Extract from MAPTON ROARS

Something Big

The first indication that something was different came with the dawn chorus on a late spring morning when the mists were rising off the fields which surrounded Eleanor Branwin’s animal sanctuary.

Eleanor woke immediately, assuming it was the hungry cry of her baby son that had snapped her out of sleep, yet now she was awake she couldn’t hear Morgan crying.

Next to her Dan was still in deep slumber, breathing steady and measured in a way that Eleanor envied. She almost poked him out of exhausted spite, but instead fumbled her way out of bed and went to check on Morgan.

He, too, was still very much asleep, peaceful on his back with his gorgeously pudgy arms and legs splayed with the blissful relaxation only babies and young children can achieve. Eleanor gazed for a moment at his perfection, still unable, after four months, to fully process the maternal love which threatened to overwhelm her. Suddenly, she realised what was wrong.

It was too quiet. At four thirty am on a May morning the birds should be competing to out-sing, and out-shout each other in the dawn chorus. Her rooster should be crowing, hens clucking to be let out of their hen house, and various animals shuffling and rustling as they stirred awake, or for the nocturnal ones, snuggled down for the day.

The sanctuary was quiet.

Then a blackbird started, a robin followed, the woodpigeons started calling, a cuckoo jumped in, and finally the rooster crowed.

Eleanor relaxed; maybe it was earlier than she thought. She didn’t know what had woken her with such a start, but Morgan was fine, Dan was asleep, and the world was waking up as normal so maybe she could be lucky enough to catch another hour or so of sleep. With dawn familiar and reassuringly cacophonous, Eleanor began to make her way back to bed.

Then something vibrated in her ears, and like music being cut off, the world outside fell silent again.

Eleanor stopped, listened. Even Solstice, her tame crow was silent, and she could normally hear him muttering and rustling downstairs.

Something had shut up all the creatures inside and out, and Eleanor knew that mostly likely meant one thing. There was a predator about.

It didn’t occur to Eleanor to be afraid as she set out across the yard with her shabby old trench coat cinched over her nursing nightie, bare feet shod in her robust wellies, no more than it had on a similar morning two years ago, when she’d found a strange man sleeping in her barn and trained her rifle on him.

That man had been Dan. It was the first time she had ever been blindsided by love; the second time was when Morgan was born.

She took her old rifle with her this time too, as much for the solid reassuring feel of it than anything else. Whatever had caused all the wildlife, here and in the surrounding fields, to fall silent was unlikely to be caused by a human. The dawn chorus wouldn’t stop for that - indeed it had already begun again - but the animals in the sanctuary were definitely spooked, either quivering deep beneath their bedding, or coming to her for reassurance. Yet, there was no sign of any intruder, not even a fox.

Eleanor sniffed the air. There was definitely an odour, a whiff of something very pungent that tugged at the edges of her memory, something that she had encountered once before but a long time ago.

And then came the roar.

Solstice, who had immediately hopped onto her head the moment she’d appeared in the kitchen and refused to let go of her hair when she stepped outside, let out one sharp, alarmed squawk and sank his claws painfully into her scalp.

Bing Crosby, who’d been alert and silent at her side, whimpered, peed involuntarily, and tucked himself between Eleanor’s legs, which was not the usual reaction of this particularly feisty Jack Russell.

Even Eleanor felt her knees tremble.

The sound and the smell together triggered her memory. Now she knew what was wrong; there was a lion nearby!

To be continued…