Lion Boy

One Saturday afternoon in September Charlie's mum was on a ladder in the backyard, doing things to plants halfway up the wall. Charlie didn't know what, or care. He the yard, the gorgeous honey-lemon smell of flowers, and the great Christmas tree that hung over back the wall, with its shiny silver and green and purple fruits that he would harvest toward mid winter and sell at the market.

He liked climbing around in the tree and in the ruins. But he didn't what his mum was doing on the ladder until he heard a shriek and a clatter and rude word, and he ran out to see.

His mum was on all fours, on the fallen ladder, on the ground with festoons of the honey-smelling plant around her, her red hair wild and her face as white as ice.

"Stupid, stupid," she was muttering.

"No you're not," said Charlie. He offered her his hand and she pulled up to her feet, wincing. "You wouldn't be a professor if you were stupid."

"Clever people can do stupid things," she said. " Let me into the house."

She hobbled inside and Charlie followed, worried but not worried, because his mum was the strongest, cleverest, bravest person in the world, apart from his dad, of course, and if anyone could handle falling off a ladder she could.

"Owwwww" she said. Charlie