by Jamie Rix
First edition for the United States published
in 2013 by Barron’s Educational Series, Inc.
Text © Jamie Rix 2012
Cover illustration © Hannah Shaw 2012
Inside illustrations © Sam Hearn 2012
First published in 2012 by
HarperCollins Children’s Books
77-85 Fulham Palace Road
Hammersmith, London W6 8JB
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced in any form or by any means without the
written permission of the copyright owner.
All inquiries should be addressed to:
Barron’s Educational Series, Inc.
250 Wireless Boulevard
Hauppauge, New York 11788
www.barronseduc.com
Print edition ISBN: 978-1-4380-0304-7
eISBN: 978-1-4380-9227-0
Library of Congress Catalog No.: 2012955328
First eBook Publication: April 2013
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
CHAPTER ONE
L
ying on her back, with her legs crossed at an angle, Mao Mao stripped the bamboo shoot with her teeth, then using the soggy stump as a pointing stick, waved it in front of her face.
“Look,” she said, munching methodically on the woody pulp in her mouth. “There’s a giant panda up there in the sky.”
Her daughter An, who was lying by her side and chewing on her own stick of bamboo, raised her eyes to look.
“And it’s being chased by a golden monkey,” she said without surprise, swallowing what was left in her mouth before taking another bite.
“I could watch clouds all day,” said her mother. “They make such interesting shapes. And they’re so quiet, so respectful. When you’re resting, listening to a sea of green bamboo growing, the last thing you want is a noisy interruption.”
“I agree,” said An. “Nobody likes a screaming wind or a crashing wave. Here on the grassy slopes of Mount Tranquil we prefer whispering clouds and the chuckle of a gentle stream.”
“You’re a girl after my own heart,” sighed Mao Mao, brushing a fly off the tip of her black-and-white nose. And with that, mother and daughter snuggled down into the soft bed of rhododendron leaves and prepared themselves for another tiring day of doing nothing.
Then suddenly, from the other side of the bamboo hedge, there was a terrifying scream. The very earth they were lying on seemed to rattle and shake, families of frightened grandala birds took flight, and, sitting bolt upright, An choked on her mouthful of pulp. A second scream accompanied by the thundering thump of heavy paw-steps made Mao Mao’s eyes snap open.
“What on earth!” she cried, sitting up and shaking the sleep out of her head by boxing her ears with the palms of her paws. Deep in a fuzzy recess of her brain a motherly instinct was sounding a warning that the scream belonged to her only son—An’s twin brother, Ping. But before she could shout at him to keep the noise down, the bamboo hedge to her right was flattened by a young panda cub, who tumbled through it and landed with a distinct lack of respect on her belly. It knocked the wind out of her, not to mention the chewed bamboo in her mouth, which ricocheted off Ping’s ear like a ping-pong ball.
Still panting, Ping flipped over and stood up on his mother’s round stomach as if she was nothing more than a grassy knoll.
“Run for your lives!” he yelled, grabbing the stick of bamboo out of his sister’s mouth and tugging at her paw to drag her to her feet. “Your lives are in danger!”
An refused to budge and snatched the stick of bamboo back.
“Don’t just lie there!” yelled Ping. “Mommy, please! Get up! Save yourself!”
“How can I,” she said calmly, “when there’s somebody standing on me?”
Ping jumped down and prodded his mother’s arm.
“There are poachers right behind me,” he cried urgently. “They’ve got literally millions of panda hides slung across their shoulders.”
“Millions?” she said, raising her eyebrows.
“Well, seven or eight,” admitted Ping. “But there is a look of evil in their eyes. If you don’t want to end up as a rug, follow me now!”
But Ping’s mother was unmoved. She simply snapped off another stick of bamboo from the hedge and resumed her methodical chewing. Ping had never seen such indifference to danger and redoubled his efforts.
“What’s the matter with you two?” he hollered. “Do you want to die?”
Mao Mao leaned forward and pinched Ping on the ear.
“Ow!” he cried. “What was that for?”
“You’ve interrupted my meal,” said his mother. “Not to mention the lovely peace and quiet.”
“But there are poachers,” Ping said half-heartedly. Even he appeared to be losing interest in the life-or-death news.
“If there are poachers,” his mother said evenly, “then I’m a panda from another planet; and I’m not, as you very well know, Ping. I am a panda from the Wolagong Nature Reserve, who sits in this clearing in the Serene Forest for fourteen hours a day eating bamboo—a lifestyle, incidentally, which suits me very well, but which, it would appear, does not appeal to you.”
“It’s boring,” said Ping. “And why doesn’t anybody ever believe a word I say?”
“Because your lying stinks worse than golden monkey poo,” snickered his sister, sticking out her tongue at him. “And it’s easy-peasy to spot when you’re lying because your mouth curls up like an ancient lychee into a snooty, ‘Aren’t-I-so-clever’ smirk.”
“You’re not helping, An,” said Mao Mao, before turning her disapproving gaze back to her son. “How many times do I have to tell you, Ping, to stop making up stories.”
“There’s nothing else to do around here,” he protested.
“You could eat bamboo,” she said.
“Oh, whoop-di-do!” Ping cheered sarcastically. “I can eat bamboo and poo forty-seven times a day!”
“There’s no need to be rude,” said his mother. “Giant pandas have lived this way for thousands of years.”
“Well, maybe it’s time for a change,” suggested Ping. “Maybe I wasn’t born to pose for the endless stream of visitors who pass by every day with their cameras. Maybe I am destined to be the first panda in the history of Wolagong who was born to lead a life of excitement and adventure! I have been speaking to my friend Hui and—”
An interrupted him.
“Hui is just a birdbrain,” she said dismissively. “I don’t believe anything he says either.”
“Hui is a grandala bird, who travels the world and knows everything,” Ping corrected her. “And he says that the world is full of interesting animals just waiting to meet me.”
His mother lay back down and contemplated the sky.
“It is enough that water is wet,” she said meaningfully. “It cannot also be fire.”
Ping sighed. His mother was fond of her irritating little sayings. She had a habit of slipping them into a conversation when she wanted the conversation to stop. Deep down Ping knew that she was right. A panda was a panda and he shouldn’t try to be something else. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t dream, did it?
Moving away from his mother and sister, Ping sat down out of their sight and picked up a handful of the bamboo stalks that he’d knocked over earlier when he’d tumbled through the hedge. He was just taking his first bite when there was a scampering and a chattering behind him, and before he could say, “What on Wolago
ng!” he was surrounded by an excitable troop of golden monkeys.
“What do you want?” he said, knowing full well what the monkeys wanted—what monkeys always wanted. To tease him. Pandas are quiet, contemplative creatures that like to think deeply, but golden monkeys are noisy chatterboxes interested only in tittle-tattle and gossip. In short, monkeys are trouble.
“Hello, Ping,” mocked their leader, Choo. “Having another busy day?”
The other monkeys snickered at their leader’s brilliant wit.
“Been eating lots of bamboo, have you? Had a few poos? Posed for some cameras?”
The snickering increased to such a volume that Ping felt the need to defend himself.
“Actually, yes,” he said, talking himself up. “I have had an extremely busy day, thank you, Choo. Some might even say a heroic day!”
The monkeys gasped and exchanged looks of mock admiration.
“I saw one of the visitors trying to steal a golden pheasant,” Ping continued, “and when I realized that there wasn’t time to call a ranger and that I was the bird’s only hope, I took a deep breath and grabbed onto a vine and swung through the trees like a stealthy shadow until I was hanging above the villainous visitor. I must have been at least ten feet above his head. Probably more. Anyway, without any thought for my own safety, I let go of the vine and bravely dropped onto his head, driving the visitor into the ground like a fence post. And after he’d pulled himself out and run away screaming, the golden pheasant put its wing on my shoulder and said, ‘Truly, Ping, you are a great hero. You have saved my life when nobody else could. And if we had a king here in the Wolagong Nature Reserve, you can bet that I’d put you up for the job because you are the best.’ And that’s how I’ve spent my day!”
At the very least Ping was expecting a pat on the back accompanied by a shame-faced apology, but instead, when he turned around, the monkeys were rolling on the ground clutching their bellies and laughing.
“You are such a fibber!” Choo screamed, leaping up into a tree and swinging back into the forest. “The lousiest liar in Wolagong.”
The other monkeys followed their leader into the trees, and Ping was suddenly alone with only the echoes of their cruel laughter to keep him company.
The young panda cub slumped to the ground and rested his chin in his paw as he mulled over his life.
“I hate it when the monkeys are right,” he told himself. “Being a panda IS really dull.”
He felt his mother’s paw stroke the top of his head.
“Do not fear going forward slowly. Fear only standing still,” she said, giving his shoulder a squeeze.
“Actually there’s another saying that’s much more appropriate,” Ping said.
“Really?” she replied. “I’d love to hear it.”
“Do not fear going forward looking like a doodoo-headed ninnyhammer. Fear only being a doodoo-headed ninnyhammer,” he said.
“And is that what you think you are?” his mother asked. “A doodoo-headed ninnyhammer?”
Ping turned and stared at her through black-ringed eyes and couldn’t find a way of saying “Yes” without sounding sorry for himself. Instead he said, “I’m going to bed,” and slumped away with his tiny tail between his legs.
But he couldn’t sleep.
As he tossed and turned on his bed of rhododendron leaves, the long, cold night carved out the truth. His life was standing still. If he didn’t do something exciting soon, he would almost certainly turn into a stone.
But, that night, as luck would have it, his wish for excitement was granted.
CHAPTER TWO
P
ing must have fallen asleep in the end, because the next thing he remembered was being woken up by the sound of a twig snapping nearby.
Flashing a look across the clearing, he was alarmed to see that both his mother and sister were asleep in their beds. So it wasn’t them he could hear creeping up on him—in the dead of night—breathing. He could definitely hear breathing. The low rumble of a big cat’s purr.
Ping sat up, his heart pounding like the rat-tat-tat of a woodpecker. A big cat could only mean one thing.
A snow leopard! A gizzard-guzzling, meat-munching, sinew-slashing, snow leopard! And snow leopards ate panda cubs for breakfast every day of the week!
Well, not today. Not if Ping had anything to do with it.
He rolled out of bed as silently as a slithering moon-shadow and sprang to his feet, pushing himself up onto the very tips of his tippy-toes. Then, treading as delicately as a mountain shrew, he pushed his way into the field of bamboo and circled around to his right.
His plan was simple. He would creep up behind the snow leopard and take it by surprise. Brilliant. What was it his mother always said? “There is nothing to fear except fear itself.” Ping wasn’t scared. Far from it. He was pumped up to his eyeballs with courage. Then, suddenly, there in front of him, he saw his target: a black-and-white-spotted shape flickering through gaps in the bamboo screen and slinking toward the clearing where his mother and sister were asleep. They would be breakfast unless Ping could save them.
Standing on his back legs, he stretched up and slid a vine off the branch above his head, all the while keeping his eyes fixed on his target. It was now or never.
Ping pounced!
With a terrifying scream designed to befuddle the snow leopard’s senses, and a cry of, “Claws off my mommy!”, Ping leaped out of the night sky, landed on the back of the animal, and keeping hold of the two ends of the vine, forced the middle section between the stalker’s jaws.
Pulling on the vine like a rein, he tugged the snow leopard sharply to its left, dug his heels into its sides, then rode the beast into the bamboo forest while his mother and sister slept on safe, and more importantly, saved!
Only when Ping reached the top of a mighty waterfall did he and the snow leopard part company. As the big cat tumbled into the deep pool at the bottom of the fall, Ping, who was standing on an overhanging rock at the top, dusted his paws, shaded his eyes, and looked out toward the wide horizon with all the puff and swagger of a mighty hero.
And then he woke up.
His sister was staring down at him, giggling.
“What have you been doing?” she asked. “You were shouting something about saving your mommy, then punching the air with your paws and bouncing your bottom up and down on the ground as if you were riding a lying-down horse.”
Ping sat up, confused to find himself back in his bed.
“Oh,” he said disappointedly. “I was dreaming.”
“I bet you were fighting a snow leopard,” she snickered, as if such a thing could never happen.
“I might have been,” said Ping indignantly. He was feeling a little foolish now. One moment he was Ping the Leopard Slayer; the next he was just plain old unexciting Ping again.
“I bet you were winning too,” added An.
“Why?”
“Because it was a dream, and boys who can’t fight are always wonderful fighters in their dreams.”
What annoyed Ping about his sister was that she was such a know-it-all, who had a knack of knowing everything about everyone, even when she hadn’t been told a thing.
“I very well can fight,” he said unconvincingly.
“No, you can’t,” she laughed. “In real life, you couldn’t even fight a fly. Well, you could, but you’d lose.”
“I could beat you!” he said, rising to the challenge.
“No, you couldn’t,” she said, “because I am a lady and I wouldn’t let you fight me.”
“And I am a man and wouldn’t listen to you,” he retorted.
“If you were a man, you would do what a lady said,” she replied primly.
“You’re not a lady,” he scoffed, “you’re my sister, so that doesn’t count.”
“Actually, it counts more.”
“No, it doesn’t. When have you ever said anything remotely interesting that I would want to listen to? Never! That’s when.”
“That’s one of Mom’s sayings, not yours,” scoffed Ping. “And anyway, it’s not interesting because it’s obvious. Only a crazy rat would chew on a cat’s tail.”
“Exactly,” said An. “That is why Mommy and I forbid you to get into a fight with a snow leopard because you will NEVER, EVER win!”
All of a sudden, the game was over and An was being serious.
“Alright,” said Ping. “Keep your fur on. You’ve made your point.”
“Good,” she said. “Because I am telling you now that if you are bonkers enough to ever take on a snow leopard, don’t expect Mommy and me to scrape you off the forest floor.”
Ping sighed. How could he ever expect to inject a little excitement into his life when his mother and sister were always warning him of danger and telling him to be sensible?
“I’ve got a saying too,” he said glumly. “All food and no play makes Ping a dull panda!”
“Food makes you healthy,” An said smugly.
“Food makes me poo,” said Ping, standing up and disappearing into the bushes. “If anyone wants me, I’m contemplating.”
And so started Ping’s day. It was just like every other day in the Wolagong Nature Reserve: eating bamboo, disappearing into the bushes, suffering the mocking jibes of the golden monkeys, and posing for the clickety-clack cameras of the visitors.
Ping’s only real friend in the reserve was an electric-blue grandala bird named Hui, who had glossy feathers that gleamed like polished metal.
Just at that moment, Hui flew into the clearing and landed on the end of the bamboo stalk that Ping was slowly turning around in his mouth like a stick of seaside rock.
“Hui!” Ping cried. “How lovely to see you!”
Ping always liked talking to Hui. It was Ping’s belief that the brightly colored grandala bird had a colorful life to match, whereas he, Ping, being only black and white, was condemned to a life without color.