Читать книгу More Meerkat Madness - Ian Whybrow, Tony Ross - Страница 9

Chapter 2

What was it, struggling up out of the gloom? A honey badger? A cobra? Either could be deadly!

Suddenly Uncle let out his breath and relaxed. “Stand easy, the Really Mads!” he ordered. “No danger.”

He bustled past the kits, bowed deeply into the tunnel and offered a helping paw to the intruder. “Up we come,” he said.

The stranger was a fabulously fluffy female meerkat. She was tall and youthful, and when she turned, she showed very pretty, regularly-spaced dark patches down the sandy fur of her back. She had clearly lost weight and condition, but not her dignity. Her eyes were very deep and dark and her gaze was steady. When she saw how anxiously the kits looked at her, she almost turned and went back the way she had come. But then she seemed to check herself and stepped forward and spoke up boldly. “What ho, Fearless, old thing,” she said. She sounded very grand and hearty. “I hope this isn’t an awkward moment. But I really don’t think I can keep myself a secret for much longer. There! I’ve done it now, haven’t I?”

With that, she threw herself down on to her tummy in the still-cold sand in the way respectful meerkats have when they wish to be introduced.

“Now, now, m’dear! Get to your paws, please!” said Uncle, puffing his chest out, pulling in his tummy and straightening his safari scarf. “No need for ceremony! The kits are not going to bite you. You’re quite safe here with us. Come out and join our Warm-up.”

“What is she doing near me, Mimi, in my home?” exclaimed Mimi indignantly.

“Our home,” corrected Little Dream quietly, looking a little confused.

Skeema dashed over and peered down into the entrance tunnel, wagging his bottom from side to side as fiercely as he could, to show that he was ready for any sort of attack. “If there are any more of you down there – come out and fight!” he cried.

Mimi joined him, and began to make loud spit-calls to show how fierce she was. “Yes! Come out and fight me, me!” she challenged. “I’m special, you know! I’m the maddest kit of all the Really Mads!”

Little Dream was still looking rather dazed by the speed at which things were happening, but he was quick to stand shoulder to shoulder with his brother and sister. “Exactly,” he cried. It wasn’t very scary but it was the best he could manage on the spur of the moment.

“Steady! As you were, everyone!” growled Uncle Fearless. “Stand easy! There’s no-one else down there, you can take my word for it.”

“There could be, Uncle!” said Skeema. “After all, this female must have sneaked in through one of the escape-tunnels.” Skeema knew a trick or too himself so he was always quick to sniff out the cunning plans of others.

“I can assure you, Skeema,” said Uncle, licking his paw and briskly polishing the fur on his chest with it, “that I invited only one guest to use the spare chamber last night. And that was Miss – or to use her proper title, hem-hem – Princess – Radiant.”

At the word princess, Mimi bristled. She had always wanted to be a princess like her poor mother, Princess Fragrant who, tragically, had disappeared when Mimi and her brothers were no bigger than baby mole-rats. So when the Really Mad Mob had moved to Far Burrow, Uncle had promised Mimi she could be a princess. Thanks to Uncle Fearless, they had escaped from their old home where they had been bullied by cold Queen Heartless and her horrid, mean royal kits.

They had made their way, facing any number of dangers together, across the kingdom of the Sharpeyes, almost as far as the land of their arch-rivals, the fearsome Ruddertails. Mimi no longer had to bow and scrape to the cruel Princess Dangerous, who had reminded her constantly that she and her brothers were of no importance at all, being mere orphans.

Now the Really Mads had their own burrow and their own tribe, and she certainly didn’t want to have to go through that sort of thing again!

Skeema was still alarmed too, and he blurted out, “Is she a Ruddertail? She smells like one to me.”

“Enemies!” piped Little Dream, remembering the tremendous fight they had all had to keep the Ruddertails out of Far Burrow when they first arrived.

“Manners, everyone!” roared Uncle. “Silence, PLEASE!” Sulkily, the kits obeyed. He went on, “Princess Radiant is most certainly not a Ruddertail, Skeema. And she is not an enemy. She is… or rather she was… a member of the Truepatch tribe, who treated her as cruelly as the Sharpeyes treated us. And they threw her out. Sadly for her, she had no fellow meerkats with her, so had no choice for many a suntime and darktime but to be a tribeless Wanderer. When I came across her, worn-out and defenceless under a shrub on the border of Shepherd Tree Clump, I… well, I didn’t hesitate, did I, Princess?”

“Radiant, please, my dear! Let the kitties just call me Radiant!”

“Kitties!” spluttered Mimi. “Me? Me? A kitty?”

Uncle ignored Mimi and pressed on with his story. “I had no hesitation in offering the, hurrumph, very lovely Radiant, my protection. Our protection, I should say. Only…”

“Only we thought I might be a bit of a shock to you if I just wandered into the burrow,” put in Radiant with a twitch of her (very lovely) nose. “So we thought I’d better lie low until we could think of a way of, er, breaking the news about me as gently as possible. Your uncle – the dear, kind fellow – hid me away and brought me all sorts of smashing grub to fatten me up a bit. Didn’t you, my splendid old fearless hero?”

The kits looked at each other and rolled their eyes. “Yuck!” muttered Mimi.

“That explains why Uncle kept running off and disappearing!” whispered Skeema with a touch of admiration. “And why he kept pretending to check on the escape-tunnels. Crafty!”

“But she can’t stay here,” returned Mimi, horrified.

“Well, I don’t want to intrude if I’m not wanted,” said the newcomer, sensing that she was far from welcome. “Perhaps I should leave now. I’m sorry…”

“Nonsense! You’re not intruding at all!” cried Uncle. “Allow me to introduce you properly. Radiant, this is my niece, Mimi. Say how-do-you-do, Mimi.”

Mimi was so furious that she could only just manage to say hello.

Skeema was equally stiff and he couldn’t quite bring himself to say that he was pleased to meet her.

Little Dream was much more welcoming. “How do you do?” he said politely and touched his nose against the stranger’s face. “Our Mama is a Wanderer too,” he said sadly. “I have dreams about her sometimes. Her name’s Fragrant. You didn’t bump into her on your wanderings, did you, by any chance?”

“Now, now, Dreamie,” said Uncle gently. “Let’s not go over that again, eh, dear boy?” His sister, Fragrant, was dead and gone, he was sure of it. He hated to see the little chap get excited by a false hope. “Harrumph! I tell you what. We can’t bring your Mama back. But I’ve been thinking. What the Really Mad Mob needs more than anything is – um – a kind and caring adult female to join us. Someone strong, with spirit, d’you see? Someone who can bring… well, the things that the right sort of adult females can bring.”

“But you look after us,” said Skeema.

“And we manage very well on our own,” grumbled Mimi.

Uncle wasn’t listening. He gazed adoringly at Radiant. “So if you’ll permit me, my dear…” he said, “as King of the Really Mads, and Lord of the Click-clicks – I should like to welcome you officially into our tribe.”

In a flash, he twirled like a dancer and sprayed her with the mark of the Really Mad Mob. “Please consider yourself one of us,” he said merrily, rapidly blinking his one good eye. “Kits, give her a nice welcome, what-what!” He puffed out his chest proudly.

“I say, you’re all frightfully decent!” cried Radiant, hugging them firmly and giving everyone a jolly good nose-rub. “I can’t tell you how grateful I am to be among friends and out of danger. I had a pretty grim time all on my own-io in the Upworld, I don’t mind telling you. We meerkats are not much good without other meerkats looking out for us, are we?” She tried to make light of it, but were those tears of relief shining in her eyes? She wiped them away impatiently. “I’m not sure how I can ever thank you.” She looked hard at Uncle when she said this. Then she was bustling among the kits, squeezing and nipping them affectionately. “But I give you my word that I am bally-well going to try.”

Skeema and Mimi managed to mumble something and Uncle, bursting with joy and pride, gathered them all into his arms.

“Hear, hear,” said Little Dream, politely. “Good speech. Welcome to the Really Mads.”