Lynne Banks - Tiger, Tiger

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First published in Great Britain in hardback by HarperCollins Children’s Books 2004

First published in Great Britain in paperback by HarperCollins Children’s Books 2005

This edition published by HarperCollins Children’s Books 2017

Cover design © HarperCollins Publishers 2017

Cover illustration © Marc Martin 2017

Text copyright © Lynne Reid Banks 2004

Lynne Reid Banks asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

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Source ISBN: 9780007462940

Ebook Edition © 2017 ISBN: 9780007349913

Version: 2017-02-01

For my son, Gillon Stephenson

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter One: In the Hold

Chapter Two: Caesar’s Daughter

Chapter Three: The Naming

Chapter Four: Visits

Chapter Five: Marcus

Chapter Six: Aurelia to the Circus

Chapter Seven: ‘The Greatest Treat’

Chapter Eight: The Trick

Chapter Nine: The Catastrophe

Chapter Ten: Freedom

Chapter Eleven: Julius in Chains

Chapter Twelve: Aurelia’s Secret

Chapter Thirteen: Aurelia’s Sacrifice

Chapter Fourteen: The Ides of July

Chapter Fifteen: In the Arena

Chapter Sixteen: A Triumph of Will

Epilogue

Author’s Note

About the Author

Books by Lynne Reid Banks

About the Publisher

The two tiger cubs, romping in the jungle undergrowth near their den, prick up their ears.

While they play by themselves, they always half listen for their mother’s return. But these sounds are not what they want to hear. They are strange and alarming. Loud, staccato beats, clattering and banging – hacking and chopping – a trampling of green stems. And voices. Not animal voices, all familiar to them. These are voices alien to the jungle. And when they begin, other sounds, the sounds that make a constant, reassuring background to the cubs’ lives, fall silent.

They look around, anxiously. Something is coming. Where is their mother?

As the barrage of noise gets nearer, there is a sudden wild whirring over their heads. They look up, and see a blur of colour and affrighted movement as a flock of birds takes flight, disturbing the leaves.

Next, bands of monkeys go fleeing hand over hand through the canopy above, chattering and screaming in terror.

It is a signal. Beasts that have been hiding, spring up. The cubs see a buck stumbling clumsily among the trees, not far from them. At a greater distance, they hear an elephant trumpet a warning. Smaller creatures flee invisibly but audibly through the undergrowth. Every sound they hear seems to urge them to run. But they do not. The flight instinct conflicts with their mother’s training – they must stay by the den, where she can find them.

They crouch together, keeping low. There is a brief pause. Then suddenly the line of hunters breaks through the jungle thickets into the small clearing in front of the den.

The bigger cub tries to run now, but it is too late.

He is pounced on, seized by the scruff of the neck, and thrust into a sack. He squirms and squeals and tries to bite his captor, but it is useless. The smaller cub doesn’t even manage to struggle – he is enclosed in a dark, noisome place, and swung upward. They can see nothing now, but they hear the sound of trampling underneath them, and the ear-hurting other sounds fade. They are bumped up and down, their bodies distressed, their minds blank with bewilderment.

*

The two hunters who carry the sacks reach the edge of the forest where their horses wait. They hand their burdens to others while they mount, then take the sacks again and loop them over the pommels of their saddles.

The horses can smell the tiger-scent and begin neighing and curvetting, trying to get away from it. Their skilled riders use this fear to urge them forward. The tigress, they know, cannot be far away.

Behind them, in the jungle, the noise of the beaters continues. More beasts are being hunted and trapped.

The moment their heads are freed, the horses rear up, then gallop for the riverbank, where the boats wait.

With their goal in sight, the riders’ hair stands suddenly on end as they hear behind them the ferocious roar of a charging tiger. The horses bolt. Reaching the ramp that connects the bank with the first boat, the leading horse bounds up it. The one behind utters a scream as it feels the tigress’s claws tear its haunch – then, wild-eyed, it plunges up on to the deck.

The hunters disengage the sacks and fling them expertly to the waiting sailors. Then they jump from their horses, and turn at the rail to watch as others repel their pursuer.

As the cubs are carried down to where cages wait in the grim bowels of the ship, they cannot know that their last chance of rescue lies at the foot of the gangway with a spear through her heart.

The two cubs huddled together, their front paws intertwined, their heads and flanks pressed to each other.

Darkness crushed them, and bad smells, and motion. And fear.

The darkness was total. It was not what they were used to. In the jungle there is always light for a tiger’s eyes. It filters down through the thickest leaves from a generous sky that is never completely dark. It reflects off pools and glossy leaves and the eyes of other creatures. Darkness in the jungle is a reassurance. It says it’s time to come out of the lair, to play, to eat, to learn the night. It’s a safe darkness, a familiar, right darkness. This darkness was all wrong.