Free Lionboy by Zizou Corder

sort of triangular, and though they had no porthole as such, if you climbed a ladder in the top corner of the curiously shaped chamber, you found yourself inside the figurehead’s face, and you could look out of spyholes cut into her beautiful green eyes, and you could peer through a thick glass window behind the great teeth of her beguiling smile. Now of course there was nothing to see but a few swaying stars, misty and far away, but in the daytime what a view that would be! When Charlie had admired the ship from the outside earlier that day, he had had no idea that the figurehead was hollow, with a peculiar little room inside where two girls lived.
    “This is absolutely amazing,” he said. “This is amazing. I am amazed.”
    The girls—acting together as always—found the chocolate. Then they unfolded their cot, and there was just room for all three to sit on it (there was no floorspace left) and start to nibble their way into a happy chocolate reverie.
    A knock at the door made them jump. “Password!” cried the twins.
    “Bucket!” said a voice, and the door opened and in marched the curly boy who had been with the clowns.
    “Ah, you’ve got him!” he cried in a cheerful tone. “The twins have got him!” he called over his shoulder, and from behind him Charlie could hear a chattering, scrabbling sound, which turned out to be the muddy-faced boy and four or five of the smallest Italians, who had come to investigate Charlie. They all tried to come into the twins’ cabin, the twins told them there wasn’t room, and then a great coo-cooing noise started up from behind one of the walls, and the twins said, “Now look! You’ve woken the doves,” and shooed everybody, including Charlie, out.
    “Where’re you sleeping?” said the curly boy to Charlie.
    “Don’t know,” said Charlie. “I’m supposed to be in with the monkeys, but since they’ve been through my bag and eaten everything, I don’t want to.”
    “Do you want to come and bunk with us in the rope storeroom?” asked the curly boy. “It’s above the galley so we never get cold. It keeps the ropes dry too so they don’t rot. It’s next to the lions . . .”
    The boy was going on about the lions needing the heat too, but Charlie wasn’t listening. Next to the lions! There were lions! He’d been told, and he knew it, but only now did it really get through to him. There really were lions on this ship and he was going to be next door to them.

CHAPTER 8

    T he curly boy was called Julius, and the thin clown was his father. The muddy boy was called Hans, and he looked after the Learned Pig, which was why he was so muddy. (The boy, not the pig. Though the pig was muddy too. But the boy was muddy because of the pig, not vice versa. In fact, the pig would have been a lot muddier were it not for the boy.)
    Hans and Julius slept on piles of coiled-up ropes in the rope storeroom. Each had his own shelf, quite big enough for a smallish boy, though without much headroom. Julius had the top shelf and Hans the bottom one, so there was a shelf for Charlie in the middle.
    “There’s a sleeping bag here already,” said Charlie. “Does someone else sleep here?”
    Hans started to giggle nervously. Julius shushed him with a furious look.
    “What is it?” said Charlie.
    Julius snorted. “Oh, well, there was a boy,” he said. “He helped with the lions.”
    “Really?” said Charlie, interested. “And what happened to him?”
    “Major Tib had him thrown overboard,” hissed Julius.
    Charlie stared. “Why?” he whispered, adopting Julius’s air of mystery.
    Julius shook his head and made a zip-the-mouth gesture. Charlie looked at the shelf and its sleeping bag again, and wrinkled his nose a bit. “Bad luck isn’t contagious,” he said to himself. “Bad luck doesn’t exist. It’s all in the mind.” This is what his mum always said—though when she did, his dad tended to raise an eyebrow and say, “The mind is a very strong thing,