The Runaways, page 9
‘She’s been without her mother for too long. A baby elephant needs its mother and it needs elephant milk,’ their grandmother told them. She was now very worried indeed. The little elephant had started to rock back and forth as she tried to comfort herself. Her skin was looking dull and very thin and the old woman was sure she was dehydrated as well as malnourished, despite their best efforts. The situation was dire. ‘She needs her mother,’ she said again. But they had no idea where the little elephant’s mother might be.
Ezra told his grandmother what the soldier said about there being a missing baby elephant in the paper. ‘Should we take her to the police?’
But his grandmother shook her head. ‘The police will only accuse us of stealing her.’
‘There’s a circus coming to Whitehaven,’ Sadie said. ‘We saw a poster for it at the fete.’
‘Maybe it’s the circus our baby elephant came from,’ Ezra said, hoping against hope. ‘Maybe somehow she got lost or left behind.’
‘Let’s take her there,’ their grandmother said. ‘Let them hand her in. At least the circus should know more about baby elephants than we do.’
Tara wore the knitted blanket on her back as they travelled slowly down the country lanes back towards Whitehaven and Cullen’s Circus. She was cold and shivery and even turned away from the apples that were offered her. Harvey came down from the caravan step he liked to sit on with Ezra and Sadie’s grandmother to walk with her and the children.
The little elephant was no longer interested in the other animals in the fields they passed. A cow mooed over a fence to her and she didn’t even look up. A pheasant flew right in front of her and she didn’t even seem to notice it because her head was so drooped.
Harvey looked at his friend and whined.
‘She’s so sad and she needs her mum,’ said Sadie as Tara stumbled to her knees and then staggered up again. She didn’t even seem to know where she was any more as she stared into the distance half dazed.
‘We have to get her to the circus at Whitehaven before it moves on,’ Ezra said.
But Tara could no longer go very far before she had to rest.
‘She’s getting sicker all the time,’ Sadie said, her voice catching in her throat.
‘Hush now, we’re doing everything we can,’ her grandmother told her.
But no one was really sure if everything they could do would be enough. The little elephant had grown so weak so quickly, despite their best efforts. It seemed very much like she’d given up even trying to live.
Harvey stayed close and licked his friend as she shivered and whimpered.
‘Come on, little elephant, come on,’ Sadie and Ezra encouraged, as they tried to coax her onwards when she lay down in the grass and didn’t want to get up.
Harvey whined and nudged at her with his silver-whiskered muzzle and finally she stood up and staggered forwards only for her legs to buckle as she crumpled to the ground.
‘Come on, little elephant, you have to eat, you have to drink, you have to walk …’ the children and their grandmother told her as Tara lay on the cool, wet grass. But all Tara wanted to do was sleep, and all Harvey wanted was to be there beside her, whining sometimes and licking her ears occasionally, but mostly just there to comfort her by being close.
‘How much longer until we get to Whitehaven?’ Ezra asked his grandmother.
‘One day if we hurry, but probably two at the pace we’ve been going at.’
They looked at each other and hoped.
‘We’ll camp here under the trees for tonight,’ their grandmother said, as she peered up at the sky. It looked as if there was another storm coming. They made a fire and Sadie and Ezra picked wild strawberries for Tara to try and tempt her to eat, but she just turned her head away.
Ezra, Sadie and their grandmother were fast asleep when Harvey put his paw out to Tara and whined softly to wake her.
The little elephant was so much thinner than when they’d left the circus seven days ago, and very weak. But she did her best to follow her friend as he led her away across the field beneath the moonless sky.
He led her towards the distant railway tracks they’d been following before Ezra had found them. His instinct was telling him this was the way to find her mum. Above them the clouds covered the sky and hid the moon and stars. Tonight it was very dark and even if Tara hadn’t been so weak the two animals would have stayed close. Tara was cold all the time and shivered beneath her knitted blanket.
When the lightning suddenly crashed through the sky followed by a roar of thunder the little elephant cried out in fear and started to run, the blanket slipping from her back, her ears flung back. She called out to her mum, but Shanti didn’t reply. She never replied.
Harvey barked at her to stop as the rain started to come down. She was too tired to keep on going and he was able to catch up with her and guide her towards the shelter of the trees ahead.
Then an even bigger flash of lightning lit up the whole of the sky, followed by a boom of thunder.
Tara screamed in terror and started to run again, but tripped and fell over a tree branch. But this time, finally, Tara heard a call so strong that its vibrations ripped through the countryside. And Tara let out a squeal of surprise and joy as the rain splashed down on her. Her mum. It was her mum. Her mum at last! Tara stood up and lifted her trunk and with every fibre of her weak little elephant’s body quivering with excitement she called back with her own deep elephant call that only her mother could hear.
The next moment she was running as fast as she could through the storm to find her mother. There was Shanti’s call again from this side and then from that and always kilometres away but Tara knew she had to reach her. Each time she heard it Tara spun and ran in the new direction that it came from, but the heavy wind and the lashing rain took the elephant’s call and distorted it as it threw the sound through the sky.
Harvey ran after the little elephant, barking at her to slow down and wait for him. But Tara only had ears for her mum’s call.
Harvey panted as he ran after her. He was determined not to lose her although his paw was now bleeding again and his old lungs felt like they were bursting as he gasped for air.
Tara finally stopped running when she came to the edge of a huge lake that stretched between her and where her mum was calling to her from, somewhere over on the other side of it. It looked further than she’d ever swum before, so far that in the rain she couldn’t even see the other side, and it was very dark. But she waded into the cold water and started to swim.
And Harvey, who’d always been afraid of water, went in after her.
Chapter 17
The flash of the lightning woke AJ. This summer storm was even more violent than the one last week, and that had been bad enough. AJ didn’t like storms at all and he pulled the bed covers up around his chin and then over his head, wishing it would stop.
But then he thought of Shanti and wondered if she was frightened too. She was all alone out there in the barn and missing her baby. Just because she was big didn’t mean she couldn’t be frightened too. AJ wrapped a blanket round himself and ran down the stairs, out of the front door and into the darkness.
The rain was so heavy that it was hard to see where he was going, but fortunately he knew the way to Shanti’s barn with his eyes shut.
The door had come unlatched and was creaking and banging as it swung to and fro.
‘Shanti?’ AJ called, as he went inside the barn. ‘Shanti, are you OK? I’m here now. It’s all right. You’re safe.’
Shanti usually came over to him straight away when he went into the barn. But not tonight.
‘Shanti?’ AJ said, his voice quavering and a sense of dread growing inside him as he realized the elephant wasn’t there.
‘Shanti!’ he shouted. ‘Shanti!’ And he ran back to the house.
Yolanda was waiting for him at the door.
‘What are you doing out in the rain?’ she asked him as he came in drenched to the skin.
‘It’s Shanti – she’s gone!’ he cried.
Shanti’s feet thundered across the wet earth as she ran towards the sound of her daughter’s cries. She called to her again wanting to get a more exact location, but Tara didn’t call back. Shanti gave a bellow of despair and raced on, crashing through the wooden farm gates that led down to the lake.
The current in the lake was so strong that Tara’s head kept bobbing under the water as she tried to fight against it. But it was so hard to keep swimming and the lake water was so very very cold and Tara was so tired. When she sank beneath the water she desperately stuck her trunk up like a snorkel, but still she kept sinking beneath the surface and gulping down great mouthfuls of water.
She couldn’t go on any further. She was too weak and the cold was too much to bear and her legs stopped treading water as she cried out.
Shanti bellowed back to her as she waded into the lake and began to swim to her daughter. Harvey clambered on to a piece of floating driftwood and barked and barked. Shanti heard his barks, and her elephant’s bellow rang through the air.
Even from below the water, Tara heard and felt her mum’s call. She lifted her trunk and kicked her legs upwards until her head came out.
And Shanti’s bellow turned to a cry of utter joy.
It was too far for Tara to swim to the mainland, but with Shanti pushing the exhausted little elephant through the water they swam to the nearby shoreline of one of the many uninhabited islands in the lake. Harvey slipped off the driftwood to follow them just as the storm stopped, as suddenly as it had started.
As soon they could stand up in the water mother and daughter elephant wrapped their trunks round each other. Tara was very weak and Shanti had to help by nudging her to the shore.
Once they were there Tara nuzzled her head against her mum. Harvey came out of the water and although he, too, was exhausted, he spun round and round like a puppy for joy. They’d found Shanti at last.
Shanti kept touching her daughter with her trunk and wrapping her trunk round her as if she couldn’t quite believe it was true, while all the time the elephants made happy sounds as Harvey lay down and watched the two of them, his tail thumping up and down.
Now Tara was at last able to have the mother’s milk that she so desperately needed. And Shanti had her daughter back and she trumpeted to the ethereal Northern Lights that flickered and danced across the night sky. Once Tara had had enough milk the two elephants lay down under the cover of the trees to rest.
Tara slept that night curled up next to her mum, their trunks wrapped around each other, and in the morning when she woke up her mum was still there and she gave a soft squee of pure happiness as she cuddled up to her and then went back to sleep.
Chapter 18
Back at the farm, Yolanda, AJ and their father were beside themselves with worry. They’d been up the whole night and none of them felt like eating the porridge that Yolanda had made for breakfast.
‘But where can they be?’ AJ said desperately, as he stirred the rapidly cooling gloop.
‘The storm was so bad last night and the lightning …’ Yolanda said, looking over at her dad, but not daring to say what it was that she’d been dreading. Shanti was so big, and she wasn’t exactly nimble. What if she’d been struck by the lightning? What if she was lying injured somewhere? Crying out to them. The Lake District could be a very dangerous place in a storm.
‘Cooee!’ Annie called coming into the cottage. ‘All ready for Shanti to have a go at logging?’ She stopped when she saw the three of them. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Shanti’s gone missing,’ Yolanda told her.
Annie, as always, was immediately practical. ‘Right, I’ll get the rest of the girls on the search and let Constable Kean know. We’ll have a search party out looking for her and I bet we’ll have found her by lunchtime. After all, how difficult can it be to find a giant-sized elephant?’
AJ wanted to say that they hadn’t had much luck with finding the baby one, but he held his tongue because that would be mean, and Annie only wanted to help.
‘Thank you, Annie,’ Mr Jones said. He was feeling very low. Lower than he could remember in a long time. ‘We’ll stay here.’
‘In case she comes back,’ AJ said. He wanted that more than anything in the world.
But Shanti didn’t come back that day and although the Women’s Land Army searched high and low they couldn’t find her.
‘Have you seen an elephant?’ Annie asked everyone she met. But no one had. Not today.
‘The storm’s ripped my gate right off its hinges,’ a farmer told them, looking at the wooden gate through which Shanti had crashed. Annie and two of the other women helped by holding the gate in place as he banged in new hinges with a hammer.
Annie looked over at Windermere just beyond his farm. The lake looked so beautiful now the sun had come out, but she wouldn’t have wanted to be out on it during last night’s storm.
Over on the uninhabited island, Tara mostly ate and slept while Shanti stayed close and was never more than a few steps away from her daughter. Her trunk often reached out to touch her baby softly as if she still couldn’t quite believe she’d got her back.
Harvey slept too. Long deep sleeps where he snored loudly and twitched, before waking with a joyful wag of his tail because the three of them were back together.
For the next two days they stayed on the island. Tara continued to build up her strength, and once Shanti was sure her daughter was strong enough to swim again she took Tara and Harvey home.
AJ was the first to see the two elephants, one large and one small, accompanied by an old collie dog, heading down the farm path. He’d been looking out of his bedroom window and hoping that Shanti would come home, and now she had.
‘Shanti’s come home,’ he shouted as loudly as he could. The news was so good that it was bursting from him. ‘She’s come home – and she’s not alone!’
Yolanda dropped the soup pot she was washing up and came running out of the house. The children raced down the farm path towards Shanti and Tara and their friend Harvey.
When they reached them, Yolanda threw her arms round Shanti and burst into tears, then found she couldn’t stop.
‘It’s just that I’ve missed her so and we were so happy when she was here,’ she said, as she mopped at her eyes. ‘And then we went back to just the same as we used to be and I miss Mum so much and …’
‘I know,’ AJ said softly. ‘I feel the same.’
Harvey wagged his tail, worried by Yolanda’s tears and then he licked her hand. She stroked him as Tara gave a little squee and ruffled up AJ’s hair.
‘Good to have you home again, Shanti,’ said Mr Jones, coming down the farm path in his wheelchair. Harvey pushed his head under the man’s hand so he could stroke him and Tara went to ruffle his hair, but Shanti stopped her with a rumble. The big elephant reached out her trunk and pushed Mr Jones back towards the barn.
‘I bet she’s hungry,’ AJ said, when Shanti stopped outside it, lifted up her trunk and opened her mouth.
‘Elephants are always hungry!’ Yolanda laughed, as she brushed away the last of her tears, and they ran to fill the wheelbarrow.
That evening, Mr Jones wrote to Albert to let him know that Tara and Harvey had been found and were now living at the farm too.
As I’m sure you know, Tara means star, and that little elephant of yours must have been born under one very lucky star to have found her mother, with the help of your dog Harvey, just in time …
Chapter 19
Shanti, Tara and Harvey often went into the village with AJ, Yolanda and their dad. The animals had been living at Stony Oakhill for almost two years now and were used to being made a big fuss of by the villagers whenever they went there. But this June day there were even more villagers about than usual.
Every year Stony Oakhill had a fund-raising fete on the village common, and it was being held today, the union jack flag bunting stretching all round the stalls proclaiming the victory that had happened on the eleventh of November the year before in 1918.
When the elephants arrived, Tara looked up at the little flags fluttering in the wind. She raised her trunk and gave a gentle tug at the flag nearest to her. But the string wasn’t designed to withstand an elephant’s pulling, even a baby elephant’s, and a whole section of the bunting fluttered down to become Tara’s new toy.
‘Oh no,’ said Yolanda. The beautiful display was ruined as all the flags that had been pinned to the stalls with the string fell down.
But the next moment the villagers and fete-goers were smiling as Tara swung her new bunting toy back and forth. She twirled it around herself giving little squeals of delight.
‘Isn’t she sweet.’
‘How absolutely adorable.’
‘Quick, take a picture of her for the newspaper!’
The local newspaper photographer was kept busy using his pocket Kodak to take snaps of the fete-goers with the elephants for a penny a time. Fortunately the two elephants seemed more than happy to have their pictures taken and be given a stroke or a pat by the person being photographed for half a bun each.
Mr Jones kept a watchful eye on them from the side to make sure everything went smoothly and that the elephants had a break every now and again.
‘She’s such a poppet,’ people said, as they stood next to Tara.
Tara’s tuft of thicker fur on the top of her head gave her a cute, slightly comical, look in the pictures.
‘Can we have our picture with both of them?’
‘Certainly.’
‘Do they give rides?’ a man asked.
Mr Jones told him that they didn’t.
Beatrix Potter could not resist getting out her watercolours and painting a picture of Shanti and Tara while the people were having their photographs taken with them.
‘I saw them when they were in the circus at Whitehaven, you know,’ she told Yolanda and AJ. ‘I told my husband, Mr Heelis, we were in for a treat that afternoon and we were. Made me think I’d like to write a story about a circus one day.’
