Jumping into the lion's den might not have been the smartest move, but I couldn’t bring myself to walk away and look for another hose if the lion was about to emerge. I was taller than Eric; I could lift him up to reach the hose, and then climb up myself. So I scrambled up the bars of the inner fence, maneuvered over their curved tops, climbed down the other side, and then slid down the hose. I was in too much of a hurry and landed off-balance, scraping both palms and ripping the knee of my jeans. That was bad, wasn’t it? Didn’t lions attack when they smelled blood? Or was that only sharks?
My arrival seemed to reassure Eric.
“I can climb up if you lift me up so I can reach the hose,” he said. “But how are we going to rescue Spike?”
He got top marks for courage too, I thought, if he could worry about Spike at a time like this.
“We’re going to tie him up in your T-shirt,” I said. “And then one of us can carry him out.”
“I’d probably better do it,” Eric said. “He doesn’t bite me nearly as much as he bites you.” He sounded a little calmer. Maybe worrying about Spike distracted him from his fear. If so, he was welcome to haul the little furball.
To my surprise, my plan worked rather well. We wrapped the suddenly cooperative Spike into a neat little bundle, and then, using the leash and Eric's belt, we rigged a harness that would let one of us sling him over our backs for the climb up. Pretty good, considering how hard it was to keep my hands from shaking every time the lion growled. Thank goodness Reggie seemed to be a lazy, procrastinating lion, taking his own sweet time coming out to devour us. Eric insisted on carrying Spike, and eyeing how high I’d have to jump to grab the rope, I didn’t argue.
“Okay, I’m going to lift you up now,” I said.
Eric had gotten a lot heavier since the last time I’d lugged him around. I hoisted him up as high as I could, and he could still just barely reach the hose, which meant that getting out wasn’t going to be a picnic for me, either. But I breathed a sigh of relief once he grabbed the hose. He scrambled up, nimble as a monkey, and then scaled the tall fence a little more slowly. Now that he was on the way to safety, I began looking around for something I could stand on.
“Don’t let Spike loose till I get up there,” I called over my shoulder. “We don’t want to have to do this all over again.”
“Okay,” he called down, peering through the fence. “But you’d better hurry!”
The lion growled as if agreeing with him.
I jumped up and tried to grab the end of the hose. No luck. The second time fell short as well. The third time, I grabbed the hose. Success.
Then the hose snapped in the middle, dumping me in a heap at the foot of the wall. I hit my funny bone on the way down and landed on something that knocked the breath out of me.
“Aunt Meg, are you all right?”
I nodded. I didn’t have the breath to answer. The lion growled again, and I suddenly felt a wave of fierce irritation at his damned repetitive growling.
“Some king of the beasts,” I muttered, with what little breath was returning. “Hiding there in your den, deliberately growling just to scare people.”
“What was that?” Eric called.
“Never mind,” I said. “You go look for another hose.” “What are you going to do?”
“Wait here for you to come back with a longer hose.” “Okay,” Eric said.
The lion's failure to appear had gone beyond luck and was edging into downright weird. Something odd was happening, and I had a hunch what it was. But I waited till I heard Eric's footsteps fade in the distance before moving. If I was wrong, I didn’t want Eric to witness what would happen.
I scrambled up from the floor of the cage to the first level of the concrete terraces. There was an opening there, but it wasn’t the source of the growling—that was coming from the opening in the second terrace. I climbed up another level, took a deep breath, and began carefully picking my way over to the den's mouth. I heard another growl.
“Aunt Meg, don’t! We can find another hose; just wait a little longer!”
We? Eric had returned and was clutching the bars of the cage. Standing by him was Montgomery Blake. “Get out of there!” Blake shouted. Did he think I’d jumped in for fun? “Find me a rope, then,” I called back. “Aunt Meg!” Eric called.
I stuck my head into the mouth of the lion's den.
Chapter 27
Outside, I could hear shouts from Eric and the old naturalist— probably because my arrival at the den coincided with another loud roar. I crawled inside, turned off the tape recorder, unplugged it, and carried it outside. I left behind the timer it had been plugged into.