Lionboy: the Truth

by Zizou Corder

  Ninu squeaked.

  ‘Shut it,’ said Sergei.

  ‘No need to be rude,’ said Ninu.

  ‘Shut it,’ said Sergei again, and put his paw on Ninu’s head.

  ‘Mmph,’ said Ninu.

  Sergei bent down and stared into Ninu’s eyes from his own level.

  ‘Ninu,’ he hissed. ‘Shut cakehole, or I’ll be compelled to masticate yer.’

  Ninu shut it.

  They lay in uncomfortable silence for some minutes. People were rushing about on deck, busying themselves as the boat left the harbour and headed out to sea. How many people? Sergei tried to peer through a gap in the ropes, but all he could see were feet, and they all looked the same, so he couldn’t tell. They seemed to be travelling towards the sun – so, given the time of day, that meant they were going west. Well, they would be. There only is west, really. He’d keep his eye on it and see if they turned north or south later.

  When it was dark, he’d sneak below and find Charlie.

  What was he going to do with this bliddy chameleon, though?

  Charlie lay in his bag, sniffing. He’d worked out that it was dark outside as well as inside his bag, therefore he must be inside somewhere because not enough time had passed for night to have fallen. The surface beneath him was hard but not cold – wood, perhaps, rather than stone. The air around him was stale. He was now engaged in trying to identify smells.

  Sniff, sniff.

  Beyond the strong smell of dusty sacking, there was something familiar about it. Familiar but strange. Dust, wood – could he be in a shed? No, there was the movement. A wagon? No, there was no fresh air. A covered wagon, a coach? No, the movement was wrong …

  An industrial kind of smell, with a salty, oily thing in it …

  A boat.

  Once he thought of it, it was obvious.

  OK, I’m on a boat.

  Maccomo was safely out of the way, in the Lions’ care. So it had to be Rafi who had grabbed him.

  His cousin.

  There was almost something funny about it. Rafi, chasing him around, wishing him harm, and sharing his blood. All these years and he’d never had a brother or a sister or anything, and now he gets a cousin, and it’s Rafi. What a pathetic joke.

  And how had Rafi managed to get hold of a boat? How had one-armed Rafi managed to manhandle Charlie into it?

  Charlie was so angry. With himself for being so stupid, with Rafi for having got him. He was so angry, his whole face felt tight.

  It’s another round of the fight, he told himself. It doesn’t mean Rafi’s won, it’s just another round of the fight. He began to think rationally through his situation.

  One, where am I being taken?

  Two, who’s on board?

  Three, someone will be along at some stage to feed me – presumably – which will in itself give me information.

  His mind slipped easily back into the habits of being in danger, being on the run. Oh, but they weren’t habits he wanted to have! He wanted to be safe. Yeah, well, you’re not, he told himself. Get on with it.

  Four, what do I have with me?

  Aha!

  Along with his medicine, shoved in his back pocket, he had his telephone. They’d all – he and his parents – got their vouchers charged up at the Riad el Amira. (Aneba, of course, had had to get a new phone.)

  So was there any reception on this boat?

  He wriggled his phone out of his pocket and switched it on. The turquoise light glowed weirdly in the dusty dimness.

  He smiled.

  So who would he call first?

  Mum.

  For a moment, as the ringing started, he felt full of hope. For a moment. Then: ‘Hello, this is Magdalen Start, please leave me a message after the beep, thank you.’

  Maybe there was no reception where she was. Or … Oh, it was useless to speculate. Just leave a message.

  ‘Mum,’ he hissed. ‘It’s me. I’m in a boat, in a sack. I’m OK, no idea what’s going on. Somebody grabbed me, it must have been Rafi. I’ll call you later if I can. Love you. I’m –’ He had been about to say I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so, so sorry, Mum, for being so stupid … But he found that his throat was choking up and his eyes seemed to be full of tears. No worrying them by crying, no way. No way. ‘Bye, Mum – ring me. I’ve got it on vibrate. Bye.’ He clicked off quickly.

  Someone might come and take the phone off him. Better get a move on.

  Dad? Well, they’d be together …

  An idea struck him. What if they’d been grabbed too?

  What if they were on the boat?

  Or – what if they’d been separated?

  He quickly pressed his dad’s number.

  Same thing, leave a message.

  He recalled leaving a message on his dad’s phone weeks, months ago, on the back step at home, the night they disappeared.

  And now he had disappeared.

  He left the same kind of message he’d left for Mum. But this time he did say sorry. He knew what it was like when someone you loved was snatched away from you, and he was miserable that he had inflicted this on his parents.

  ‘Misery is not useful,’ he said toughly. ‘Not. Useful. Don’t. Waste. Time.’

  So then he rang Rafi.

  While King Boris raced back from the forest, Claudio returned to the harbour.

  Magdalen and Aneba had left. He could see their boat, Suleiman’s Joy, moving off about a mile or so away. A neighbouring fisherman told him that yes, the African and the red-haired woman were on board.

  ‘What’s going on?’ enquired one of the boatmen, a very cheerful, muscular little man in a grubby djellaba. ‘All these sudden departures and chases.’

  ‘What was the first sudden departure?’ Claudio asked.

  ‘Old Yeller,’ said the boatman, and spat over the harbour wall. ‘Nasty thing anyway.’

  ‘And that one?’

  ‘Suleiman’s Joy,’ he said. ‘Good boat. Good man. Don’t know where he thinks he’s going, though.’ He looked a little wistful.

  ‘Do you have a boat?’ asked Claudio.

  ‘Of course,’ said the boatman. ‘I am a boatman, of course I have a boat.’

  ‘Which?’

  ‘Why? You want me to follow and chase too? Please! I can follow, I can chase, yeah, James Bond, cops and robbers, police and thieves. Are we the good or the bad? Or the ugly?’

  ‘Are you equipped?’ asked Claudio. ‘It might be a long trip.’

  ‘Can you pay? Then I am equipped.’

  And thus the third Essaouira boatman of the day got an unexpectedly large and complicated job at short notice. But only this one – his name was Younus and his boat was called El Baraka – the Blessing – got a Lion as a passenger.

  Charlie could hear the phone ringing. Sometimes it seems you can tell by the way a phone rings whether anybody is going to answer it. There’s the close, warm, immediate ring, which you know will be picked up in seconds, and then there’s the hollow echoing hum down the lines, which will never be brought to a close by a friendly human voice. This ring seemed to Charlie very close – well, of course: Rafi would be on the boat. Charlie had disguised his number, though – Rafi would not know who was calling.

  It seemed very close, actually.

  Suddenly Charlie realized why.

  He was hearing the ring through his other ear: not the one he was holding to the phone, but the other one.

  Rafi’s phone was in the same place as Charlie was.

  And then Rafi answered it.

  ‘’Allo? Who’s that?’

  And Charlie heard Rafi’s voice, across the – the whatever it was he was in. It sounded like he had been woken.

  Crike, that was close. Thank god he had talked so quietly when he’d left the messages for his parents.

  But what was Rafi doing in the same place he was? Surely he would be on deck, or in some swanky cabin. Or was he, Charlie, in a swanky cabin?

  No, he knew the smell of under the waterline
. He was in the hold, he was sure.

  So why was Rafi asleep in the hold?

  And then there was a noise, a bang, footsteps.

  A voice. ‘Give me this, please. No telephone here.’

  And Rafi’s voice saying, ‘No, I bliddy won’t. I came here in good faith. I came here to do business. I don’t know what you’re playing at, but your boss is not going to be happy at you treating me like this …’

  Charlie held his breath. Rafi was a prisoner too!

  But then who …?

  And then there were more footsteps, and then there was another voice, a smooth, gentle voice with a cold line of iron running right through it. A voice that Charlie knew very well.

  ‘Don’t be silly, Rafi,’ it said.

  And Charlie’s blood ran cold to match. It was Maccomo.

  At just around that time, sixteen men in two armoured limousines – petrolcars – drew up by the main gate to Essaouira. They were large, and they were wearing burnooses. They stepped out of the long cars and looked around them. Everyone was staring at the cars. Essaouira had not seen a petrolcar in years. One little boy burst into tears. Several women made the sign against the evil eye. A stallguy spat.

  The men walked into town, not hurrying, not hesitating, and broke into pairs. They talked on their mobile phones, looking left and right. One pair went directly to the Riad el Amira. One went to Maccomo’s lodgings. One went to Ninu’s café, close by. One man in each pair had a small machine with him: it looked like a computer game or something. They held the machines in front of them, studying the screens.

  It didn’t take them long to cover the town. Whatever they were looking for, they didn’t find. Within an hour they were back in the main square, looking down towards the harbour. Only one of them was on the phone now. That was when King Boris saw them.

  ‘Oh,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘Ah. Time to go now.’

  Claudio and Younus were still discussing money and supplies, poking about in their wallets and their crates of dates. The Young Lion had chosen his moment, and then slipped invisibly on board Younus’s boat, directly into the hold.

  ‘Come along,’ said King Boris, an urgency entering his voice that made Claudio look up. ‘Now, and quietly.’

  Claudio followed the King’s gaze and saw the sixteen men in burnooses coming towards them: not Moroccan, not tourists, not holy men. One of them was wearing sunglasses.

  ‘Yes,’ said Claudio.

  Younus looked up too.

  ‘Aiwa,’ he said, picking up the last crate of dates. ‘Yalla.’

  As the men started asking questions along the seafront, El Baraka took off on the tide.

  What the Young Lion found in the hold made him yowl.

  ‘What are you doing here!’ he screeched as he landed on a pile of soft fur with legs and teeth and whiskers.

  ‘I’m coming too,’ said Elsina.

  ‘No, you’re not,’ said the Young Lion.

  ‘Try and stop me!’ she said.

  ‘Get your leg out of my mouth!’ he grumbled.

  ‘Well, stop biting my leg,’ she retorted.

  ‘Oww! How did you get here?’

  ‘I ran, and I watched, and I used my common sense,’ she said. ‘I’m not stupid, you know.’

  The Young Lion was very angry. His sister had put him in an impossible position. They argued, hissing furiously at each other under their breath, until they heard footsteps approaching and realized that Claudio, Primo and Younus were coming on board.

  ‘And what am I meant to say to the family, when you get killed? Or when we both do, because I have to go and rescue you?’ the Young Lion snarled as quietly as he could.

  ‘If we’re both killed you won’t have a chance to explain, will you?’ whispered Elsina crossly. ‘Now shut up. I’ve come to help and I have every right to! Don’t be such a pig!’

  Then Younus and Claudio were right above them, and the Young Lion was unable to reply for fear of giving himself away. But the moment they moved on, he started hissing at her again. ‘You’ll be a liability!’ he said. ‘You’ll slow me down and bring danger on us all! And you’d better behave!’

  It smelt bad in the hold, but Elsina didn’t mind. He couldn’t send her back, and in due course he would find out how useful she was.

  ‘I will be an angel among Lionesscubs,’ she replied.

  ‘And you’ll have to eat fish,’ he retorted.

  Oh, she thought, remembering the long journey down the Mediterranean. Oh, yuck.

  Magdalen and Aneba stood side by side on the deck of Suleiman’s Joy, watching as the sun slowly moved down the scarlet sky in front of them. Old Yeller had been a dark dot on the sea ahead of them; now, as the sheet of ocean before them turned to molten gold, it was impossible to pick it out at all. Their eyes dazzled and burned as they stared into the furnace of the late evening. Magdalen blinked. Aneba tried and failed to shade his eyes in such a way that he could make out anything ahead to the west.

  ‘Suleiman,’ said Magdalen. ‘How will we not lose the other boat in the dark?’

  ‘Darkness exists only for the eye of the body,’ said Suleiman. ‘The eye of the heart is illuminated by wisdom.’

  Magdalen looked at Aneba. Aneba looked at her.

  ‘Oh dear,’ he said.

  ‘God will guide us,’ said Suleiman, a happy smile on his lips.

  ‘God helps those who help themselves,’ murmured Aneba.

  ‘So can you sail?’ Magdalen asked him.

  ‘Of course, my love,’ he said. ‘I can do anything.’

  But she noticed that he was watching the crew closely to see what they did, and why. She did the same herself. You never know. Then when Suleiman set up the night watch, when the day’s solar power took the boat along on autopilot through the darkness, she went below into the cabin and began to look at the sea charts, and the equipment, and the books, and to make friends with the sailorguys, and to learn what they knew.

  And later that night, as they sat huddled from the Atlantic wind, rocking on the swell, in the cockpit for a bit of privacy, Magdalen said to Aneba, ‘The guys on the quay said they were going to the US. But is that really where Maccomo would take him?’

  The wind was cold down their necks as they tried to remember everything Charlie had said about Maccomo; everything they knew about him.

  Uppermost in their minds was what Maccomo had said that night in Essaouira, in the hotel. Aneba and Magdalen had been hiding behind a screen, believing Mabel still to be loyal to Maccomo, and had heard with their own appalled ears as he outlined his plan to sell the Catspeaking boy to the Corporacy, via Rafi Sadler, and make his fortune …

  Mabel.

  ‘Ring her,’ said Aneba.

  Through the rushing waves, in the dark, it was hard to make out what the telephone was doing. Was there still a signal? Would it work out here?

  The screen lit up. The number rang, far away.

  And Mabel picked up.

  ‘Hi, Magdalen!’ she said brightly. ‘I’m on the train! You sound like you’re in the middle of the sea.’

  ‘I am,’ said Magdalen. ‘Listen – we might be cut off at any moment. Listen – Maccomo.’

  ‘Yes?’ said Mabel, guarded suddenly, warned off by the tone of her sister’s voice, and by the subject matter.

  ‘Mabel, if Maccomo got hold of Charlie, what would he do?’

  ‘What?’ Mabel said. ‘I can’t hear you.’

  The wind was wheezing, echoing the noises on the phone line.

  ‘IF MACCOMO GOT HOLD OF CHARLIE, WHAT WOULD HE DO WITH HIM?’

  ‘God, I hate to think!’ said Mabel in alarm, but luckily Magdalen couldn’t make it out, and by the time Mabel spoke again she had realized that wasn’t the most tactful thing to say.

  ‘WHAT! WHY? HAS HE?’ she shouted instead.

  ‘YES! HE’S GOT HIM ON A SHIP. THEY’RE HEADING OUT TO SEA FROM ESSAOUIRA. WHERE ARE THEY GOING?’

  ‘Oh my god,’ breathed Mabel. She felt suddenly as i
f it were all her fault. As if she should have known, and could have prevented this. The ache in her sister’s voice, the courage with which she was sticking to the point despite the pain she must be feeling … God, her brave little sister.

  ‘HE WON’T HURT HIM!’ she bellowed. ‘HE VALUES HIM! CATSPEAKING! WANTS TO LEARN!’ She racked her brain. What else?

  Her mind too flicked back to the night when Maccomo had proposed to her. What a fool she had been ever to have cared for him.

  ‘CORPORACY!’ she shouted.

  ‘BUT WHERE?’ shrieked Magdalen.

  Mabel didn’t know where. But she knew how high Maccomo was aiming.

  ‘HEADQUARTERS!’ she yelled. ‘I DON’T KNOW WHERE THAT IS! I CAN TRY AND FIND OUT! ARE YOU ON A SHIP? I’LL TRY AND CALL – I’LL … WHAT DO YOU WANT ME TO DO?’

  She’d been yelling into a vacuum. The line was dead.

  Everyone in the carriage was staring at her.

  ‘She’s right,’ murmured Magdalen. ‘He’ll have gone back to plan A. Sell Charlie to the Corporacy.’

  ‘So does that mean Rafi’s involved?’ said Aneba.

  ‘Well, he was the original contact,’ she murmured.

  At that moment her phone flashed the message icon.

  Charlie’s number.

  Magdalen and Aneba read it swiftly; looked at each other.

  ‘Go on, call it up,’ Aneba said, but Magdalen’s hand was shaking so much, she hardly could.

  They listened together, their heads touching, leaning in to the telephone.

  ‘In a boat, in a sack,’ whispered Magdalen.

  ‘Quick, ring him,’ Aneba said.

  Magdalen looked up at him. ‘What if he’s hiding – what if the ring gives him away? What if they hear and take the phone off him …?’

  ‘He said it’s on vibrate,’ said Aneba. ‘Here, I’ll do it.’ He dialled his son’s number. Held his breath.

  Meanwhile, on board El Baraka, while Younus and his guys were considering whether to try and catch some dinner, Claudio took the opportunity to look around the boat. It seemed well made and shipshape, but dreadfully small. He peered into the hold and, hearing a noise, swung himself down.

  In the corner, he thought he saw a flash.

  He went over. Behind a trunk, tucked away …

  He gasped.