Oliver Strange and the Ghosts of Madagascar. Dianne Hofmeyr

      The Forest

      The howling woke him. It started as a single eerie wail, endlessly rising and falling. Then it cut off abruptly. There were rustles and thuds. Things running over the roof. Then they all started to howl together.

      Oliver covered his ears but he couldn’t block out the sound. The night was filled with demons wringing blood-curdling wails from the darkness. Ghost wolves.

      He pushed himself upright. He was high up somewhere. His bed was swinging. Then it dawned on him. He was in a hammock.

      Next to him in the half-darkness he made out a shape. Another hammock.

      “Zinzi …?” he whispered, “Zinzi, are you there?”

      The ghostly shrieks rose and fell and moaned around him. It was impossible she could still be sleeping.

      “Zinzi, wake up!”

      In the half-light she emerged all tousled from her sleeping bag.

      “Do you hear them? Wolves.”

      He heard her groan.

      “What then?” he hissed.

      “We’re not in Red Riding Hood’s forest, Ollie.”

      “What do you mean?”

      “This is Madagascar.”

      “So?”

      “There aren’t any wolves in Madagascar.”

      “I know … but perhaps they’re ghost wolves.”

      In the shadowy light he thought he saw her grin. Typical. He’d only been here a few hours and already Zinzi was doing her “I know everything” act and making him feel an idiot.

      “You’ve too much imagination, Ollie.”

      “Well? What are they, then?”

      “Lemurs.”

      “Lemurs? Impossible!”

      “Indris to be precise. They call every morning when it starts to get light.”

      “Why didn’t you warn me?”

      “I wanted to surprise you.” She wriggled out of her sleeping bag like a moth emerging from a cocoon, rolled out of her hammock and landed barefooted on the floor.

      “Every morning?”

      “Yep,” she nodded. “Quick-start! Let’s see if we can spot them. Grab a torch.” She was already pulling on a tracksuit over her pyjamas. “Come on, hurry!”

      Ollie felt under his pillow for his torch and switched it on, then tipped his hammock to see what was below before he swung his legs over the edge. The rough floor planks were covered in a damp carpet of fallen leaves. He hoped nothing was lurking beneath them.

      He tried to take in his surroundings. It’d been much too dark to get a sense of the tree house the night before. Now in the half-light, he saw there was a roof over him made of palm leaves and a woven-palm fence around the edge of the platform but no walls.

      He pulled on tracksuit pants and padded after Zinzi onto a swinging walkway. The planks swayed from side to side beneath him. It made him feel odd – like being on a boat. He gripped the rope railing.

      The air was damp. A fine mist was raining down. The trees were dark and shadowy on either side. His torch beam didn’t reach far into the mist. Zinzi was already hurrying ahead along the walkway. Her footprints made shiny patches in the moisture on the planks.

      She swung her torchlight from side to side up into the trees. “There!” Her arm arrowed upwards. “Quick! Look! That dark shape. High up in the canopy. Do you see it? A female indri.”

      He caught a glimpse of a face in the mist. The creature peered down. Dark fur around the eyes and mouth and tufted white ears and eyes that were butterscotch yellow in the torchlight. It seemed aware of them but barely seemed to care. Except for a few munching sounds it was completely silent now. No ghost calls.

      “How do you know it’s a female?” he whispered.

      “There’s a baby.” Zinzi directed her torch beam at a spot on the indri’s stomach. A tiny face peeped out from the fur. Then he saw a second baby creep out from around her back and stare down too.

      More dark shapes appeared out of nowhere. They sat in the topmost branches of the trees, hunched and woolly against the misty light – huge monkey creatures with long, heavy legs. He heard the leaves rustling as they snaffled and munched on them.

      In the torchlight he saw they were balanced on impossibly thin swaying branches. Every now and again without warning they launched their bodies through the air, stretching out to grab another slim branch and landing gracefully on the next tree with an eerie wail.

      He caught a glimpse of Zinzi’s mum on the opposite walkway. She was wearing headphones and was fiddling with a recorder slung across her shoulder. She mouthed hello and gave them a silent wave.

      And then, just as quickly, the indris were gone and the forest was utterly quiet as if they’d never been there.

      Zinzi gave him a huge grin. “See … ghosts.”

      He stared out into the mist. “How can such a terrifying sound come from something as utterly ordinary as a monkey?”

      “Because it’s not an ordinary monkey, Ollie. It’s a lemur!”

      He shook his head. He should’ve known. Nothing was ever utterly ordinary around Zinzi. Here he was, standing on a hanging walkway, swaying from side to side, ten metres off the ground, having woken up in a hammock in the middle of a Madagascan rainforest that was filled with howling monkey creatures that were not monkeys, but lemurs – but who were actually more like ghosts. And to make sure everything stayed as way beyond ordinary as possible, he was here with Zinzi, who he’d last seen when they’d rescued his father from being abducted in Botswana.

      He clung to the rope handrail as he followed her back across the swinging walkway and looked down at the silent green of the forest below. No. Nothing could ever be ordinary when he was around Zinzi.

      2

      A Letter and a Map

      In his pocket was Zinzi’s letter. He knew it almost by heart. He’d read it so many times that the first part of it had torn off. Yet every time he opened it, the letter still had the hot, dry whiff of Botswana escaping from the pages like a puff of dust kicked up by an elephant.

      The letter was typical Zinzi style. Breathless and fast. Criss-crossing backwards and forwards as quickly as a jumping spider eager to catch up with a grasshopper. Never staying on anything for long and talking in code.

      He knew WWF stood for the World Wildlife Fund and the CR Red List was the list for critically endangered wildlife and that Zinzi meant lions when she wrote cats. But why did she write Madagascar with a dollar sign? Or was it a crossed-out spelling mistake? Snakes he could live without. At least Zinzi didn’t have the pet python she’d had in Botswana. The thought of it still gave him

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