Chapter Two

“No, not tomorrow, Poppet,” said Ooma gently.

“Elephants take a long, long time to grow to full size. But you’ll get there one day. There’s nothing to stop you, for we are too big and our skins are too thick for any other creature in Africa to hurt us. Except two.”

“What are they, Mum?” asked Poppet.

“One,” said Ooma, “is a monkeylike thing called a man. Men kill elephants.”

“Why?”

“For their tusks.”

“What are tusks?”

“Great big long teeth that elephants have. Like these two of mine.”

“I haven’t got any.”

“You will. But you should be all right, because we live in a special place called a reserve, where elephants are protected.”

“Oh,” said Poppet. “But you said there were two creatures that could hurt us. What’s the other one, besides a man?”

“A mouse,” said Ooma.

“Oh,” said Poppet. “Are they even bigger and stronger than us, these mouses?”

“Mice,” said Ooma, “are very small and, what’s more, mice live in holes, and that’s the trouble.”

She stretched out her long, long trunk till the tip of it was right in front of Poppet’s face.

“What do you see, Poppet?” she said.

“A hole,” said Poppet.

Then Ooma, speaking slowly and solemnly, repeated to her newborn child the old elephant-wives’ tale that her mother had told her when she was a baby, a tale in which she had always believed.

“Poppet, my son,” she said.

“First, never have anything to do with mice. Second, if you should be unfortunate enough to meet one, keep your trunk curled up out of the way. Never, never put the tip of it anywhere near a mouse, otherwise the most dreadful thing imaginable will happen to you.”

“What’s that?” said Poppet.

“The mouse will run up the inside of your trunk.”