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Anna Akhmatova, ‘The Sentence’
When Firedrake came down on the throne platform again, Tattoo was standing beside Kraa’s petrified form with his head bent. Winston and Berulu were with him, and so was Barnabas, who with the aid of several lianas had actually managed to climb from Kraa’s palace down to the platform on his own. With Twigleg in his pocket. After all the experiences of the last few hours, the climb had seemed almost easy. They were all still alive, which seemed a miracle. But none of them felt anything like joy, let alone a sense of victory.
It had all been for nothing. The long journey, running all those risks… for nothing.
Ben picked up one of the many feathers lying on the platform. Most of them were Kraa’s, but there was no sun-feather among them. The sun-feathers now turned to stone, were around Kraa’s petrified neck. Telling Vita and Guinevere about their failure was going to be an ordeal. And the Pegasus… Ben could hardly bear to think of Ànemos.
Even the fact that they had rescued Shrii couldn’t really console Ben. He had only to think of the photograph of the motherless nest in his pocket, and his heart was heavy with grief and disappointment.
They were the only ones still standing by the stone figure of Kraa. All the others had followed Shrii when he and the other griffins flew up to Kraa’s palace nest.
Shrii… no, it had not all been for nothing. Pulau Bulu would be a happier island when they left it again. Who knew what would have become of Shrii, TerTaWa and all the others but for their arrival? Twigleg was telling himself the same thing as he stood between Barnabas and Ben, looking up at the sun-feathers on Kraa’s stone neck.
‘Maybe they’ll work even now they’ve been turned to stone,’ said Twigleg, with faint hope in his voice.
‘I can’t really imagine it,’ murmured Ben. ‘I think we’d better fly home.’
Tattoo groaned, and lowered his head so far that he almost bumped his nose on Kraa’s claws.
‘It’s my fault! All my fault!’
But although it was obvious how disappointed Barnabas was, he shook his head vigorously. ‘Nonsense! Kraa didn’t make it easy for any of us to think clearly. You were only trying to protect the others.’
‘Exactly. What else could you have done?’ Winston stroked Tattoo’s patterned scales comfortingly, while Berulu uttered a sympathetic squeak. Sometimes the maki sounded almost like a…
… rat!
Twigleg looked around. ‘Has anyone seen Lola?’
The others shook their heads.
Oh no!
‘But she must be here! She got away when Nakal grabbed hold of me!’ cried Twigleg. ‘I thought she ran to Barnabas!’
Oh, that confounded rat! Even if Twigleg still thought poorly of the way she had abandoned him to Nakal and Kraa on his own, he was genuinely worried! Suppose the stupid rodent had let something or other eat her? After all, she wasn’t half as big as she thought she was!
Lola had not let anything eat her, but she was in a fix. Rats can squeal quite loudly, and their shrill voices carry considerably further than their body size might suggest, but even a rat has trouble making herself heard above the noise of dragons and griffins locked in battle. And when the agitated chattering and squawking of monkeys and parro
ts is added to the racket, the prospect is hopeless!
Lola had tried shouting until her throat would produce nothing but a hoarse squeak, but no one had heard her. Of course she had left the humklupuss only to fetch help! But in doing so she had crossed the path of one of Kraa’s jackal scorpions, those infuriating nuisances. Wasn’t it bad enough for the brutes to have pincers? Did they have to snap at her with jackal’s jaws into the bargain? The anaesthetic in Barnabas’s fountain pens had already made her pursuer sleepy. But it could still have hunted rats, and Lola’s life would probably have come to a sudden end there on the island of Pulau Bulu if she hadn’t spotted a hole in the mud wall of Kraa’s nest just in time to save herself. It was a ridiculously tight fit, since after all, she wasn’t the most slender of rats, and her hideout stank of monkey and bird droppings. But the worst of it was having to crouch there while her friends could be heard fighting for their lives outside. And to make the situation even sillier, Barnabas’s anaesthetic had sent the jackal scorpion to sleep just outside the hole, barring her way of escape with its horrible pincers.
When cries of jubilation suddenly rang out, and the griffins were screeching Shrii’s name, Lola began shouting again. But her hoarse squeals were still not much louder than the squeak of a frightened mouse, and it seemed ages before Twigleg peered over her sleeping pursuer and looked into the hole.
‘And about time too, humpelklumpus!’ Lola snapped at him, while Barnabas moved the scorpion aside in what seemed to her an exaggeratedly considerate way.
‘Not a word!’ she said as she squeezed herself out into the open. ‘I don’t want to hear a word about it! I’ve missed it all, right? All the fun! But no, Barnabas didn’t want to put anything stronger in those fountain pen cases. Huh!’ She kicked the sleeping scorpion in the side with her tiny boot. ‘That dose wouldn’t even have knocked me out!’
This was too much for Twigleg.
‘All the fun?’ he repeated, outraged. ‘I’d just have loved to change places with you, Lola Greytail! Do you think it was more fun being held in a proboscis monkey’s perfumed paw, waiting to be fed to a griffin as a snack?’
‘Well, of course I’d have changed places right away!’ retorted Lola snippily.
Which was probably the truth. Twigleg was still trying to think up a good answer when someone cleared his throat behind them.
TerTaWa was squatting on Kraa’s abandoned throne. He had pinned a jasmine flower to his jacket in honour of the day.
