Lionboy by Zizou Corder Read Free Book Online Page B

while he was asleep to play Snake, and had run the battery down.
    Aneba was annoyed about this. Lying back on the lower bunk with Magdalen dozing on his shoulder, he was staring right at the two-way mirror at the spot where he felt Sid and/or Winner would be.
    “Berma, mu ye kwasia eni mu ha ma jwi,” he muttered. He stared from under his hooded eyelids. His mouth was hard. He hadn’t moved for an hour and a half—not a twitch, not a blink, only the tiny movements of his lips, and they were scarcely visible. Basically, he was letting himself look frightening, and he knew perfectly well that he could look very frightening indeed.
    “Wo ho ye ahi paa,” he murmured. On the other side of the mirror, Sid and Winner didn’t like it.
    “What’s he saying?” said Winner. “What is that?”
    “Wo ho ye ahi paa.”
    “What language is that?” demanded Winner. “What’s he saying that for?”
    Aneba carried on muttering, and staring, like a block of obsidian possessed by an evil voice.
    “I hear he’s some kind of wise man, some kind of, like, one of their wizards, isn’t he!” said Winner, who couldn’t really tell the difference between a wizard and a university professor.
    “Yeah,” said Sid.
    They didn’t like it at all.
    “He’s putting a curse on us,” said Winner. “He’s putting a hex on us.”
    Slowly, weirdly, the block of obsidian cracked. Aneba smiled, a long, scary smile. It was working. All he was saying was “you stupid little irritating men, you’re beginning to annoy me,” but if they wanted to think they were being cursed, that was fine with him. Fat and Skinny, as he called them, were already scared of how huge he was. Skinny had said that he didn’t want to go into the cabin anymore.
    Suddenly a voice burst over the intercom from the other cabin.
    “Stop cursing us!” it cried. “Stop it!”
    Aneba lifted his head, flashed his eyes, and gave them a huge grin. The effect, after the hours of motionlessness, was electrifying. Sid and Winner jumped.
    “Certainly,” said Aneba politely. “When you give me back my telephone, recharged, and tell me where you are taking us, and why, and on whose instructions.”
    Magdalen rolled her head in her sleep and tried to shift, but there was no room. The ship’s cat, a lazy-looking marmalade, fell with a yowl from her lap, where he had been lying, and gave her an irritated look. She half woke.
    “Charlie?” she murmured.
    Aneba touched her head. He very much wanted to leap up, break the glass, throw the two guys overboard . . . He probably could have too. He was, after all, extremely big and strong. But there was something else he wanted more. He wanted to know why they had been kidnapped, and by whom, and what for. More important than escaping was learning what was going on.
    He stroked Magdalen’s head, then turned his gaze to the two-way mirror and started muttering again.
    “Wo hairdresser nye papa,
wo maame ye kwadu,
wo gyime ye sononko,
wo hwene kakraka.”
    (Loosely, “You have a very bad hairdresser, your clothes look as if they have been out dancing on their own all night, your mother is a banana, your nose is too big, your stupidity is so famous, they have statues of it in the city squares . . .”) “Your nose is too big” sounded good, so he said it a few more times, rhythmically, getting louder and louder:
    “Wo hwene kakraka,
wo hwene kakraka,
WO HWENE KAKRAKA!”
    “Stop it!” shouted a big fat voice over the intercom.
    “I’d be glad to,” said Aneba. “You know what you have to do.” And he lowered his lids again, and stared, and muttered, and stared, and muttered, and stared.

CHAPTER 7

    A bout an hour later Charlie heard noises at the top of the ladder, and realized that someone was climbing down. He had no time to think what to do—even to decide whether or not to hide—before the person was standing in the cockpit, staring at him out of big brown eyes and saying: “François! Regardez! Il y a un garcon