Running Wild

Running Wild
Michael Morpurgo

Discover the beautiful stories of Michael Morpurgo, author of Warhorse and the nation’s favourite storyteller.An epic and heart-rending jungle adventure from the bestselling author of Kaspar and Born to Run.For Will and his mother, going to Indonesia isn't just a holiday. It's an escape, a new start, a chance to put things behind them - things like the death of Will's father.And to begin with, it seems to be just what they both needed. But then Oona, the elephant Will is riding on the beach, begins acting strangely, shying away from the sea. And that's when the tsunami comes crashing in, and Oona begins to run. Except that when the tsunami is gone, Oona just keeps on running.With nothing on his back but a shirt and nothing to sustain him but a bottle of water, Will must learn to survive deep in the jungle. Luckily, though, he's not completely alone…He's got Oona.

Copyright (#ulink_bd25d47a-cfef-53a8-8285-1c5ddac5efc7)

HarperCollins Children’s Books a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)

Text copyright © Michael Morpurgo 2009. Illustrations copyright © Sarah Young 2009

Running Wild: Jacket photographs © PhotoAlto/Alamy (boy); Michael Llewellyn/Getty Images (Indian elephant); Gary Vestal/Getty Images (tiger); Michael Nichols/Getty Images (monkeys); JH Pete Carmichael/Getty Images (snake). All other images © Shutterstock.

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Michael Morpurgo and Christian Birmingham reserve the right to be identified as the author and illustrator of the work.

Some images were unavailable for the electronic edition.

HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication

Source ISBN: 9780007267019

Ebook Edition © FEBRUARY 2012 ISBN: 9780007380664

Version: 2018-11-09

For Ella, Lottie and Charlie, and in memory of their grandfather, Eddie.

Contents

Copyright

Dedication (#u1a23957c-03e0-5c60-8476-b68a8b1cc687)

A sudden change of heart (#u303e6f29-b4b8-529c-a0b7-baefe3902eb3)

“Look at me, I need a smile” (#udaeeb15d-97a5-5a6e-a5d6-cd5b99315bb2)

“No leaves, Oona, I can’t eat leaves” (#ueb3dcc68-a66e-58b3-a6fd-c233c0abe193)

Tiger, Tiger… (#litres_trial_promo)

A feast of figs (#litres_trial_promo)

“He is like God here” (#litres_trial_promo)

Other One (#litres_trial_promo)

Burning bright (#litres_trial_promo)

Sanctuary (#litres_trial_promo)

Elephant’s child (#litres_trial_promo)

Postscript (#litres_trial_promo)

Author’s Note (#litres_trial_promo)

Post postscript (#litres_trial_promo)

Deforestation (#litres_trial_promo)

Orang-utans (#litres_trial_promo)

Tsunami (#litres_trial_promo)

Tyger Tyger (#litres_trial_promo)

Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo)

Keep Reading (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)

Also by Michael Morpurgo (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

A sudden change of heart (#ulink_1e241310-cdba-56ec-9fb6-9979a88c5ec4)

he sea murmured onto the beach. Beneath me, the elephant walked on over soft and silent sand. The further we went along the beach away from the hotel, away from the distant cries of the swimmers in the sea, the quieter everything became. I was loving the gentle rock and roll of the ride. I closed my eyes and breathed in the peace around me. This was a million miles from everything that had happened, from everything that had brought me here.

It was as I was riding up there on the elephant, swaying in the sun, that Dad’s elephant joke came into my mind. Usually I can’t remember jokes, but I always remembered this one, maybe because Dad told it so often. I knew it word for word, just as he’d tell it.

“You know the one about the elephant and the bananas, Will?” he’d begin, and without waiting for an answer, off he’d go. “A man and a boy were sitting opposite one another in this railway carriage – they were travelling between Salisbury and London. On his lap, the man had a huge paper bag full of bananas. But soon enough, the boy noticed that something very strange was going on here. The man wasn’t eating the bananas. Instead, every few minutes, he’d just stand up, open the window, and throw one of them out. Of course, the boy couldn’t understand what he was doing this for. He kept trying to puzzle it out. So in the end, he just had to ask.

“’Scuse me,” he says, “but could you tell me why you’re throwing all those bananas out of the window?”

“To keep the elephants away,” replies the man. “Cos elephants is very dangerous, y’know.”

“But there aren’t any elephants around here anyway,” says the boy.

“Course there aren’t,” the man tells him, throwing yet another banana out of the window. “But that’s only cos of my bananas. If I didn’t keep doing this, there’d be millions of them out there, squillions. And elephants is very dangerous, y’know.”

I loved that joke, mostly because when Dad was telling it, he’d always be heaving with laughter before he could ever finish it, and I loved to hear Dad’s laugh. Whenever he was home it was his laugh that filled the house, brought it alive again.

I didn’t want to think about that, because I knew where it would lead, and I didn’t want to go there. So I tried to make myself think of a train journey instead, a train journey when Dad hadn’t been there. I wanted to keep Dad out of the picture. I didn’t want to have to remember, not now, not again. But memories of the train journey with Mum came tumbling out, out of my control and out of sequence, as memories often are, because memories will always become other memories, I suppose – they cannot help themselves.