The Last Leopard Read Online Free

pouch she wore around her neck.
    “What does all this mean, Grace? Will I ever be able to have a normal life? I mean, I’m glad I have my gift, even if I don’t exactly know what it’s for, and I want to be able to heal as many animals as I can, but it would be nice if I could have just one school vacation where I could relax and read books and ride Jemmy and do the things that other kids do.”
    Grace put a warm arm around her shoulders. “How many kids have you seen ridin’ white giraffes? Hmm? We don’t always get to choose the paths of our lives, chile, and the path that be chosen for you is not an easy one. Trust in your gift. Your gift will keep you safe.”
    The caracals began to fight over their food then, and Martine had to open their run and separate them. It only took a minute, but Grace was already a splash of pink in the dusty distance, swishing away down the track without so much as a good-bye. As Martine watched, she lifted her hand and waved without turning her head.
    Martine sat down on the bench again and stared unseeingly at the sanctuary animals: the caracals with their fur-tipped ears, the owl, Shaka the little elephant, and his new companion, a zebra foal who’d been rejected by his mother and was being bottle-fed by Tendai. She was thinking about the leopard in the sand. It had seemed an extra-large leopard. It had been crouched, as if it was on the verge of pouncing. She could still remember its claws and the way its lips curled back over its teeth in a snarl.
    The caracals started pacing around their run again, alerting her to footsteps. She looked up, expecting to see Grace returning, but it was Ben. A huge grin lit up his face.
    “I’ve spoken to my mum and dad,” he said. “I’m coming with you. I’m coming to Zimbabwe.”
    So softly that only the caracal kittens heard her, Martine replied, “So am I.”

3
    M artine put down the book that she’d been attempting to read for the past hundred miles and hauled herself wearily into a sitting position. She was cramped, tired, and slightly carsick, and her eardrums throbbed with the endless noisy hum of the Land Rover. They had already been on the road for a day and a half and they’d shortly be arriving at Rainbow Ridge, where they were staying the night. Martine couldn’t wait. Traveling was fun when there were fields of wildflowers or quaint historic towns to admire, but when there was nothing in view except a long, tapering ribbon of black asphalt, it was the most boring experience on earth.
    “Is it far now? How long until we get there?” she kept asking Gwyn Thomas on the first day, until her grandmother threatened to play really loud opera music if she brought up the subject again.
    They’d spent the first night at an ostrich farm midway between Cape Town and Johannesburg. Most ostrich farms bred the birds for their pocked, leathery skin, popular for belts and handbags, and also for their meat, but this one was a sanctuary for mistreated ostriches or those rescued from the slaughterhouse.
    At dusk, Martine and Ben had sat on the rails of a corral and watched the birds strut around their paddock in clouds of sunset-tinted dust, their wrinkly necks gliding up and down like periscopes. The farmer told Martine that the great birds could be quite bad-tempered at times, and wouldn’t hesitate to use their powerful toes to kick anything or anybody they disliked. They had an air of being very pleased with themselves, as if they thought everyone else at the farm was beneath them. They didn’t seem at all grateful to have been rescued.
    Martine’s ears popped, and she became aware that the Land Rover was climbing sharply. The mountains that had been a mauve outline for so long were all around them. Forested slopes gave way to sheer cliffs and crags and, just beneath them, a knife-edge ridge. Curlicues of smoke rose from it.
    As they drew nearer they saw that the smoke was actually mist caused by spray, and that a perfect rainbow