Summary

Ruby was taken into the elephant orphanage where she met many humans. She was frightened of them and did not understand why they were showing her their teeth. The humans put Ruby inside a cage, and then she met Jabori for the first time.

Ruby should have been scared, but Jabori had a wonderful laugh and he smelled like elephants. He always sang, and he spoke in a soft, low voice. He knew exactly what Ruby needed, and always took good care of her. She tells her uncles that elephants call the people who take care of them “sentinels.” She says that Jabori was her sentinel, and so was her mother, and Grandmama, and the two bulls who saved her, and the humans in the helicopter, and her uncles, too. She starts to cry and says that she has been a very lucky...