The Zoo at the Edge of the World (7 page)

12.

H
aving the power of animal speech made me infinitely better at my job. I solved problems that had been plaguing us for months. After cleaning up the Blue Birdcage, I learned that the bats were getting sick because their berries weren't ripe, and I made a note to replace them out. Dreyfus hadn't been drinking enough water because someone had raised a flagpole by his water trough and it was scaring him. The sloths told me they'd feel safer if there were more branches on the fake trees, and I gladly installed some. The tapirs had me dig them a mud bath so they could keep from getting sunburned. But the greatest victory of the day was helping Mala, our spectacled bear.

Mala hadn't been nursing her little cub, Bashtee, so I had to enter the den a few times a day to feed him donkey milk from a bottle. This was bad for two reasons. The first is that babies need what's in their mother's milk to stay healthy. The second is that to get donkey milk, you have to milk a donkey, and I'm not even going to tell you what that's like.

When I asked Mala why she hadn't been nursing her cub, she told me that he'd gone missing after she birthed him. “That's the boy's cub,” Mala said. “Not mine.”

“This is Bashtee,” I said, astonished. “He's yours. I watched it happen.”

Mala shook her head and turned away from me.

Kenji whispered, “The cub doesn't have the right smell. That's why she thinks it's not hers.”

Bashtee was in my arms, sucking a bottle of milk.

“Why don't you smell right?” I asked him.

“Because of Master Marlin's brother!” Kenji said, grabbing my ear. “Kenji saw him take the cub out of the cage.”

Tim knows not to touch newborn mammals. Father lectures us every time one is born. Mothers sometimes abandon their cubs if we touch them when they're too young.

“Why would he do that?” I asked Kenji.

“There was a tall girl with him,” Kenji said.

That was all I needed to know.

So Tim's scent on the cub prevented his mother from recognizing him, and now the workers and I were in there bottle-feeding him five times a day and making it worse.

“This is your cub!” I told Mala. But she only sulked in the corner of the cage.

If I'd learned one thing from Tappet that morning, it was that animals saw things differently than I did. If I wanted to live with them and help them, I'd have to look at the world from their point of view.

I told Kenji to fetch me a big fluffy towel from the bath house and meet me at the river. I had nearly finished washing Bashtee when Kenji arrived. Then I rolled him in mud and picked him up with the towel, careful not to make contact with my skin. Finally, I dropped Bashtee in a bucket of dung from Mala's den. Not the most civilized solution, but it was the best I could think of.

After he was good and covered, I picked him up with the towel and carried him back to the Bear Den. I slipped him through the door of the cage when Mala wasn't looking and snuck off with Kenji.

We sat for nearly half an hour on the roof of the Butterfly House with a pair of binoculars. Mala finally padded across the length of cage and sniffed Bashtee. The mother bear hesitated for a moment, twitched her ears, and then relaxed her body and rolled over.

Bashtee climbed onto his mother's tummy and started to nurse.

 

There was one place in the zoo Kenji wouldn't go: the Snake House.

It was a big sturdy building down near the base of the pyramid. Its walls were made of stone and its roof was wood and tar, but we thatched it with leaves for a rustic feel. It was kept dark for the comfort of the animals, but it created a rather frightening environment for the guests.

It was Dead Eyes that scared them.

Inside the Snake House, we had species ranging from four inches all the way up to six and a half feet, but Dead Eyes was the star of the show. We kept him behind a wide panel of triple-thick glass. His exhibit was dim, and he rarely moved. On tours, Father would stop at his display and ask guests what they saw. They'd point out rocks, mounds of dirt, and logs. Then Father would reveal that every bump and texture and curve and rise that they thought was decoration was really thirty feet and eleven hundred pounds of giant anaconda.

Dead Eyes was already blind when Father found him, but he often snapped at the guests through the glass. He'd slam his head into the barrier and hiss. Nothing would get through the triple-thick glass, but it scared people so badly that Father laid rugs on the floor to muffle vibrations. This day, though, Dead Eyes was unusually still.

It was late afternoon, and Kenji had gone off to brighter quarters of the zoo. I decided I didn't need her help to talk with the animals, so I just walked up to a tank of iguanas and said hello. They didn't respond, so I opened the lid of their tank a crack in case they couldn't hear me.

“Hello there!” I said again.

They didn't respond, and neither did the other lizards, or any of the snakes. Perhaps they didn't understand me for some reason, or perhaps they didn't care.

With no one to talk to, I thought it'd be a good idea to check the worksheet. I unlocked the staff room in back and closed the door behind me.

Each species of snake prefers certain foods at specific times, with different intervals between meals. Some eat every few hours, and some get sick if they're fed more than once a week. Everyone on the chart looked up-to-date except Dead Eyes, who was due for an afternoon meal.

I turned to the small pen in the corner of the staff room. We keep the young capybaras meant for Dead Eyes there. A capybara is a very large rodent that lives in the jungle, something like a giant guinea pig. They weigh about three hundred thirty pounds when they're full-grown, but the ones we keep for snake food never grow that large. They're hardly teenagers when Dead Eyes gets them.

“Hello,” a furry-snouted creature chirped at me. “Do you know where my brother has gone?”

For the first time, this new power didn't seem so great.

In the pen, there were five little piles of straw where each of the five young capybaras had been growing up. They were born a few weeks previously to Bucktooth, one of the females of the Capybara Camp in the zoo proper. Father decided we had enough capys on display and sent these babies to be used as snake food.

This capy was the only one left.

“I haven't seen my brother in a few days,” the small creature mewed. “Before that my other brother left, and before that my sisters.”

I felt a little ill.

“Do you know where they've gone?”

“Um, hello,” I said, blanching.

“Hello,” he said in a friendly tone.

I checked the feeding schedule again.
DEAD EYES: ONE (1) CAPYBARA
. And the date was today. This fellow was on the schedule.

“Can you help me find them?” he asked.

I'd fed one animal to another before. I'd done it countless times. I'd eaten animals myself: deer, fish, snakes, frogs. Though I suppose they weren't alive when I ate them. And they certainly weren't speaking to me.

“It's getting lonely in here.”

I didn't know what to do. Dead Eyes had to eat. We'd put him in a cage. He couldn't hunt. That meant we had to feed him.

As long as he was in that cage, I had to feed him little capybaras or else he'd die.

“I . . . I don't want to lie to you,” I said to the little creature.

“Don't want to lie to me about what?” he asked.

My lunch felt unsettled in my stomach. I believe I'd had venison that day.

“I know where your brothers and sisters are.”

“You do?” he chirped.

“It's not good news,” I said. “They've been eaten. By a snake.”

The capybara's hair stood up all over his body. His eyes grew wide. His lips pulled back.

“Is there a snake here? I thought I smelled something bad.”

He lifted his forepaws to the edge of the pen and tried to jump out, but it was too high.

“Please save me!” he begged. “Please save me from the snake!”

He was scared but gave me a trusting look. He didn't know I was here to make a meal of him. That I'd done it before, even taken one of his brothers when the group was sleeping and dropped him in with Dead Eyes. I'd hardly thought twice about it.

“Okay,” I said finally. “I'll get you out of here.”

One creature eats another, the circle of life—I knew all that. But I wasn't going to kill this little creature asking for my help. I'd sneak him out of the Snake House and take him outside the walls of the zoo, and work all that moral stuff out later.

“You will?” the capy said. “Oh, thank you!”

I nodded at him. All I'd need to do was somehow figure what Dead Eyes would eat.

“I know! I know! I'm late!” Leedo Flute burst into the staff room in a huff. “It's a very busy day—sometimes I get behind!”

He took the worksheet out of my hand and laid it on the table, then pushed past me and grabbed the capybara. “I don't need a little boy doing my job for me all the time.” He tucked the capy under his arm. “You trying to get me in trouble with your father?”

The capybara squealed, “Help!”

I tried to grab it out of Leedo's hands, but he swatted me away.

“What's the point talking to you anyway?” He pushed past me into the main room of the Snake House. “Leedo does his job—don't let anybody say different.”

“SS—s—ST—ST-aaa-aaa—” I stuttered.

The whole day, I'd been completely fluent, but now I was a stutterer again, and my voice was useless. I had to catch him. But he was moving so fast that by the time I managed to get a hand on his belt, he was already at the feeding chute of Dead Eyes's display.

He turned around and looked at me.

“Yeah, Marlin? What is it?”

He opened the hatch and dropped the capybara down the chute. It closed with a metallic clang, and the creature slid down into the anaconda's chamber.

I pushed Leedo out of the way, opened the chute, and shot my hand down, trying to pull the little creature out. An earthquake of movement rose up against my hand and forced it out of the chute. The hatch slammed shut and Dead Eyes was still.

It was over.

 

I chose to neglect work for the rest of the day. At the dinner table that evening, I found myself unhappily presented with a plate of sliced duck.

I didn't touch it.

I couldn't even look.

Second Night

We know this resort comes highly recommended. If you hadn't read the thrilling accounts and seen the etchings in the newspapers, you wouldn't have sailed all the way to the Edge of the World.

We know you had high expectations when you arrived.

But did you imagine that the jungle would be this beautiful? The picture books and travelogues pale in comparison to its wonder. Dark mysteries and unspeakable secrets are being revealed to you one by one.

Tonight, we invite you to gaze up at the stars and let your imagination soar through a guided tour of the night sky: the home of the Jungle Gods.

The native people of this land have long seen their guardians in the constellations. Join Heppa, our resident artist and storyteller, as she regales you with tales of the Old Times and the Gods That Dance in the Sky.

You may snicker to hear it, but many natives still believe these stories are true. And while we can't vouch for the tales' authenticity, be assured they are wonderful legends that may leave you thinking of them long after the telling is done.

13.

“B
efore the people of your world came to this place, the Gods of the Night danced through the sky.”

Heppa stood before an assembled crowd of guests and raised her arms. “When I was a small child, I saw them dance. I can still remember this.”

I didn't attend Heppa's starlight routine much anymore. I'd heard all the stories a hundred times, but Father had tasked Tim and me, and a few workers, with moving animals in preparation for the circus the next day. We were to do it at midnight, so I had a few hours to kill.

I suppose I also may have been feeling reflective.

We were on the Great Lawn, with blankets and woven mats spread across the grass by the dozens. The guests were huddled in groups of families and friends. They had been given small telescopes to view the night sky, and servants were making their way from blanket to blanket handing out chilled milk with cocoa beans.

“They aren't dancing now!” a man with a long black mustache called out. The lady guest in the red hat from Heppa's painting class turned and scowled at him from where she sat, up front with the rest of the students from that afternoon.

“They did dance,” Heppa intoned. “For those first few magical years of my life, I saw them dance. When the ships came, that's when they stopped.”

The members of the painting class were entranced, and their enthusiasm slowly spread through the crowd. Heppa raised a wrinkled hand to the sky and traced a line connecting seven stars in a group.

“Slint, the rainbow bird,” she said. “The mother of this place. Long ago, before anything was here but a great flooded plain, Slint flew across the sky and dropped a seed from another land. It fell in the floodplain and grew into the first tree. That tree multiplied and its family pushed back the flood until it was a single river. Slint dropped more seeds, for plants and animals and fish. In the night you can see Slint's egg.” Here Heppa pointed to the moon. “Every thirty nights, Slint lays a new egg, and you can watch it hatch and give birth to something new.”

“What's it give birth to?” asked the lady in the red hat.

“No one knows!” Heppa smiled. “It's too dark to see up there!”

The crowd broke into laughter. Heppa had them now, as she always did. She waited for the laughter to die down before snapping her fingers and pointing.

“Do you see him? Be quick! It's Alguna, the bloody hare.”

She pointed to a small speck in the sky that I knew wasn't a star at all; it was Mars, and it changed its position in the sky throughout the year.

“Alguna races amongst the gods, one day here and one day there, always running for his life! See how his white fur has been stained with blood? That's because he's been clawed and bitten. In the time it takes for ten of Slint's eggs to hatch, Alguna will be attacked by Mirgas, the snake”—she traced a line of six stars—“Ruupt, the crocodile; and Banta, the eagle.” She pointed them out to the crowd.

“He has not yet been caught, and his frantic run will never end. That is the way with things big and small. The strong may rest, but the weak must always run.”

The capybara couldn't run.

“But,” Heppa exclaimed, “Alguna is no fool! He stays far away from Kocaru.”

She pointed to a grouping of stars set apart from the others. Three faint white dots made a tail, a group of five were the body, and two extraordinarily bright stars, almost yellow in their hue, were the eyes.

“Kocaru, the black jaguar. Eater of the sky!”

 

“All right, I want to keep this short and sweet.” Tim considered me with contempt. “We're going to nab just three apes. Orangs or chimps, it doesn't matter. Rope them, lead them to the mobile, lock the door, and we're done. Simple enough?”

Zargo Hunt, Leedo Flute, Manray Lightfoot, and I all stood at attention. I was on the end, trying to avoid Leedo.

“Sound simple?” Tim barked at us.

“Yes, sir!” shouted the men. I sputtered nervously.

It was pretty normal for us to take animals out of their permanent cages and put them in mobile ones if they got sick or we had to transport them somewhere, but I'd never before been on a capture crew taking dangerous animals like apes out of their cages. I'm not sure why Father stuck me on this job when I could just as easily have been moving tapirs. Maybe he thought of me differently after I got the collar around the Jaguar. Whatever it was, I could tell Tim didn't like being stuck with me.

Zargo Hunt, the guard from the night before, smiled at me reassuringly. “You will do well, young Rackham.”

“Thhh-TH-th-TH-aa-anks,” I stuttered.

“Have something to say?” Tim sneered at me.

I shook my head no.

“Then listen to me,” he snapped. “Chimps are dangerous. You want to get someone hurt?”

I lowered my head and shook it again.

Father wanted three apes in mobile carriers so we could wheel them up to the Sky Shrine for the next day's circus show. Tim signaled Zargo to unlock the gate of the Monkey Maze. Leedo was breathing heavily, and I noticed that my hand was shaking. The maze is home to three orangutans and thirty-seven chimpanzees. Father ordered a whole mess of them from Africa and Borneo, thinking most wouldn't survive the boat ride. They all did, and we were left with an almost unmanageable population. They starved out all the South American primates we lodged them with at the zoo, and Father was forced to construct this enormous exhibit just to handle them all.

We'd never tried to take any out before. It struck me as strange that we'd captured a man-eating jaguar, been visited by a duke who Father apparently hated, and were pulling chimpanzees out of the Monkey Maze all in the same week.

The key turned in the lock, and the gate swung open. I'd never actually been inside the maze proper before, just thrown food through the bars and let the apes sort for themselves who got to eat what.

We call it a maze for a reason. When Father had the enclosure built, he dumped topsoil and planted trees all through the Monkey Maze. It was like a miniature jungle in there, with trees and vines growing all the way up the iron bars that covered the top. Some branches pushed their way between the bars, and we had to prune them from the roof of the cage so they didn't bend openings with their growth.

Chimps knuckle-walked toward the forested area at the center as the five of us entered.

“Men coming in!” I heard one of them screech. There was ape laughter in the trees. It was an awful sound.

“All right, men.” Tim tried to keep his voice steady. “We move as a group and take one at a time.”

“Yes, Mr. Rackham,” Zargo said. Then he turned to Manray and said something in Arawak.

“No jungle talk,” Tim chided.

“I was just relaying your order, sir,” said Zargo.

“How will he ever learn the Queen's English?” Tim turned to Manray and pointed sharply at himself. “Listen to me. Follow me.”

Leedo cast me an accusatory glance and huffed. As though Tim treated me any better!

“To the trees,” Tim barked, and we followed him, though I didn't know what Tim's strategy was. The majority of the apes were in the treed area, but it seemed like we'd have better luck catching stragglers who were meandering around the clearings.

But we ended up under the trees.

“What are you doing here, Marlin?” a chimp called down to me from a hidden branch.

“Lot of men with you,” said another. “Why do they have those catchers?”

Each of us was armed with a large wooden bar that had a wire lasso on the end, much like the one I'd used to collar the jaguar. I suppose we were meant to snare apes with them, but in the dark, under the trees, they seemed useless.

“Oh, Mr. Tim,” Leedo said with a mix of irritation and fear. “We might have better luck catching monkeys in the clearing. Where, you know, we can see.”

“Quiet!” Tim said. “You'll give us away.” He crept between the trees, cautiously stepping over vines—believing, I guess, that the apes didn't know where he was.

“Walking pretty funny, that one is!” called down another chimp from a tree.

“Don't step on a flower!”

“Or trip!”

Blue Boy launched himself down from a branch and landed on Tim's back, toppling him over in the dirt. Manray stabbed his lasso at the ape, but Blue Boy jumped away, and Manray only managed to club Tim in the calf with the rod.

“Ow!” Tim yelped. “Grab him!”

Manray swiped again, but his lasso caught on a tree branch as Blue Boy scaled it, laughing to his friends, “Slow, aren't they?”

Tim refused Zargo's help and picked himself up. “What was that?” he shouted.

Manray looked to Zargo for a response, but Tim put up his hand. “I'm asking you,” he said, pointing at Manray.

Manray blinked and pointed to the tree.

“I know he went into the tree,” Tim fumed. “What I want to know is why you didn't catch him.”

“Mr. Tim,” Leedo said again. “This is a hard place to catch a monkey—let's try the clearing.”

“Do you want to go where things are easy, Mr. Leedo,” Tim mocked him, “or do you want to go where your job is?”

I heard a chittering in the trees.

“Ready to go?” one chimp said to another.

“That's what I thought,” said Tim. “Now, form up behind me, and the next chimp that comes thro—”

A black mass dropped down behind Tim. Then more came down all around us. Zargo grunted and I saw him fall under the apes.

Then there were shouts, and my mouth was tasting the ground. All I could see was a small glint of moonlight in the dewy grass.