The Rainbows and the Secrets by Christine Cox (best ereader for academics .TXT) 📕

/> “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