Tiger Tales, A Story of Survival

Chapter One

In the Quiet of the Night

     Inga hasn't eaten all day. Now, deep inside her den at the Denver Zoo, she waits alone. No sounds disturb her. It's dark. Something is about to happen.

     At eight o'clock the next morning, zookeeper Liz Hooton tiptoes to a tiny camera. She peeks into the den. Two cubs! By ten o'clock there are two more.

     Inga has given birth to four healthy Siberian tigers--one of the most endangered animals on earth. And Liz can already tell that Inga's going to be a very good mother.

(The childhood biography of Ginetta Sagan, who in 1996 received the highest civilian honor in the United States of America, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, honoring her lifelong work for human rights through Amnesty International, the Aurora Foundation and her heroic acts as a young girl.)

Prologue--The Young Ginetta
1933, Italy

     A dark, curly head with sparkling brown eyes peeked over the neighbor's rough rock wall. Cherries! Black bingos, more delicious than the cherries at home. The young girl, Ginetta, and her friends scrambled over. Ginetta climbed a tree. Laughing, she picked cherries and dropped them into her scarf, then passed them down.

     "The farmer here isn't very nice," one of her friends said.

     "Oh, he's nice." Ginetta plucked another cherry. "He wouldn't like us to be here, but he won't catch us."

     From below, dead silence. Her friends were gone.

     "I'm glad you think I'm nice," the farmer grumbled. "But I'm not nice, and I've caught you. Now come down, you little bandit!"

     The farmer look Ginetta to her parents. In that beautiful valley, Val d'Intelvi, in the northern Italian Alps, neighbors did not steal from one another.

     After dinner, Ginetta's parents sent her to her room without dessert. She was supposed to think about what she had done. There, she planned how she would go to the neighbors the next morning to say, "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have done that." The neighbors would say, "No you shouldn't have done that," and then give her hugs and kisses and hot chocolate.

     Little did Ginetta know that, within only a few years, she would be stealing much more than a few bunches of cherries.

Fernitickles

Chapter One

     Duncan Fisher slipped a piece of smoked salmon and a barley bannock into the leather bag at his waist. Smiling, he looked through he open window of his house, past the town of Stirling, towards Stirling Castle. For fourteen years, since three years before Duncan's birth, Stirling Castle has stood empty on a black stone crag above the town, waiting for the King's promised return. Today the King was coming home.

     The people of Stirling had long prepared for the King. They passed laws to stop poaching in the King's Park. They repaired the city gate and the road. They gathered tapestries and robes and silver vessels from all over Scotland. They gilded His Majesty's coat of arms and the cross at the Tollbooth with gold.

     With the King's return, the people of Stirling once again dared to dream of riches and fame. On this early summer day in the year 1617, that dream flickered from one to another like a smile.

     But Duncan's smile was not for gold, and it was not for the King. Duncan smiled because no one would work today. Even Duncan and his father, John Fisher, the Village Fisher, would not fish until after King James arrived. Duncan could watch his otters.

     "I'll be going now." He ducked under the carved wooden fish that hung above the doorway of his family's stone and wood house.

     "Aye, no ye wil'na, lad!" A rough hand grasped his arm. "Ye wil'na be going to the river today, and ye wil'na be playing the fool with the wild creatures of the woods! Today we honor our returning King."

     Duncan knew his father would never understand. He could not tell him about the months of waiting or his weeks of gently coaxing. He could not tell him what he otters had done just yesterday. For John Fisher, otters meant only two things: torn nets and pilfered fish. "But Father," Duncan said, "why should I honor King James? He has been in England since before I was born!" Duncan eased away from his father's grip. "Uncle William says Scotland is better off without him. We Scots don't need an English King to tell us what to do!"

     "James the First is not an English King!" John Fisher's face grew red. "James the First is the first King of Scotland to be King of England, too!"

     "That is not what Uncle William says. Uncle William says James is English through and through. Uncle William says the King is just a salmon, swimming upriver to where he was spawned."

     "Och! Duncan! Duncan, lad, ye listen to my baby brother too much. William talks too much with these reformers! He is too young to remember." Rubbing his rough hands together, Duncan's father sighed. Then he smiled the way he always did when he looked into the past. "Aye! Those days when the royal court was at Sirling Castle, Stirling was a true royal burgh. It bustled with court visitors and trade. Aye, those were fine, wonderful days."

     "Fine, wonderful days, indeed!" Duncan's mother Ishbel, rushed from the house and thrust a package into Duncan's hands. Her hair was uncovered and still uncombed, and her eyes were tired looking and red. "Finished, and just in time. Duncan, run and deliver this gown for the wee bairn of the Earl of Mar. Hurry, before the King's procession arrives."

     "I will, Mother." Duncan took the package--and the opportunity to escape. "But, Mother, the Earl should not ha' asked you to knit this in only one day's time. You've worked all night."

     "No, he should not have." Duncan's mother reached behind her and pulled Duncan's little sister, Fiona, from the folds of her skirt where she was hiding. "I think your father has forgotten. That was the way of those 'fine, wonderful days' of 'More!' and 'Now!"

     John's droopy moustache flared. His eyes shot from his wife, over the golden hair of his daughter, and riveted on Duncan. "King James will bring new hope, even for a fisher's son! Ye will see!" He grabbed his pipe and stomped away.