Running Wild. Michael Morpurgo

      I wasted no time. As soon as Oona came out of the water, I went right up to her. I held her trunk and stroked it as I talked to her, just as the mahout had done. As I spoke I was looking her right in the eye, her wise, weepy eye. “Oona,” I began, “I know your name, but you don’t know mine, do you? You don’t know anything about me. So I’d better tell you, hadn’t I? Here goes then. I’m Will. I’m nine years old, ten soon, and I live near Salisbury in England, which is a long way away, and that’s where I go to school. My Grandpa and Grandma have a farm in Devon, where it’s muddy, and he’s got a lot of cows, and a tractor, and I go there for holidays. Dad was a soldier and he was killed by a bomb in Iraq because there’s a war there, and now I think Mum’s dead too, drowned by that big wave, the one you saved me from. If you hadn’t done that I’d be dead by now, like she is. But the thing you’ve got to understand is that I’ll be dead anyway pretty soon, if I don’t get some food to eat. I’m hungry, Oona, really hungry. I need to eat. Understand? Eat.”

      I opened my mouth wide, said “aah” several times, sticking my fingers down my throat. Oona looked down at me knowingly from a great height, so knowing that I felt she must be understanding at least the gist of what I was saying. Much encouraged by this I went on. I rubbed my stomach. “Yum, yum. Food. Food.” Unblinking, she looked back at me. She was listening, I could tell that much, but now I wasn’t so sure she’d understood a single word I’d been saying.

      Maybe her eye wasn’t knowing after all, simply kind. I just didn’t seem to be getting through to her. I had an idea. I decided I’d have to try another tack altogether. I ran off to the edge of the forest, and came back after a while with a long leafy branch I’d torn from a tree. I offered it to her, hoping these might be the kind of leaves she liked. She sniffed at it for a few moments, then curled her trunk around it, ripped off what she wanted and shoved it into her mouth. “Yes, yes, Oona,” I cried. “You see? Food. Yum, yum. Me. Me too, I need food. But not leaves, Oona. I can’t eat leaves. Fruit. Fruit.”

      As she chomped and chewed her eyes never left me once, and from somewhere inside her there came a deep groan of contentment. I was hopeful that these were all signs that she understood now, that she was grateful to me for fetching her food, that she would do the same for me. But when she’d finished stuffing in the last of her leaves, all she seemed interested in was exploring my hair and then my ears with her trunk. Exasperated now, I lost my patience. I pushed her away, and shouted up at her. “Can’t you understand anything, you stupid elephant? I’m hungry! I just want food! I have to have food!”

      I looked around in desperation, and saw there was some kind of red fruit, they looked like huge ripe plums, and they were growing high up in a tree on the far side of the river. “There! Look, Oona! That’s what I want. It’s too high for me to climb. You could reach them easy as anything, I know you could. Please, Oona, please.” But Oona just turned from me and began walking away from the river and up into the trees, her trunk searching out more leaves. Once she was busy eating again, I discovered that no amount of yelling at her, or leaping up and down, or slapping her leg would distract her. Oona was feeding, and nothing and no one was going to stop her.

      I felt my eyes filling with tears. I tried to blink them back. But it was no good – they kept coming anyway. I sat down beside the river, clasped my knees to my chest and let the tears flow. I was sobbing not out of self-pity or grief. There were no thoughts any more of Mum or Dad. I was crying out of fury and frustration, and hunger too. I buried my face in my hands and rocked back and forth, moaning in my misery.

      When at last I did look up again, I saw that the howdah had now become firmly wedged between rocks. It was obvious that there was no possible way I could retrieve it from the river. Without it, I knew I could never ride Oona again. And without Oona how was I ever going to be able to find my way out of this forest, and back to safety? Strangely, it was only now, as I came to understand all this, that I finally stopped crying, and began to calm down and collect my thoughts. If I couldn’t ride the elephant, and if she wouldn’t find me food, then she couldn’t save me. In which case I’d have to search for food myself, fend for myself. I’d have to find another way altogether of saving myself. There had to be a way out of the jungle. There was a way into this place, so there was a way out. I’d just have to find it, that’s all.