1

In trouble again

It was a brilliant puppet show, but it was spoilt for Jamie. Punch was doing something violent to Judy, or the baby, or the policeman; Jamie couldn’t see. As usual they’d put him on the back row, and the boy in front, who’d been fidgeting all the way through the show, was now standing on the bench blocking Jamie’s view. Jamie put his hands on the boy’s shoulders and pushed downwards. The boy toppled off his perch and fell onto the shrieking children on the bench in front of him, banging his knee and howling with exaggerated pain.
Jamie saw Mr Buxton heading in his direction. Two rows in front he saw the long blond hair of his nine-year-old stepsister Ellie, pinned back with that stupid slide with the pink glittery hearts she was so proud of. He watched Ellie’s hand go up. He heard Ellie say: “It was Jamie, sir.” (How did she know? Did the slide have eyes in it?)
Jamie felt himself being propelled out of the school hall and along the corridor to the Head’s room. The Head wasn’t there, so Jamie had to stand in the secretary’s room till she came back. The secretary glared at Jamie and telephoned his father. “I’m sorry Mr Hadfield,” he heard her say, “...yes, in trouble again...Mrs Gupta will want to see you-can you come in at 3.15?”
Dad and the Head arrived at the same time: he heard their voices in the corridor, talking about him. “It’s the second time this week he's been in trouble,” the Head was saying. “I shall have to suspend him.”
As they passed through the secretary’s office to the Head’s room, Mrs Gupta looked crossly at Jamie, and beckoned him to follow. His father looked sad and hopeless. Ellie had tagged along behind, and was waiting in the corridor. She looked smug.
Mrs Gupta asked Jamie why he’d pushed the boy off the bench.
“Don’t know,” replied Jamie. He didn’t bother to explain that he hadn’t meant to push the boy off the bench, only to get him to crouch down so Jamie could see. Nor did he mention that the boy had been a nuisance all afternoon, squirming about, leaning against Jamie’s knees, and getting out of his seat.
No-one ever listened when Jamie explained things. They seemed to think everything was his fault because of his size. He was the biggest boy in the school, in spite of being nine, and two years younger than the Year Sixes. It didn't matter who he complained to when other children teased him: Mr Buxton, or Mrs Gupta, or Dad. Whoever it was would always say, with disbelief: “They picked on you? But you’re the biggest boy in the school, Jamie!”
Jamie was suspended from school for three days.
“You’re the biggest boy in the school, Jamie,” said his father as they walked to the van, “and the worst behaved. Do you realise how many times Mrs Gupta has sent for me this term?”
“It’s four,” said Ellie immediately.
“Is not,” said Jamie.
“Is!” said Ellie. "The first time, you hit someone with a ruler in class. The second time you threw a girl’s sandwich on the floor and trod on it-“
“She spat in my lunchbox!”
“Says you! The third time-"
“Shut up!” yelled Jamie, grabbing a bunch of her long blond hair in each hand and yanking it hard. “Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!”

Ellie was screaming. Dad took Jamie’s arms in a vice-like grip and Jamie dropped the hair. Ellie ran sobbing to the van. Dad turned Jamie round to face him, still holding his arms. His father stared at him.
“What is it with you Jamie?” he said. “Are you mad?”
“Mad Jamie! Bad Mad Jamie! Mad Bad Jamie!” called two giggling girls from his class as he climbed into the back of the van, where Dad made him sit among the pipes and toilet bowls and wash basins, while Ellie travelled in the front.
“No television for you tonight,” Dad told him.
On the way home, Dad bought Ellie an ice-cream, to make up for having her hair pulled.

At home, Jamie lay on the captain’s bed in what he called his “cupboard”. This was an exaggeration, but his bedroom wasn’t much bigger than a walk-in closet. The captain’s bed consisted of a top bunk, with some shelves and drawers underneath instead of a bottom bunk. It took up the whole of one of the longer walls. The opposite wall was only three-quarters of a metre away, so there was just room for a bunk ladder, and for Jamie to get in and out of bed, but for no other furniture. On one end wall of the narrow room was a small window; on the other, a sliding door, because there wasn’t enough space for an ordinary door to open. The bunk was too short for him and as he lay on his front, his feet stuck out uncomfortably over the end rail. From the lounge came the sound of Ellie laughing at the television.
Jamie took out the mobile phone Dad had given him a few days earlier, for his birthday. He wondered where his mother was, and how surprised she would be if she had a phone call from her son. Maybe she would be overcome with joy and rush over from the other side of the world and take him back to live with her. Or maybe she had twelve other children now and would say: “It’s lovely to talk to you Jamie but I’ve got my hands full at the moment. Call me back in ten years.” Jamie didn’t have her phone number.
He dialled his grandparents’ number instead. He heard Gran’s voice on the answerphone say; "Sorry, we can’t come to the phone just now...,” and remembered they were on holiday abroad somewhere. There was no-one to phone. What was the use of a phone if you had no-one to talk to? He banged the back of the phone against the metal end-bar of the bunk. How many bangs would it take for the screen to break? Jamie banged it again harder, then a third time, harder still. The screen was still unbroken. He stopped because it was too noisy. If he carried on banging some-one would come to see what was happening. Risking one last noise, he threw the phone at the wall opposite his bed, expecting it to bounce off and hit the floor with a clatter. No clatter came. The phone sailed through the wall and landed with a faint thud, somewhere beyond it. Jamie stared. The phone had gone through the wall.
The paper on this wall showed monkeys of many different colours – all the colours of the rainbow in fact- sitting in trees, eating, or swinging from one tree to the next. Multi- coloured parrots flew here and there, and near the floor some blue hippos basked on a muddy bank. It was different from the wall against which his bed rested. On that wall, although the hippos were similar, the trees were different and the parrots were just plain green. The monkeys were a dull green colour too, and so hidden in the trees that you had to look hard to see them. Jamie had often wondered why the two walls were different.
As he stared, he noticed a red monkey, right opposite him. He was surprised to see that the red monkey looked the way he, Jamie, felt: angry. It was staring at something, frowning and baring its teeth. It was a comfort to Jamie that someone else seemed to feel as angry as he did. Jamie liked this monkey.
The next thing that happened was stranger still. As Jamie was observing the monkey, the monkey shifted its gaze, and looked straight at Jamie. “What are you staring at?” it snapped.
Jamie gasped. “I was looking for my phone and - and you’re angry like me,” he started to explain, “I was just wondering why...Anyhow,” he added, getting his breath back, “why shouldn’t I stare at you if I want to? You’re on my wallpaper!”
Before the monkey could reply there was a sudden noise of rustling leaves and creaking branches, and an orange shape flashed by. The orange monkey – for that was what it was – landed on the branch of a mango tree, grabbed a fruit and began to gobble it greedily. As it did so, Jamie heard a snarl, and saw the red monkey launch itself from its perch, hurtle through the air and land with such force on the same mango branch that several fruits fell to the ground. It continued to shake the branch violently, as if to shake the orange monkey off it, snarling the while. The orange monkey retreated to a fork in the tree trunk, still clutching the mango. Once there, to Jamie’s further amazement, it turned as red as its opponent, snarled back and crouched ready to pounce.
The monkeys were going to hurt each other. Jamie had to stop them. He knelt on the bunk, stretched out his arms and grasped something solid that felt like a tree branch. It seemed as if a window had opened in the wall. He pushed his head through, and pulled the rest of him after it. It wasn't a very big window: he had to wriggle and squirm his way through. Then suddenly he was on the other side, hanging by his arms from a tree, his feet dangling. He felt anxiously around for a foothold, and found one.
He was in a tree, standing on one branch and holding on to another. The two red monkeys were either side of him: only now they were no longer red, but shocking pink. The air felt hot and damp, and his ears were filled with the squawking of parrots, the screeches of monkeys, the buzzing of insects, the rustling of leaves and the creaking of branches, as the tree swayed alarmingly in the wind. The ground was a dizzyingly long way below.


2

Monkey business

The bright pink monkeys had stopped snarling and were staring up at Jamie. But then they started to make another alarming noise - sort of half-panting, half-coughing - and turned yellow.
“You change colour!” exclaimed Jamie.
The panting-cough got louder and more violent, and then stopped as the monkeys ran out of breath. They were both apple green now.
“Don’t you change colour?” asked the first monkey.
“No,” said Jamie. “not much, anyway.”
“Then how does anybody know how you feel?” asked the second monkey.
Jamie had never thought about this before, and it was hard to concentrate, clinging to a swaying tree. Before he could come up with an answer, the first monkey snapped suspiciously: “You’re not one of those Secrets are you?”
“What secrets?”
“Doesn’t matter.” This monkey had a very short attention span. “Give it a mango Tufts,” he said to the other monkey, who had two tufts of hair sticking up on the top of her head. “See if it eats mango.”
Jamie ate the mango with difficulty, keeping a tight hold of the branch at the same time, juice running down his chin and neck onto his shirt. Watching him, the two monkeys started the noise again. Jamie realised they were laughing!
“You’re a weird sort of monkey, mate, that’s for sure,” gasped Tufts as she got her breath back. “He’s the weirdest monkey I’ve ever seen. How about you Snapper?” she addressed her companion.
“I’m human,” explained Jamie, and for some reason this sent the monkeys off into new gales of mirth.
Jamie looked down and felt giddy. He needed to sit down. He was bigger than the monkeys, three times as big, but where the tree trunk forked, several branches had grown out sideways. They formed a flattish space that was big enough to provide a seat.
“Could you move along please?” he asked Tufts, who was still occupying the fork. Tufts obligingly hopped along a branch and Jamie moved gingerly along his own branch and settled himself in the space.
“What’s a human?” asked Snapper.
“Not a monkey,” observed Tufts. “Monkeys aren’t afraid of falling out of trees.
Why have you come?” she asked, turning to Jamie.
“I came to stop you fighting,” said Jamie, “and to find my phone. It went through the wall and opened up a window. What were you going to fight about?”
“Doesn’t matter now," said Snapper.
“Have another mango,” said Tufts.
“We’ll all have one,” said Snapper. “We’ll have a mango party!”
Snapper threw Jamie a mango, which he caught with one hand. “Good
catch! Your turn Tufts!” Snapper tossed another fruit up in the air, vaguely in the direction of Tufts, who missed it. Tufts tossed one back, and there followed a frenzy of mango-tossing, shouting, whooping and laughing. The monkeys skipped from branch to branch like wildfire, flashing yellow and orange. But they were hopeless at mango-catching and most of the fruit fell to the ground. Jamie saw other monkeys scrabbling for it and squabbling over it as it landed down below. Then Snapper and Tufts abruptly stopped the game and began instead to guzzle mango after mango, as if there were no tomorrow.
“You’ll run out of mangoes!” warned Jamie. The branches immediately around them had been totally stripped of fruit.
Snapper stopped eating, sank down beside Jamie in the tree fork, and turned suddenly purple. “That’s the trouble,” he said with a deep sigh. “The mangoes are running out. Soon there will be no mangoes left in the jungle.”
“Then we shall starve,” put in Tufts, who had gone a similar colour.
“So why-" began Jamie.
“-did we have a mango party?” finished Snapper. “Because we didn’t think. Monkeys do things first and think later. ”
“Shouldn’t you think first and then do things?”
“Of course not! That would be ridiculous!”
“We’d never get anything done!” agreed Tufts.
“Is that what humans do? Think first?”
“Er-” began Jamie, but he wasn't sure of the answer.
Snapper had lost interest anyway and was lying curled up on the flat space, yawning and turning a dark green colour. Jamie suddenly felt very tired too.
“Time for a nap,” said Tufts, settling down beside Snapper. “Lie down Human!” she said to Jamie. “Don’t humans sleep when they’re full up with mango?”
“He didn’t eat as much as us. Maybe he’s not tired,” said Snapper. “He isn’t dark green.”
“He doesn’t change on the outside,” Tufts reminded him. “But I think he’s pale blue inside.”
“What’s pale blue?” asked Jamie.
“Pale blue is scared,” was the answer.
“Scared is ridiculous,” snapped Snapper. “There’s nothing to be to be scared of.”
“Humans fall out of trees,” Tufts reminded him.
“Oh yes!” yelled Snapper gleefully. “Humans are rubbish in trees!”
“Worse than hippos!” agreed Tufts. “Imagine hippos climbing trees!”
Both monkeys found it necessary to turn yellow and roll about in merriment at this for a minute or so.
“Get in the middle!” Snapper ordered Jamie when he recovered himself. “A monkey each side will stop you falling. Lie down and go to sleep, Hippo!”
Jamie lay down between the two monkeys, and they each laid one arm and one leg across him. He still didn’t feel entirely safe. He was still a bit “pale blue inside".
“At least,” he thought to himself, “at least I’ve stopped the monkeys hurting each other.” It had been a bad day, an awful day, but at least he had done that, and now they seemed to be friends. It was good to feel their warm, furry bodies beside him, and he did feel very tired. Perhaps if they all went to sleep, when they woke up, the monkeys would have forgotten all about fighting. He laid his head down, but as he did so, it struck something hard and uncomfortable: his mobile phone!
Jamie had forgotten all about the phone, which had perhaps got stuck in some leaves and fallen out during the mango party. It reminded him of home. Would they be wondering where he was? He thought perhaps he should go back, instead of sleeping here with the monkeys. But he decided to let them go to sleep, to make sure everything was peaceful before he left. So he lay quietly between the two monkeys and examined his phone.
As he did so, he noticed something glinting in the fading sunlight. He was amazed to discover it was a button: a new one. He was quite sure it hadn't been there before. It was glinting because it had on it a tiny picture of a golden monkey.
Jamie pressed the button, and immediately the "window" he had come through from his bedroom, which was still open, closed. That was scary. Suppose it didn't open again? How would he find his way home? Jamie pressed the button again and, to his relief, the window re-opened. So that was how it worked! He left the window open and lay down again. He would wait till the monkeys had drifted off to sleep, and then leave.
But when he looked at Snapper, he saw that the monkey's eyes were still open. And it was then that Jamie made his mistake. “Why did you want to fight?” he asked Snapper.
As soon as the question was out he was sorry. Snapper was changing colour again.
“She was in the wrong tree,” he said, jabbing a finger at Tufts. “The trees on this side of the jungle belong to our family. The ones on the other side belong to hers. But these trees are spare trees.” Snapper was orange.
To make matters worse, Jamie thought he could faintly hear Dad calling him from the other side of the window.
Tufts was orange too. “Spare trees for everyone!" she asserted. “Anyone can use these trees!”
“Only in emergencies!” snapped back Snapper, now red.
“I was hungry!” retorted Tufts. “That’s an emergency!”
“Not enough of one!” Snapper was on his feet now, and a deep scarlet. “Every day!” he shouted. “Every day I see you in this tree! You have emergencies every day, do you? Get out!” he continued, “Get out of this tree and go back where you belong!”
Red as a post box, Tufts crouched, snarling.
“Jamie!” He heard his father’s voice louder now.
"I've got to go," he told the monkeys. "I'll come back later and try to help! Please don't fight again, please!" Jamie climbed up to the open window, and pushed his head through into his bedroom.
“I’ve made your tea,” Dad was calling from the kitchen.
“But the monkeys!" protested Jamie. “I think they might fight again!”
“No nonsense now! It’s going cold!” In a few seconds more Dad would come to get him. He gripped the bunk rail, pulled himself through the window, and jumped to the floor. He pressed the golden monkey button to close the window behind him.


3

War or peace?

Dad met Jamie in the hall. “Apologise to Ellie!” he ordered, before they entered the kitchen.
Ellie was sitting at the kitchen table. Violetta, Jamie’s stepmother, was serving up the food. “Sorry I pulled your hair,” mumbled Jamie as he passed Ellie and took his usual seat by the wall, opposite her. Ellie glared at him in silence.
“Fish and chips with mushy peas! Your favourite, Jamie!” Violetta was trying to be nice. She beamed at Jamie; but unfortunately, as she did so, she couldn’t help noticing his school shirt, sticky with mango juice and grimed by tree bark, the pocket slightly ripped. She couldn’t stop herself exclaiming “Oh, what state is shirt in Jamie!! And you teared pocket!” Violetta spoke English very well, but she came originally from Estonia and still had a strong accent. When she got excited, her grammar went awry. “Children in Estonia do not tear the clothes,” she continued. Violetta's parents had been very strict and she had always had to be very good when she was a child. So Violetta believed that all the children of Estonia were perfectly behaved, while English ones were spoilt and disobedient. Ellie, whose full name was Elena, had been born in Estonia, and come to England as a baby.
Jamie scowled. “He’s making a face!” said Ellie, but luckily no-one was listening.
The two adults joined the children at the table. It had somehow got pushed closer than usual to the wall and Jamie’s legs were squashed. The anger welled up inside him again. Why was there never enough room for him anywhere in this flat? He felt like shoving the table violently away from him, sending the plates and cutlery sliding, sloshing the water about, and probably winding Ellie. He clenched his teeth-and immediately heard the voice of Snapper, inside his head, saying: “Is that what humans do? Think first?” Well, Jamie had more sense than a bunch of monkeys. He wouldn’t have wasted a treeful of precious mangoes. “Think first” he said to himself. “Don’t shove the table. They’ll only send you off again without any tea and you’ll probably have to spend the whole weekend in bed.” Jamie didn’t shove the table, but it was very hard not to. He fidgeted around, trying to get comfortable.
“Sit still Jamie!” said Dad.
Jamie glowered. “How can I sit still, with a table digging into my knees?” he demanded crossly.
“That’s enough!” warned Dad. But he pulled the table out a little.
Violetta put a plate of food in front of Jamie, but Jamie didn’t much feel like eating. The sweet taste of mango in his mouth had taken his appetite away, and he was worried about Snapper and Tufts. He imagined them hurt and crying out in pain.
His father continued more kindly: “Listen Jamie. You can change bedrooms if you want. That bunk you’re in is too small, and there isn’t room for your stuff. You could sleep in the attic. Violetta’s OK with that, aren’t you, Vee?”
Ellie drew herself up straight at this, her eyes widening. She let out an indignant: “Huh!”, then her eyes narrowed again and she hunched over. She looked, Jamie thought, like a monkey ready to pounce.
The Hadfields lived in a flat on the top floor of an old house. They had a small kitchen, a lounge, bathroom and toilet, a medium–sized bedroom for Violetta and Ian, another for Ellie, and Jamie’s closet. Then there was the room inside the roof-space: the attic room. This was where Violetta did her sewing, making dancing outfits and wedding dresses for her customers. No child was allowed in there normally: the materials were too expensive and delicate. Jamie knew it would be an honour to be allowed to sleep in there.
“There’s room for a full-sized bed,” continued Dad “and I’ll put up some shelves.”
Jamie considered the idea. It would be good to stretch out properly in bed; but the best thing about sleeping in the attic was that it would make Ellie mad. He thought about saying 'yes' for just that reason. Jamie knew the arrangement wouldn’t work for long, though. Before any time at all he’d be in trouble for upsetting Vee’s pin tray, or getting grubby finger marks on the delicate fabrics. Besides, he needed to be near the jungle. He needed to get back there.
“I’m all right where I am,” he said. “Can I get down now? “
“Where are you going?” asked Dad. .”I said no telly, remember!”
“I want to go to bed.”
“At half past seven on a Friday night?”
Jamie nodded.
Ian and Vee exchanged glances. They suspected mischief, but couldn’t think what mischief it might be, so they didn't object.
“Wash up your plate before you go then,” said Dad. “Vee’s working tonight.”
As well as sewing, Vee worked three nights a week and all day Sunday in a nursing home.
Jamie took his plate and cutlery over to the sink, washed them up and
left the room.
He got ready for bed quickly, climbed onto his bunk, and examined the wall paper opposite his bed. The original mango tree was there, the one where he’d first noticed Snapper - though stripped of mangoes now – but there was no sign of his friends. He got out of bed and put the light on. He knelt on his bunk and tried to scan the whole wall, and after a minute, near the bottom of it, he spotted a monkey he was sure was Tufts, apple green, sitting on the ground near the hippos’ mud bank, with her back against a tree. She didn’t seem to be hurt, which was good, but where was Snapper? Jamie got down from the bunk and approached the wall. He pressed the golden monkey button on his phone, and a window opened in the wall. Jamie wriggled through and landed on his stomach in the mud at the river's edge. He stood up, and as he did so, a hippo behind him shifted, sending a spray of more mud over the back of his blue and white pyjamas. ‘More trouble with Vee’ thought Jamie. “Children in Estonia,” she would say, “have always the clean pyjamas.” But he soon stopped worrying about that; because a moment later, he felt himself sinking helplessly into the mud.
Luckily, it stopped at his knees; but that was bad enough, because he found his legs were stuck: he couldn’t walk. He looked around for something to grab hold of, and found nothing but a sleepy, basking hippo. Just as he was wondering whether the animal was friendly enough to let him hold onto its back, it yawned, grunted, turned right over in the water, and sent Jamie sprawling backwards into the mud. He landed on his bottom, sitting in mud up to his chest. Try as he might, he couldn’t stand up.
“Help!” shouted Jamie, looking hopefully towards the tree where he’d seen Tufts sitting. The monkey had gone pale blue and was hopping about, beating her breast, obviously having no idea what to do. “Get me a rope or something!” yelled Jamie, though he didn’t imagine there would be any ropes in the jungle. “Hurry!” That seemed to turn on a light bulb in Tufts’ brain. She scrambled up a tree and ran along a branch that hung above Jamie’s head. She untangled a creeper from the branches, and lowered it into the mud near Jamie. Jamie took hold of the creeper with both hands and pulled himself to his feet. Then, with a great effort, he freed his feet from the mud, gripped the creeper between those too, and climbed up the “rope”. He’d practised this in PE at school, and was the best rope-climber in the class.
He clambered onto the branch, worked his way along it, and then more-or-less slid down the tree trunk to the ground.
“Rubbish at climbing!” Tufts commented. “That took forever!” But she was obviously relieved that her friend was safe. She was yellow again, and grinning.
"You could have helped a bit sooner," complained Jamie, sinking down on the ground beside Tufts. “Did you fight Snapper?” he asked.
“No,” said the monkey. “I was too tired. So I went away. I’ll be back though, and I’ll fight him next time,” she added defiantly. ”He won’t keep me out of those Spare Trees.”
Jamie sighed. “Don’t you want to be friends with Snapper?” he said. “You seemed like friends when you had the mango party.”
“Monkeys can’t be friends when there aren’t enough mangoes,” replied Tufts sadly. “Look!” she said to Jamie. “Look around. See those monkeys under the other trees?”
Jamie looked around him and saw monkeys sitting here and there, alone or in little clusters, chattering or resting, or picking fleas out of their fur. (What would Vee say if he got fleas?)
“They’re my family,” said Tufts. “What do you notice about them?”
Dusk was falling quickly and Jamie couldn’t see the monkeys very well, but then a group of them got up and ambled past where Jamie was sitting, turning to stare at him as they went. Jamie saw that all of them had injuries: damaged eyes, or torn ears, or scarred faces, or shortened tails, or bare patches in their fur. A couple of them limped. One had a hand missing.
“From fighting?” asked Jamie, shocked.
Tufts nodded sadly. She was deep purple. “We need your help, Jamie,” she said. “You’ve got to help us before it gets even worse.”


4

The Story

“I can only help you if we include Snapper in the plan,” said Jamie.
Tuft’s purple colour became tinged with flashes of red.
“It’s the only way,” Jamie told her. “You’ve got to get your families to agree.”
The purple disappeared and the red faded into light orange. “I’ll do it then,” said the monkey. “But what if he won’t talk to me?”
“Take him a present. Take him a mango from your family trees.”
“Snapper doesn’t deserve it," objected Tufts.
Jamie shrugged. “Maybe not, but it’ll get him on our side.”
“If you say so,” agreed the other, reluctantly. “We’ll find Snapper in the morning. Must get to the den before dark.”
Tufts led Jamie away from the river to a place where there was no grass, but the undergrowth was thick and tangled. She crawled through an opening in the bushes, and Jamie just managed to squeeze through after her, scratching himself and ripping his pyjamas. Inside there was a large hollow, filled with dried grass and leaves. The sun had almost disappeared from the sky, and there was very little of light in the den, but Jamie could make out the shapes of several dark green, sleeping monkeys. He snuggled into the soft bed next to Tufts, and total darkness fell. There didn’t seem to be any moon, and Jamie couldn’t even see his own finger, when he held it in front of his eyes. He closed them. ‘I hope there are no snakes,’ was his last thought. (He’d never seen one on the wallpaper, but he couldn’t be sure.) Then he dreamt that he was swinging from creeper to creeper through the trees, with Tufts, and doing rather well at it; but he had to be careful because every other “creeper” was really a boa constrictor lying in wait!
At dawn they set off to find Snapper. Jamie did swing from creeper to creeper. (“Snakes?” said Tufts. ”What are snakes?” and this made him feel better.) It was much harder work than he had imagined, and it hurt his arms badly, but he was proud of his progress. That is, he was proud of it until Tufts said impatiently: "Rubbish at swinging through trees. Get there next week. Wait here. I’ll fetch Snapper,” and she was gone before Jamie could reply.
“Show off!” muttered Jamie crossly. “Can’t help it if I’m three times as big and three times as heavy as she is, can I? I’ll show her.” To prove he was as good as any monkey, he started to climb the tree in which he found himself, clinging on to the creepers, pulling himself up from branch to branch, higher and higher until he had an excellent view right across the jungle and to the other side of the river.
The river was wide, but it didn’t look deep. Jamie thought he could wade across the river easily, maybe swimming a bit if necessary. There were plenty of healthy–looking trees on the other side. By the time Tufts came back with Snapper, Jamie had a plan.
The three of them settled in a shady spot on the ground below. The monkeys looked reasonably green, but they were chattering a bit, beginning to get back into yesterday’s argument. “Shush!” Jamie stopped them. When he’d got their attention, he proudly announced his idea: “We must cross the river and find more fruit trees.”
“Cross the river?”
“Cross the river?” The monkeys echoed each other. They were both pale blue.
“Monkeys – never – never – cross – the river!” said Snapper jerkily.
“But I thought you weren’t scared of anything," said Jamie. " ‘Monkeys do things first and think later’ that’s what you told me”.
“Not that!” said Tufts. “We don’t do that! We never even talk about crossing the – about that.”
Jamie remembered that Tufts had gone pale blue the evening before, and hadn’t been very quick to help him when he’d got stuck in the river mud.
He tried to reassure them. “It’s not difficult. We can build a raft and I’ll tow you across. Then we'll load the raft with fruit and come back.”
“Ridiculous, ridiculous!” Snapper was muttering to himself, his face buried in his hands.
“You don’t understand” explained Tufts, still pale, “Monkeys mustn't cross the river. The Story forbids it.”
“The Story?”
“Fetch a parrot! Fetch a parrot!” shouted Snapper, “before he has another crazy idea!”
Tufts shot up the tree and called to one of the multi-coloured birds perched on the upper branches. Before she arrived back, the parrot had swooped down to the lowest branch and opened its beak.
“I am Augustine,” it began, “Keeper of The Rainbows’ Story”. “The Story is very important and must be listened to carefully by all monkeys!”
“Monkeys don’t do anything carefully,” objected Jamie.
“Shut up!” yelled Snapper.
“Silence!” squawked the parrot, fixing Jamie sternly with its beady eye. “The Story must not be interrupted. The Story was given to the Rainbow Monkeys,” he continued, “by the Golden Monkey herself, long ago. The Golden Monkey came from the sky, at the Beginning of Time, and gave the Jungle to the monkeys, and the hippos, and of course, the parrots. We are all Children of the Golden Monkey.
Monkeys are in charge of the Jungle and they can eat all the fruit in the Jungle. The land and the trees are for monkeys and parrots and hippos. The river is only for hippos. The river is dangerous for monkeys; they must not cross the river or wade or swim in it. They can drink from the streams. One day the Golden monkey will return and punish those who do not obey. This is the Story given to us by the Golden Monkey, our Mother,” finished the parrot solemnly.
“To care for the mango trees you need to stop picking the fruit for a while,” whispered Jamie to Tufts. “I want to ask him how you can do that when you have nothing else to eat.”
Tufts shook her head. “You don’t ask parrots questions,” she said. “They just repeat things, and you have to listen. They are the Keepers of the Story.”
In any case, Augustine had flown away.
“Do all the parrots say the same?” asked Jamie.
“Pretty much,” replied the monkey. “So you see, it’s hopeless.”
“Waste of time! Waste of time, all this!” complained Snapper. “Not hanging around, if you haven’t got any better ideas.” He was swinging from a creeper, ready to take off.
“It’s not a waste of time, not hopeless!” squawked a voice behind them.
Jamie thought the parrot had come back, but then he saw that it was a different one; the colours were differently arranged. “Lady parrot,” whispered Tufts. “They’re a bit different, sometimes.”
“I am Evangeline, Keeper of the Rainbows’ Story. Listen to me!” said the lady parrot.
Snapper jumped down from his creeper and the second parrot began her version of the Story. The first part of it was exactly the same as they had heard already; but when she came to: "The river is dangerous for monkeys,” she finished the sentence: “-they do not need to cross the river, or wade or swim in it. Monkeys who ignore these things,” she continued, “will be in trouble; but monkeys who listen to the Story and follow it will have their reward. One day the Golden Monkey will return.”
“It’s different!” exclaimed Jamie.
“Not really,” shrugged Snapper.
“Words a bit different,” said Tufts. “Mean the same though.”
“It doesn’t mean the same at all!” protested Jamie. “You didn’t listen carefully, like you’re supposed to. Could you repeat the last bit please?” he asked the parrot. “From the bit about the river being dangerous?”
The parrot did as she was asked.
“See” Jamie addressed the two monkeys “you don’t need to cross the river. That’s not the same as must not. It means you shouldn’t have to cross the river, but you can if you want to.”
“But if the Golden Monkey said we don’t need to cross the river,” objected Tufts, “then we don’t need to.”
It was Jamie’s turn to shrug. “Maybe you didn’t need to when she said it, but now you do,” he offered. He looked for more help from the parrot, but she had gone.
“Can’t cross the river anyway,” said Snapper. “Secrets live over there.”
Tufts nodded emphatically in agreement.
Jamie listened as they told him about the Secrets: the mysterious green monkeys who had a habit of hiding away.
"They're weird," complained Snapper. "We Rainbows never hide."
"And they don't change colour," continued Tufts, "so how on earth does anyone know how they're feeling?"
Jamie realised, of course, that he’d seen Secrets on the wallpaper: they were the difficult–to-spot monkeys on the side of his room where the bed was. They didn’t look frightening at all, to him.
“I’m not afraid of Secrets,” he told Snapper and Tufts, “and you shouldn’t be. They probably hide because they’re scaredy-cats. If you don’t cross the river to get more fruit, you’ll just go on hurting each other more and more, or you’ll starve. Probably both.”
"You go,” pleaded Snapper, very pale blue. “You go on your own, Jamie, and bring the fruit back for us.”
“No way!” said Jamie. “You need to come, and bring lots of other monkeys with you. It’d take me forever to climb all those trees and pick enough fruit on my own.”
Snapper turned red. “Another plan then!” he demanded. “Make another plan, Human!”
“I can’t!” snapped Jamie. “If you don’t like this one, I can’t help you, and I’m going home!” He began to look around for his mobile phone.
“No!” cried both monkeys together. “Don’t leave us, please!” They each grabbed one of Jamie’s legs and held on to him tightly.
“Then get some monkeys together, and find some fallen tree trunks, - not too long, but not broken in the middle. And cut me some creepers to tie them together-for the raft,” ordered Jamie.
Without another word Snapper and Tufts hurried away. They rounded up more monkeys quite easily, by telling them that Jamie wanted to cross the river and bring them all back lots of fruit. They conveniently left out what Jamie had said about taking monkeys with him; and so they soon came back with a gang of willing helpers.


5

Coconuts!

Under Jamie’s direction, the monkeys bound several sturdy tree trunks firmly together with creepers. Jamie decided his ripped and filthy pyjamas weren’t worth saving. He took the top off and tied the end of one arm to the raft. This was his tow-rope.
He decided it was best to make a trial journey to the opposite bank alone, and take a look around before returning to fetch the monkeys.
“Can you find a spot where there's no soft mud?” he asked them, remembering how he'd got stuck the night before.
“That’s easy,” said Tufts. ”Look for no hippos. No hippos, no mud.”
She and Snapper led the way to a rocky bank, where large boulders lined the water’s edge and the ground between them was stony. Jamie took hold of the pyjama tow-rope and waded out into the water. It was fast moving but not cold and, for quite some way, didn’t come up higher than his knees. But small sharp flints on the riverbed cut Jamie’s feet and he stubbed his toes several times on larger stones. When he reached the middle, the water was still only up to his waist. (Though it would have drowned the monkeys, who were so much smaller, and couldn’t swim.)
He reached the half-way mark. This was a large rock on which a few plants grew, forming a small island. There were spits of this rock sticking out under the water, which Jamie didn't see. He was just thinking how easy it all was, when he tripped over one of them, and grazed both knees. At the same moment, a strong current caught the raft. The pyjama tow-rope snagged on a thorny shrub, and came away. Jamie struggled to his feet. He managed, just in time, to get a grip on the raft itself before it was swept away. He swung it round and continued on his way, pushing the raft in front of him.
On the far side of the river a shale bank sloped gently up out of the water, and it was easy to push the raft up onto the grey sand above it and beach it there. The warm, soft sand was comforting to Jamie’s cut feet as he padded up the beach towards the trees. “Perfect!” he exclaimed, looking up at them. They were just what he’d hoped they were: coconut palms, loaded with coconuts.
There was not a Secret in sight. Jamie picked up a few fallen coconuts, in good condition, to take back and show the monkeys. ‘That’ll get them shifting,’ he thought. ‘They won’t be able to get over here quick enough when they’ve seen these.’
He remembered to be careful of underwater rocks, and the journey back was easier.
“Coconuts!” he shouted triumphantly, as he carried them up the bank. He was immediately surrounded by a bright orange crowd of excitedly chattering monkeys.
But they looked puzzled and disappointed when they saw the brown, hairy things. One of the monkeys picked up a fruit and rolled it along a flat rock. Another sent it rolling back. A game was about to begin.
“Stop!” ordered Jamie sternly. “Leave it!” He picked up a big stone and smashed it against the coconut. After a couple of blows it made a jagged hole in the shell. Jamie picked it up and drank some coconut milk. Instantly the monkeys clamoured to do the same. There wasn’t enough for all of them, so Jamie let Snapper and Tufts sample some, then with another blow he opened the crack wider and pulled the shell apart with his hands. He handed half a shell to each of them. “Let them all have a taste,” he said. Snapper and Tufts scraped out the coconut flesh with their claws and teeth and distributed small pieces among the crowd of monkeys, while Jamie set to work on opening another shell.
The coconuts were gone in no time, and now Jamie had plenty of volunteers to go with him on his second trip. He had to struggle across the river with fifteen frightened but excited monkeys, flashing alternately pale blue and bright orange, crammed aboard the raft. He tried to make them keep quiet and still. He was very afraid they might sink the raft or push each other overboard with their squirming, or attract an army of Secrets with their noise. But they all arrived safely on the opposite shore.
Jamie ran up the beach shouting: "Secrets! Secrets! We’ve come to get coconuts! Keep away!”, hoping this would scare off any of the rival monkeys who might be around. His boldness reassured the Rainbows, who came scampering up the beach after him. They swarmed up the trees, and soon hundreds of coconuts cascaded onto the beach, to the sound of whooping and cheering monkeys.
Jamie saw that he needed to act quickly to stop them getting too hyped up and fooling around. He shouted at them to form a line across the beach, a monkey chain along which they could pass coconuts, one to another, onto the raft. This took shape, and they made good progress with the loading. Jamie was wondering if he would have to make a separate journey with the coconuts, and return to collect the monkeys, when a small pale blue monkey suddenly leapt onto his shoulder and whispered urgently in his ear.
“Secrets! Secrets!” it said. “Seen them! In the long grass there!”
Jamie looked, but could see nothing more than long grass blowing gently in the warm breeze. He climbed a small tree nearby, and from a branch near the top, thought he spotted a green tail waving amongst the grasses.
Then: "Look up! Look up!” shouted Snapper.
Jamie looked up. He saw a green face above him, and a coconut speeding towards him. Then everything went blurred, and he felt himself falling backwards, knocking his head on a branch as he did so. As he fell, Snapper rushed forward to catch him: but the boy was too big for the monkey, and Snapper was only able to cushion the blow as his friend’s head hit the ground.
Jamie lay there without moving, his eyes closed, Snapper still cradling his head. All the Rainbows gathered round. “Jamie, Jamie!” cried Snapper, desperately licking the boy’s face, trying to rouse him. It didn’t work.
“Dead!” cried Tufts mournfully, "Dead!”
Snapper laid Jamie’s head down gently and the two monkeys, deep purple, clung to each other, wailing loudly. The rest of the Rainbows, purple too, looked on in shocked silence.
After a few minutes, Snapper said: "Must go. Secrets'll get us!"
"We can't just leave the human here," objected Tufts. "His family won't know what happened to him. We must send him home to his own world."
They found Jamie's phone, and pressed the golden monkey button to open a window. Then several of the monkeys together pushed and shoved, till they managed to get Jamie's limp body through the hole. They posted the mobile phone after it.


6

Missing pyjama top.

Jamie wasn’t dead. He opened his eyes, and found himself staring up at a white surface. In the middle of it was an upside-down saucer-shape of the same colour, with a glass ball in the middle. It took Jamie several seconds to work out that this was his bedroom ceiling, with light bulb and light shade. He heard Vee’s voice, and she appeared in the doorway, starting in alarm when she saw Jamie.
“Oh my goodness, you hurted yourself! Did you fall from bunk? And why are your pyjamas so dirty? And where is top? You will be cold.”
Jamie tried to sit up, but the room span.
“No, no, you must lie still,” Vee told him. She covered him with the quilt and eased a pillow gently under his head. Then she looked carefully in his eyes to see if both pupils were the same size.
“Ellie! Ellie!” she called, “come here quickly! Jamie has fallen from bunk!”
Ellie had just got dressed and was looking for a jumper or cardigan to wear. She could only find the one she hated; the one knitted by Great Aunt Olga in Estonia, which had a flower pattern, a pointy hood and lots of tassels, and which Great Aunt Olga was looking forward to seeing on her great-niece when she came to visit next spring. Ellie wondered if her mother had hidden all her other warm tops on purpose, to force her into wearing Auntie Olga's cardigan. Reluctantly she went to Jamie’s room.
“Mum, I can’t find my fleece top or my sweat tops and I’m cold,” she complained.
“Wear Aunt Olga’s cardigan,” said her mother impatiently. “Jamie is hurt and he must go to hospital. You must help me.”
“I don’t want to go to hospital,” protested Jamie.
“Don’t worry,” said Vee. “You must not get excited. Of course you have to go to hospital, but it will be all right, I am sure.”
“But I have to – have to get back to the monkeys -” He struggled to remember what had happened. “The Secret!” he exclaimed suddenly. “It attacked me with a coconut!”
“Oh no, he is delirious!” said Vee.. “Look after him Ellie, while I phone. Find his pyjama top please.”
Ellie looked down at Jamie. “You seem OK to me," she said disdainfully. “What on earth were you doing to fall out of a bunk?”
Jamie ignored her. He was trying desperately to think what he could do to help the Rainbows, who were now stranded on the Secrets’ side of the river. He feared there would be a terrible battle, and it would all be his fault.
“Where’s Dad?” he asked, hoping that perhaps his father wouldn’t agree that he needed to go to hospital.
“At work of course,” said Ellie. “It’s Saturday." Jamie's father always started work early on Saturdays.
Jamie sat up again, very slowly this time, to counteract the dizziness, and examined the wall behind his bed: the Secrets’ side of the jungle. He couldn’t see any monkeys at all.
Then Ellie, who was rummaging crossly through her stepbrother’s things, searching for his pyjama top, suddenly gasped. “Who painted that?” she exclaimed. She was staring at the short wall behind Jamie. He turned his body carefully, not daring to move his head on its own, and followed her gaze. There, on this usually plain white wall, was the raft that Jamie and the monkeys had built, half-loaded with coconuts. It wasn’t on the beach where he’d left it, though. It was on the water. The raft was adrift.
“You’ve got to help me Ellie,” said Jamie. “I need something to draw with – felt pens or something. I need to draw a bridge.” He reckoned that since the raft he’d made had appeared on the wall, a bridge he drew on the wall might appear in the jungle.
“I always said you were crazy,” said Ellie. “Did you paint that stuff on the wall?”
“You know I can’t paint as well as that,” replied Jamie.
“Lie down Jamie!” ordered Vee, coming back into the room. “Ambulance will be here soon.”
“His pyjama top isn’t anywhere,” said Ellie.
“That is very strange,” said Vee. “He must wear his other pyjamas, then.”
“I haven’t got another pair,” said Jamie. “I grew out of them and you gave them to the charity shop.”
Vee had forgotten this. “You must put clothes on then,” she told Jamie. ”I will help you.”
“No,” said Jamie quickly, “I can put my own clothes on if – if Ellie finds them for me.” Seeing Vee hesitate, he added: “I’ll get dressed lying down. I won’t stand up. Promise.”
“All right,” agreed Vee. “I must phone your father, anyway.”
“My pyjama top is there,” whispered Jamie to Ellie when Vee had left the room.
“Where?”
Jamie pointed to the halfway island, that could be seen on the wall upstream from the raft.
Ellie peered at the wall. Of course, things looked much smaller on the wallpaper than they actually were, but Ellie could make out a mottled brown, blue and dirty white rag caught on a thorn bush.
“It looks brown,” she objected. “Your pyjamas are blue and white.”
“But they're very muddy,” pointed out Jamie. “Not all the mud washed off in the river. I used the top as a tow-rope.” Then he poured out the whole story, including how he'd got in and out of the monkey world using his mobile phone. Ellie was interested enough to listen without interrupting.
Just as he finished, they heard a ring at the doorbell.
“So now you know why I need to draw a bridge – a drawbridge, so the Rainbows can escape over it and then pull it up to stop the Secrets following. You’ve got to help me!” Jamie pleaded desperately.
Before Ellie could answer, her mother came back with the ambulance people. Jamie still wasn’t dressed, so they wrapped him in a blanket before strapping him into a chair.
While they were doing this, Vee put his clothes and washing things in her bag and said to Ellie: “I must go with him. You had better come too.”
“I don’t want to,” said Ellie. “I’ll stay here. I’ll be all right. I’ve got to get my stuff ready for the swimming gala.”
“Oh my goodness,” said her mother, and Ellie could see from her face she had forgotten all about the gala. “Mum!” she said desperately. ”I must go to the gala! I’m the best in the swimming club team! And I’ve got to get there early! Ian was going to come back from work and take me in the van. But I’m never going to get there now am I?” she added bitterly.
"I am sorry Ellie, there is no way I can take you to the swimming gala," said her mother. "I will come back when Ian gets to the hospital, but then I have customers coming for fittings. You can stay here I suppose. On my way out I will ask Mrs. Wakefield to keep an eye on you."
"But Mum - " Ellie started to protest again.
Her mother wasn't listening. She was hurrying down the stairs ahead of the paramedics, who followed behind, carrying Jamie in the chair.
“Ellie!” shouted Jamie as they bore him away. “Draw the bridge yourself! It’s the only way!”
Ellie heard the door shut behind them all. Then she heard Mrs Wakefield, the old lady who lived in the flat below, calling up the stairs to her: "Ellie! Come here a minute, dear!"
Ellie went downstairs. "I'm just having some breakfast," said Mrs. Wakefield. "Would you like to have some with me?"
"No, thank you," said Ellie. "I've had cornflakes."
"All right, then, Ellie," said Mrs. Wakefield. "I won't come upstairs with you because my hip's playing up today. And there's a DVD I want to finish watching, because my friend's coming to collect it this morning. But give me a shout if you need anything, or if you're worried, won't you dear?"
Ellie said she would, and hurried back upstairs. She stomped into Jamie’s room. “Stupid, stupid boy!” she said out loud, stamping all over his duvet, which was still on the floor, wishing her feet were as muddy as Jamie’s pyjamas.
The pyjamas! What if Jamie hadn’t fallen out of bed doing something silly? What if he had really got his injury helping monkeys? A small part of Ellie began wondering if Jamie was quite so bad after all. The rest of her told that small part to shut up.
“OK,” she decided," if he wants a bridge, he can have one.” She would paint a bridge in bright, bold strokes on the wallpaper, and when their parents wanted to know who had done it, she would say it was Jamie. It would be true, in a way, she told herself, because he was the one who wanted it.
Ellie fetched art materials from her own room. But then she looked at her paint pots and brushes and decided they were too small for the job. So she went to the kitchen and fetched Ian’s brushes and a can of black gloss paint and another of red from the cupboard under the sink. Taking the biggest brush, she coated it thoroughly in black and painted a thick line from one side of the white wall right across to the other.
Ellie stepped back to look at her work and grinned. She had never in her life been this naughty before, and it was fun. She sloshed more black and red paint on, giving the bridge a floor and sides, with pillars to hold it up at each end, and even steps to get up and down. By the time she had finished, she was giggling.
She realised she had paint on Great Aunt Olga’s Cardigan and gasped. “Poor Auntie Olga,” she said aloud in a very sad voice – and collapsed into helpless giggles again.
Then she remembered the bridge was supposed to be a drawbridge. She went to find her book about castles to see how drawbridges were designed. There was a diagram in the book, showing hinges, chains and pulleys. Ellie did her best to copy it, but it was very complicated and hard to get right. She needed to try it out to see if it worked. How? Jamie's mobile wasn't there. He must have taken it with him.
Ellie looked around the room for ideas, and down in the corner near the end of the bunk, she noticed something. The window that the Rainbows had pushed Jamie through was still open. Ellie took a deep breath and put her head through.


7

Ellie in the jungle

The Rainbows couldn’t stay long to mourn Jamie when they thought he was dead. Just as they had finished pushing him through the window, a sudden barrage of coconuts came flying at them from the Secrets, and they took to their heels.
Secrets would have scattered and hidden in the jungle; but the Rainbows didn’t even think of this. In trouble or danger, they always kept together and did something. So they ran to the raft, where it lay beached, half-loaded with coconuts, and all together tried to push it home.
This was a good example of doing things first and thinking later, because none of the monkeys could swim. They might have ended up being carried helplessly down river, and over the rapids, and never seen or heard of again. But luckily, when the water was up to their chests, they got frightened and abandoned the raft.
Not used to wading they splish-sploshed clumsily back towards the shore. There, a gang of Secrets lined the bank and barred their way. The Rainbows were obliged to stay in the water, with the uncomfortable feeling of it sloshing round their knees. For about half an hour they tried to dodge the Secrets, and the Secrets blocked their way. Then, the Secret on the end of the row suddenly whispered something to the next, who passed it along the line, and they all ran off. At last the Rainbows could get back onto dry land.
The words that had been whispered were: "Human! Another human! Let’s get her!” because the Secret had caught sight of Ellie hanging onto a chain, trying to see if her drawbridge worked. It didn’t: but maybe that was just as well, because Ellie had drawn it on the wrong side of the river – the Secrets’ side! She had just realised this, when she felt several small but strong hands close around her arms and legs, and she was whisked away into the jungle by green monkeys.
They pulled and pushed her through a tunnel in the undergrowth, and finally laid her down, on her back, on something soft. She couldn’t get up, because six or seven monkeys were sitting on her legs and arms.
“What shall we do with her, Softpad?” one of them asked another.
“Let me go?” suggested Ellie. She was frightened, but determined to stay calm.
“Humans are dangerous,” pronounced Softpad. “A human brought the Rainbows here and caused all this trouble. We can’t let you go.”
“I won’t cause trouble,” said Ellie. “I didn’t come here to cause trouble.”
“Why did you come here?” demanded Softpad.
Ellie didn’t think that telling them she’d drawn a bridge for the Rainbows to escape across would help, so she tried changing the subject. “You do know, don’t you,” she said, "that a lot of your coconuts are on the Rainbows’ raft, and it’s drifting down the river?” Then, suddenly thinking of the idea, she added: “If you let me go, I can save the coconuts for you. I’m a brilliant swimmer.”
“It’s a trick,” said one of the Secrets. He was an older monkey than the others, with a wrinkled, surly face. He stared suspiciously at Ellie, through narrowed eyes. “It’s a trick,” he said again. ”Don’t trust her.”
“Shadow’s right,” agreed a small monkey with a squeaky voice and only one eye. “We should tie her up with creepers.”
“Who asked you, One-eye?” sneered a big, strong monkey with a stupid-looking face. He spoke slowly in a deep, growling voice. “We should take her to the highest tree top, and drop her! I’ll do it!” he offered.
“Shut up Thrasher,” said Softpad, who seemed to be the leader. “How do we know we can trust you?” he asked Ellie.
“It isn’t a trick. I promise I’ll bring them back for you,” said Ellie. “But you don’t have to trust me. You can carry me to the river and put me in, and not let me come out again if I don’t come back with the raft.”
So they did what Ellie suggested. They carried her back to the river, and deposited her in the water. Of course, Ellie could easily have swum up or down stream, or across the river, and escaped, but the Secrets didn’t realise this. They thought Ellie would want to get out of the water as soon as possible, by the shortest route, just like the Rainbows. Ellie had no intention of tricking the Secrets, though. She had promised them she would bring the raft back and planned to do so. She waded some way out towards it, then swam the remaining distance.
Watching from the riverbank, Shadow complained to his companions. "Crazy!" he said. "Crazy!"
"What's crazy, Shadow?" squeaked One-eye.
"Trusting a human," grumbled the old monkey. "That Softpad doesn't know what he's doing. They should never have made him leader. I would have been a much better one!"
"I tried to stop them," said One-eye. "I told them you should be leader, not Softpad, because your family's got the biggest and best and most coconut trees in the whole jungle. But they didn't listen to me. Softpad said the coconut trees ought to be shared out more fairly. And they made him leader."
"I tried to stop 'em, too," growled the deep-voiced Thrasher. "I told 'em you was the best leader, even though you was old -"
"Were," said One-eye.
"What?" said Thrasher.
"I told them you were the best leader, even though you were old," One-eye corrected him.
Thrasher picked the smaller monkey up by the scruff of his neck. "Listen, Pipsqueak," he said. "D'you wanna go for a swim, or what?"
"No!" squealed One-eye," Put me down, Thrasher, please!"
"Who does he think he's calling 'old'?" Shadow continued his grumble, though no-one was listening. "No respect for their elders, that's the trouble with young monkeys these days."
Meanwhile, Ellie struggled with the raft, which was stuck. Just a metre downstream from Ellie’s bridge, it was caught in some scribbles with which Ellie had scribbled out a mistake in the drawing. They’d turned into tangled wire netting. As she tussled with the wire mesh, Ellie heard cries from the bridge above her. She looked up and saw orange and red monkeys leaning over the side, chattering with excitement and anger. Rainbows!
“Leave our raft alone!” shouted Snapper. “Those are our coconuts!”
While he was speaking, two Rainbows climbed down some creepers they had attached to the bridge, picked up coconuts from the raft and shinned back up with the booty to their comrades above. Other Rainbows started to follow suit. Softpad and his band saw what was happening from the riverbank and ran onto the bridge. More and more Secrets came out from their hiding places in the jungle and scurried across the beach to join Softpad and company. On the opposite bank, Ellie could see scores of Rainbows making for their side of the bridge to join their fellows too. She heard the noise of monkeys shouting, scuffling, snarling, and howling with pain, and wanted to block her ears. A major fight had broken out.


8

Stopping the battle

Jamie lay on a hospital bed and Vee sat beside him. He felt fine, apart from a slight headache, and if he hadn’t been worried about the Rainbows he would have enjoyed this attention. Vee was being very nice to him, and had never once mentioned that it was unheard of for Estonian children to fall out of bunks or mysteriously lose their pyjama tops during the night. Instead, she kept patting his hand and smoothing his brow and offering to bring him all kinds of things.
When his father arrived, Vee left to buy Jamie some pyjamas before going home to see her customers. She kissed him on the cheek and gave him a final gentle pat on the forehead before leaving.
Dad bought him a drink, a comic and a puzzle book from the hospital shop, and they did some puzzles together. Every half an hour a nurse came to check him, because he had a hairline skull fracture and had to be kept under observation. After a while Jamie said: “Dad, you can go and get a cup of coffee if you want.”
“Actually, Jamie, “said his father, “I need to make some phone calls. Customers I’m not going to be able to get to today. And I have to go and see somebody. It might take about an hour – will you be OK?”
“’Course I will,” said Jamie.
As soon as his father had gone, he pressed the golden monkey button on his phone. Nothing happened. No window opened anywhere. He got out of bed, and felt the wall behind the bed. It was solid as a rock. It seemed the golden monkey button only worked with his bedroom wallpaper. He saw the nurse coming to check him, and got hastily back into bed. Then he had an idea.
As soon as the nurse had checked him, he said:" Can I have something to draw with please?" She brought some felt pens and a small pad of paper. "The paper," said Jamie,"-it's too small. Haven't you got anything bigger?"
The nurse looked impatient. "How big do you want it?" she asked. Jamie indicated something about A1 size with his hands. The nurse snorted, but went off to the cupboard again and came back, not with paper this time, but with a fairly large blackboard and some coloured chalks. "Will this do for sir?" she asked.
"Perfect," said Jamie. With the chalks he frantically drew Snapper and Tufts in all the different colours he could find. Then he picked up the phone again and pressed the golden monkey button. He had twenty minutes, just twenty minutes to help his friends and get back before anyone noticed. A window opened, he pushed himself through it.
But he wasn't back in the jungle. He was in a tunnel: a narrow tunnel that curved, so he couldn't see the end of it. He crawled along the tunnel to the first bend, but all he could see ahead was another bend. It continued like this for some distance: one bend after another, and no end in sight. It got darker and darker, and the rough ground scraped Jamie's hands and knees, (and his hospital pyjamas), but still he carried on. It seemed to go on for ever. Then suddenly it grew lighter, and noisier, and there, ahead, was an opening. He squeezed through and was back in the jungle, blinking in the sunlight. He was on the bridge, with a monkey battle raging around him.
All over the bridge monkeys were wrestling with each other, biting, scratching, and pulling out fur. It was lucky that Ellie had drawn the bridge wide and with parapets, otherwise many of them would have fallen into the river.
Jamie couldn’t bear the shrieks and howls of pain. “Stop it! Stop it!” he shouted. But no-one took any notice. Then some of the Rainbows who'd seen him fall from the tree and thought he was dead, spotted him there. They turned, in rapid succession, bright pink with surprise and yellow with joy. "Snapper!" they shouted, "Snapper! It's the human! He's alive!"
But Snapper was busy, fighting with a Secret. Snapper drove the Secret up against the parapet. To avoid Snapper’s claws, Softpad (for it was he) jumped backwards, up onto the parapet. Jamie lunged forward and pulled Snapper away, but this startled Softpad. The green monkey suddenly realised where he was, looked down at the water behind him, lost his nerve and teetered dangerously. Jamie tried to catch his foot, but it was too late. With a cry of fear, Softpad toppled off the bridge.
“Stupid, stupid monkey!” shouted Jamie at Snapper, shaking him hard. “Stupid, stupid monkey, you’ve drowned him in the river!”
At the mention of drowning, the whole bridge fell silent and still. Fighting was one thing: bites and scratches and bruises and bald patches were part of the monkeys’ lives; but killing each other was something else. That had never been any monkey’s intention. And because the monkeys were so afraid of the river, killing one by drowning seemed the worst thing possible.
Snapper turned a whole lot of colours at once: bright pink at finding Jamie alive, yellow for the same reason, and red because Jamie was shaking him. Then he realised what he'd done, and went dark blue with shame and purple with sorrow and regret. As soon as Jamie put him down, Snapper was reduced to a quivering purple heap, snivelling into his hands and repeating: "Sorry! Sorry! Didn’t mean it! Didn’t mean it!” over and over again.
Jamie took advantage of the awed silence on the bridge to say: "This fighting has got to stop now! Nobody moves while I go down and look for Softpad! He might still be alive.”
"Snapper drowned Softpad! He drowned our leader!” shouted one of the Secrets. It was Shadow. “Let’s throw him in the water!”
“Let’s see how he likes it!" echoed One-eye.
“Come on then, One-eye!” chimed in Thrasher. “Show us you’re not all mouth! Who’s gonna get ‘im first?”
Shadow, Thrasher and One-eye began to move forward, snarling. Jamie put himself between them and Snapper, while the Rainbows formed a protective circle round their leader.
“You’ll have me to deal with me first,” said Jamie. “And you’re wasting precious time.”
“Keep back!” some of the other Secrets begged their comrades. “Leave Snapper. Let the human go and save Softpad!”
Then suddenly another Secret shouted: "Softpad's OK! I can hear his Music! Listen, Secrets, listen to the Music!"
Everyone on the bridge listened. Jamie and the Rainbows heard only the sound of the water below them. "There's no music," said Jamie, puzzled.
But all the Secrets looked suddenly happier, rushed to the side of the bridge, and scrambled onto each other’s shoulders to look over.
Then they all heard Ellie calling Jamie’s name from below, and everyone else went to look too. There was Ellie holding the raft, still half-loaded with coconuts. And there, squatting among the coconuts, was Softpad: dripping wet and shivering with shock, but alive.
Ellie had wrapped the monkey in Aunt Olga’s cardigan, but since that was soaked through anyway it wasn’t doing much good. Some of the Secrets formed a chain, with Jamie firmly gripping the ankles of the last “link”, and pulled their leader up onto the bridge. Then they gathered round him and started to rub and stroke him till he felt warmer. As they did so, they made a strange, low, whistling sound, as if they were all whistling the same tune. As Softpad gradually recovered and stopped shaking, the whistling became higher and more tuneful, until it sounded like beautiful tinkling bells.
It was a lovely sound, but Jamie didn't have time to listen longer. He addressed all the monkeys: “I have to go. Secrets, you must go back to your side of the river, and Rainbows, you must get back to yours. Promise you won’t fight any more – at least until I can get here again.”
“They stole our coconuts,” Softpad reminded him. “Make them give the coconuts back.”
“That was my fault," said Jamie, trying to stop him being angry with the Rainbows. “It was my idea. It was because they were hungry. But you’re right,” he added sadly, “they are your coconuts. Ellie,” he called to her over the parapet, “push the raft to the Secrets’ side, will you? We’ve got to give the coconuts back.”
“No,” said Ellie. “The Rainbows are hungry. The Secrets have thousands of coconuts. They can easily spare this lot. Tell them not to be selfish.”
Some of the Secrets on the bridge heard this and looked annoyed, but luckily Softpad had water in his ears.
Jamie tried to be tactful. “Ellie is worried about the Rainbows,” he told Softpad, “because they’re so hungry. Couldn’t you be very kind and just let them have a few coconuts?”
Softpad made a grunting, grumbling noise, but said grudgingly: "Just for her then. She saved my life.”
"Ellie!" Jamie called down to her again. "Softpad's being kind and letting the Rainbows keep some of the coconuts. I really think we ought to let the Secrets have the rest back. We mustn't make them angry."
So Ellie reluctantly threw half of the coconuts, one at a time, up onto the bridge. It was hard work, but only one or two missed the mark and fell in the river. Then she pushed the raft across to the Secrets’ beach and left it there.
Meanwhile, on the bridge, the Secrets vanished and the Rainbows scrabbled for the coconuts. Jamie did his best to make sure the original fifteen monkeys who had crossed the river with him had one each, and that nobody had more than one. Then he hustled all the Rainbows off the bridge before they started to fight amongst themselves. But most of them were too tired and sore to do that anyway, and went sadly home to lick their wounds. .
When the bridge was cleared of monkeys, Jamie joined Ellie on the Secrets’ beach. “We did it!” he said. “We stopped them fighting! Thanks for helping, Ellie.”
This was the probably the only nice (ish) thing her stepbrother had ever said to her, and Ellie felt pleased for moment. But “helping?” It seemed to Ellie she had done most of it: pushing the raft about, throwing coconuts (which were quite heavy) up onto the bridge, above all saving a monkey leader from drowning. She said: “It was your stupid idea to draw the bridge. There might not have been a fight anyway without a bridge. Now they’ll just get back on it and fight each other when we’re not around.”
“ ’Course there would’ve been a fight,” said Jamie. “The Rainbows couldn’t escape, could they? Derr-err-err!”
“Oh, hell – o?” replied Ellie scornfully. “Whose brilliant idea was it to take the Rainbows over there in the first place?”
This made Jamie angry. He felt like shaking Ellie, as he had done Snapper. But he didn’t, because he suddenly realised he needed her help again. He had to try to be nice to her, even though she was being horrible. The nurse had probably already been to check him again, and would be wondering where he was. He had to get back. So he said: “Well, it was good you rescued the coconuts and helped sort things out. Please can you go home and paint over the bridge – or draw something to stop the monkeys getting back up there – because I’ve got to go back to hospital?"
Ellie was worried about the monkeys too, but she wasn’t going to admit it.
“Maybe” she said.


9

Ellie in trouble

Ellie found her way back to Jamie’s bedroom through the still open window she had come through. She was dripping wet. Mrs.Wakefield was calling up the stairs: "Ellie! Are you all right, dear?"
Ellie went to the top of the stairs and shouted down: "Yes, Mrs.Wakefield, I'm fine, thank you!"
She grabbed some felt pens and scribbled tangles of barbed wire reaching to the ceiling across both ends of the bridge. Then she added a lot of extra, big, sharp spikes, in case the monkeys thought of scaling it.
As she was finishing this, she heard her mother’s key in the door below. How was she going to explain her wet clothes? She ran to the bathroom, put the plug in the bath, and turned the taps on.
Violetta came upstairs, calling to her daughter: “Ellie! Are you OK? Jamie will be fine, they think. I have bought him new pyjamas, two pairs.”
Vee was very tired, having worked all night, and her first customer was about to arrive at any moment, for a wedding dress fitting. The dress wasn't ready because she'd had to stop working on it to go to hospital with Jamie. It had been a bad morning altogether. Then she went into Jamie’s room to put one of the new pairs of pyjamas away, and saw painting and scribble all over the back wall. Vee let out a small shriek. She stared at the wall painting, in puzzlement. Some of it looked like children’s painting and drawing. Some of it looked so life-like, it must have been done by a very clever artist. For example, there was an exact copy of Ellie’s cardigan, the one she’d got from Great Aunt Olga, complete with its pattern, pointy hood and tassels. It was hanging over the parapet of the bridge, just as if someone had left it there to dry.
Scattered on the floor were Ellie’s poster paints, her felt tips and crayons, and two pots of Ian’s gloss. The tops were off the pots and Ian’s brushes were stuck in them. The carpet was spattered with paint. A trail of water led from Jamie’s room to the bathroom. Vee followed it and found her daughter lying quite still on her back in the bath, fully clothed, her long blond hair floating around her. Her face was under the water. Vee gave another little shriek, of fright this time, but Ellie suddenly sat up with a splash and breathed out with a noisy splutter.
“Practising holding my breath,” she explained.
“With all your clothes on?” exploded her mother. It was too much: her sensible daughter had painted all over a wall and got in the bath fully dressed. Was she going crazy?
The doorbell rang.
“I am very, very disappointed in you Ellie!” shouted Vee. “You have let me down badly! How will I cope with new baby if you are not good? Children in Estonia do not behave like this!”
Ellie tried to say: "Jamie painted the bridge,” but found her conscience wouldn’t let her. So she began instead: “It was Jamie’s idea –“
“And another thing!” interrupted her mother. “You are always telling the tales on Jamie and blaming him for all things. But Jamie is in the hospital and he is not painting the wall. And he is not in the bath with his clothes on.”
The door bell rang again and she stormed down the stairs to let her customer in, shouting: “To tell the tales is not nice. Children in Estonia never, never tell the tales! What are you English children like!”
Ellie was shocked. She had been born in Estonia, and always thought her mother counted her among the good children of that country. Now it seemed she was one of the bad English children her mother complained about. Ellie was usually so well-behaved, she wasn’t used to being told off, and it hurt.
She was also stunned by what her mother had said about a new baby. Mum must be pregnant! Mum was pregnant and was going to have a good baby to replace Ellie, who was English and bad.
She spent a miserable time on her own, while her mother dealt with this customer and then the next one. She changed her clothes and hung the wet ones on a clothes horse over the bath. Then she made Mum a cup of tea and took it up to her in the attic, hoping to please her again.
But Vee only said: “Oh, take tea away Ellie; you will spill it on dress next!”
When Vee finished with the customers, she went to bed. Ellie couldn’t watch television or put music on in case it woke her. She put peanut butter on the last slice of bread for her lunch and tried to read a book, but couldn’t concentrate. She started to think about Jamie. She wondered what he was doing in the hospital, and whether anyone had noticed he’d gone missing.
She thought about the new baby. How could they all fit into the flat? Where would they all sleep? Perhaps one of them would have to be sent away. Perhaps she, Ellie would be sent away to Great Aunt Olga in Estonia, to learn to be a good Estonian child. That would be dreadful. She didn’t want to be the one to be sent away, of course. But she discovered that she didn’t want Jamie to be sent away either. She didn’t want to be on her own with Mum and Ian and the new baby.
Suddenly Ellie wanted to talk to Jamie. She wanted them, together, to find a way of helping the monkeys share the jungle and the fruit. She called Ian on his mobile and said: “Ian, can I come to the hospital and see Jamie?”


10

Sticking together

When Ellie saw Jamie lying on his hospital bed, she grinned. He grinned back.
“Ian,” said Ellie. “There’s no food at home, I ate the last slice of bread.”
“We’ll get some on the way home," said Ian.
“You could go now,” suggested Ellie “and I’ll keep Jamie company. Then we won’t be home too late. Mum won’t want to start cooking late.”
Ian looked doubtful. He wasn’t sure visiting children were allowed in the hospital on their own. But he was tired and hungry, and didn’t want to be washing up late in the evening. He was also surprised the two children wanted to be friends, and thought he should encourage it. So he said: "I’ll just be half an hour then.”
“We need to talk about the monkeys,” said Ellie to Jamie, as soon as Ian had gone. “But first I’ve got something to tell you. It’s a secret, but Mum accidentally let it out. Bad news,” she added.
“What secret? What bad news?” asked Jamie. But at that moment the nurse appeared, frowning.
“Are you family, young lady?” she asked Ellie. “Only related children can visit, and they must be with an adult.”
“She’s my sister,” said Jamie quickly. “And my Dad’s– er - just gone outside for a minute.”
“You don’t look anything like each other.” The nurse looked suspicious. “Anyway," she continued, “you’d better make sure you both behave.” She turned to Ellie. “Do you know what he did this morning? He disappeared out of his bed and I couldn’t find him anywhere. He still hasn’t told me where he went.”
“I was in the jungle,” said Jamie, “stopping a monkey battle.”
“He didn’t do it on his own!” protested Ellie. “I was there too. I got captured in the battle, but I escaped by saving a raft full of coconuts from a raging torrent. And I saved a monkey leader from drowning.”
“Raging torrent ! The water was only up to your knees!”
“Was not! It was up to here!!” Ellie pointed to her neck.
“Well, at least you quarrel like brother and sister," said the nurse, reassured. “Just don’t go off to the jungle again, understand?” she told Jamie. ”I’ll get into trouble if you don’t stay in your bed.”
“I’ll stay if we can have some toast,” wheedled Jamie. “I’m really hungry and my sister hardly had any lunch.”
“I couldn’t possibly make toast,” said the nurse, “I’m off to the desert, to take part in a camel race. Wish me luck!” and she was gone.
“My Mum and your Dad are going to have a baby,” announced Ellie.
“Are they?” said Jamie, amazed.
Ellie nodded. “Mum’s pregnant.”
“Did she tell you?”
“No, but this morning she said to me: ‘How am I going to cope with the new baby if you aren’t good?’ Which wasn’t fair, because I am good all the time usually,” Ellie finished angrily.
“Wicked!” exclaimed her stepbrother. “Babies are cool! My baby cousin’s really cute. He smiles at me and grips my finger with his little tiny hand.”
“Yeah right!” scoffed Ellie. “Your cousin doesn’t live with us, does he? Where’s the baby going to sleep, derr-err-err?”
“In Dad and Vee’s room.”
“Like they’ve got any space!”
Ellie forestalled the next suggestion. “It can’t go in my room,” she said quickly. “You know my friend Holly-“
“The one who’s always having sleepovers?”
“She doesn’t have sleepovers any more, does she ? Why not? Because her baby sister’s sharing her room, that’s why! And it cries in the night and she can’t sleep! And they never go anywhere any more because her Mum says she can’t take the baby. And her Mum’s really tired and cross all the time and tells her off for every little thing. And she has to do millions of jobs like washing up and hoovering. And her room’s all full of baby stuff and poohy nappies and things because her Mum never tidies it up.”
Jamie knew the last thing would be the worst for Ellie. She wouldn’t be able to bear anything that upset her perfectly neat room, and Vee wasn’t a tidy person. And it was likely that the baby would sleep in Ellie’s room, because it was the only place they could fit a cot. Now that Ellie was being friendly to him, he felt a little sorry for her.
“Our parents never have time to do anything with us now,” continued Ellie. “I missed the swimming gala because you’re in hospital-I know that’s not your fault,” she added hastily, not wanting to upset Jamie. “They’re always busy. They never listen to what we want. They don’t even care about us. When the baby comes, I bet they won’t care at all.” Ellie looked as if she was going to cry.
This was a shock for Jamie. He had always thought Ellie was quite happy. Now he realised she felt just as bad as he usually did. "We'll have to stick together, "he said.
Ellie looked a little happier.
“We’ll stick together and make them do something,” Jamie went on. “Like move to a bigger place and – and – I don’t know, but we’ll make them do something. Agreed?”
“Agreed” said Ellie, and smiled as they exchanged high fives.
The nurse arrived with a large plateful of toast.
“I won the camel race in double quick time,” she explained, “so I came back and made you this, to celebrate.”
As they ate the toast, they discussed what to do about the Rainbows and Secrets. “We’ll go back to the jungle together,” said Jamie, “and....
“...and call a meeting for both sets of monkeys to discuss the food situation.” chimed in Ellie. “It’ll have to be in a specially drawn place, where they can’t start a fight – oh but we can’t!” She remembered the trouble she was already in for drawing on the wall and told Jamie all about it.

Meanwhile, at home, Vee woke up and found a note from Ian explaining that he’d collected Ellie and taken her to the hospital. Then she remembered her daughter’s shocking behaviour of that morning. She went to look at the wall again, to check that it wasn’t all a dream. She phoned Ian on his mobile. He needed to know about this. Perhaps he could buy some paint while he was out and repaint the whole room. It was silly wallpaper anyway.
Ian was in the supermarket when he answered his mobile. The call from his wife didn’t make any sense to him at all. Vee told him that Ellie had painted all over Jamie’s bedroom and tried to blame it on Jamie. Yet now, without seeing each other in between times, Ellie and Jamie seemed to be the best of friends. He couldn’t understand it at all; but Vee wanted paint, so he bought some.
When he arrived back at Jamie’s bedside, he was even more confused. The two children were talking excitedly together, their mouths full of toast.
“Dad,” said Jamie, “you know I’m coming home tomorrow? Well, I’d really like it if me and Ellie could paint my bedroom wall - I mean with pictures and things and jungle scenes. I don’t care about the small bed and I won’t mind sleeping in there for ever if we could do that.”


11

A different Story?

On Sunday morning, before he fetched Jamie from hospital, Ian took the captain’s bed apart and put it in his van.
“It is too dangerous,” Vee had said. “He will fall out again, because the bed is too small for him.” She said this before she left for the nursing home: she worked there all day on Sundays. The doctor had told them they must be especially careful that Jamie didn’t do anything that could cause him to bang his head again for the next two weeks.
Ellie cleared out one of her cupboards and helped Ian to transfer Jamie’s things from the shelves and cupboard of the captain’s bed into it. When Jamie came home, there was nothing in his room but a black futon rolled out on the floor.
“I’m sorry Jamie,” said Dad, “but this is only temporary, while we sort something out.”
“No problem!” cried Jamie, delighted. “We can roll the futon up while we paint!”
While they ate lunch, he and Ellie chattered about paint. They wanted Ian’s coloured pots from under the sink. ‘Why not, if it keeps them happy?’ thought Ian to himself. The room would probably have to become a store room now anyway: he’d never be able to fit a proper full-sized bed in it.
“Will you want any help?” he asked them.
“No thanks Dad” said Jamie. “You can watch the football. We’ll be fine.” With a bit of luck Dad would fall asleep in front of the TV.
And so by the middle of the afternoon, Jamie and Ellie were able to go back to the jungle. They had converted the bridge into a meeting place. On either side, they had cleared away some of Ellie’s barbed wire and spikes, so both sets of monkeys could get onto the bridge from their sides of the river. But they had also made a break in the middle of the bridge, too wide for monkeys to leap across without risking falling in the water. This was designed to keep the two sides apart and stop them fighting. They had added two pillars each side, to support the two broken ends of the bridge, and each pillar had steps on it, leading down to the water. If Ellie or Jamie wanted to cross from one side of the bridge to the other, they could climb down the steps on one side, swim across the gap and climb up the steps on the other side. No monkey, of course, would dream of doing that.
They easily got the Rainbows to join them on the bridge: Snapper and Tufts and most of the fifteen monkeys who had previously crossed on the raft were there, plus quite a few more, all chattering and fidgeting impatiently.
Then Ellie went on her own to look for the Secrets, because seeing Jamie might have annoyed them. They were very hard to spot and she had almost given up hope of finding them. But they, of course, unseen, were watching her. When they reported back to their leader, Softpad sent for her and listened to what she had to say, because she had saved his life.
Just as Snapper was saying: “Waste of time! Waste of time!” and was about to round up his Rainbows and leave, Softpad and his companions arrived and lined up opposite, looking expectantly at Jamie from the other side of the break in the bridge. Several green parrots that had come with them perched along the parapets to either side of the monkeys.

“They’ve brought their parrots!” cried Snapper immediately. “Not fair! Send for ours!” and Jamie had to stop and wait till the multi-coloured parrots had taken up their perches around the Rainbows.
Meanwhile Ellie wanted to be near Jamie. She had been careful to put a swimsuit on under her clothes this time, so she stripped them off, went carefully down the rather rickety steps, swam across the gulf and climbed up onto the Rainbows’ side of the bridge.
“Now," announced Jamie, loudly enough for the Secrets to hear him too, “you had a terrible fight yesterday. Some of you were hurt, and Softpad nearly died. They nodded solemnly. They remembered that. “We need to make sure it won’t happen again,” Jamie went on. “That’s why we’ve called this meeting.”
“It won’t happen again,” said Softpad, “if you get rid of this bridge you’ve made.”
“It wouldn’t have happened at all if you hadn’t brought those Rainbows over to steal our coconuts,” complained Shadow, growling.
“Quite right, Shadow, it wouldn’t,” said Softpad. “But now, just take the bridge away, and everything will be OK again,” he told Jamie.
“It won’t be OK,” began Jamie, but Ellie nudged him and whispered: “Apologise!”
"I have,” whispered Jamie.
“Not properly.”
“Look,” said Jamie to the Secrets, “I’m very sorry I brought the Rainbows over to –errm –take- your coconuts, but they’re very hungry and-“
“Not their coconuts, not theirs!” interrupted Snapper.
“Don’t interrupt!” ordered Jamie. “Of course the coconuts belong to the Secrets. They’re on their side of the river.”
Snapper shook his head. Then Tufts joined in. “Rainbows own the whole Jungle. Our Story says so. The parrots will tell you that.” She looked up at a large multicoloured parrot with a hooked, authoritative beak. Jamie was sure it was the same male parrot that had told him the Rainbows’ Story before: Augustine. It started to squawk, but the Secrets shouted over it: “Don’t listen to their parrots, listen to ours!”
Jamie shushed them. “We’ll hear the Rainbows’ parrot first, then we’ll hear yours,” he promised.
Augustine told the Story just as Jamie had heard it before. When he had finished, Tufts asked him to repeat the part about monkeys being in charge of the jungle.
“You see,” said Tufts to Jamie when the parrot had finished. “Monkeys are in charge of the Jungle and they can eat all the fruit in it. That means Rainbow monkeys of course, because it’s our Story. Rainbow monkeys are in charge of the Jungle. And we can eat all the fruit in any part of the Jungle.”
“Wrong!” said Softpad. “Our Story is different!”
“Not wrong! Our Story isn’t wrong!” shouted Snapper.
“Shut up!” ordered Jamie. "They listened to your parrot, now listen to theirs!"
Snapper was quiet, and a green parrot recited the Secrets’ Story. It was exactly the same as the Rainbows', until it came to the bit about the fruit and the jungle. At that point the green parrot continued: “Monkeys must look after the trees and the fruit and keep them safe, and not let them be wasted or harmed."
“You see!” said Softpad. “Monkeys – that means Secret monkeys, because it’s our Story – ‘must look after the trees and fruit and keep them safe.’ It’s not for the Rainbows to look after the fruit and eat it all, it’s for us. That’s why we fight them if they come over and steal it!”
“I don’t think your stories are different at all! They’re just different bits of the same Story.” said Ellie. “The Rainbows’ story says monkeys are in charge of the Jungle and they can eat all the fruit in the Jungle. The Secrets’ Story says monkeys must look after the fruit and trees and keep them safe. So: monkeys are in charge of the Jungle. They can eat all the fruit in it, but they have to look after it. The two bits go together – like a jigsaw. What’s the problem?”
“The Golden Monkey told them to do different things,” said Jamie. “She told the Rainbows to eat all the fruit and the Secrets to keep the fruit safe.”
“No she didn’t!” protested Ellie. “She said monkeys should do both those things. She didn’t say Rainbow monkeys should do this and Secret monkeys should do that. She just said monkeys! That means all of you! All of you can eat all the fruit in the Jungle, and all of you must look after it!” Ellie looked around at all the assembled Secrets and Rainbows as she finished this speech. They stared back at her in silence. They had never thought of anything like this before.
Just then, Evangeline flew down from the parapet and landed gently on her shoulder. She looked around at the assembled company and said: “Please listen carefully. This is very important.”


12

Ellie’s plan

Everyone listened as Evangeline spoke. She opened her beak and repeated several times: “We are all Children of the Golden Monkey, all Children of the Golden Monkey, all children of the Golden Monkey.”
"All Children of the Golden Monkey agreed a green Secret parrot on the other side of the bridge. Then several more parrots on both sides began to chant: “We are all Children of the Golden Monkey.....”
“I get it!” said Ellie suddenly. “There’s only one Golden Monkey, and she’s the mother of the Secrets and of the Rainbows. That makes you all brothers and sisters,” she told them. “So ‘monkeys’ in both Stories means all of you. She meant the Jungle to be for all of you, and the Story to be the same for all of you. She wouldn’t want some of her children to have more food than others. That wouldn’t be fair. A mother wouldn’t do that.”
“Then why did she make us live on different sides of the river, and tell us not to cross it?” demanded Tufts.
“She didn’t say you mustn’t ever cross the river at all,” argued Jamie. “She just said it was dangerous. Evangeline, will you repeat the bit about the river, please?” he asked the lady parrot.
“The river is dangerous for monkeys: they do not need to cross the river, or wade or swim in it,” recited Evangeline.
“You see?” said Jamie. “Monkeys don’t need to cross the river, but it doesn’t mean they can’t.”
"Monkeys have no business crossing the river, in my view," grumbled Shadow. "Rainbows should stick to their own side, and leave us Secrets to ours. That's how it's always been. I don't hold with changing things. Let's hear what some more of our parrots have to say."
Some Secret parrots started to talk again, but then Rainbow ones joined in. Parrots on both sides of the bridge started telling their different versions of the Story, all at the same time. And none of them was exactly the same as another. There seemed to be almost as many slightly different versions of the Story as there were parrots. The monkeys argued too, and the noise was deafening. Jamie didn’t know what to do.
Ellie covered her ears and shut her eyes. She was trying to think. She felt quite sure that the Golden Monkey had intended the whole Jungle to be for all the monkeys. No-one knew for sure exactly which version of the Story was right, but if the Golden Monkey had really said that monkeys didn’t need to cross the river, then there must be a reason for that. Suddenly it came to her. Of course! It was obvious really. Ellie’s heart beat faster and she started to pant with excitement. “Shut them up” she said to Jamie. “I’ve got it! I know what we need to do!”
But Jamie couldn’t get the attention of the crowd. The parrots had mostly stopped reciting, because no-one was listening to them, and flown away. Some of the Secrets had got bored and disappeared again. Many of the Rainbows had forgotten what they were arguing about and run off into the jungle. The monkeys that were left were chattering aimlessly. And in the middle of it all, Jamie and Ellie realised that it would soon be teatime and Ian would be looking for them. They needed to get back.
Ellie felt desperate. She must make at least some of the monkeys listen to her before they left. She hurried down the rough steps, swam to the opposite pillar and scrambled up onto the Secrets’ side of the bridge. “Softpad,” she said, kneeling down to speak to him where he crouched, in conversation with Shadow and a huddle of other Secrets. “Softpad, you must listen to me please!” And she outlined her plan to him. Some of the other Secrets looked suspiciously at her as she did so, and Shadow growled quietly all the way through. But Ellie could tell that Softpad was at least half-interested. "I’ve got to go,” she told him. “Will you meet us tonight and do what I’m asking, if I can get Snapper and some Rainbows to do it too?”
Softpad hesitated.
“Don’t listen to her!” growled Shadow.
But Softpad ignored him. “We’ll do it,” he said.
Ellie hurried down the steps, across the water and back up to the Rainbows. Snapper, Tufts and a few others had got interested again now and were waiting expectantly for her. Gasping for breath, she told Jamie and the monkeys her plan.
“Sounds good to me,” said Jamie. He turned to the little group of Rainbows: “Will you come with us?”
“Coming, coming!” said Snapper. “Got to keep an eye on those Secrets. Stop them getting up to mischief! We’re coming too!”


13

The plan is put into action

Back in his bedroom, Jamie concealed himself under the duvet. In case Dad had noticed him missing, he thought it best to pretend he’d been hiding there.
“There you are Jamie!” said Dad as Jamie stuck his head out. “That’s funny, I thought – anyway, why are you hiding? And where’s Ellie?”
“She’s in her room getting changed. Her clothes –well –”
Ellie had arrived back in a wet swimsuit. She had forgotten her clothes, which were where she had left them, neatly folded, on the Secrets’ side of the bridge.
“She didn’t get paint on them I hope!” said Dad.
“No Dad, I think she just – felt like changing them. You know what girls are like.”
Dad smiled. “Well I’m glad you two are getting on better,” he said. “You know Jamie, it might be quite nice for you to have a sister.”
“Yes,” said Jamie, “and I don’t mind about the baby – ” He stopped. He hadn’t intended to say anything about the baby. “I mean,” he continued, only making things worse, “I think it’ll be great to have a baby. Ellie doesn’t though,” he added, seeing his stepsister appear in the doorway. “She thinks there isn’t room. And she’s right really, ‘cos it’ll be awful for her, having it in her bedroom and things.”
“What will be awful for Ellie? What are you talking about?” Jamie hadn’t heard Vee come in. She was standing behind her daughter.
“We don’t want a baby in here,” burst out Ellie. “There’s no room and it’s not fair on us! And you’re always working and you never have time to do anything with us! You shouldn’t have a baby when you don’t even look after us properly!”
“How do you know about this baby?” asked her mother indignantly. “You must have listened at doors! And it is not for you to tell your parents what they should do!”
“I did not listen at doors!” cried Ellie indignantly. “You told me about it this morning. You probably didn’t mean to, but you did. And I have to tell you what to do, because you’re not sensible. If you’re going to have a baby, we need to move somewhere bigger, and you shouldn’t both work so much.”
“Oh you think so, do you madam? In England the girls give the advice to their mothers I suppose? Well, not in this family! You will go to your bedroom and you will not have any tea!”
So this time it was Ellie who lay miserably on her bed; but Jamie was equally miserable eating his tea. It was a very quiet meal. Nobody mentioned the baby again. Jamie said nothing at all, but sat there wishing he hadn’t said what he had and hoping Ellie wouldn’t stop being friends with him because of it. Violetta, still looking angry, talked to Ian a little about work. They didn’t notice that Jamie had a plastic bag under the table.
He got away as soon as he could, slipped quietly into Ellie’s room and deposited the bag on her bed. “Sorry Ellie,” he whispered, “I didn’t mean to let on we knew about the baby.”
“It’s OK,” Ellie whispered back. “It wasn’t your fault. I wanted to say all that stuff anyway. I don’t care if I got into trouble. It was true what I said.”
“See you in my room,” whispered Jamie, “as soon as I’ve gone to bed.”
Ellie nodded. She looked in the bag and grinned: there was a cheese and tomato roll, a banana and a chocolate biscuit. “Wow!” said Ellie, “Thanks Jamie!” She gave Jamie a thumbs-up sign as he left the room.

So that was all right then, thought Jamie. At least they were still friends. He collected things ready for the evening’s adventure, for putting Ellie’s plan into action: two bottles of water, some more biscuits, and a strong torch (borrowed from the glove compartment of Dad’s van). It would have been easier to go on this excursion in daylight, but Ellie had to go to school the next day. At quarter to nine he said goodnight to his father and Vee, called loudly: “Goodnight Ellie!” outside her bedroom door, then got into bed, fully dressed.
Ellie made her way to Jamie’s room, and within a few minutes they were back in the Jungle, standing on the Rainbows’ side of the bridge, with Snapper, Tufts, and a little cluster of Rainbows around them. Above them, Augustine and Evangeline perched on the parapet. Opposite them, on the other side of the bridge, stood Softpad and his small band of Secrets.
“Oh no, there's Shadow and his gang,” whispered Jamie to Ellie. He didn't trust those three. "I wonder what they want those creepers for." Shadow and Thrasher were carrying coils of creeper slung over their shoulders.
Ellie shrugged. "Maybe they're scared of falling in the river, and they've brought lifelines just in case."
Some of the monkeys hadn’t heard Ellie’s plan, and she explained it again.
“We’re going up the river,” she said. “We’re going to follow it to its source.”
“What’s ‘source’?” asked a monkey.
“The place the river starts from.”
“Why are we going there?”
“Because there, it won’t be wide. It’ll – just bubble up out of the ground or come out of a crack in the rocks or something.” Ellie wasn’t really sure exactly what happened at the source of a river. “The point is,” she continued, “we won’t have to cross it. We’ll be able to just walk round it.” Ellie waited for her words to sink in. Several of the monkeys were staring at her, open-mouthed with astonishment. (The Rainbows among them had turned bright pink). The monkeys had never even thought about where the river came from, or what it was like upstream.
“I think,” continued Ellie, “that that’s why the Rainbows’ Story says that monkeys don’t need to cross the river.” She looked up at Evangeline, who nodded encouragingly. Augustine looked doubtful and rather cross. “And even if Augustine is right, and the Golden Monkey said monkeys mustn’t cross the river, “she continued, “it doesn’t matter. Because up there, up at the source, you can get to the other side without crossing it.”
“Ellie thinks there’s another bit to the Stories, too,” put in Jamie. “Tell them about that Ellie.”
“I think,” said Ellie, “that the Secrets’ Story and the Rainbows’ Story are all really part of the same Story. Because the Golden Monkey wouldn’t give her Children different Stories: she’d treat them all the same. So if you’ve both got different bits of the same Story, maybe there’s another bit missing too that might explain things more. And I-I don’t know why, but I think we might find it if we go up the river.”
“Let’s go then!” said Snapper. “What are we waiting for?”
But of course, there were things to be decided first, like what side of the river they all travelled on. Neither set of monkeys was willing to cross the river, but Jamie and Ellie wanted to be together on the same side: apart from anything else, they only had one torch. In the end, it was agreed that the two children would walk up the Secrets’ side of the river, with Softpad and co, and their parrots. The Rainbows, with Augustine and Evangeline, would make their way up their side.
It was easy at first, because the moon lit their way as the children walked along the sand. But as they progressed upriver the beach gradually petered out and their path was often blocked by tangles of undergrowth that grew right up to the water’s edge. Sometimes the children had to leave the bank and make a diversion into the darkness of the jungle before finding their way back to the river. Other times they had to wade through the water itself. While they did this, the monkeys swung through the tree tops ahead of them. The children could faintly hear the Rainbows, across the river, chattering impatiently as they waited for the humans catch up. From their own side came the sound of Secrets singing cheerfully in harmony. They were much more patient.
"What do your songs mean? What's that tune we just heard?" Ellie asked Softpad, when they caught up.
"Oh that was just a Passing-the-Time song. We have lots of different music," said Softpad. "It's the way we send messages to each other without words. Some music means we're worried, some means everything is fine. They sang both kinds on the bridge, when I was saved from drowning. First they sang the Worried Song, because I was cold and wet. But when they saw I was all right, they changed to the Happy Song. But you can't hear some of our music at all," he added. "That's our special Warning Music. Only we Secrets can hear that. We don't use our ears for it."
"How can you hear it without using your ears?" demanded Ellie.
Softpad shrugged. "We just do," he said. "We just feel it inside us. Even deaf Secrets can hear the Warning Music. We send it when we need help."
"So that was what happened on the bridge!" cried Jamie, suddenly realising. "That's how that Secret knew you were alive. He told the others to 'listen to the music', but I couldn't hear any! It was the special Warning Music, that only Secrets hear!"
Softpad nodded. "We Secrets are cleverer than you think," he said.

They must have walked for at least two and a half hours: it was the longest walk that either of the children had ever been on. But at last the trees and undergrowth grew thinner, and the ground started to rise. They saw bare hills in front of them, under the moon and the clear, starry sky. The monkeys were waiting for them as, hot and tired, they sank down on a rock to rest: Secrets on their side and Rainbows on the other. They could see each other easily, because here the river was less than half as wide as by the bridge, from where they had set off. Ahead of them, they could hear it coming down the hillside in a series of waterfalls, that glittered in the moonlight.
“End of the Jungle!” announced Softpad.
“Have you been here before?” Jamie asked him.
“Of course.”
“Have you been up into the hills?”
Softpad shook his head. “No point,” he said. “No trees.”
“It’s a long, steep climb up there,” grumbled Shadow. “And we don’t know what’s waiting for us when we get there. I don’t hold with going places no-one’s ever been before.”
“That’s right,” chimed in One-eye. “We don’t know if it’s safe.”
“Big waste of time,” added Thrasher.
But Softpad was beginning to believe that Ellie was right about the river. It was definitely getting narrower; perhaps it really did end in nothing. In that case, he wouldn’t be able to stop the Rainbows coming to the Secrets' side of the Jungle as often as they wanted, and the Secrets would be able to wander about as they liked in Rainbow territory. Somehow, they would all have to come to some kind of agreement and be friends: otherwise the fighting would be endless.
“No, Ellie is right,” he told the complainers. “We have to get to the start of the river.”
“Let’s move on! Let’s move on!” Snapper was shouting impatiently from the opposite bank.
“Off we go then,” said Jamie, getting up.
Secrets and children on one side, Rainbows on the other, they all started to climb the hill.


14

The source of the river

The climb up the hill took as long as the walk through the Jungle. It was gradual at first, passing through a grassy area, where hippos grazed in the moonlight. Then it went up in giant steps, so they had to scramble up steep bits, where the river beside them rushed down in a torrent. Then the river would flatten out again, flowing along a kind of shelf, and the bank would become flatter too, until it reached the next steep bit. But the river was becoming narrower as they climbed. The children jumped across it several times, to prove this, but the monkeys stuck firmly to their own sides.
They came to the source of the river quite suddenly. They had just scrambled up a very steep, rocky bank and they found themselves at the side of a round pool that sat in a hollow near the hill top. From the front of the pool water trickled over the edge and gathered force, turning into a waterfall. This was the start of the river. But at the back of the pool, there was just a wall of rock. There, the pool was very still, with no movement of water at all.
“It’s here” announced Ellie. “The beginning of the river!”
Awestruck, the monkeys watched in silence as Ellie started to walk around the pool. Her path took her up onto the top of the rock wall at the back. She stood there for a moment calling:” No water here! My feet are dry!” Then she walked down the other side and joined the Rainbows on their “side” of the river.
The monkeys were overcome with shock. Ellie had got to the other side of the river without touching a drop of water on the way. The river they had always thought they couldn’t cross, didn’t need crossing any more! The barrier that divided Rainbows and Secrets from each other was gone!
“Three cheers for Ellie!” shouted Jamie and the monkeys cheered. The Rainbows cheered because now they could get coconuts without crossing the river. The Secrets felt they had done something new, different and clever, so most of them cheered too. They rushed up the rock wall to the hill top behind it and leapt about: Secrets, Rainbows and children together, whooping with joy and embracing each other. Only Shadow and his friends didn’t join in the fun. They stood to one side and looked on suspiciously, muttering to each other.
Jamie leapt about so much, he fell over. "Be careful," warned Ellie. "You're not supposed to bang your head. And look! We're on a cliff-edge!" They were standing some distance away from the pool and the river, facing towards the other side of the hilltop. When Ellie shone the torch ahead of them, Jamie saw that she was right. The land seemed to fall away into nothing.
When the monkeys were tired out with glee, everyone flopped down on the hill top to rest. Snapper said: “What's next?”
“Next you have to decide how you’re going to share all the fruit in the jungle and look after it,” said Ellie.
“How?” asked Softpad.
“Well, if you Secrets let the Rainbows eat some of the coconuts, the mango trees will grow more fruit again, and one day the Rainbows will be able to share the mangoes with you.”
“Who wants to eat mangoes?” objected Shadow. “Stupid Rainbow food! It turns monkeys funny colours!” One-eye and Thrasher sniggered.
But Ellie wasn’t put off. “What would you do,” she asked the Secrets, “if the coconut trees all got a disease? That happens to trees you know. And how do you know you won’t run out of coconuts sometime, just like the Rainbows are running out of mangoes? Anyway, eating different kinds of food is good for you. They told us that at school.”
“I’d like to try mangoes,” said Softpad.
“So would I!” chimed in another Secret, and another, and then another.
“We could share the coconuts,” said Softpad, “if the Story says it’s OK. But I’m not sure if it does.”
He looked up at the parrots circling overhead, and had a big surprise. There, among the Rainbows’ multicoloured Story Keepers, and the Secrets’ plain green ones, he spotted two of a kind he’d never seen before. They were shocking pink.
Just as Softpad spotted them, the two swooped down and landed in a flutter of shocking pink feathers on the ground amongst the crowd of astonished monkeys and children. (The Rainbows turned shocking pink too, in surprise.)
Everyone stared as one of the new parrots opened its beak and began to speak. “I am Angelica,” it said. “And this is Francesco. We are Keepers of the Monkeys’ Story.”
“Which monkeys?” demanded someone.
“All monkeys,” replied Angelica. “All monkeys are Children of the Golden Monkey, and this is the Story she gave to her Children. We have never told the Monkeys’ Story before, because we live in the hills, and no monkey has ever come up here to find us.”
“But we will tell it now,” continued Francesco. “Please listen carefully.”
They all listened as Francesco spoke. The beginning of his Story was exactly the same as the beginning of the Rainbows’ and Secrets' versions. But the next part was as follows: "Monkeys are in charge of the Jungle and they can eat all the fruit in the Jungle. But Monkeys must look after the trees and the fruit and keep them safe, and not let them be wasted or harmed."
Then Angelica took over. “The river is dangerous for monkeys,” she said, “but they don’t need to cross it. They can come up to the hilltop and walk round it.” (“Yes!” shouted Ellie triumphantly, but everyone shushed her.) “Or perhaps one day, somebody will make them a bridge that will be safe for them to cross,” continued Angelica, looking at the children.
“Someday,” Francesco took up the Story again, “one kind of fruit may begin to run out. If this happens, it will be especially important for all the monkeys to share all the fruit. Monkeys who have plenty of fruit should give some to those who don’t have enough. And some of the fruit should be stored, especially the coconuts, because coconuts store better than mangoes.”
Angelica finished off the Monkeys’ Story. “Monkeys who ignore these things will be in trouble,” she said, “but monkeys who follow them will be rewarded with happiness. The Golden Monkey wants all her Children to be happy. One day the Golden Monkey will return and she will be happy because her Children are happy. This is the Story given to the Monkeys by the Golden Monkey, their mother.” Angelica stopped speaking.
“You see!” cried Ellie. “You see! You are all one big family of monkeys, and you are supposed to help each other and share everything!”
“Good Story!” said Snapper. “Like this Story best!”
“I like it too,” said Tufts.
“I like it too,” said Softpad. “It’s strange to think Rainbows and Secrets can be friends, but it must be what the Golden Monkey wants. So it must be what we need to do.”
“Then you can do it!” said Jamie. “We can help you build a coconut store, and a bridge without a hole in it.”
“And help you organise everything,” said Ellie, who thought the monkeys were sure to get in a muddle about how to share the fruit.
The monkeys cheered and clapped.
But then: “NO!” shouted a voice. “NO! We are Secrets. We’ve always had our own Story, and it isn’t right to change it! We won’t change our Story!”
It was Shadow. Everyone turned to stare at him, but no-one said a word.
Then: "Call yourself a leader, Softpad?" sneered the old monkey. "You shouldn't let this happen! If you were a proper Secrets' leader, you wouldn't listen to a human!" With a look of disgust he turned on his heel. "Let's go," he said to One-eye and Thrasher. "I've had enough of this. We've got things to talk about," he added under his breath. The three monkeys slunk away into the darkness.
"Never mind them!" said Softpad to the children. "We like the new story, and we want you to help us with the store and the bridge, don't we, monkeys?" He turned to the crowd. "Yes, we do!" shouted the monkeys, and cheered again. Then they all sat down, to talk excitedly about the building plans.
They were all very tired, and after a while, most of the parrots flew away and the monkeys settled down, one by one, to sleep. A sweet, gentle hum started up, like a lullaby: the Secrets' Tired but Happy Song. The children were just thinking that perhaps they should go home, when One-eye suddenly reappeared.
"Ellie," he said, "come with me, please. I want to show you something."
"Shall I come too?" asked Jamie.
"No," squeaked the small monkey, "just Ellie. It's...it's a nest of baby parrots, and...and I think one of them might be hurt. But it's very important to come one at a time, because ....otherwise you'll scare them, and they'll fall out of the nest. I'll show you afterwards, Jamie."
Ellie took the torch and followed One-eye. He led her to the edge of the cliff, and stopped. "It's down there," he said.
Ellie lay down on her front and peered over the edge of the cliff, shining her torch around. "I can't see anything," she said.
"The nest is on a ledge," said One-eye. "Can you see the ledge?" Ellie made out a narrow ledge that started slightly to her left. It ran along the cliff-face, sloping downwards as it went, in a diagonal line. Below it was a sheer drop, going down...how far? Probably thousands of metres. Ellie couldn't see the bottom.
"I can't go down there!" said Ellie. She was about to add: "It's much too steep and dangerous," when someone shoved a large stone into her mouth, and covered it with their hands.


15

A terrible accident

The hands over Ellie's mouth were monkey hands, but unusually big for a monkey. It was Thrasher. He and Shadow were sitting on Ellie.
"Tie her up, One-eye," ordered Shadow. "Clever of me to bring those creepers with me, wasn't it? I knew they'd be useful. Don't worry Ellie," he continued. "We'll help you onto the ledge, won't we, boys?"
"Oh, we'll do that all right," said Thrasher with a menacing laugh.
One-eye bound her round tightly with creeper. "Don't forget her mouth," Shadow told him. "Put the creeper round that, to keep the stone in. We don't want her shouting for help."
"But-" began One-eye. "But-won't that hurt her?"
"Don't 'but' me! Do what you're told!" growled Shadow.
One-eye still hesitated, till Shadow roughly pushed him out of the way, and bound Ellie's mouth himself.
"I - I -I don't think -" stammered One-eye. "I mean, you know best, Shadow, of course, but - maybe we shouldn't take her onto the ledge...b-b-because -"
"Whose side are you on, One-eye?" Shadow glared at him.
"Yours, of course, Shadow," said One-eye.
"You know what the plan is then, don't you?" continued Shadow, through clenched teeth. "We take her along the ledge till we find a cave. We leave her there, tied up. We fetch the other human. Then we get Softpad too, and maybe Snapper-one at a time. Once they're all in the cave, we roll some big stones down to block the mouth of it."
"So they'll never get out again!" exclaimed Thrasher.
"When they can't get out, the humans will be forced to go back to their world, and leave us alone," said Shadow.
"What about the monkeys?" asked One-eye.
"Who cares?" growled Shadow. "That's their problem. And when they're all safely out of our way-"
"We'll be leaders!" cried Thrasher.
"I'll be leader," Shadow corrected him. "I'll stop all that nonsense about changing our Story and sharing the coconuts. I'll be in charge of the jungle. I'll decide who gets the coconuts. Secrets who do what I want will get them. The ones who don't obey me can starve. We certainly won't waste any on Rainbows. Now," he said to One-eye. "You take the torch and lead the way along the ledge. We'll bring the human."
One-eye obediently picked up Ellie's torch and set off along the ledge. Shadow and Thrasher followed, dragging the helpless Ellie awkwardly between them. She was really too heavy for the monkeys, and so they bumped her along in a very uncomfortable fashion. The only good thing about it, thought Ellie, was that they had to go very slowly. She was very frightened. The ledge was no more than half a metre wide and it sloped downwards steeply. On one side Ellie could see the cliff wall, on the other, nothing but dark, empty space. She shut her eyes. She tried to shout for help, but it came out as no more than a muffled squeak.
Back on the hilltop, Jamie was talking to Snapper and Softpad. "I wonder where Ellie's got to?" he said. "We really ought to go home."
"Shush!" said Softpad, pricking up his ears. He could just hear Ellie's squeaks, and he heard something else, too, much more clearly. It was the special Secret music, the sounds they didn't need ears for, that no-one else could hear. It was the Warning Music. Another Secret was sending him a message, from somewhere near the cliff edge, telling him something was wrong.
"Danger!" shouted Softpad suddenly. "Secrets, wake up! Follow me!"
Softpad ran to the cliff edge, followed by Snapper and Jamie. Most of the Secrets woke quickly and joined them, because they'd felt the Warning Music inside them too, even before Softpad had shouted. The Rainbows were sleepier and took longer to come.
Softpad got to the cliff edge first. He looked down and saw the three monkeys with Ellie. One-eye was walking ahead, with the torch. Shadow followed, pulling Ellie by the feet, and then came Thrasher, holding her under the arms. Softpad half-scrambled, half slid down the cliff-face onto the ledge. He landed right in front of Shadow, barring the way.
"Take her back to the top!" demanded Softpad.
"You can't make me!" sneered Shadow. "Now, get out of my way!"
But Softpad stood his ground. Seeing that the other monkey wasn't going to move, Shadow was overcome with rage. Suddenly, he dropped Ellie's feet, and, snarling, made a grab for Softpad's throat. Softpad moved aside, forgetting, for a second, that he was on a ledge. A moment later, he remembered. It was too late.
Watching from above, Snapper saw that dangerous side-step. In an instant, he
leapt onto the ledge and grabbed Softpad round the middle. But Softpad was already falling, and Snapper couldn't keep his footing. Together the two monkey leaders plunged into the darkness below.
Jamie screamed as he saw them fall. After that, there was a stunned silence on the hilltop. And then, the monkeys began to howl mournfully.
It was a terrible, heart-rending noise, and Jamie couldn’t bear it. He looked round for help and saw Francesco the parrot. “Where will they be?” he asked him desperately. “What’s down there?”
Francesco shook his pink-feathered head. “It’s a very deep chasm,” he told Jamie, “with rocks at the bottom.”
“Can we go down and look for them?” asked Jamie.
“That would be far too dangerous for you,” replied the parrot. “Not even monkeys could climb all the way down there safely. Some of us parrots will fly down and look for them at dawn. Now,” he reminded Jamie, “you need to rescue Ellie."
Ellie was still lying, tied up and gagged, on the ledge, alone. Her captors had vanished. Several monkeys climbed down, and helped to bring her carefully back to the safety of the cliff-top. They gnawed through her bonds with their teeth.
"Francesco," said Ellie, as soon as the stone was removed from her mouth. "Do you think - I mean, how will we find out if - ?"
But Francesco shook his head again. “They won’t be alive,” he said. “No-one could fall down there and survive.”


16

Bad news and good

Usually Ellie was up early on school days, and ready to go at half past eight, clean and tidy in her school uniform. On this Monday morning it was quarter past eight before Vee noticed that her daughter hadn’t come into the kitchen for breakfast. She found her still in bed, and so deeply asleep that Vee had to shake her several times to wake her. Her eyes looked puffy, as if she’d been crying.
“Where am I?” Ellie said drowsily, and then, remembering Softpad and Snapper: “Oh no! Oh no!” She buried her face in her hands.
Her mother thought she was still fretting about the baby, and said (a little impatiently): “It is not as bad as all that, Ellie, that we think about having baby. Maybe it will not be yet. Maybe in year or two. Perhaps I can give up nursing home. Perhaps we can move to bigger place. Ian thinks so. There is not the hurry, after all.”
For a moment, Ellie forgot about the monkeys and tried to take this in.
“So you’re not pregnant then?” she asked, amazed.
“Of course not!” said Vee, equally amazed that her daughter had imagined this.
“But you said you wouldn’t be able to cope with the new baby if I wasn’t good.”
“That is baby we think about. We want to have one, and we talk about it, that is all. So you see, you do not need to worry so much. Now you must hurry to get ready for school.”
Ellie was stiff and sore and bruised from being dragged along the ledge, as well as sad, but somehow she managed to get ready for school. Vee gave her some toast to eat in the van while Ian drove her there. But Ellie had no appetite, and put the toast in a bin in the school playground. She sat at her desk going over and over in her head what had happened the night before. Sometimes she thought it was possible the two monkey leaders might be alive; and sometimes she was sure it wasn’t.
Jamie wouldn’t have been able to go to school, even if he hadn’t been suspended. The doctor had said he must stay off for two weeks because of his bang on the head. He was very tired too of course, and didn’t wake up till the middle of the morning. He padded around the flat in his pyjamas, heard Vee on her sewing machine up in the attic, and decided to go back to the jungle at once. It was dreadful to think the two monkeys might be dead. Jamie had to find out for sure what had happened to them.
He couldn’t get back to the hill top, because it wasn’t on the wall paper, so he went back to the bridge. He found it deserted. He started walking into the jungle on the Rainbows’ side, towards the place where Tufts’ family had its den, and as he came into a small clearing, he found a group of Rainbows. They were deep purple and unusually quiet, squatting on the ground. As Jamie approached, they raised their heads, and one of them came running over to him. It was Tufts. The monkey leapt up into Jamie’s arms.
“Snapper: is he...,” began Jamie, hardly daring to ask.
“Dead,” said Tufts sorrowfully. “Softpad too. Both dead.” The two of them buried their faces in each other’s shoulder and cried.
After a while Jamie put Tufts gently down, and sat miserably on the ground while the monkeys told how Francesco and Angelica, had gone searching and found the bodies of Snapper and Softpad at the bottom of the cliff.
“What did you do with them?” asked Jamie. “Don’t we need to bring them back?”
The monkeys shook their heads.
“We’ll leave them out in the open,” explained Tufts. “That’s what we always do when monkeys die.”
This idea seemed strange to Jamie. He was just trying to get his head round it when he heard a small thud, and a coconut dropped gently onto the ground in front of him. It was followed by another, then another. Jamie gasped. Secrets! On the Rainbows’ side of the jungle! More and more of the green monkeys came out of the trees and showed themselves. Each one dropped a coconut onto the growing pile.
The Rainbows watched them, shocking pink patches showing through their purple colour. There were about thirty Secrets altogether. They had been as silent as usual coming through the jungle, which was why no-one had noticed them till they were actually there.
“How did you get here?” Jamie asked.
“We walked round of course,” explained one of them. “Last night we didn’t go back to our dens. We stayed at the edge of the jungle. We were waiting for news from the parrots.”
“Then we heard that our leader is dead, and so is yours,” continued another. “We are sorry. We came to say that we are sorry. We went back to get coconuts, then we climbed up to the hill top again and walked round the river and came through your jungle to see you.”
“What about Shadow and Thrasher and One-eye?” asked one of the Rainbows sharply.
“Shadow and his friends have gone. We don’t know where they’ve gone, but they won’t be welcome in the Jungle ever again,” said the first Secret.
“Not while there are Secrets living in it,” added his companion. "Monkeys who behave like they did are not part of our tribe. Isn’t that right?” He turned to the crowd of Secrets around him, and they all shouted their agreement.
“We speak for all the Secrets,” said the first one. “We want to be friends. We are sad, like you, terribly, terribly sad, and we want to be friends. No more fighting again ever. And we are happy for you to share our coconuts.”
“We want to be friends too,” cried Tufts, turning to her fellow Rainbows, “don’t we, Rainbows?”
It was the Rainbows turn to shout their agreement. And then they jumped up, and turning bright yellow in spite of their sadness, just for a minute or so, embraced the Secrets and danced around with them.
When they had all settled down again, Tufts said: “Jamie, you and Ellie will help us, won't you? You'll help us make a proper bridge without a hole in the middle, and build a coconut store, as you promised?”
“Of course we will,” said Jamie. “But I have to go home now.” It was getting near lunchtime. He stood up.
There was something still bothering him though, and he was reluctant to leave without sorting it out. “Snapper and Softpad- shouldn’t we give them a funeral or something ?” he said.
The monkeys just looked at him blankly. They didn’t know what a funeral was.
“That is not what monkeys do,” squawked a voice above his head. It was Evangeline, perched on a tree branch. “But listen, Jamie. You don’t need to worry about Snapper and Softpad any more. They are with the Golden Monkey now, and they are happy.”
Back at home, as Jamie ate his lunch, he thought about the new friendship between the Rainbows and Secrets, and Evangeline’s words, and it made him feel a little better. He wanted to tell Ellie about it. He sent her a text message.
Ellie was not supposed to have a mobile phone with her in school. But that morning she’d sneaked it in with her. She was half-hoping, in spite of what Francesco had said, that Jamie might have some good news about the monkey leaders to pass on to her. She had set the phone on “vibrate”, and at that moment she was sitting on it, to hide it from her teacher, Mrs. Khan. The class was watching a history programme on television, but Ellie was too sad and too tired to concentrate. She folded her arms on the desk, laid her head on them, and within seconds she was fast asleep.
Ellie was woken by the phone vibrating under her bottom, making a banging noise against the wooden chair seat. The children nearby looked at her curiously, but luckily Mrs Khan had gone to the classroom door to talk to somebody, and didn't notice. Ellie pulled the phone out hastily and read the message, shielding it with her hands from prying eyes.
“Rnbws + Scrts frnds,” it read. “goin 2 share ccnuts. We must hlp wiv nu bridg etc. Snpr+Sftpd wiv Gldn Mnky. Parrot sez happy.”
Jamie had meant this message to make Ellie feel better, but it didn't. As soon as she read: "Snpr+Sftpd with Gldn Mnky,” she understood. It was just like when her grandmother in Estonia had died and her mother had told her Babushka had gone to heaven. Ellie covered her face with her hands and began to sob. She cried and cried and couldn’t stop.
Mrs Khan got the welfare assistant, Miss Smith to take Ellie to the sick bay. Miss Smith was young and pretty and kind. “What’s up Ellie?” she said.
All Ellie could think of to say was: “I had some bad dreams last night.”
“Tell me about them.”
So Ellie poured out the whole tale of Jamie and herself and the Rainbows and Secrets. “Well,” said Miss Smith, “that’s a very complicated dream. It sounds more like a film. Are you sure you haven’t been watching scary DVDs?”
Ellie shrugged. She wasn’t sure about anything anymore.
“Anyway,” continued Miss Smith, “I think it’s a beautiful story. You and Jamie were very clever and very brave to help the monkeys make friends and share the jungle.”
“But Snapper and Softpad died – they died rescuing me,” said Ellie. “And it was my fault. If I hadn’t taken the monkeys to the source of the river and shown them that all the Stories were the same, it wouldn’t have happened.”
“But you were right,” said Miss Smith. “All the Stories were the same, and the monkeys needed to know that. They needed to share the jungle, otherwise the fighting would have gone on and on, and some of the monkeys would have starved. You saved them, Ellie, you and Jamie. And it wasn’t your fault, what Shadow and his friends did. You weren’t to know that was going to happen.” She waited for this to sink in for a while, then asked: “Do you feel a bit better now?”
“A bit,” sniffed Ellie. “As soon as I get home, we can start painting a proper bridge for the monkeys. And we’re going to help them build a coconut store.”
“That’s the spirit,” said Miss Smith. “Why don’t you get some sleep now then?”
So Ellie slept till it was time to go home.


17

The "Proper Secrets"

Shadow, Thrasher and One-eye did find a small cave along that rocky ledge. And they did use it as a hiding place, after all. But it was themselves they had to hide in it, from monkeys who came by on their way to walk round the end of the river. Banished from the tribe, the three of them dared not show themselves in daylight.
One-eye also stayed in the cave to avoid seeing the cliff edge and remembering what they had done. He crouched in a dark corner muttering: "Shouldn't've done it, shouldn't've done it.!"
"Shut up, One-eye!" growled Shadow. He fixed the younger monkey with a threatening stare. “Listen!” he continued, “It’s good that those two idiot monkey leaders have gone. Snapper was a Rainbow, so he doesn’t matter anyhow –"
“Stupid Rainbow!” put in Thrasher.
“… and Softpad – Softpad called himself a Secret, but he was no true Secret at all! Softpad was a traitor! He wanted to change our Story. No true Secret would ever change our Story.”
“Traitor!” agreed Thrasher.
“But we,” continued Shadow proudly, "we are proper Secrets! We don’t need those other so-called Secrets. Who cares if they’ve banished us? And we certainly don’t need Rainbows. We don’t need any of them! We’ll have our own monkey tribe.
We'll call ourselves: "The Proper Secrets."
The Proper Secrets had to find food. They had to go into the jungle they had been keeping away from. They avoided the Secrets' side, because Secrets, being good at hiding, were good at finding each other too, and would have noticed them straight away. So, although Shadow was reluctant to eat mangoes, when darkness fell, they set off to the Rainbows' side. It was a long walk down to where the jungle began, and there were no trees to swing through, which would have been much quicker. The monkeys hated being out in the dark, and it was very dark, because there was no moon. They kept tumbling down the steep bits and bruising themselves, and they were cold.
When they reached the jungle they crept quietly in, as Secrets are so good at doing. But even Secrets find it hard to be totally quiet in the dark, because they can't see everything they are treading on or touching. The three of them climbed quickly up the first mango trees they came to. They didn't dare to shake them, or drop the mangoes to the ground. They picked the fruit soundlessly, till each had as many as he could hold in one arm, then slipped quietly down the trees.
But then things went wrong. Thrasher, landing on the ground, snapped a twig under his foot. Shadow thrust his bared teeth into Thrasher's face, and in the darkness accidentally banged his forehead against the other monkey's. They were both too Secret to cry out in pain or shout. Thrasher made no noise in his anger. Instead he silently sank his teeth into Shadow's cheek. A scuffle followed, more twigs cracked underfoot.
The Rainbows, sleeping in their dens, heard nothing of this. But now there were Secrets in this part of the jungle too, who had made dens and were sleeping there. Some of them had woken at the crack of the first twig. At the sound of more cracking they crept out of their dens. Shadow and Thrasher became angrier and the fight became more violent. It disturbed a parrot; the parrot shrieked; more parrots joined in. Within seconds, wide-awake Secrets and sleepier Rainbows came scurrying through the jungle, screeching and snarling at the intruders, pelting them with sticks and lumps of earth.
The three "Proper Secrets" scattered and hid; but they had to keep moving their hiding places as the other monkeys found them out. They were chased to the edge of the jungle, and then back where they had come from, up the hill towards their cave near the cliff top. The two younger monkeys were much quicker than Shadow and left him behind. Half-way up the hill he could run and scramble no further. He sank down, exhausted, behind a small rock, the only cover he could find. He peered anxiously round it, pricking up his ears, to look and listen for his pursuers. Luckily for him, they seemed to have given up.
Slowly Shadow sat up his haunches and picked up the booty of mangoes, which he still had with him. He trudged wearily up the rest of the hill, as day began to break.
In the cave he found Thrasher and One-eye gobbling fruit. "Stop it you idiots!" he growled. "We must save some!"
But Thrasher looked at him rudely and carried on gobbling. Even One-eye finished his mango and spat out the stone before doing as he was told. Shadow was too exhausted to do anything about it. He lay down on the rocky, uncomfortable floor of the cave and went to sleep. One-eye licked his paws and settled down to sleep too, beside what was left of the small pile of mangoes they had managed to bring with them out of the jungle.
One-eye and Shadow woke at noon the following day. There was no sign of Thrasher, and their little store of fruit had gone. If they were to eat, they would have to go back into the jungle as soon as darkness fell.
Shadow and One-eye continued like this for a week or so. They slept, as well as they could (not being used to it) in the day time. At night they made the long walk to the edge of the jungle. If they were lucky, they got away with a mango or two before being chased away and forced to run back up the hill. Now, of course, the Rainbows and Secrets were expecting them, and posted guards in the trees. So they were ready for the two invaders before they even got down the hill. It got harder and harder for the "Proper Secrets" to feed themselves. They were very hungry, and very tired.
One-eye was also very worried. He was afraid it would not be long before the other monkeys grew impatient with having to fend off their night raids and came up to the hill top to hunt them out. But Shadow got angry if One-eye said anything about his worries. In fact, it was getting difficult to say anything to Shadow at all. His temper was very bad: he growled and snarled a lot, and hardly ever spoke.
One-eye was getting desperate, however. "Couldn't we," he said to Shadow one day, "couldn't we go back and say sorry? They might let us have food.."
"Never!" shouted Shadow fiercely. "Never, never, never!" he snarled. "Don't ever mention going back again. Cowards talk like that. Traitors talk like that. You are a Proper Secret. We Proper Secrets have our own tribe. We don't need those other fools."
One-eye didn't like to point out that there wasn't exactly a Proper Secret "tribe": only himself and Shadow. But he wished he could be part of the old Secret tribe again, and have plenty to eat, and feel safe.
The night came when they got no fruit at all, and had to go back empty-handed. By the following evening, neither of them had eaten for at least thirty-six hours. Hungry as they were, they decided not to set off for the jungle at sunset, as they usually did. Instead they waited till the early hours of the morning. They hoped that the guards might have gone off duty by then, and that the monkeys might be sleeping more soundly.
They set off in the cold night air. In human time, it was about 3 a.m. Shadow was very weak. Several times he fell over. Once he tumbled down a steep slope and couldn't get his breath for several minutes. One-eye wanted to go on alone, but the older monkey refused to give up. He got to his feet and struggled on.
But when they were still a few hundred metres away from the jungle, passing through the hippos' grazing ground, Shadow had to lie down, and this time he couldn't get up again. He lay on his back breathing heavily, his eyes rolling.
"Shadow! Shadow!" cried One-eye, panicking. Shadow didn't seem to hear him.
One-eye had to find food for his leader, and find it fast. There was no time to go into the jungle. He must find food now, or Shadow would die, and he, One-eye, would be all alone in the world.
He looked around him in the darkness, and saw hippos eating grass. Could Shadow eat grass? One-eye couldn't imagine it: the thought was disgusting. In any case, he wasn't sure Shadow would be able to chew and swallow grass. What he needed was coconut milk, real Secret food, easy to digest. He could pour it into Shadow's mouth.
As he was thinking this, One-eye saw the hippos wander towards the river and wade in. His eye followed them and he caught sight, in the moonlight, of things floating on the water. They were roundish brown things… was he imagining it? …or could they be coconuts?
One-eye ran to the water and begged the nearest hippo to help him reach them. The hippo was full up with grass and wanting a rest. But he reluctantly allowed One-eye to climb on his back, and slowly started to lumber away from the bank.
As he did so, One-eye became aware of another monkey nearby. It was Thrasher. He loomed suddenly out of the darkness, leapt from the bank, and landed (without permission) on the hippo's back beside One-eye.
This annoyed the hippo, who shifted angrily in the water. At the same moment, One-eye spotted a "coconut" floating by and leaned out to catch it. With a great effort he managed to get the object between his hands. He just had time to realise, with a huge flood of disappointment, that it was not a coconut, but a clod of earth. Then the hippo shifted again, and One-eye slid into the deep water, and felt himself sinking down, and down, and down.


18

Monkey drowning?

Ellie persuaded Ian to let her and Jamie have some of the white emulsion he’d bought, and they painted over the old bridge. It took several coats to cover it, and they had to wait for each one to dry in between, so it was the following weekend before they could paint a new bridge.
They tried to make the new one wider and lower, so the monkeys could run over it easily, and with high sides to keep them safe from the water. But it wasn't easy to paint all that in perspective, and make it come out right. When they went back to the Jungle, they found that the new bridge hadn't turned out the way they'd planned it. It sloped in the wrong places and directions, and it had only one side. In spite of this, Rainbows and Secrets, were swarming across it and back again in both directions, just for the fun of trying it out.
Then a new problem came up, which they had not thought of before. It started to rain. The rain began with a few large heavy drops out of a dark sky. Within a couple of minutes, it built up to a torrent. For the monkeys, this added to the fun at first. They found themselves sloshing through puddles that had formed on the surface of the bridge. Not thinking what the puddles might mean, they merrily splashed each other as they ran across.
But suddenly a monkey shouted: "Soft! The bridge is going soft!"
"It's melting!" yelled another, "the bridge is melting!" The rain was dissolving the bridge. All the monkeys on the bridge rushed off it in a panic. They were just in time. Seconds after the last monkey reached the bank, holes appeared all over the surface of the bridge, and grew rapidly bigger and bigger. There was nothing that anyone could do but watch in dismay as the rain washed the new bridge away. In fact, it washed so much away that it even uncovered the old bridge, and then washed that away, till there was nothing left of what the children had painted at all. Evidently, things that were painted on the wallpaper appeared in the jungle, but didn't last there.
"Do you think we can help them build a bridge, properly?" Ellie asked Jamie, when both bridges had disappeared, and they were standing with the monkeys in shocked silence.
"We shall have to try," replied Jamie. "We'll have to use wood. It won't last as long, but the stones here are the wrong shapes and sizes, and we've nothing to cut them with."
So they set about organising the monkeys to build a bridge. That wasn't easy either. They had to cut down some of the tallest trees, lay them across the water and bind them together. Then they had to raise the bridge up so that it was above the water level. They decided to build a stack of stones on either side, to support the tree trunks, but they needed a support midway across as well. In the end they solved that problem by using the island where Jamie had left his pyjama top. It was rocky and stuck up out of the water, and did the job very well.
They wouldn't have been able to do any of this if they hadn't had help from the hippos. It was Jamie's idea to ask those animals for assistance, but no-one thought it would work. Why would hippos be interested in anything but mud and grass? The hippos, however, turned out to be most obliging creatures when spoken to nicely. They were extremely useful in breaking down tree trunks, moving them around, and carrying things (including children, and a few brave monkeys) out into the water.
But there was a snag. Hippos were all sweetness and light when in a good mood. In a bad mood, a hippo could be most destructive. And hippos could get into a bad mood very quickly. It was very easy to upset them.
One day, when the first half of the bridge was in place, some Rainbows were having a friendly mango fight to celebrate. A flying mango struck a hippo in the face, and split. Eyes stinging from the mango juice, and with bits of mango up his nose, the hippo was in a rage. He lowered his head. He was about to charge at the bridge and trample it, destroying all their work. Jamie saw it and knew he had to act fast.
He stood in front of the furious hippo (which was very brave, but rather dangerous), and said the first thing that came into his head. "Stupid monkeys! Don't let them get to you! They're so stupid they - they think it's good to put mango on their faces, so they thought you'd like it too! They think they look better with mango all over their mugs, and -well- monkeys are so ugly, it's probably true!" Jamie picked up the nearest Rainbow and squashed a mango into his face to demonstrate. "You like that, don't you?" he said, covering the victim's mouth when he tried to squeak :"No!"
It wasn't a very funny joke at all, but hippos have a simple sense of humour. Fortunately this one found the squealing, squirming, bright red, mango-faced monkey amusing. He gave a few deep, ground-shaking guffaws, and lumbered off to wash his face in the mud.
This was just one example: there were lots of times when Jamie had to calm the hippos down. He became good at it. There were many squabbles among the monkeys too. And on top of that, they all had to work in the teeming rain; yet somehow the bridge got built, and everyone was delighted with it.

The coconut stores should have been easier. They decided to build two, one on either side of the river, to make it fair. They started the one on the Rainbows' side first. They shaped it like a wigwam, with long thin tree trunks standing in a circle, coming together at the top, where they were firmly bound with creepers. Then they wove palm leaves in and out of the poles. At first it went well. The rain had stopped, and the monkeys worked happily, side by side, for a while, Secrets and Rainbows together.
But one morning disaster struck again. They had built most of the wigwam the day before, and when the sun rose, the monkeys started work, eager to finish it. All over the wigwam monkeys were weaving busily. A small group of Rainbows was working near the top, when suddenly one of them turned pale blue, then orange, then pale blue again. "Monkey!" he shouted. "Monkey in the river! Monkey drowning!"
Everyone turned to look, some scrambling up higher to see, others scrambling down to run to the river bank. The wigwam was awkward: it was too big, and they hadn’t stuck the poles in the ground firmly enough. The commotion unbalanced the wigwam, and it came toppling down, bringing the weavers with it.
No-one was badly hurt, but they were bruised, and shaken, and bitterly disappointed at the ruin of all their hard work. A lot of shouting broke out. "Stupid Rainbow!" yelled a Secret. "What did you have to say that for?"
"They always get over-excited," complained another Secret. "I knew we shouldn't work with them. Look at me! I'm covered in bruises, and I've banged my head. Ow!"
"It was one of yours," retorted the Rainbow who had raised the alarm. He was bruised himself, and didn't consider that any of this was his fault. "It was a Secret I saw drowning. I was just trying to help. He's probably drowned now."
"You're imagining things!" accused someone else. "Typical Rainbow!"
"I didn't imagine, I saw it. I saw a Secret float by, hanging onto a piece of wood."
"Maybe it was one of their Outlaws," suggested another Rainbow, "one of the Murderers." ("Outlaws" was one of the labels they had given to Shadow and his two followers. "Murderers" was the other.) "Good thing too, in that case."
The squabbling got worse:
"What if you did see it, you didn't have to knock the wigwam down, did you?"
"Me knock it down!"
"Stupid Rainbows! Useless at building! Ruined everything!"
"At least we aren't murderers!"
"Who are you calling murderers?"
"Shut up!" shouted Jamie. "We'll never get this thing built if you don't shut up and listen to each other!"
"Never get it built anyhow!"
"It's hopeless."
"I'm off."
"Same here."
Several of the monkeys had wandered off already, and others were leaving.
"Come back!" Jamie called after them, but they ignored him..
"Maybe it is hopeless," he said to Ellie. She had just come back from the riverbank, where she'd been looking for the "drowning monkey", but had seen no sign of it. If there had been one, it had gone now. "I've had enough of monkeys. Maybe we should just go home and forget all about them."
But Ellie was listening to something else. "What's that noise?" she said suddenly.


19

The return of the outlaw

There was a sound of heavy feet squelching through the mud at the water's edge. The children looked up and were astonished to see a hippo coming towards them, with something on its back. The hippo stopped in front of them, and deposited the "something" on the ground at their feet. It was green, wet, and hairy; and apparently alive, because it was shivering. Except for the shivers, it lay motionless where the hippo had dropped it.
Two Secrets, still squatting nearby, came forward and rolled the 'thing' over onto its back. "One-eye!" they cried, recognising the Outlaw. "We don't want him here!" they told the hippo. "He's a Murderer. Take him back where you found him - or drop him in the river. It's what he deserves."
"I've just pulled him out of the river," objected the hippo.
"Please," gasped One-eye, "I didn't murder anyone! It was Shadow - and it was an accident."
"You kidnapped Ellie, you and your friends," said Jamie. "You took her down a dangerous cliff. You were going to keep her prisoner. Shadow attacked Softpad, and made him fall. Snapper fell trying to save him. It's your fault they're dead, yours and the other Outlaws'. You deserve to be called murderers."
"Sorry," gasped One-eye, "very, very sorry. Didn't mean to kill anyone. Didn't want to take Ellie onto the ledge. Tried to stop Shadow." One-eye turned over again and curled up in a sobbing, shivering heap.
"But you told me lies about a baby parrot that was hurt," said Ellie. "You were part of the plan."
"I'm sorry," said One-eye again. "I know it was very bad, what I did. But Shadow just told me to go and get you. He didn't say why. He said: 'Make up a reason, otherwise she might not come, because she's probably angry with us.' I didn't know he meant to kidnap you."
"You tied me up," Ellie reminded him.
The small monkey was still hiding his face in shame. He said in a very quiet voice: "I was - I was scared of Shadow. And I wanted him to like me. He was the only friend I had. But I didn't put the creeper round your mouth. He wanted me to, but I wouldn't. I didn't want to hurt you. I said we shouldn't take you on the ledge."
"But you went onto the ledge with the others," objected Jamie.
"I know," mumbled One-eye. "I thought I had to do what Shadow said. It was wrong, and I'm very, very sorry. I'm so sorry those two monkeys are dead." Then he suddenly lifted his head and shoulders and turned to look at Ellie. "But I tried to save you, Ellie," he continued. "I tried to save you by sending a message with the Secret music, honestly, I did! I sent the Warning Music to Softpad - that's why he came and found us!"
Jamie and Ellie looked at each other. They didn't know if One-eye was telling the truth.
`Jamie changed the subject. "Where did you find One-eye?" he asked the hippo.
"At the grazing ground. He climbed onto my back - trying to get coconuts out of the river or something - as if there'd be any down that end! There was another monkey with him. Bigger than this one. Stupid-looking. And ignorant. No manners at all," said the hippo.
"Thrasher!" cried the two Secrets together.
"They both fell in," continued the hippo. "Big stupid one floated off downstream, hanging onto a tree branch. Probably gone over the rapids by now."
"I told you!" interrupted the Rainbow who had raised the "drowning monkey" alarm. "I told you a Secret floated by with some wood!"
"That must have been him," said Ellie. "It must have been Thrasher."
"This one was half-drowned too," said the hippo, nodding towards One-eye. "I fished him out, nearly dead. He asked me to bring him to you."
"Where's Shadow?" demanded Jamie, of the blubbering heap that was One-eye. "Stop that noise, and sit up, and tell us what Shadow's up to."
Slowly, One-eye turned over and sat up. "Could I -" he begged in a whisper, "could I just have a tiny bit to eat? I feel so weak."
Ellie hesitated, then handed him a half-coconut that someone had left nearby. He nibbled a little of the flesh, then said: "Shadow's dead."
"Dead!" exclaimed Jamie.
"Dead!" the murmur went round the little crowd of monkeys, which was growing bigger again..
"Then you're the only one left of the Murderers," said Jamie.
"Not a murderer," muttered One-eye. "But sorry. So sorry I didn't stop them. I want to make up for it. Came back to say to say sorry. Came back to make up for it."
"You can't make up for it," Ellie said. "You can't bring those dead monkeys back."
"Get on with the story," said Jamie. "Tell us how Shadow died."
One-eye explained how Shadow had collapsed from hunger and exhaustion on their way to the jungle. He told them how he, One-eye, had asked the hippo to help him get the coconuts he thought he saw in the river, and had fallen in when Thrasher annoyed the hippo. "I sank deeper and deeper," he said, "and I couldn't breathe. But then suddenly - I must have had a dream while I was down there, because suddenly - all the cold water and darkness had gone, and I was in a warm, dry place and comfortable, and not even hungry any more. It was a beautiful place. There was music: like our Happy Song, but lovelier. And there was a kind of golden glow -"
"The Golden Monkey!" exclaimed one of the Secrets.
"Yes," said One-eye. "I knew the Golden Monkey was near. And then Shadow arrived."
"Shadow!"
"Yes. Suddenly he was next to me. But he wasn't comfortable. Shadow didn't like it there. He complained that the golden glow was too warm and too bright. He said it made him sweat and it dazzled him. Then I saw -" One-eye hesitated.
"What did you see?"
"I saw Softpad and Snapper," he continued in a low voice. "They came towards Shadow."
"What did they do to him?"
"They were kind to him."
"Kind?"
"They were laughing and holding out their arms to him saying ' come and join us Shadow, come and be happy with us!'
"How could they want to be friends with him?" asked Jamie. "Why didn't they hate him?"
"They said they couldn't hate anyone. They were with the Golden Monkey and they were too happy to hate anyone. They said the Golden Monkey wanted everyone there, even Shadow."
"What did Shadow do?" asked Ellie.
"Shadow was angry. He snarled and pounced and tried to bite and scratch Softpad and Snapper. I did try to stop him then. I yelled at him to stop, but he wouldn't. It didn't matter though, because it didn't seem to hurt them at all. They just laughed more and said 'Lighten up, Shadow, we're with the Golden Monkey. No-one needs to fight here. Stay and be friends and enjoy yourself!"
"Did Shadow stay?"
"No he didn't. He spat at them and said he hated them and the Golden Monkey too, and he didn't want to be happy with them. He said it was too warm there and too bright and he preferred darkness and cold. Then Shadow started backing away from them, and away from the light, into a sort of - dark tunnel behind him." One-eye shuddered. "There was a rushing noise, and it seemed like the air in that tunnel was spinning round, like a whirlwind, sucking him in. It got faster and the noise got louder. And then it just stopped, and there was nothing but silence."
"And Shadow?"
"Gone. Vanished."
"Into the dark tunnel?"
One-eye nodded. He shuddered again and hid his face in his paws.
No-one spoke as the children and monkeys took this in.
Then: "That was quite a story," said Ellie.
"What about you?" said Jamie. "Why didn't you stay?"
One-eye hung his head. "I didn't deserve to be there," he said.
"Did the Golden Monkey send you away?"
"No. But those two were so happy, and so kind to Shadow, it made me feel worse about what I'd done. I knew I had to go back and try to make up for it. I wasn't ready to be happy like them. Then I woke up gasping for breath. The hippo had pulled me out of the water and he was holding me upside down in his mouth, shaking the water out of me. He put me down on the bank, and I crawled back to where I'd left Shadow."
"And Shadow was dead," said Jamie.
One-eye nodded. "So I asked the hippo to bring me here - to say sorry. I want to help Secrets and Rainbows be friends. I want to be friends with everyone. I don't want to be like Shadow."
Jamie looked from the Outlaw to the group of listening monkeys gathered around.
"What shall we do with One-eye?" Jamie asked them. No-one answered.
Then a Secret spoke up: "He did send the Warning Music to Softpad.. I heard it too, in my sleep. It woke me up."
"How do you know it was One-eye?" asked Jamie. "It could have been Softpad who sent it to you."
"No," said the Secret. "It came from the direction of cliff edge, before Softpad got there."
"I heard it too," said another Secret, and several others agreed.
"Well," said Ellie, "it's true he wouldn't put the creeper round my mouth. Shadow pushed him out of the way and did it himself. And I remember them arguing about going onto the ledge. That bit's true too. But you still did a terrible thing," she told One-eye. "If it hadn't been for you, I wouldn't have gone to the cliff-edge, and none of this would have happened."
"What shall we do with One-eye?" Jamie asked again.


20

One-eye tries to make amends

The monkeys argued. Some thought One-eye should be sent back to his cave to live as best he could as an Outlaw. But the hippo had gone, and One-eye was too weak, for the moment, to walk that far. Some thought he should be thrown back in the river - but none of them was willing to do it.
They were all tired after their hard work and in low spirits because it had been wasted. They were glad they would not be bothered by Outlaw raids any more, now that Shadow and Thrasher were dead, and they were not much interested in the small, one-eyed, half-drowned Outlaw that remained. In the end they just left One-eye where he lay, in the mud near the riverbank, and went off into the jungle again.
When they had gone, Ellie said: "He can't stay here in the mud." So she and Jamie carried him away from the riverbank and laid him in the shade of some trees. Then they too went home.
One-eye slept under the trees for most the day. He was woken in the evening by the chattering of monkeys who had come to look at the wreck of the wigwam and discuss what to do with it. He hid himself away, ashamed to be seen by anyone, and quietly ate what was left of the coconut, which Ellie had left tucked under his paw. Then he made himself a hole in some undergrowth, and crept into it to spend the night.
He was up before dawn the next day. He looked at the collapsed coconut store. "Must help," he said to himself. "Must make up for what I've done. Can't make up! But must try to!" And he went off into the jungle.
When Tufts and some more monkeys arrived, to set about rebuilding their wigwam, they found that One-eye had made a collection of small tree trunks, and was dragging along another to add to it. "Can't build - big - store," he explained, panting. "Too big - falls down. Build lots of small ones."
The other monkeys looked at each other, and realised that there was no reason why the coconut stores needed to be big, as long as they built enough of them.
"He's right," said Tufts. "Let's use the small tree trunks, and make sure we dig them deep enough into the ground this time."
By the time Ellie and Jamie arrived, the first small wigwam was nearly finished. Over the next few days, Secrets and Rainbows worked together, and the children came to help as often as they could. The plan was to build ten wigwams on the Rainbows' side, and then ten more in the Secrets' territory.
"And when it's all finished, we'll have a big party," said Tufts.
One-eye was allowed to work with them. No-one would talk to him, and he was only allowed one piece of coconut or a small (usually mouldy) mango each day to eat. They probably wouldn't even have let him have that, if Ellie had not insisted that he must be fed. At night, the monkeys chased him out of the jungle, so he was obliged to sleep on the hippos' grazing ground, where there was no shelter. He didn't want to make the long steep walk back to the cave: he was too tired, and it reminded him of Shadow and the awful things that had happened.
But in spite of no-one's speaking to him, of being half-starved and made to sleep out in the open, One-eye worked harder than any of the others, and never complained.


21

Human crocodiles

On Jamie's first day back at school, as he walked through the playground, the boy he’d pushed off the bench was standing with the two giggly girls from Jamie’s class, Mandy and Alice,. The boy called out: “Where’ve you been, Jamie?”
“Suspended!” said Mandy in a mocking tone.
“For two weeks!” said Alice. “He must be really bad.”
Jamie started to get angry. He stopped, and was about to turn on the three of them, when suddenly he remembered a red, snarling monkey-face, with bared teeth - Snapper, the first time they'd met. He remembered Shadow attacking Softpad on the ledge. He remembered Snapper and Softpad falling to their deaths. He remembered the angry hippo threatening to smash the bridge. Then he thought of how he'd made the hippo laugh. "Stupid monkeys! Don't let them get to you!" he'd told the hippo. "Stupid kids! Don’t let them get to you!” he told himself.
He turned to face them. “I wasn’t suspended for two weeks,” he said calmly. “I had an accident.”
“In your pants?” said the boy, and the girls hooted with laughter.
Jamie frowned. "Stupid kids! Don’t let them get to you!” he told himself again; but it was hard.
“He’s getting mad,” said Alice.
“He’s turning into a wild beast,” said Mandy. She made a growling noise.
It gave Jamie an idea. "That's right!" he said. "I'm a stampeding hippo!" Jamie lowered his head, opened his mouth wide, and, roaring loudly, charged at the three children. They shrank back, cowering, as Jamie pulled up just in front of their frightened faces. They were actually scared of him! Jamie was astonished. He was only fooling around, but they were scared of him! They were just silly kids that got frightened when he did animal impressions. Why did he need to worry about them? He smiled. “Any more wild beasts you’d like me to be?” he offered. They didn’t answer. “See you later then,” he said cheerfully, and walked off.
Later that day, at playtime, he saw Mandy and Alice playing “Please Mr Crocodile, may I cross your coloured water?” with some other girls. Mandy was the “crocodile”. She stood by the wall, while the others formed a line opposite her. Ellie was one of the girls in the line.
“Please Mr Crocodile,” they chanted, “may I cross your coloured water?”
“Only if you’ve got the colour pink,” answered Mandy, and two girls who had pink in their socks ran across to the wall, while Mandy tried to catch one of them, to be the next crocodile. But they touched the wall before she could get them, so they went back to the line and Mandy had to have another go.
Standing next to Alice in the line was a new girl called Poppy. Poppy’s clothes were grubby and she was wearing a pair of dirty white trainers. The sole had come loose on the right one.
Alice looked critically down at Poppy's feet. “Wow!” she said in a loud, sarcastic voice. “That is one cool pair of trainers you’ve got there Poppy!”
Hearing her friend’s voice, Mandy the “crocodile” turned round and sniggered.
Jamie looked at Poppy. If she was a Rainbow monkey, he thought, she would be purple.
“Please Mr Crocodile,” chanted the girls, “may I cross your coloured water?”
“Only if you’ve got cool trainers!” called out Mandy gleefully.
Only Alice ran across. “I've got cool trainers,” she said with a smirk. She had an expensive new pair of the latest design of the most fashionable brand sitting at home in her wardrobe, though at that precise moment she was wearing black school shoes. “Mandy and I have got the coolest trainers in town, haven’t we Mandy?”
“You bet!” agreed her friend.
“Did you buy them yourselves?” asked Jamie.
“Don't be stupid,” said Alice. “My Mum bought mine yesterday. I saw Mandy’s and just had to have some, so she bought them for me. My mum buys me anything I want, exactly when I want it,” she boasted.
“Well then,” said Jamie, “if you didn’t buy them, what makes you so clever? Anybody can have cool trainers if their mum spoils them. Teasing Poppy isn't clever. Can’t you see she’s purple?”
“Purple?” said Alice and Mandy together.
“I mean she’s miserable,” said Jamie.
“Let Jamie be the crocodile,” said Ellie suddenly.
“Yeah let him,” said another. “Go on Jamie.”
Mandy and Alice stood by looking sulky while the rest of the girls asked Jamie the crocodile if they could cross the water.
“Only Poppy can,” said Jamie “and anybody who wants to be friends with Poppy and make her yellow – I mean happy.” Every single girl in the line rushed across to the wall. Jamie caught Poppy. “You’re crocodile now” he told her.
Poppy grinned.


22

Two announcements and a celebration

At the end of term assembly, Mrs Gupta announced that after the holidays there were going to be Anti-bullying Monitors in the school. She named Jamie as one of them.
That evening, the family went out for tea, to celebrate. Jamie had a chocolate milkshake and a doughnut. Ellie had a pink iced cupcake, and a pink milk shake to match.
“I’m so proud of you Jamie,” said Dad.
“We are all proud of you Jamie! Aren't we Ellie?” said Vee, squeezing him so tightly that the doughnut got stuck on its way down. Ellie nodded vigorously, though in truth she felt a little jealous.
Then Ian said: “We’ve got some news for you both! I think you’ll like it!”
Ellie and Jamie looked expectantly at their parents.
“We’re moving,” announced Ian.
“Moving!” cried both children at once. “Where to? Where are we going?”
“He has got new job,” explained Vee. “It is twenty miles from here, I think.”
Jamie’s heart sank. Twenty miles! He’d have to leave school, and give up his post of Anti-bullying Monitor when he’d only just got it!
“I’m going to be a school caretaker,” explained Ian. “It’s a big secondary school, so there’ll be lots of space to ride bikes around.”
“But best thing is,” said Vee, “house that goes with job has four bedrooms, and big kitchen, and three reception rooms. So there will be plenty of room for us and baby too.”
Ian looked at his son’s unenthusiastic face and sighed. “It was what you wanted – more space,” he said. “I know it’s going to be hard for you both going to a new school and leaving your friends, but – the good news is, they don’t want me till after half-term.” It was now April, so this was a couple of months away. “We’ll probably move in the half-term holiday” he continued. “So you see, Jamie will get a bit of a chance to do his monitoring job.”
“Will we have to sell our flat?” asked Ellie.
“No,” said Ian. “That’s the other part of the plan. We’re going to rent it out, and get the money. So your mother won’t have to work in a nursing home.”
“And I won’t need to do dressmaking unless I want to,” said Vee. “Which I will, maybe, but not if baby comes.”
“And I shall try to spend more time with you all too,” promised Ian.
“It might be fun, moving,” said Ellie to Jamie later, when they were alone together. “The house sounds nice.”
“Maybe,” said Jamie. “At least I’ll get half a term at being a monitor. We’ll have to leave the jungle behind, though.” It had been difficult for Jamie to get to the jungle from the hospital; it would surely be too difficult to get there from their new home.
The few weeks till half-term went quickly.
Ian decorated most of the flat, ready to let it out. But at Jamie’s and Ellie’s request he left the jungle room untouched. ‘It doesn’t really matter,’ he thought. ‘It’ll only be a store room anyway. It’s not big enough for anything else.’ Jamie and Ellie thought differently: they thought that perhaps some other children might one day find their way through the wallpaper.
23

The Golden Monkey

The afternoon before moving day, when nearly everything was packed into boxes, the two children went back to the jungle. They were almost sure it would be their last visit.
They opened a window with Jamie's phone and wriggled through, arriving on the bridge. The first things they spotted were two neat rows of wigwams on either side of the river, standing in the shade of big trees, and well away from the mud: ten sturdy-looking coconut stores on the Secrets' side, and ten on the Rainbows'.
Then they heard music, like a thousand tiny, joyful bells. Tufts came skipping onto the bridge, bright yellow with delight, accompanied by a little crowd of yellow Rainbows, and Secrets singing the Happy and Excited Song. Tufts leapt up to hug each of the children in turn.
"It's all finished!" she cried gleefully. "We're going to have the biggest party ever! The parrots and even the hippos are coming. We've just been waiting for you to get here! We can have the party now!" A cheer went up from the monkeys. "It'll be a mango party!" shouted some of the Rainbows. "No, a coconut party!" contradicted some Secrets. "It'll be both," said Tufts.
"Great, but can we see the stores first?" asked Jamie.
They inspected the Secrets' and then the Rainbows' stores, accompanied by a band of skipping, proud, exuberant monkeys. Their first impressions had been right: the stores were strong and well built. They were all full of coconuts. "They're fantastic!" said Jamie. "Brilliant!" agreed Ellie.
In a clearing on the Rainbows' side, the party began. As many mangoes as possible, and an awful lot of coconuts, were eaten, and a great deal of coconut milk drunk. Ellie invented a game for them to play. It was based on one of her own favourite games, which she'd played at the seaside: crazy golf. She got Jamie to help her make an obstacle course by digging holes, making slopes and channels in the earth, and bridges from stones and branches. The animals had to roll coconuts over, under and through the various obstacles to land in a hole.
They all loved this game, even the hippos, who were hopeless at it. But after a while, they had made a total mess of the obstacle course. So, with Ellie's help, they made up other games: a kind of boules with the coconuts, and a game of catch with mangoes (which the hippos couldn't manage at all.)
The games kept the animals amused for hours, while green, multi-coloured and shocking pink parrots squawked overhead, making comments and giving advice.
Ellie and Jamie were watching a group of Secrets and Rainbows play catch. The monkeys stood in a circle and one threw a mango to another, who had to catch it and throw it on to someone else, at random. Meanwhile, another mango was introduced, and then another, till there were several mangoes flying across the circle quite fast. If anyone dropped a fruit, he or she was out of the game. The monkeys who were left in last won the mangoes.
As Ellie was watching, she suddenly became aware of a flutter of bright pink feathers, and Angelica perched gently on her shoulder. Ellie was delighted to see the parrot again. There was something she’d wanted to ask. “Angelica” she said, “how does anybody know there are only three parts to the Story? Might there be four or five, or even more?”
“Of course there will be more parts to the Story,” said Angelica. "The Story isn’t finished. It’s still going on."
"It'll go on without us," said Ellie. "We won't be able to come here any more."
"We won't be able to get here from where we're moving to," added Jamie.
"That's sad," said Angelica. "But you've already done all you can do to help the monkeys. You've helped them enormously by making them realise that they all have to look after the jungle together and share all the fruit in it. Now they'll have to manage on their own. "
"I bet they'll still quarrel," observed Jamie.
"Of course," replied Angelica. "But that's something you've helped them with too - learning how to sort out their quarrels without getting violent. They'll have to do that for themselves too, now."
"Will the Story ever be finished?" asked Ellie.
“It will be finished," said Angelica, "when the Golden Monkey returns."
“When will that be? When?” This was from Tufts, who was out of the game and had joined the conversation.
“That,” answered Angelica, “depends on the monkeys and parrots and even the hippos: all of us who are part of the Story. When we can all live together happily, looking after the jungle and sharing the food, making sure everyone has enough to eat; when there is no more fighting, and no animal ever hurts or is nasty to another on purpose; when every monkey and hippo and parrot - every animal - is the friend of every other animal - then the Golden Monkey will return."
"Not for a long time then," muttered Tufts, disappointed. She had hoped it might be soon, but now she couldn't imagine that it would be. The monkeys still had an awful lot to learn. They were all sharing the jungle now, and there hadn't been any violence since that dreadful time when Snapper and Softpad were killed, but there were still plenty of arguments and unkind words among them.
At that moment, one of the monkeys in the catch game sent a mango sailing through the air, right out of the circle. It was caught by a small Secret who was hovering on the edge of the gathering. "Well caught!" shouted Jamie. Then he realised who the small Secret was: One-eye. It had been a particularly good catch, considering the little monkey had only the one eye. The "Outlaw" had been watching the party, not daring to join in. Ellie noticed how thin he had become on his meagre diet.
"He's got our mango! He'll steal it!" shouted a couple of Secrets.
But the Secrets were wrong, because One-eye was not running away, but heading towards the circle of monkeys. He was bringing the mango back. He threw it to the nearest monkey, then turned and walked away.
Tufts watched him go, and said to Angelica: "If we have to be friends with every other animal - does that mean him too?"
"Of course!" squawked the parrot.
"But he's bad," protested Tufts.
"He did bad things," corrected Angelica. "He isn't doing bad things now. And he's sorry."
The animals started to get tired. Most of the hippos wandered off to their mud bath. The monkeys squatted on the grass and tried to sing. Jamie taught them "Ten green bottles hanging on a wall." But the Secrets (not knowing what bottles or walls were, but being fond of green) insisted on changing it to: "Ten green parrots perching on a tree".
The Secrets were very tuneful, but the Rainbows sang flat. With one or two remaining hippos rumbling along with them, they made a strange noise. And all of them were hopeless at getting the numbers right. "Six green parrots, perching on a tree," sang the monkeys. "One fell off and then there were ..er… " "Three!" suggested one. "Seven!" offered another. "A hundred and ten!" boomed a hippo, and the monkeys all found this so funny that they rolled about laughing for several minutes.
The party continued all afternoon. When, at last, the sun was an orange disc going down in a yellow, pink and turquoise sky, the monkeys started to gather up the left-over coconuts to put them in the stores. (Nearly all the mangoes had all gone.)
Tufts didn't take part in the collection. She was sitting thinking - thinking about Angelica's words. It might be a long time before the Golden Monkey returned, but she wanted to do something, even if it was only a small thing, to bring that time nearer. Suddenly Tufts jumped up onto a boulder and made an announcement.
She was orange, but a little pale blue round the edges. "Listen everybody!" she shouted. "Stop and listen, please! I think - I think we should give One-eye more food." She pointed towards the Outlaw, where he sat in the shadows, watching them from a distance.
"So do I," chimed in Ellie. "He's worked so hard on the coconut stores, and he's got so thin, he might die if he doesn't get more to eat."
There was silence for a moment, then one of the Secrets muttered: "Doesn't deserve anything, not after what he's done." There were growls and murmurs of agreement from several other monkeys.
But Tufts continued bravely. "He did bad things," she said, echoing Angelica's words, "but he isn't doing bad things now. He tries to help as much as he can now. He brought the mango that he caught back. And Ellie's right: he worked harder than all of us on the coconut stores. And he's sorry." Tufts picked up a plump, juicy mango she'd been saving for the next day. "Anyone who agrees, follow me!" she said. Two more monkeys joined her, and a very small procession set off in the direction of One-eye.
When she reached One-eye, Tufts silently handed him the mango. The monkeys behind her, carrying coconuts, put them down at One-eye's feet. Slowly, a few more monkeys made a contribution, most of them rolling coconuts from a few metres away, not ready yet to be seen getting too close to the former enemy of both Secrets and Rainbows.
After a few minutes, a small pile of fruit had formed in front of One-eye. He could scarcely believe it was his. "Thank you," he whispered, and his one eye was full of tears.

It was time for Ellie and |Jamie to go home. They knew they would probably never see the monkeys again. They both promised they would never forget them. All the monkeys came in turn to hug each of them, (or almost in turn - monkeys aren't very good at queuing).
It was Tufts they hugged last and longest. As she and Ellie finally let go of each other, Tufts suddenly turned from purple to bright pink and exclaimed: "Look! Look!" A splash of yellow light from the setting sun lit up her pink face. "Look at the sunset!" she said.
The children turned to follow her gaze. The orange globe of the sun had sunk a little lower, the turquoise and pink had disappeared. But the yellow glow had turned to bright gold, so bright they had to cover their eyes and peer through their fingers at it. And the glow wasn't just a glow. It was a face: a monkey face. It was the most beautiful monkey face they had ever seen.
"The Golden Monkey!" whispered Jamie.
As they looked at her, she looked back at them, smiling; and as the Golden Monkey smiled at them, they all felt blissfully happy.
And then she was gone.
The Golden Monkey had appeared for just a few seconds in the sky above the sunset. But the children would never forget her, or the monkeys and their Story, for the rest of their lives.

THE END


Contents


1 Jamie in trouble again
2 Monkey business
3 War or peace?
4 The Story
5 Coconuts!
6 Missing pyjama top
7 Ellie in the jungle
8 Stopping the battle
9 Ellie in trouble
10 Sticking together
11 A different story?
12 Ellie’s plan
13 The plan is put into action
14 The source of the river
15 A terrible accident
16 Bad news and good
17 The "Proper Secrets"
18 Monkey drowning?
19 The return of the outlaw
20 One-eye tries to make amends
21 Human crocodiles
22 Two announcements and a celebration
23 The Golden Monkey

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Tag der Veröffentlichung: 16.03.2010

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