fur. Tears ran down his face and it seemed to him that she was crying too. One day, tigers would roam the earth again and he’d walk among them unafraid, but until then, they were on their own.
He stepped from the shadows and the teenagers gasped. In the forty days he’d spent with the tiger, Caleb had changed from a boy to a man and filled out with muscle, but that was not what shocked them. What surprised them the most was that he had an aura of invincibility about him. Strength and calmness emanated from him.
‘Let’s go,’ he told them in a tone that brooked no argument. ‘My mum will be expecting me.’
Levi stumbled wordlessly after him, like a man who has found himself in one of his own nightmares. Zach and Jeb plied him with questions. How had he survived? What had he eaten? Why did he look so fit and well and confident? What was his secret?
Caleb said nothing. He just climbed into the Land Rover and counted his ‘wages.’ He couldn’t wait to see his mother’s face light up when he walked in the door with money that would transform their lives for the first time since his father died. He couldn’t wait to go to school again. But although he was looking forward to a fresh, bright start, and a big plate of his mum’s vegetarian food, nothing could erase the agony he felt at being parted from the best friend he’d ever had. His heart felt as if it were being ripped from his chest. He knew even then that he would have laid down his own life for her.
Absorbed in his own thoughts, he barely noticed the engine start up, and it was not until they were bounding down the rough road that he realized Levi wasn’t with them.
‘It’s time he had a taste of his own medicine,’ Zach was saying. ‘Forty days and forty nights. Let’s see if he makes it.’
Caleb sat up. ‘No,’ he cried. ‘He’ll never survive. Don’t leave him out here.’
‘You’re kidding, aren’t you?’ said Zach. ‘If you can do it, so can he. That was our challenge to him. Don’t worry, we won’t really abandon him for forty days, even if he deserves it for offering Jeb to the tiger spirit for a meal. We’ll come back and get him in the morning. By then he’ll have learned his lesson.’
Before they rounded the first bend, Caleb looked back. Silhouetted on the boulder behind Levi was the tiger. It could have been a trick of the light but it seemed to Caleb that, as the eighteen-year-old set off in the direction of the cave, swagger gone, the tiger was eyeing him with more than a modicum of interest.
The Bear
Who Wasn’t There
by Raffaella Barker
Once upon a time, not so very long ago, and not so far away, a little bear was playing snowballs with some children when he lost his way home. The cub, whose name was Arcas, hopped and tumbled for a while, waiting for the children to come and find him. No one came. He began to shiver. Even though he was a bear cub, with the thickest warmest coat you ever saw and shining eyes as dark and sweet as treacle, he was frightened to be out alone at dusk. He was happy when he was playing close to his friends. Arcas’s best friends were the children. He loved their piping voices and their laughter, he loved how the tiny ones spun and floated like dandelion flowers when they played on the swing and the wooden see-saw. He crinkled his bear eyes and smiled when the older ones wrapped loving arms around his neck and breathed warmly into his fur. The children were always there. Whenever Arcas sauntered out of the woods and across the road to Main Street, some of them would be there ready to play. Before the people came, before houses were built and warmth gleamed in the windows, and gold wrapped chocolates sparkled on the Christmas trees at snow time, he had been a lonely bear cub, living with his mother Callista in a shadowy den on the edge of the woods where the hill drops away to the river. Arcas had listened to the rushing of the stream. He heard skylarks far above and the wind in the trees of his homeland. He heard the emptiness, the echoing silence. And he was sad.
Once, many bears had lived in these dens, which interlocked like honeycomb on the edge of the tangled wood above town somewhere not so far away. The young bears tumbled and somersaulted in the pastures. They climbed trees for berries in the woods. They dived into the river to catch a silver fish and bat it with their paws, throwing it from one to another until some smart cub—on the cusp of growing up—would duck down, open wide and swallow that fish in one gulp. Arcas knew this because Callista had told him. Every winter, he and his mother snuggled into their den as the days grew grey and cold. Callista fed him nuts and honey to fill him with goodness for his long sleep, and told him stories of his ancestors. What she didn’t tell him though, was what had happened next.
Arcas was cold and tired. He tried to call to the children, but his snuffles and his whispered roar went nowhere in the muffled silence of falling snow. He only ever whispered his roar because otherwise he knew it would frighten the children. They were so small with their pink cheeks and smiling faces. Three of them would climb up on his back for a ride, hugging themselves close to him, urging him to run and whoosh and slide through the fields and hills around to
wn.
‘You are our dream bear, we wished you here and you came, just like it said in our books,’ they cried. ‘We love you Arcas.’ He loved them too, and now he had lost them, and he hadn’t said goodbye before tomorrow’s sleep began.
The lights of the town disappeared. Arcas was in a silver landscape, trotting towards nothing he recognised. He howled suddenly, he couldn’t help himself, he was scared. How would he be found? His mother was out gathering berries, she had told him that morning she would not be home until late.
‘Arcas you can go and play all day, for tomorrow we start our winter sleep. I will bring the final part of our feast and tomorrow we will dig ourselves in deep until spring.’ Arcas loved waking up in spring, trees were green, the river rushed with sparkling water and the children would be waiting for him, ready to play. But where was he now? Arcas saw a dark grove of what looked like nut trees. His mother might be there. He trotted in.
He found himself in a cave, not in a grove of trees at all. He crouched and fumbled on the ground, stumbling over some stones. He remembered his mother preparing for hibernation with him, and he struck the stones together and made a spark. Then he lit a torch. He was not in a shallow cave, he was deep in a maze of chambers like his own den, but unused. Curious, though his heart thumped as loud as a hammer on a sheet of tin, he shuffled further into the cave, and through a tunnel to the next one. There, his torch lit wall paintings. He stopped and stared in horror. There were hunters with spears, dozens of them, pursuing bears as they ran to shelter. There were pictures of bears trapped in nets and being dragged away in chains. There were bears dancing in front of faceless crowds, tall on their hind legs, eyes sad, fur matted. Arcas stared at them for some time, his eyes wide and shocked. He had never understood where all the ancestor bears his mother told him about had gone, and now he could see it for himself. The final painting was of a bigger bear, up on his hind legs, roaring and swiping the air with his claws. Swirling up from his paws were stars. Above him on the ceiling of the cave the stars had formed into bears in the sky. Arcas was relieved to see these bears: they looked happy.