The Rainbows and the Secrets - Christine Cox (the snowy day read aloud TXT) 📗

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