Lizard's Leap: Chapter Eighteen: Let's Get Physical, Physical

‘It’s no good. It won’t work. I can’t get it off. I’m not strong enough.’

‘Call for Sylvia,’ Emma said, with hysteria in her voice.

‘Of course,’ Kerry said. ‘Get Sylvia. She’ll know what to do.’

Vicki stood up and grasped the lizard necklace. In a trembling voice, she chanted:

'Sylvia, Sylvia, calling you.
We’re in the picture, come on through.'

Despite being upset about the wolf, Kerry couldn’t help laughing when Sylvia literally popped into the clearing in front of them. She looked ridiculous. She was wearing a bright orange leotard and a pair of black tights. She had trainers on her feet and a sweatband across her forehead. Her face was bright red and her hair was plastered to her head with perspiration.

‘All right, all right, I know I look a sight. I was just in the middle of my Oldie & Easy workout. Now, what do you lot want that’s so important you have to pull a woman out of her daily exercise routine?’ Sylvia saw Mark and Vicki on the ground and summed up the situation. ‘Oh my, the poor thing. Hold him steady, Mark, and I’ll see if I can get this thing off.’

She bent down and after a bit of huffing and puffing managed to release the trapped wolf. ‘Hold him still while I have a look at him.’ She held the wolf’s damaged leg and checked it from shoulder to paw.

‘He’s a lucky fella,’ she said at last. ‘It doesn’t look too bad at all. It doesn’t even feel broken. If you lot hadn’t been here it would have been a lot worse for him. He would probably have bitten his own leg off to get free. Then the other pack members would have killed him. The winter’s coming and they can’t survive unless every pack member does his share of the hunting. It’s nature,’ she said seeing the look on Vicki’s face, ‘survival of the fittest and the wolves know that.’

Sylvia moved the cloth to the side and checked him all over. He wasn’t hurt anywhere else. She carefully unwrapped the cloth that was holding his mouth shut and frowned when he lay there and made no attempt at all to move. His eyes were glazed, and, when she lifted his lip, she saw that the wolf’s gums, which should have been bright red, were almost white.

‘He’s in shock and although his leg isn’t bad, there’s a nasty cut on it that will be prone to infection if it isn’t treated. I don’t like this, but we have no choice. We have to take him back with us until he’s healed. If we leave him here, he’ll probably die.’

The large female wolf had moved forward and was pacing up and down a few feet in front of them. She was distressed and growled, low and soft.
‘Don’t worry, mamma. We’ll take good care of him and get him back to you just as soon as he’s well enough.’ The female wolf cocked her head, listening to Sylvia’s calm tones. Maybe she even understood a little of what Sylvia was saying to her.

‘Problem’s going to be when we bring the little fella back. They might not accept him when he has the stink of human all over him.’

Sylvia picked the limp wolf up as though he weighed nothing at all. The animal wasn’t unconscious but he was so exhausted and shocked that he put up no resistance. They all held hands and Kerry held onto Sylvia’s waist as she chanted them back to Brampton Hall.

****

They would have to be aware of the time. From the minute they stepped into Sylvia’s house they were on real time and not leap time. Sylvia told them to go before they were missed but they wouldn’t hear of it until the wolf was settled.

‘Are we going to take him to the vet’s?’ asked Kerry.

‘No, child. We can’t risk doing that. Too many questions would be asked about where he came from. Don’t worry, if we can bring him out of the shock he’ll be okay. He just needs to be kept warm and left to recover.’

Sylvia bathed his paw in warm water and antiseptic. She smeared the wound in a healing cream and wrapped a bandage round it to stop the wolf licking all the cream off before it could do any good.

‘Tomorrow we’ll let him lick it better,’ she said. They put him in Sylvia’s bedroom where it was warm and dark and pulled the door across so that he could be left in peace.

‘Bye Sylvia,’ they said when they left. Vicki had the last word: ‘We’ll come back after tea to see how he is.’

The children had no trouble sneaking in through the garage when they got back. Granddad was out taking some rubbish to the tip and Nana was watching Novak Djokovic playing tennis. She was oblivious to everything but her hero.

They couldn’t wait to get back to Sylvia’s to see how the young wolf was.