The Summer Lion

Chapter One

On a summer evening a group of brightly painted wagons were clustered together on a hill. Walking towards the was a tall, thin man with a lion on a lead. A short, round woman and two little girls hurried across the grass to meet him.
"It's a disgrace!" Cried the woman. "It's shocking, that's what it is!"
The two girls ran to the lion, but their mother stopped them.
"Sapphire, Spangle, don't touch it!" she said. "Poor old thing, it might have fleas or something!"
"They called him Samson," said the man? Whose name was Freddie Snapdragon. "They only let me have him if I promised not to tell anyone one where I got him from."
"They're a lot of scoundrels," said his wife. "No circus should have performing lions. Walking round the ring for show, fair enough, but lions aren't meant to do tricks. It's no way to treat a proud, strong creature. It gives circuses a bad name."
"But we're a circus," said Sapphire, the eldest girl.
"Only we've never had lions and things," said her sister Spangle.
"That's because we're the BEST circus," said her mother. "We don't have to ill-treat animals to get people to come and see us. Now we need to fill a bath to give him a good wash and find him something to eat. Poor thing, he doesn't have many teeth left."
Freddie Snapdragon looked round. "Where's Drina gone?" He asked. Nobody knew where Drina, the youngest of the snapdragon children, had got to. She was nearly three years old and good at disappearing quickly.
"She'll be in one of the wagons, I suppose," said Freddie. "You know what she's like. I'll look for her while you do what you can for this poor old thing. And I don't like the name 'Samson'," he added. " We could change that."

The lion was left tethered to a wagon by a long rope while Mrs Snapdragon and the two older girls put cans of water to warm on the campfire. Freddie Snapdragon called from one wagon to the next, looking for his youngest daughter.
While all this was happening, a small figure appeared at the door of the Snapdragon family's wagon, holding a mug half full with milk in one hand and most of a kipper in the other. She had decided it would be fun to hide under a costume basket but nobody had come looking for her, and she was bored. The little girl sat down on the top step. Her legs were short, the steps were steep, and her hands were full of what was left of her supper. She decided it would be easiest to sit down and bump from one step to the next, so she did just that, then padded in bare feet across the grass to the lion.

Drina had half heard the lions name when her father was talking earlier. It was something like "Sampots". When she tried to say it, it came out as "Jampot". The lion looked up all the same. She knelt in front of him , not noticing that his mane was matted with dirt and his face thin with hunger. She looked into his eyes, which were golden like amber and desperately sad.

Seeing at once that he was too big to drink from the little mug, she poured milk into her hand and let him lap it up. Her hand was very small so she had to keep filling it and a lot of milk ended up on the ground. The lion seemed to like it and kept on licking long after the milk was gone.

She offered him the kipper next, and smiled to hear him slurp it about on his tongue and crunch it with his few remaining teeth.

When he had finished eating, the lion licked his lips. Then he opened his red mouth very wide. Little Drina covered her face with her hands, not because she was afraid, but because his breath smelt so bad. Even when his bony jaws closed round her, she still wasn't afraid.

Like a mother cat with her kitten, the lion drew her close and laid her softly against his foreleg. That was where they found her a few minutes later, sleeping contentedly against the lion's mane.