Through the Tiger's Eye Read Online Free PDF Page A

like her nightmare it was spooky. The thought that human eyes might be looking out from that house made her tummy hurt. She wanted to turn and run back up the path and along the tunnel as fast as she could, flat torch batteries or not – until she saw a little black dog trotting out of the bushes on the other side of the clearing, white-tipped tail waving like a flag.
    ‘T-Tongue!’ squeaked Ricardo. Lucy clamped her hand fiercely over his mouth. What if soldiers came running? A strange piercing birdcall split the silence in the clearing and Lucy had an idea. She risked a soft whistle. T-Tongue pricked up his ears and to her relief trotted obediently over. It was possibly the first time he’d obeyed her in his entire short life!
    Finding their faces at licking level, he yelped with pleasure and got on with the job.
    ‘Shhh,’ breathed Lucy in his ear, terrified that soldiers might arrive at any moment and bring her nightmare to life.
    ‘Let’s get out of here!’ whispered Ricardo, but Lucy was staring at a coil of rope near the gate. Just what they needed to get out of that pit.
    ‘Hold T-Tongue,’ she said, thrusting the squirming puppy at Ricardo.
    She pulled herself forward on her elbows, belly flat to the ground like the soldiers in the TV ads for the Army. The rope was a million Ks away. The sun burned down and her head felt as though it would melt like a candle. Sharp sticks gouged her T-shirt through to the skin but she kept going.
    Lucy reached the rope just as a gut-wrenching sound reached her ears: a familiar shouted command.
    And marching feet ever closer .
    No time to think, let alone crawl. She grabbed the rope, scuttled desperately back to the cover of green and threw herself down, just in time. She lay panting as the smiling soldier and his men marched a column of children into the clearing. She tried to control her breathing. If the soldiers hadn’t been yelling at the kids, they might have heard her.
    She heard another shouted order and the kids lined up at the barbed-wire gate.
    ‘This is not happening,’ Lucy told herself; but T-Tongue, growling low in his throat, clearly thought something was happening. Lucy opened her eyes and gave the hand signal for ‘drop’ she’d learned at his first and only obedience class (he had failed), and miraculously he dropped down on all fours. He must have known it wasn’t a game because he stayed very quiet, quivering, waiting for her command.
    Lucy longed to be able to slide backwards up the track, right out of the fix they were in, but the soldiers were too close. She and Ricardo would have to sit it out – if lying with your face buried in the dirt was sitting it out. Half of Lucy’s instincts said freeze, the other half said run. She chose freeze, partly because her legs had turned to stone again.
    The smiling soldier unlocked a padlock on the gate, barking another order, and the sad parade of children passed through the gate and up the stairs of the rickety house. The heavy door slammed shut behind them.
    Then the smiling soldier crouched, examining the ground where the rope had been. Lucy felt sick: there were her footprints in the dust.
    A brightly coloured flock of birds burst shrieking from the trees above, and Lucy seized her chance. She began to inch backwards. Ricardo found it harder, as he was grasping T-Tongue, who was starting to make take-onthe-world noises. Semi-Superdog – ready to take on four armed soldiers.
    Then a loud, gurgling, throaty cough came from the other side of the clearing. Lucy had an instant overwhelming impression of muscular power and lethal speed. What happened next unfolded so fast, Lucy felt she was still dreaming. A tiger leapt from the undergrowth, knocked the closest soldier to the ground with one mighty swipe of a striped paw, pivoted, and was gone, springing into the trees before the others could even raise their weapons.
    The soldier on the ground writhed as blood sprang from the vicious claw marks on his