The Storm Leopards Read online

  She clicked on Frequently Asked Questions, wondering if it said how many snow leopards there were in the world. The zoo display board had said there were only about five thousand wild snow leopards. It didn’t sound like very many at all.

  There – between four thousand and six and a half thousand, it said. And they were at risk from all sorts of things. Isabelle read the article with a tightness in her throat. Those beautiful cats – so many people seemed to want to hurt them, or just didn’t care if they got hurt. How could people hunt snow leopards for their fur, especially when there were so few of them left? Isabelle shivered. She thought the creamy spotted fur was gorgeous, but she couldn’t imagine wanting to wear it.

  “Isabelle, it’s bedtime.” Mum put her head round the bedroom door. “Are you all right?” She came in and eyed Isabelle worriedly. “Belle, what’s wrong? You look so sad.”

  “I was reading about snow leopards.” Isabelle sniffed. “It just seems like everybody wants to hunt them. People even want to use their bones in medicines – did you know that?”

  “Oh, Isabelle.” Her mum leaned down to give her a hug. “I suppose at least we’re helping a bit by buying the Christmas decoration. We can hang it on the tree, when we put it up tomorrow.”

  “But there are so few of them left…” Isabelle looked at the picture on her screen – a snow leopard dozing with its chin on a boulder. How did anyone get that close to take the picture? she wondered. The snow leopard looked like any cat, slumped and snoozing in the sunshine. It had a gorgeous apricot-pink nose, and a spray of delicate black spots across the creamy fur on its chin. Isabelle wished she could sit next to it and stroke that soft-looking muzzle.

  She picked up the little felt snow leopard and rubbed one finger across its head. Somehow, just buying a Christmas decoration didn’t seem like enough, she thought, as she hugged her mum goodnight and began to get ready for bed. Once she had her pyjamas on, Isabelle tucked the little leopard beneath her pillow. Then she curled up under her duvet, with her fingers round the cat’s stubby tail, and sighed. How was she ever going to get to sleep when there were gorgeous spotted cats dancing around inside her head?

  Isabelle rolled over and pressed her cheek into the warmth of her pillow. It was still really dark – and it was a Sunday; she didn’t need to get up yet… But there was a noise. She blinked sleepily, trying to work out what it was.

  Someone was crying.

  Isabelle sat up, listening. Was it Tilly having a bad dream? Isabelle hesitated for a moment. Mum and Dad obviously hadn’t heard her. Isabelle sighed. Her bed was so warm – and it was very, very cold in her bedroom. Much colder than it had been the night before, actually. Perhaps Mum had been right, and it had snowed?

  Another burst of sobbing made Isabelle wriggle out of bed, shivering as she pulled off the duvet. Poor Tilly! She sounded so upset. She sounded like she was nearby, too, Isabelle realized, shaking her head and yawning. Tilly must have got out of bed. She definitely wasn’t in her own bedroom across the landing any more – Isabelle could tell that the snuffling, heaving breaths were really close. Perhaps Tilly had come into her room. She did sometimes climb into bed with Isabelle if she wanted a cuddle.

  Isabelle peered around her bedroom, squinting at the shadowy shapes of the furniture. It looked – different. But that was the dark. It made everything look strange. Isabelle had once woken up in the night and spent a whole ten minutes being absolutely terrified of her own wardrobe.

  Someone cried again – a heartbreaking little catch of breath.

  “Where are you, Tilly?” Isabelle whispered. “Are you on the end of my bed? I can’t see you. Did you have a bad dream?”

  There was silence – no more crying. But Isabelle was sure that Tilly was there, and had heard her. It was a listening sort of silence. As though Tilly was holding her breath.

  “I’m not cross. What’s wrong?” Isabelle blinked again. She was getting used to the darkness now and she could almost see. There was a lump at the end of the bed – definitely someone lying there. “Come and have a cuddle, Tilly.” Isabelle climbed back into bed, pulling the duvet up around her shoulders. She shivered again – it was so cold – and huddled closer into the duvet, wishing it was thicker. It felt odd.

  Isabelle was just realizing that the duvet wasn’t her duvet, when the small lump at the end of the bed unrolled itself and sat up – and she saw that her sister wasn’t her sister, either.

  It was another girl – a complete stranger.

  Isabelle swallowed slowly. Her eyes were properly accustomed to the early morning dimness now, and she could see quite well. It wasn’t that there was a stranger sitting on the end of her bed – she was the stranger.

  It wasn’t her bed, or her bedroom, or her house. In fact, the bed probably belonged to the confused, tear-stained girl who was staring at her.

  Isabelle opened her mouth to explain – to say sorry, that she’d made a mistake. And then she shut it again. She couldn’t explain, not at all. For a moment she wondered if she’d gone sleepwalking. She had done it, once before. Her mum had told her all about it afterwards, how she’d come downstairs, asleep but with her eyes open, and Mum had had to try and persuade her back to bed. But that had been such a long time ago – and even if she’d managed to sleepwalk out of her own house and into someone else’s, this room didn’t look like any room she’d ever seen before.

  The girl reached down to the side of the bed, and Isabelle flinched back, wondering what she was doing. But when she sat up again, she had a little light in her hands – a torch. She was shading it with her fingers, as though she didn’t want it to be too bright.

  Isabelle blinked in the glow and looked around slowly, still trying to work out what sort of place she’d turned up in.

  It was round. There was a stove in the middle, with a tall metal chimney – a bit like the black iron wood-burning stove at Gran and Grandad’s house, but this one was shiny metal, the front of it cut into patterns, like stars. The chimney led up out of a hole in the ceiling. That was strangely old-fashioned – but then there was a fridge, up against the wall, and a television on a wooden chest. And there were more beds, with people still sleeping in them, ranged around the edges of the room.

  The girl rubbed a hand across her eyes – to wipe away the tears, Isabelle thought, or perhaps to wipe away this strange dream-girl who was sitting in front of her.

  A dream! That was it! Isabelle felt the tight fear in her chest ease a little. It was a dream, of course it was. She was dreaming all this and she would wake up soon. She took a deep, slightly shaky breath and smiled at the other girl.

  “Hello.” Then she nibbled her bottom lip nervously, wondering if the girl would understand her. She was wearing pyjamas that weren’t all that different from Isabelle’s own, with a sparkly dog on the front of them, but she didn’t look quite like anyone Isabelle had ever met. She did remind Isabelle a bit of Lucy, who was half Chinese, but this girl’s skin was more tanned than Lucy’s. And she lived in this strange round room.

  “Hello,” the other girl said back, shyly. She looked confused – as though she’d woken up, but her dream hadn’t gone away.

  Isabelle’s smile widened in relief – so she did talk English. Or actually, Isabelle decided, since this was a dream, she must be talking whatever the other girl’s language was. Or something. At any rate, they seemed to understand each other.

  “Sarangerel?” The girl looked at Isabelle hopefully, and Isabelle’s smile slipped. She didn’t understand, then! Perhaps the girl had just repeated hello to be polite. What did “Sarangerel” mean?

  “You are Sarangerel? I’ve never seen you for real before, only spoken to you… But you must be her,” said the girl.

  Isabelle hesitated, torn between relief that the girl seemed to speak the same language she did after all, and a reluctance to say that yes, she was Sarangerel. The girl seemed to want her to be Sarangerel so much. She was leaning forward now, reaching out her hand to Isabelle across t
he pile of patterned quilts and blankets. Her narrow dark eyes had widened hopefully, and she was smiling, even though there were still tear-tracks down her cheeks.

  “I’m so glad you’ve come. I need someone to talk to, and even though I used to talk to you all the time, it’s so much easier now you’re real.”

  “Yes…” Isabelle agreed. She could understand that. But who was this Sarangerel?

  “I haven’t talked to you for years,” the girl murmured. “I don’t know how long. I suppose you’re here because everything’s going wrong. You knew I needed you…”

  Isabelle blinked, suddenly wondering if Sarangerel was the girl’s imaginary friend. Tilly had one – every so often Isabelle heard her talking to someone called Herbie. Tilly said he lived in America, and he came to visit, and he only ever ate popcorn (which was Tilly’s favourite food). But thinking about it, Tilly did tend to talk to Herbie when she was upset. He cheered her up.

  This is the strangest dream I’ve ever had, Isabelle thought. There was so much in it. Things Isabelle didn’t think she’d be able to imagine, like this odd room. The walls weren’t papered, the way she’d thought at first. The red flower pattern was fabric, hanging up, and here and there she could see a wooden trellis, like the trellis her mum had in the garden for growing clematis. But it was as if the walls were made out of it – with fabric on the outside, too.

  A tent, she thought to herself. A really big, round tent. Like a tipi. And then it came back to her – of course, dreams were like that. You put things in them that you’d been thinking about the day before. It wasn’t just a tent, or a tipi, it was a ger. The same sort of tent that the Mongolian nomads used, the people who lived in snow leopard country. The people who’d made her little felt snow leopard. She had been thinking about snow leopards, and the people who lived so close to them, just before she went to sleep. It made sense that she’d dream about them. It was just a dream. Somehow, working that out made her feel much better. “Yes, I’m Sarangerel,” she told the other girl.

  “Maybe you’ve come now because of the full moon,” the girl said thoughtfully. “I was looking up at it last night and wishing so hard. It is your name, after all. Sarangerel means moonlight. I called you that when I was little because it was the prettiest name I could think of.”

  Isabelle nodded. It would help if the girl would say what her own name was, but Isabelle couldn’t really ask – not if she was supposed to be her imaginary friend. It might spoil the dream, and she didn’t really want to wake up yet. Now that she wasn’t frightened any more, this was the most interesting dream she’d ever had.

  “Why were you wishing?” she whispered, glancing around at the other sleeping people.

  The girl’s face seemed to crumple, and she hung her head. “I don’t know what to do,” she whispered back.

  “Tell me what’s wrong,” Isabelle said, settling cautiously back against the trellis wall, with the quilts pulled up around her chin.

  “Three of our goats are dead,” the girl explained, her voice shaking a little.

  “Oh… Did you really love them?” Isabelle asked sympathetically. There had been goats at the zoo, in the petting area. The little ones were very cute. “Did they have names?”

  The girl looked up at her in surprise. “No, of course not. We don’t name our goats. We don’t even name the horses. Why would we? The dogs have names, that’s all. And I didn’t love those goats more than any of the others. It’s just that we can’t afford to lose them.”

  Isabelle nodded slowly and decided she’d better not say too much. Everything was so different here, it would be easy to make another silly mistake.

  “You can’t afford to lose them…” she prompted the girl.

  “No, because we need to sell the meat and use their wool for the toymaking. We haven’t got so much money that we can just lose three goats and it doesn’t matter!” She gave a miserable little snort.

  “What happened to them?” Isabelle asked, hoping that this wasn’t another silly question.

  “My pa thinks it was wolves, but my uncle Erdene, who herds with us, he thinks it was a snow leopard, from the way the goats looked.”

  Isabelle gasped, and the girl glanced up at her and nodded. “They don’t know for sure. The dogs barked, and Pa ran out with his gun and scared whatever it was away.” She sniffed, and Isabelle saw tears trickle down her cheeks.

  “I don’t understand…” Isabelle whispered. “I know it’s terrible that something killed the goats – but I don’t see why you’re so upset.” The way the girl was crying reminded Isabelle of how she’d been the day they moved house. Or worse, the day before that, when she’d said goodbye to Lucy and Ellie. It wasn’t the way someone cried over a goat that was definitely just a goat and not a pet. “You’re crying like you’ve lost something you really love,” she said at last, trying to put it into words.

  The girl brushed the tears off her cheeks and nodded. “Yes. I haven’t yet, but I think I’m going to.” She looked searchingly at Isabelle, and then stretched out her hand. “I’ll have to show you. Then you’ll understand. You’re Sarangerel, of course you’ll understand. Come on.”

  The girl gently pulled Isabelle by the hand over to a chest at the foot of the bed. There was a rumpled pile of thick cloth lying on it and a pair of boots lined up there, too. The girl looked Isabelle up and down thoughtfully. “You’re a bit smaller than me,” she murmured, picking up the bundle and shaking it out. She handed Isabelle the torch to hold and quickly slipped her arms into the sleeves. It was a coat, Isabelle realized. Or maybe a dressing gown? It wrapped over at the front and buttoned up. The girl tied a sash around her middle and then lifted the lid on the wooden chest, making the painted flowers across the top dance in the torchlight. She pulled out another bundle, and held it out to Isabelle.

  “This deel should fit you. It’s nice and warm. And you can try on the boots I’ve just grown out of, look.” She put them down in front of Isabelle’s feet. “Hurry, though. We don’t want my ma to wake up.”

  Isabelle did as she was told, pushing her feet into the leather boots. She was glad she’d put on her fluffy socks at bedtime. The girl held up the deel and showed Isabelle how to put it on, guiding her arms into the sleeves and giggling a little as Isabelle tried to understand how the strange bobbles fitted into their holes. In the end, the girl did them up for her and wrapped the sash around her waist, too. “Good, it fits,” she murmured.

  Isabelle held out her hands, showing the girl the way the sleeves flapped over them. “Can you help me turn them up?” she whispered.

  “No, don’t be silly, you want them like that, to keep your hands warm.”

  “Oh.” Isabelle nodded. Extra-long sleeves instead of gloves. She shivered a little, even though the coat was thick and padded. She thought it was probably made of wool, or at least the lining was.

  “Come on.” The girl led Isabelle over to the door of the tent – a proper wooden front door, Isabelle noticed, frowning to herself. This was nothing like the tent Mum and Dad had for camping holidays. But then, her family only ever spent weekends in theirs. This was more like a cross between a tent and a house.

  The girl stepped carefully over the doorframe and out into the early morning mist. Isabelle almost stumbled as she followed her outside.

  “Mind the threshold,” the girl murmured, catching her arm. “Bad luck, remember.”

  Isabelle hardly heard her. The view was like nothing she had ever seen. They were surrounded by snow-covered mountains, rising up out of the mist. Great snowy crags ringed the grassy terrace, pink and grey and shadowed in the early light of the morning. The dark rocks looming above them were seamed with snow, but around the white tents, there were only small patches dotted about.

  “Why isn’t it all snow-covered here?” Isabelle whispered to the girl.

  “Because the mountain protects us from the wind. That’s why we have our winter camp up here. Come on.” She pulled Isabelle after her, and they began to head
away from the flattish grass where the four gers were pitched. At least, it looked flat compared to the jagged mountains all around, but Isabelle guessed that the gers must be in exactly the same places every year. Someone must have cleared the rocks and boulders away from those circular patches to fit the tents in. There was plenty of long, scrubby sort of grass, but it was growing in and around the rocks, and as the girl began to lead her up and away from the gers, the rocks grew thicker, and the grass petered out entirely.

  The girl stopped to pat a dog that loomed up at them out of the shadows, and Isabelle looked at him worriedly. But all he did was sniff at them, and then he trotted away, obviously deciding they weren’t a threat.

  “He’s guarding the sheep,” the girl whispered. “The snow leopard or wolf, whatever it was, it got past the dogs.”

  “Where are we going?” Isabelle asked, tucking her hands up inside the long sleeves and huddling into the warm, padded coat. It was painfully cold, even though there was a little pale sunlight shining on the snow.

  “Further up the mountain, so I can show you. But you’d better hold my hand – it’s steep here.”

  Isabelle nodded gratefully. The girl was a very good climber, even without any special sort of equipment, no ropes or gripping gloves, or anything like that. She was just wearing leather boots, and she had quite a long coat on – the deel – but she could scramble over rocks much better than Isabelle. She giggled as she hauled Isabelle up after her. At one point, she even came round behind Isabelle to push her up a scree slope, a whole hillside of wobbly stones that seemed to want to slip out from under Isabelle’s boots at every step.

  “I’m not very good – at climbing things,” Isabelle panted. “Sorry. It’s so slidey.”