by Matt Haig
‘I can’t . . . I can’t breathe . . .’ She felt a sudden need to step away, and so she started walking, then running, out of the reptile house. Out into air and sunlight, with Ramesh jogging behind.
‘What’s up?’ he asked.
‘I just felt a bit dizzy,’ Evie lied. ‘It’s fine.’
Five minutes later Evie and Ramesh were at the chimpanzee enclosure.
They saw some teenagers, not from their school, who were all laughing at another boy who was standing in front of the chimpanzees, trying to do an impression of them.
‘Oooh ack acka ooh ack ack acka,’ said the boy, smiling at how funny he was.
But Evie wasn’t really listening to the boy.
‘It’s so embarrassing,’ said the chimpanzee closest to her. ‘To think we are related to these hairless monkeys.’
‘Oh Cynthia, don’t,’ said another, a male chimp, hanging upside down from a thick branch. ‘You are SUCH a downer.’
But then they heard something.
‘What was that?’ said the first chimpanzee, Cynthia.
And Ramesh was asking the same question, out loud.
Evie heard it too now.
Screaming coming from beyond the aviary behind them.
Now it was Ramesh’s face that was filled with panic. ‘Oh no.’
‘What?’
‘The noise. The screaming. I know where it’s coming from. It’s the lion enclosure . . .’
They both started running, back through the reptile house and the aviary, until they were there, pushing their way through the crowds that were gathering. Some of these people were gasping or crying or wailing.
A woman spotted that Ramesh was wearing the yellow sweater that was the uniform of workers in Lofting Zoo. Even though Ramesh was twelve, he was tall and looked a bit older.
‘Do something!’ the woman cried. Evie felt she recognised her.
‘What happened?’ Ramesh asked.
‘It’s my son! He’s fallen! He climbed up the fence! I tried to stop him! And . . . and . . . he’s in there. He’s in there with the lions. LOOK!’
The Lion’s Den
vie pushed through the crowd quickly, ahead of Ramesh.
Once at the fence, it took a few seconds for her to spot the boy.
She stared over the sunken enclosure at the lions.
And then she saw him.
A child. A little boy.
Evie turned back to Ramesh, who was a bit further back in the crowd.
‘Do something!’ Evie shouted. ‘There’s definitely a kid in the enclosure!’
She saw Ramesh looking in horror as he grabbed the walkie talkie from his belt. ‘Calling all units! Emergency! There is a child in the lion enclosure! Repeat! THERE IS A CHILD IN THE LION ENCLOSURE! Mum! Everybody! THERE IS A HUMAN CHILD IN THE LION ENCLOSURE!’
Evie couldn’t see clearly, the boy’s back was turned, and he was standing near one of the trees. He had hurt himself and was hobbling a little in pain. He walked forward, as the crowd gasped ‘No!’
He was heading towards the four lions. Three were lying down but one – a strong and powerful-looking lion – was walking over towards the boy. A female, Evie realised, because it had no mane. Evie knew that it was the lionesses that were often the most dangerous. They were the ones who killed their prey for the rest of the pride to enjoy. But another lion, a male with a big bushy mane, was also standing up to see what was going on.
The walking lioness got close, then stopped and inspected the boy.
That was when Evie realised it was HIM.
The little boy in the red T-shirt with wild curly hair.
‘Oh no,’ said Evie.
It was Sam.
His mother, standing at the edge of the lion enclosure, screamed, ‘Like a statue! Stand still like a statue!’
Meanwhile, the lioness skulked closer to little Sam. And began looking intently into his eyes.
Evie tried to blot out the noise of the crowd. She remembered what Granny Flora had taught her about liquorice. To concentrate on nothing else. She stared at the lioness’s face, quite far away, and tried to let the world disappear.
She felt the lioness’s mind prowl into her own.
‘I need to eat the boy,’ the lioness was thinking.
‘He does look very tasty,’ agreed the lion standing further behind.
Evie pictured a bow in her mind. And turned a thought into an arrow. Hard and sharp and to the point.
‘No,’ was the thought. ‘No, don’t eat the boy. He has a mother. He has people who love him. Please, don’t eat the boy. Don’t eat Sam.’
She was bright red with the effort of trying to make the lioness understand.
But she was too far away. There were too many people. There was too much commotion. The lioness took another step towards Sam.
‘Make sure you share him with us,’ said the male.
Evie looked around. She couldn’t see Ramesh now. He was lost in the crowd. No one was looking at anything apart from the boy.
Someone who worked at the zoo was running over.
But there was still no one from the zoo inside the lion enclosure.
Evie looked at Sam. He was still hurt, but he had gone quiet.
She knew, suddenly, what Sam was doing in there.
He was trying to use the Talent on the lioness. He wanted to talk to her.
Evie remembered he had told her he couldn’t talk to normal cats, so a lion was going to be impossible. And she knew that in a matter of seconds the lioness was going to do something.
Without another thought, Evie was climbing over the timber and metal fence.
‘What the hell are you doing?’ asked a man next to her, trying to grab her leg. She kicked his hand away.
‘Sorry!’ she said.
She was on the other side of the fence now, standing high on the outer rim, a ledge between the fence and the lower level of the enclosure floor.
There was a long drop to reach the lion area.
Evie fell onto the dry, yellowing grass and hurt her ankle.
Behind her she could hear Ramesh. ‘Evie! Evie! Oh man. What are you doing?’
But Evie couldn’t listen to the voices of humans now. She had to focus on the lioness – the lioness standing right in front of little Sam.
‘I am going to eat the boy,’ thought the lioness, licking her lips. ‘He looks a bit crunchy. But tasty.’
Evie thought as hard and sharply as she could and aimed the thought right between the lioness’s hungry eyes.
‘No.’
The lioness saw her and flicked her tail.
‘Yes,’ said the lioness. ‘Yes, I am going to eat him. And then, after that, I am going to eat you.’
‘But you’ll still share, right?’ said the male in the background. ‘I’m getting REALLY hungry.’
Evie continued staring at the lioness as Sam turned around and saw her.
‘It’s you!’ he said. ‘I was waiting for you to come . . .’
‘What?’
‘I knew it was safe if you were here!’
She put her finger to her lips, but there was no shushing him.
‘Tell me how to speak to the lion! I want to speak to a lion! Please!’
Evie could see he had a rip in his jeans where he had fallen. And his knee and hands were bleeding a bit.
She needed to get closer to him. She needed to get between Sam and the lioness.
The Queen of Beasts
bove her, and all around, the crowds of zoo visitors were still lost in horror. Well, apart from the people who were filming it all on their phones.
‘We don’t want to hurt you,’ Evie told the lioness. ‘Come on. We have people who love us. Please . . .’
‘Why should I care about you humans? You don’t care about me. You just come to point and take photos.’
Evie had a quick glance around for some sign of help, but there was nothing. Ramesh was nowhere to be seen.
She was scared, suddenly.
Lions were hard creatures to argue with. And also, if you lose an argument with a lion you end up as lunch, which is not a great way to end up.
The lioness walked closer to Evie, ignoring the boy now.
The lioness growled at Evie. It looked ready to pounce.
She tried a different tactic.
‘You’re right,’ thought Evie, staring hard into the predator’s amber eyes. ‘They don’t care about you. Not really. Not next to a human life. So be careful what you do.’
Evie kept her eyes on the lioness, trying to make her face match the mind message.
The lioness didn’t seem to be listening.
And then, a voice, shouting from the crowd.
‘EVIE! STAND BACK!’
It was Mrs Sengupta.
She was holding a kind of rifle. She was ready to fire at the lioness. Evie was pretty sure she would fire a tranquiliser dart rather than shoot the lioness. But Evie was also pretty sure the lioness wouldn’t know that.
‘Look! Look up there. If you so much as scratch either one of us, they will kill you. You will be dead. I’m sorry. But it’s true. They will kill you. If you touch either the boy or me, they will kill you.’
The lioness looked up at the watching crowd, then back at Evie. Her thoughts came strong, like punches. ‘You are lying. You are a bad liar. Your mind is as weak as a gazelle’s.’
‘No. It will happen. Please . . . if you hurt me, or the little boy, they will kill you.’
The lioness lifted her chin up and gave Evie an arrogant glare. ‘I am the queen of beasts. No one is in control of me.’
‘Oh, really? Look around. Can you leave here if you want to? No. The humans are in charge here.’
The lioness looked to the side, then scratched her ear. For a moment she looked as innocent as a housecat. ‘If I back down, I’ll look weak.’
Evie thought, ‘And if you don’t back down, you’ll look dead. Because, well, you’ll be dead. Dead. Totally dead.’
Evie might have been overdoing it with the dead stuff, but it was getting through. It’s the one thing all animals have in common: they don’t like the idea of dying very much.
The lioness was thinking hard, as the three other lions came closer.
Evie tried to remember what Granny Flora had told her. She closed her eyes. She looked for the darkest part of her vision. The part like liquorice. But it was a sunny day, and the darkness of her closed eyes was more like a redness. But still she tried. She tried to find the dawa. The river of life that connected her to the lioness.
She remembered the words of Granny Flora.
Don’t just understand the animal. Be the animal.
There, in the sun-red blankness of her closed eyes, she felt a strange stillness. She finally could sense she was getting close to it. The dawa! She focused on that darkness as it grew, imagining the lioness all the time – her face, her skulking movements, the voice of her thoughts . . . And then, suddenly, she felt like she wasn’t there at all.
She saw herself from the lioness’s perspective. Standing still, eyes closed. She saw Sam, too, who was starting to look scared, chewing his own fingers.
But in that same moment she also felt the force of the dawa. Granny Flora had told her that the first time she experienced it, it would be powerful. It entered her mind like a gale-force wind.
The lioness knocked her off her feet without even touching her. And as she landed on the grassy ground the connection was lost.
‘What happened, Evie?’ shouted Sam. ‘Was that the lion in your mind? That is so cool.’
Evie, on the floor, saw a door slowly open in the enclosure. A zoo worker was there in the shadows. Ramesh! They had to escape to the door, but Evie knew an adult lion could run over fifty miles an hour pursuing its prey. So they couldn’t run together without one of them being eaten. She decided to stay and distract the lioness.
‘Sam,’ she said quietly. ‘When I stand up, you walk very slowly towards that open door, do you understand?’
But something had happened between the lioness and Evie. Something in that moment of touching the dawa.
‘You’re right,’ the lioness said.
She turned to the other lions.
‘The human girl is right,’ she told them. ‘It’s not worth it.’
The male lion was disappointed. ‘Well, your call, Delia. But wow, that would have been fun.’
Evie slowly stood up.
‘Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.’
She walked over to Sam and took his hand. ‘Come with me, and you’ll stay alive,’ she told him.
Sam stared at all four of the lions. Including the male one, still licking his lips. He could see the lion’s sharp, hooked teeth.
He gulped. The little boy seemed to realise how foolish he had been.
And so they – Evie and Sam – walked calmly, steadily, watched by hundreds of faces and cameras, towards the open door, where Ramesh was standing, waiting for them.
What Evie’s Dad Said
vie’s dad was in the garage fixing a broken wardrobe.
He was being very aggressive with a hammer and a nail, which resulted in him banging his own thumb. And this made him swear. But he wasn’t just angry about the hammer. He was angry with Evie, and she knew it.
‘Dad, I’m really, really sorry. But what else could I do?’
He ignored this question as he walked around holding his thumb.
‘Are you crazy?’
Evie shrugged. ‘No, Dad.’
‘What were you thinking?’
Evie decided to be honest. ‘I was thinking that no one else would have been able to communicate with the lioness. I was thinking that there was a good chance that I could save that boy’s life. I was thinking I had no choice.’
‘There is always a choice, Evie. And besides . . . even with the Talent, you can’t just jump into a lion enclosure. Especially as you haven’t used it in a long time.’
‘I have used it,’ she said.
‘What? Evie! Why? After everything I told you.’
‘I’m sorry, but . . .’ She stopped short of telling him that Granny Flora had been training her.
‘You’re lucky you weren’t killed!’
‘But I wasn’t!’
‘Yet.’
Evie was flummoxed. ‘Yet? Yet? What do you mean?’
He walked over to a battered table full of crumpled papers and tools. He picked up his phone.
‘Look. It’s all over social media!’
Evie stared in horror as he showed her posts of the camera phone footage on YouTube and Facebook and Twitter and Instagram. Of her and Sam and the lion.
‘Girl tames lion’ was the title of the video.
She saw a news headline. ‘GIRL SAVES BOY FROM LION’S DEN’. And another: ‘THE LION WHISPERER’.
Just at that moment the doorbell rang.
Evie followed her dad through the garage and into the house and watched as he opened the door. Outside there was a smartly dressed woman holding a microphone, with a cameraman standing behind her.
‘Hello Mr Trench, this is Scarlett Adams from BBC News. I just wondered if we could speak to your amazing daughter about what happened at the zoo today . . .’
‘No. No, you can’t.’
Scarlett Adams kept smiling. ‘Well, maybe we could have a word with you, then? We have already spoken with the mother of the little boy – Sam – and apparently he believes he can talk to animals. With his mind.’
‘What NONSENSE!’ Evie’s dad said.
‘The boy said that Evie can do it, too. That’s why the lion retreated. That’s what he says. Does your daughter believe she can talk to lions, Mr Trench?’
‘Of course she doesn’t. Now, good day!’
As the door slammed in the news reporter’s face, Evie’s dad glared at her. He looked frightened more than angry. And then he quietly swore in Spanish. ‘See! See what you’ve done. This is a nightmare.’
His phone started to ring.
&nb
sp; ‘Hello?’ he said. ‘No . . . No, I do not want to talk to the New York Times. And nor does my daughter.’ Then, when he had hung up the phone, Evie’s dad said, ‘It’s international now. The New York Times! And now that blooming boy is telling the world you have the Talent. This is a nightmare! And you know why it is a nightmare, don’t you?’
Evie nodded grimly. ‘Mortimer.’
‘Exactly.’
There Is No Normal
he next day was Sunday. Evie and Granny Flora were convincing her dad not to move. He had been halfway through packing everything in Evie’s bedroom into cases.
‘We can’t stay here! He’ll come for us . . .’
‘Dad, we can’t just run away. He’ll come for the boy, too. That’s all over the news as well. We can’t just leave him here.’
‘Lo siento. I’m sorry. That boy is not my responsibility, Evie; you are. My final promise to your mother, before the venom took over completely, was that I’d look after you. She just wanted me to keep you safe, Evie. We’ve got to go. And we’ll take Granny Flora too.’
Up until this point, Granny Flora had been sitting in silence in the corner of the room, with Plato the bearded dragon on her knee. She had her eyes closed, as if in a deep trance. But now Granny Flora’s eyes sprang wide open.
‘NO!’ she shouted.
Evie’s dad was confused. ‘No, what?’
‘We can’t move. We have to stay here. That’s what Plato believes. If we leave, the trouble will end us. If we stay, we can end it.’
Evie’s dad didn’t like the sound of this. ‘We can end it? We can end it? ¿Qué significa eso? What does that mean?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Granny Flora. ‘I just know we have to stay. And wait.’
‘And in the meantime?’ wondered Evie, staring at the bearded dragon’s mysterious ancient face.
Granny Flora popped a liquorice in her mouth. ‘In the meantime, we carry on as normal.’
So that was what they did.
They carried on as normal. Or they tried to.
The trouble was, nothing seemed normal any more. Evie was gossiped about continually at school. She was now known as ‘Lion Girl’.
She hoped the gossip would fade, but the whole day went by and she was still being laughed at. She tried to focus on other things. In her science class, she got an A for a biology test, possibly for knowing that when some plants are being eaten by caterpillars they send chemical signals to wasps, who then come along and attack the caterpillars. In art, she drew a really detailed picture of Scruff, from memory. And ignored it when someone behind her whispered, ‘She probably thinks she can talk to dogs, too.’