“Look. Lots of kangaroos,” Bill whispered.
“Yes, yes. I can see them myself,” Emmy shut him up. “Be quiet. Don’t scare them with your silly talk.”
“Be quiet yourself,” Bill hit back.
“Shush!” Emmy said.
“These are kangaroos?” Lancelot asked himself, astonished.
A tall kangaroo stood aside from the mob. It had a pouch with a joey in it, its little head popping up. The joey sniffed the air, then stretched its neck and wiggled itself over the edge. It fell hard on its mouth and straight away tried to crawl back. But the pouch was not within its reach. Too far away for its tiny legs and arms. Desperate, the joey nudged its mother. She grabbed it and put it back into the pouch while smacking its bottom. At the same time, a rumble, rustling and stomping filled the air as the mob hopped away in wide and elegant leaps. Lancelot’s eyes followed the kangaroos until the horizon had swallowed them. Not even the tips of their tails could be seen anymore.
Chapter Five
Running Away
The day after, Lancelot told Meryl Sheep about his adventure on Mount Pear. He told her about the sweet grass, the water fountains and the nasty neighbour. Meryl Sheep listened carefully while she was eating grass. Lancelot was still excited about the kangaroos he had seen in the forest. They were on his mind all night. He asked himself why they looked like him. Or, why he looked like them.
“Am I a kangaroo?” he asked Meryl Sheep.
Meryl Sheep glanced at him, suspicious. “Rather like a teddy bear that desperately needs a bath,” she laughed.
Lancelot did not think it was funny. He buried his face in his paws, biting his lips. Watching him for a while it dawned on Meryl Sheep that obviously this was not the right time to crack a joke.
“I didn’t mean it,” she said. “I wasn’t serious. Of course you are a kangaroo. From tip to toe and from belly button back to the tip of your tail.”
Lancelot turned away, showing her his back, but Meryl Sheep could clearly hear him sobbing. It is not easy for a sheep to hug a friend when he is in need for help. There is an easy explanation for that: sheep only have legs. Hugging someone with your legs is almost impossible. But Meryl Sheep was smart enough to find a way to give Lancelot a hug. She stood on her hind legs and put her front legs around Lancelot’s shoulders.
“Tell me,” she said, “What makes you sad?”
“How come Bill and Emmy both look different to me?” Lancelot asked.
“Because Bill and Emmy aren’t kangaroos. They are human beings.”
“Human beings? But they are my parents.”
“Well, they raised you. They fed you milk from the bottle. They bathed you and brushed your coat. They taught you how to eat on your own. They sang lullabies for you to go to sleep and they love you more than anybody and anything else in the world. Considering all that, one can say that Bill and Emmy are your parents. However - how shall I word this? - they haven’t brought you into this world.”
“Why? Who has?”
“Your mother.”
“I don’t get it.”
Meryl Sheep pulled Lancelot a little bit closer.
“Kangaroos are different to human beings or to sheep. A kangaroo does not have a father. As soon as a joey is born it is solely raised by its mother. In your case it was Emmy who raised you, like a mother, even if she is not your mother. Your natural mother is not a human being. She is a kangaroo.”
Lancelot pulled himself away from Meryl Sheep. “Bill and Emmy are not my parents? How come I live with them? Who is my mother? Where is she?“
„She is dead.“
Lancelot ran to the farmhouse. His heart pumping. Painful thoughts and questions puzzling his mind. His mother was dead. Why have Bill and Emmy never told him? Why did they keep it a secret? They were not honest with him. His whole life. How on earth could they love him? He was not even their child. He was a stranger. How can a stranger be loved? It is impossible to love someone you don’t know. On top of it, Lancelot was not even a human being. He was a kangaroo.
The door to the farmhouse was shut. Lancelot knocked and waited. But there was no response. Bill and Emmy did not answer the door. On the back of the farmhouse he climbed onto a bench, sitting under a window, and pressed his face against the thick glass. Inside the bedroom, Bill and Emmy were packing a suitcase.
“It’ll be wonderful,” Emmy said. “I cannot wait.”
“Only you and me, the two of us in the most beautiful place on earth,” Bill said.
“Do you think Lancelot will be alright without us being around?”
“Of course he will. There is enough feed in the paddock and plenty of water in the creek.“
“I am sure he will miss us,” Emmy sighed.
“Who knows? Maybe he is happy about us leaving. That way he finally can do whatever he wants.”
“Yes. Picking leaves off the rosebush,” Emmy said with a grim face.
“Snap out of it. Will you?” Bill said quickly and placed a big kiss on her forehead.
Lancelot’s heart was pumping. Wild and painful. This was the proof. Bill and Emmy did not love him. They were about to leave him. That was the reason for them packing a suitcase. Lancelot realized and understood in that very moment that he did not belong to Bill and Emmy. His true home was in the forest where the kangaroos lived. They waited for him. It was a fact set in concrete. They wanted to be his friends, they wished to play with him. They would teach him a lot of tricks, like jumping high up in the sky or hopping like a rubber ball. Lancelot was convinced that there were a thousand more tricks only kangaroos knew. He would learn them all. He had no other choice but to leave the farm and see the kangaroos on Mount Pear. Now. This very moment.
However, he could not leave before he said good-bye to Meryl Sheep and give her a farewell present. Quickly and silently, so that Bill and Emmy could neither hear nor see him, he pinched a few leaves from the rosebush.
“They are for you. I am leaving,” he said to Meryl Sheep, placing the leaves at her feet.
“Why? Where to?” Meryl Sheep asked, surprised.
“Bill and Emmy don’t love me anymore. Never have. I have nothing left here. I must go. Good Bye.”
“What are you talking about? Where do you want to go?”
“I will say good-bye to the horses,” Lancelot answered and jumped the fence, running towards the horses.
“But . . .?” Meryl Sheep said and was quickly lost for words as the sweet smell of rose leaves struck her nose. It crawled into her head, numbing her mind. Meryl Sheep forgot about Lancelot, about the world, about the universe. All day right into the evening she chewed and sucked the rose leaves. Eventually she was exhausted but satisfied and fell asleep on her bed of straw without a wink.
Chapter Six
Not a Nightmare
It is incredible but at the same time it is true: for two long days Meryl Sheep chewed and sucked the rose leaves. And, even harder to believe, she was not aware of it. It just went past her. She also could not remember having slept in between, twice. She thought that only minutes had passed since Lancelot gave her the leaves. On the third day, as she stepped in front of her shed she still noticed a wisp of the flavour sticking to her palate.
“Pure heaven,” she murmured and clicked her tongue, content and happy. “Better than paradise”. She raised her head and saw Lancelot standing in front of her. “Why are you still here?” she asked. Some irony in her voice. “I thought you were going to leave us.”
“My arm hurts,” Lancelot said, weeping. “I can’t move it.”
Meryl Sheep became suspicious. She looked closely at Lancelot, checking him out from head to toe until she realized that he in fact looked terrible. His coat was all messy and full of dust. His face swollen with crying, like an old wet sponge.
“Deary-Me,” she said, “What happened to you? You look as if you hadn’t slept for three days. Quick! Into the shed. Have a rest in my bed.”
“I can’t,” Lancelot said
. “My arm hurts even more when I lie down. Meryl Sheep, help me. I don’t know what to do. It hurts so much.“
“It’s alright, my little boy. I am with you,” she tried to calm him down and pushed him gently into the shed. “Sit against the wall; it’ll make you feel comfortable. Have a rest. Where have you been?”
“I don’t remember” Lancelot said. He was shivering all over. If it was not for his grey coat you would easily have seen that he was as pale as a ghost. After a short while he stopped sobbing and finally fell asleep. Meryl Sheep inspected his arm and stopped short.
“Deary-Me,” she whispered, “That’s a terrible wound. Poor boy. How could this happen?“
All day she stayed with him, not moving an inch. She closely watched his face, his eyebrows heaving and the corner of his mouth jerking, as he mumbled words that did not make any sense. Meryl Sheep suspected they came from a very bad dream. A nightmare. They sounded like this:
“Dear horses . . . Good bye . . . I am leaving . . . Ouch! . . . silly rock . . . No! . . . don’t get a fright . . . don’t kick me . . . please don’t . . . Ouch! . . . my arm . . . it hurts . . . Ouch!”
It was not a nightmare causing Lancelot discomfort after all. It was the memory of the incident in the horse paddock. After Lancelot had said good bye to Meryl Sheep he was hopping towards the horses, calling out to them:
“Dear Horses! Good bye! I am leaving!“
The horses did not take any notice. Calmly, they ate their grass as if nothing in this world was of any concern. However, what happened then came about so fast that absolutely nothing and absolutely nobody could ever have stopped it. Lancelot stumbled over a rock sitting in the paddock, hurled through the air, like an arrow, and fell head-first to the ground. But that was not all. He bounced off, plunging into one of the horses hind legs. The horse got a big fright and kicked to all sides. Its hoof hit Lancelot’s left arm, causing great pain. Lancelot was shocked and ran away. He ran into the forest, further and further, deeper and deeper, driven by the urge to escape the pain. For two days he staggered through the forest not knowing what he was doing. Without any sleep. Without any food.
Chapter Seven
High Temperature
While he was restless in his sleep Lancelot slid down the shed wall, dangerously close to the ground. Meryl Sheep was busy shuffling straw behind his back to make him sit comfortably. With every hour his health deteriorated. His body was shaking with a high temperature. Lancelot felt so weak he could hardly move. His voice had become so thin it sounded like a mouse talking through a thick wall. Meryl Sheep had to listen very carefully in order to understand what he was saying.
“Meryl Sheep? Am I dying?“
“That’s nonsense,” she said, “You are not dying. Everything will be alright. You must be brave, my little boy. Bill and Emmy will be home soon and take you to the hospital.”
“No. Bill and Emmy will never come back again. They’ve left me. They don’t love me anymore.”
“They love you more than anything else in this world.”
“No. They have packed their suitcase and have left me.”
“My sweet little boy”, Meryl Sheep said, patting his forehead with her woolly soft cheek. “Bill and Emmy have not left you. They went on a holiday. Every year around this time they pack their suitcase and go to the beach for three days. It won’t be long and they will be back.”
“I can’t feel my arm anymore. Tell me, Meryl Sheep. Has it already dropped off?”
“You don’t know what you’re saying. Now, keep quiet. You have a high temperature.”
“Tell me the truth,“ Lancelot said, pleading. “Will my arm drop off?”
Meryl Sheep did not give him an answer. She turned away, so he would not see how worried she was.
Chapter Eight
Yelling
On the same evening Bill and Emmy returned from their holiday. Emmy screamed when she saw the rosebush. At least fifty leaves were missing.
“Lancelot! What have you done? Come here, right now.“
“Stop yelling,” Bill yelled through the kitchen window.
“Don’t you yell at me,” Emmy yelled back, furious and impatient.
“Calm down. The rosebush will grow back. Don’t make such a fuss and stop yelling.”
“I am not yelling,” Emmy yelled, now even louder. “You are the one who is yelling.”
“What’s wrong with you?” Bill asked.
Emmy rested her hands on her hips, stomping and cursing like a raging magpie. “How dare you talk to me like that!”
“I’m not talking to you,” Bill said quickly, pointing at the paddock. “I’m talking to Meryl Sheep.”
Meryl Sheep was running up and down in front of her shed, bleating as loud as she could. Finally, after Bill and Emmy stopped yelling at each other, Bill could hear Meryl Sheep’s alarming cry.
“I better have a look,” he said.
Chapter Nine
Merry-Go-Round
“Will you be able to save him?” Emmy asked.
“We’ll see,” the veterinarian said.
Emmy pressed her hand onto her lips so she would not cry uncontrollably. Bill put his hand on her shoulder trying to comfort her. At the same time he held Lancelot’s paw. Lancelot did not notice that the veterinarian put a syringe, stuffed with narcotics, into his thigh. Everything started to blur; Emmy’s face; Bill’s face; the veterinarian’s face. The table he lay on began to float. The chairs and the cupboard in the corner moved. They flew in a circle like on a merry-go-round. But there weren’t any fire engines, horses or airplanes one normally finds on a merry-go-round. Instead dozens of kangaroos whirled and spun around, laughing and screaming. With joeys in their pouches, waving their tiny arms. All of a sudden it was dark and very quiet.
Chapter Ten
White Bucket
The veterinarian did not have a choice. Lancelot’s wounded arm needed to be amputated, surgically removed. This procedure was his one and only rescue, otherwise he would have died. The broken arm, the open wound were both exposed to the elements, like the wind, the weather and all sorts of dirt. Nasty germs had nested themselves in the wound and produced a venomous mixture, threatening Lancelot’s life. The operation went well. The veterinarian was known to be a very good doctor, with a reputation for skillful work. Taking off the arm left a big hole in Lancelot’s upper body which he sewed together with a special thread. All you could see was a tiny scar. It looked as if there had never been an arm. One could swear Lancelot always had only one arm. That is what he was now: a one-armed kangaroo. Not more and not less. Something though looked terrible. There was no coat along half his chest and all over his left shoulder. One could clearly see his skin, tender and pink, as shiny as a piglet’s little body.
“I had to clip him in order to operate on him,” the veterinarian explained. “However, there is no cause for any concern. His coat will grow back. In about three weeks time he will look normal again, like any other kangaroo.”
Anyway, there was something else that looked just as horrible. It was the white plastic bucket, attached to a sturdy leather belt wrapped around his neck, its wide brim squeezing Lancelot’s ears.
“This will prevent him from trying to bite through the thread before his wound has healed,” the veterinarian explained.
His head stuck in the bucket, Lancelot looked ridiculous. He looked as if he was about to go on stage in a big theatre, dressed as a white tulip, or a white bucket with a head stuck in it. The bucket made him feel trapped in a big pipe. At its other end lay a world unreachable to him, like the grass. Lancelot’s head was buried so deeply in the bucket his lips could just reach the tip of the grass but it was impossible to bite into it. Despite stretching his neck the bucket kept him from the grass, with the result that the tough plastic squeezed his neck, causing a fair amount of pain.
Bill and Emmy worried about Lancelot. Every half an hour they fed him fresh grass and promised never to leave him. But their efforts were to no
avail. It did not matter how often they showed him their love, Lancelot did not respond. He had set his mind on the kangaroos on Mount Pear. He needed to find them, even with only one arm and a horrible bucket around his neck.
Chapter Eleven
Rosebush
The same night, while Bill and Emmy were sleeping in their beds, Meryl Sheep was snoring on her bail of straw and the horses were resting in the paddock, Lancelot set out to climb the steep and rocky path leading to the top of Mont Pear. It was far more difficult than he had imagined. Every time he tried to hop over a rock he lost his balance. He swung his only arm around, uncontrollably, and fell onto his nose. He had no choice but to crawl if he wanted to make it onto the mountain’s peak. The ordeal slowed him down so much that even a snail could have easily overtaken him. But something else was worrying him far more. He felt a sensation in his arm, a tingle and tickle. In his left arm that was no longer there. Again and again he stopped; wanting to give himself a good scratch but all his paw could scratch was air. Once he even forgot that his left arm was missing. He was convinced it was there. Could feel pins and needles in his arm. He was about to support himself on a big rock when he, like so many other times, once more fell down to the ground.
It was dawn when Lancelot reached the forest where he had seen the kangaroos the first time. It was so early in the morning, not even the birds had woken yet. There was silence, all around. No wind was howling. The air stood still. Nothing moved. The long-fingered, spiky leaves of the eucalyptus trees hung like icicles from branches and twigs, rigid and motionless. Peeled off bark was twisted around stems, as dry and rugged as the giant rocks littered amongst the tall trees in this tiny forest. There was no motion, no sound, nothing seemed to breathe. Everything looked dead. Lancelot struggled while crawling into the shade of a rock, his legs and his arm hurting. He let himself down on a pile of dried-up leaves, exhausted, hungry and thirsty. Meryl Sheep would now have said that it was silly to travel so shortly after an operation. How right she was, Lancelot admitted.
Lancelot slept all day. Once he woke he opened his eyes and saw little clouds swarming the sky, stained pink by the glowing red of the sun setting on the horizon. Some of the clouds looked like sheep, bulky and woollen like Meryl Sheep. Others had the shape of crunchy apples. Lancelot’s eyes followed them, helpless and hungry, but in his mind he picked the biggest out of the cluster. Its skin was shiny, its smell sweet. Lancelot was just about to bite into it when he felt a touch against his back. He turned, surprised and frightened at the same time, and saw a large fox standing in front of him. The fox obviously was surprised too and stepped back a little.