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“I don’t know what all this fuss is about,” grumbled Uncle, trying to pretend nothing had happened, but trembling all the same.
“If The Silent Enemy comes down on us when we reach the Upworld, I’m going to bite his head off!” said Skeema, doing his best to sound brave.
“Good lad!” said Uncle. “That’s the spirit! But don’t you worry about enemies. We shall be perfectly safe so long as we look out for one another. You see, I was . . . well, I was on my own. I was caught off guard, what-what! It was hunger that did it. My mind was on a tasty rock lizard, d’you see? The eagle owl saw his chance, came out of the sun, snatched me into the air and took out my eye with his claw.”
“Poor Uncle,” said Little Dream.
“Never be off your guard!” warned Uncle. His voice grew stronger as he added: “Ah! But at least I gave him a taste of his own medicine! I pulled a great mouthful of feathers out of his chest! Ha-ha! That shook him! That showed him who was boss! He couldn’t hold me then, what-what!”
He decided not to mention that the eagle owl had dropped him from a great height and smashed several of his bones. This was not the time. He took a deep breath to stop himself from shaking at the memory of it. “But it was all rather a shock, I don’t mind telling you. It took me a very long time to get my strength back,” he went on. “My mind wandered. I was feverish! I was weak as a grub! The rest of the Sharpeyes thought I had the Meerkat Madness. They didn’t think I’d live. So naturally, they had to choose another . . . ”
He couldn’t bring himself to finish the sentence and so Little Dream said, “Never mind. You can be our secret king.”
“Hear, hear!” cried Skeema and Mimi. “Three cheers for our secret king!”
“Harrumph!” grunted Uncle, feeling foolish. “No more nonsense, now! Up and follow, kits. Up and follow.” Without another word he began digging at the nursery door.
The kits had learned their lessons well and stood in line behind him in their digging order. Each passed the scooped-out sand to the one behind, as if they were passing buckets of water to put out a fire. Skeema was right behind Uncle Fearless, his brave heart pounding; then Mimi, then Little Dream. In a flash they had removed more sand than they all weighed together – and found themselves in a damp and chilly passageway.
Blindly they followed their noses and ears through this and other passages and into a wider space. Uncle told them in a whisper that they had reached the main tunnel. There were strange new smells in each place they came to – of pee and dung that was not theirs – and the kits’ paws were tickled by unknown dung beetles at work with their loads.
“On,” said Uncle. “And say nothing until I tell you.”
They followed silently until the tunnel did a peculiar thing. Its blackness rolled back and became something else, not so solid. This made them gasp and Dream began to whimper quietly.
“Don’t worry. This is just the sunlight pushing in,” said Uncle. “It creeps into the burrow slowly so as not to shock our eyes. You’ll notice it grow bigger as we get closer to the Upworld. But it won’t harm us. It’ll warm us up and make us feel quick and tricky. Then you will understand what we call ‘seeing’. You’ll enjoy it once you’re used to it.”
They pressed forward and smelled new air as the darkness began to move aside for a stronger kind of light that made the kits’ eyes blink. It was there in the half-darkness that Chancer surprised them. His smell slid out of a side-tunnel first. Then came his slick head. That was finally followed by the swaying body of the King of the Sharpeyes himself.
“Welcome to the Upworld, brother Fearless!” said Chancer. He didn’t sound very welcoming. “The Queen’s hungry,” he went on. “She’s keen to forage on the hunting grounds, but she is waiting to greet the young ones at the entrance to the burrow. So hurry. Come this way. ”
Chapter 4
Queen Heartless was nibbling a grasshopper when Fragrant’s kits and their babysitter were bundled into her presence. She was waiting on The Spoil, the loose sand heaped up just in front of the main entrance. Fearless had once been her husband but after his ‘accident’ with The Silent Enemy she had taken Chancer, Fearless’s younger brother, as her new husband. Chancer ruled the Sharpeyes with Queen Heartless now. He was the father of her royal kits.
So Queen Heartless hardly glanced at Fearless. He meant nothing to her any more. That was the meerkat way. It was something he simply had to accept. Still, if it was painful for him to be no more than a babysitter, he did his best not to show it.
The Queen puffed up her fine pale fur and sat up proudly, staring into the sun. Her back was to the newcomers as they crept, blinking, out of the burrow. The royal kits, Princes Spiteful, Needleclaw and Snatch stood beside her with Princess Dangerous. A little way off the rest of the tribe stood to attention or bobbed busily, scanning the skies and the sands all around for enemies.
The sun was still low in the sky, so the eyes of Skeema, Mimi and Little Dream were dazzled. Their first sight in this amazing new Upworld was of something shockingly bright and yellow-orange.
*
For a second, poor Little Dream thought that the Queen must be the sun itself. It hurt his eyes to look at her and he had to turn away. Most meerkats have dark patches round their deep-set eyes that allow them to look directly into the sun without damage to their sight. Not so, Little Dream. He was born with eye-patches that were so pale they could hardly be seen at all. The royal family were quick to notice this and Princess Dangerous could not stop herself from giggling. “Look at that one! Have you ever seen such silly eyes!” she whispered.
Skeema and Mimi looked dazed. They felt weak and chilly. Uncle had told them about the need to warm up their tummy-pads by standing in the sunshine and they tried to stand to attention as they knew they had to. Unfortunately, the journey through the tunnels had made them very tired and they wobbled and fell over. There was more laughter, this time from Prince Needleclaw.
The queen stopped nibbling for a moment. The grasshopper was still wriggling although she had just chewed its head off. “Have the new kits been marked?” she asked the King.
“Stand still,” ordered King Chancer and sprayed them with the royal smell.
Queen Heartless-the-Dazzling looked down her long and elegant nose at her damp new subjects.
“Now you share our Sharpeyes’ burrow,” she announced coldly.
Now you share our Sharpeyes’ smell.
Now and forever you are Sharpeyes!
“Repeat after me the Sharpeye motto: Stay alert to stay alive. And stay with the group.”
“Stay alert to stay alive,” repeated Skeema, Mimi and Little Dream. “And stay with the group.”
“You may now bow and scrape.”
The kits copied Uncle Fearless as he bowed and scraped and licked the royal face and fur, the Queen’s first, then the King’s. “Now you must greet the princes and the princess,” whispered Uncle. It turned out that the royal kits didn’t want to be licked. Instead, they formed a noisy gang and rolled the visitors over. Since they were much larger than Skeema, Mimi and Little Dream, they could do it easily. They went for Skeema first, snapping and snarling and turning him on his back in the hot sand. This caught Skeema completely by surprise. Still, he began to give as good as he got, returning with interest the bites and scratches he was given.
Uncle Fearless managed to get in among the scrapping bodies and whisper into his ear: “Give way, Skeema! Remember your place!”
Then it was Mimi’s turn to be knocked about, and finally, Little Dream’s. Mimi was nipped quite sharply but did her best to be brave and not make a fuss. Apart from Uncle, not one of the rest of the watching Sharpeyes moved or said a word.
When the royal kits turned on Little Dream he let out a warning call and words started to tumble out of him: “Wup-wup-wup! Don’t you pick on me or you’ll upset Bold Uncle Fearless and he doesn’t like bad manners and he’s our secret king and once he bit The Silent Enemy!”
“How dare you speak to us like that!” spluttered Princess Dangerous.
Little Dream took no notice. “And he is the King of the Click-clicks!” he went on. “And he’s not scared of Vroom-vrooms, and he can stand on a Blah-blah’s head, so you be careful!” It was the longest speech he had ever made.
A dreadful hush fell. This was unheard of! A kit – a commoner kit at that – speaking up without an invitation! In front of Her Majesty! Some of the humbler Sharpeyes began to murmur.
“Who does that kit think he is?”
“He must be mad!”
“It’s all that Fearless’s fault, putting ideas into his head! Secret king, indeed!”
“Yes, because he had The Madness himself – remember?”
“You’re right! Do you remember the time, just after the eagle owl attacked him and dropped him on his head? He twitched, he was helpless . . . he talked rubbish, poor kat.”
“Such a shame!”
The Queen silenced them all with a sharp cry. Nobody moved. She returned for a moment to her grasshopper, snapping off the legs one by one. For a moment there was no other sound except the whirring of insect wings. Then she said, “I have no time for any more nonsense. Tell me, Fearless, are you or any of these kits likely to be a danger to me or to my tribe?”
“N-n-not at all, Your Majesty.” Fearless was flustered but trying to seem steady.
“A babysitter’s job is to mind babies,” she said. “Not to fill their heads with nonsense. Mind them. Teach them how to be useful and how to obey. Anything else is . . . unwelcome. Do you understand?”
“Absolutely, Your Majesty. I—”
“Chancer, children, come!” she interrupted. “I lost more weight in the darktime than is good for me. I must forage for food without delay.”
With that, she turned and galloped off towards the hunting grounds.
Chapter 5
“I say, look here, my dear young Dreamer,” said Uncle as they stood alone by the burrow entrance on the very edge of the Upworld. “You mustn’t go about saying that I’m your . . . your actual king. I mean it’s awfully kind of you but it’s just not done.”
“Ah, but we like you being our king,” said Little Dream. Small flurries of hot sand blown on the wind made him stagger and squint. Luckily nature had fitted him with little wind screen wipers, so the sand in his eyes was quickly flicked away.
“It was supposed to be a secret, Dreamie, you bedbug! You’re not supposed to tell anybody secrets!” scolded Skeema. He turned to Uncle, who was looking ruffled and uncomfortable. “Don’t worry, we won’t say you’re our king out loud, we’ll just know it,” he assured him, anxious to make him feel better about himself.
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