I Heard Animals' Voices novel · Chapter 7 of 24

Chapter 7: Mabel's Message

We had twenty-six hours, and a plan with one hole in it that was five hundred pounds.

"He won't talk to me," I said.

We sat on the bench by the otter pool with a notebook between us.

Derrick was drawing the big cat house from above.

"Then somebody else has to talk to him," he said.

"Who?"

I looked down.

Mabel had hauled herself onto the edge of the pool.

She stared up at us.

"I heard," she said. "Everybody heard. The sparrows told the pigeons, and the pigeons told the goats."

"Mabel says the whole zoo knows," I told Derrick.

"What does the whole zoo say?"

"She says they think I'm very brave and a bit stupid."

"That's fair," said Derrick.

"She says the tiger is sulking, and the tigress hurt her foot, and nobody has told him how she is."

I stopped.

"Nobody told him," I said.

"We've been trying to get the message to the cats house for hours," Mabel said. "We need someone who isn't a person."

"Can you do that?" I asked her.

"I'm an otter," said Mabel, and slid into the water without another word.

Derrick watched the ripples.

"There's no zoo policy for this," he said.

"For what?"

"Sending an otter to deliver a love letter to a tiger."

"She's the best messenger service you've got," I said.

It took her forty minutes.

She came back with water in her whiskers and a look of deep satisfaction.

"He's talking," she said. "He asked how she was first. Before he asked about himself."

Keep reading free with an account. Start I Heard Animals' Voices from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.