The Zoo at the Edge of the World (5 page)

8.

T
hen the voices were back.

“They're gone.”

“Let's move.”

Tim and Father were definitely asleep again, and they'd crucify me if I woke them up. But there was someone in the house, I was sure of it.

I tried staying still, but I was shaking. There was a creak.

I turned the spark stone in Father's oil lamp, which he'd let me keep for the night, and stepped into the hall. If I could surprise them and start a commotion, maybe they'd be scared off. Or if they weren't, I could be loud enough to get Father out with his gun. I turned the flame to full burning and headed to the stairway.

“I'm afraid he hasn't got it.”

The voice was above my head.
The attic
.
Of course,
I thought,
the one place we didn't look.
It was dark with lots of crates and junk everywhere, a good place to hide. I turned down the knob on the lamp until the flame was just a flicker and opened up the broom closet. My tiny light caught on the string that dangled from the attic trap door. I pulled it, and the wooden ladder slid down toward me. The voices grew louder.

“You have it?”

“Beautiful!”

It was shocking to hear them so close, but they sounded strangely small. I popped my head above the attic floor and saw movement by some crates in the corner. I pulled myself up and crept along the planks.

I glanced back toward the trap door. The only plan I really had was to pounce on them, turn up the light, then race back to the attic door and shove it closed behind me. I could prop it shut with a broom and call for Father.

“The big man's not so scary!” one voice chittered.

“Never said I was scared!” squealed another.

“He's old and slow!” They laughed.

I stood by the edge of the crates, steeling myself.

I am a Rackham
, I thought,
and this is my home. I am my father's son.

“Hah!” I leaped from the shadows and turned my lamp to full blast. Light chased darkness from the corner, and the shadows raced away.

“No!” one shrieked.

“The boy!” cried another.

“Run!” called a third.

All that remained was a half-eaten sausage torn apart on the floor. Little bites were missing, tiny, as if they'd been picked by a fingernail.

The thieves had been a circle of mice.

9.

I
stumbled out into the night with my lamp in my hand and clambered down the hill in utter shock. The mud squished between my toes until I reached the Golden Path. And there, at the base of the pyramid, I could see all the torches that burned along the borders of the resort. Guards were posted at various points along the wall, but they all looked outward into the jungle. I quietly climbed the path to the cages.

I pressed my stomach to the fence of the Boar Den and looked in. Tuskus lay sleeping in the mud with Belly Wart by his side. Gray Beard was off in the corner. She opened her eyes and snorted at me.

“Hello, Marlin. Do you have some food?”

I pulled back the lamp and stood straight. Gray Beard's grunting woke up the other two pigs. Tuskus sniffed grumpily.

“Be quiet. I'm sleeping.”

Gray Beard trotted to the fence, “Have you, Marlin?” she whined. I backed away and turned up the Path.

“What's the matter? What's the matter?” a pair of cockatoos called from their cage.

“It's Marlin! Wake up!” one of our bush dogs barked.

“What's going on out there?” moaned the spectacled bear.

I shook my head and slapped my face. I tried to tell myself I was in a dream, but my own voice was drowned out by the terrible noise of the zoo. Each caged animal I passed as I climbed up the pyramid snorted, bayed, growled, or hooted at me.

“Marlin! Marlin! Marlin!”

Surely this would bring the guards, and I'd look as crazy to them as I felt. So without thinking I called out to the animals. “Quiet!”

But it wasn't my voice, or at least not my language. I tried saying something else. “You'll wake everyone up!” I grunted and hissed. There were no words in what I said, not ones I could recognize, but the meaning was there.

A shout came from below me, one I couldn't understand. It was Zargo Hunt, a guardsman calling out something in his native tongue. He was coming up the pyramid toward me. I extinguished the light and ran.

The Monkey Maze was our largest exhibit by far. It took up nearly one entire side of the pyramid, and the Golden Path cut through it via a caged pedestrian walkway. I tried to make my escape through there, but something caught my leg and I fell. I looked down to see a hairy hand holding me through the bars.

Another hairy hand grabbed my thigh. The first one left my foot, disappeared between the bars, and reemerged to take my shoulder. This hand pulled me up to my feet with surprising strength.

I followed the hairy hand down its arm to the other end and saw Trébone the orangutan staring at me.

“Did I hear you right?” he whispered.

I tried to knock his hand away, but the grip was too tight.

“You spoke!” he said in amazement. “How is this?”

I pushed back against the bars, trying to free myself. “I should be asking you!” I shouted.

Trébone shrieked and snaked his other arm through the bars to hold me. “What is this?” he gasped.

He stuck his thumb into my mouth and stretched out my cheek to look inside.

“Get your fingers out of my mouth!” I mumbled.

He reared back and laughed heartily. A few chimps and another orangutan padded over to the walkway.

“What you doing with him?” asked Screecher.

“Got some fruities for us, Marlin?” called Blue Boy.

“Get away, you fool!” Trébone slapped Blue Boy, and the chimp screeched at him.

The rest of the clan had woken up and were descending on us. They leaped up onto the bars and climbed to the iron roof of the walkway.

“Give us some beetles, Marlin!”

“I want nuts!”

“Fruities, Marlin, fruities!”

They were hooting and hollering, and their voices mushed together so much, I couldn't understand them. Just the howling noise of the monkey clan again, like I'd always heard from them.

“Shut your stupid mouths!” Trébone bellowed. “I cannot hear this boy speak!”

Blue Boy laughed. “A talking boy, Trébone?”

“Yes!” the orang shouted back. “Quiet your yap and you'll hear.”

“Marlin, can you understand this?” Blue Boy stuck his thumb into his mouth and blew a raspberry at me.

“I have something for you!” called a chimp above my head, and I narrowly dodged a plop of something headed straight for my face.

Hysterical apes shook the cage bars with their laughter. Trébone was fixed on me.

“This is that jaguar they captured.” He held me by the ears. “I have heard of jaguar magic.”

The blood was rushing to my face, and Trébone's dirty thumbs were whirling around in my ear canals.

“Shut up in there!” someone shouted, in English this time. Zargo was near. If he saw me, he would tell my father I was out at night.

“I've got to go.” I pulled Trébone's fingers off my ears.

“To the jaguar's den,” he said. “That is where you must go.”

“Shut up!” Zargo shouted again. I broke free of Trébone's arms and ran out of the Monkey Maze.

“Jaguar food!” all the chimps called after me. “Jaguar food!”

10.

B
efore building the circus tent in the Sky Shrine, Father's pet project had been restoring the Ruby Palace. No one knows what it was used for in the old times, but it must have been important. All along the floors, walls, and ceiling were indentations the size of almonds. They were settings for precious stones, though the gems themselves were gone, stolen ages ago. Father couldn't afford to set all new gemstones there, but he wanted to reclaim the chamber's former glory, so he had all the indentations filled with chips of colored glass. They were red and blue and yellow, but at dusk, when the sun came straight through the entryway, the whole chamber lit up like a flame, and so he called it the Ruby Palace.

It sat empty for some time after it was restored, waiting for an animal that could live up to its majesty. The jaguar was a perfect fit.

The lock on the door hadn't been changed yet, so my skeleton key still opened it. I entered the chamber in darkness and sat in silence with whatever was on the other side of the bars. It took me some time to raise the courage to relight my lamp.

I turned the spark stone, and the wick caught flame. The glow of the light reflected in the hundreds of colored glass chips embedded in the walls, floor, and ceiling. It was like being inside the eye of a dragonfly. A red halo grew around the stones on the other side of the bars, but it didn't touch the jaguar; he was still a shadow. I turned the knob of the lamp, feeding more oil to the wick, and the glow intensified in the hundreds of facets. But the jaguar stayed an inky nothing.

Then he opened his eyes. They were a brighter yellow than the jeweled glass, and they considered me coolly, with that bored intelligence all cats seem to have. He didn't appear menacing, and I found myself drawn to him.

“Jaguar,” I began. “What have you done to me?”

He appeared uninterested. His long body was stretched out over the floor of his cage, and his massive head rested on a paw. He blinked.

“Jaguar,” I said again. “What did you do?”

His stare was blank. I began to feel foolish for talking to an animal and expecting an answer.

I hadn't been sleeping well lately. Perhaps that was the explanation. Was I sleepwalking?

The stones felt hard, and the bars of the jaguar's cage felt cold when I touched them.

“Am I dreaming?” I asked.

I crouched to the floor until my face was level with his. I looked into his yellow eyes.

“You must be asleep to dream,” the jaguar said.

I jerked backward and fell on my wrist. A sharp pain pierced my hand, and when I pulled it out from under me, I saw I'd slashed myself, wrist to palm, on a broken shard of colored glass sticking up from the floor. I eyeballed the jaguar and put my bleeding hand to my lips.

“Does it taste like a dream?” the jaguar asked, purring.

I cradled the wound to my mouth and sucked. The blood was dripping down my chin and shirt. The jaguar flashed his eyes and raised his head.

“You should let me heal that for you.” He stood up and stretched. “I have magic, if you couldn't already tell.”

With that he let out an awful laugh, the muscles of his back tightened across his body, and his toes and jaw spread with power.
Magic,
I thought,
is that what this is?
I'd heard stories from the natives about the jungle and its strange inhabitants, but Father said it was fanciful thinking, something to amuse our guests but nothing to take seriously.

Yet here I was, talking to one of them.

My wrist was bleeding profusely now, and I unbuttoned my shirt and wrapped it around my arm. It soon soaked through with blood, and I felt myself becoming light-headed. No one knew where I was. If I fainted here, I might not wake up.

“Do you not believe me?” the jaguar asked, amused. “That cut is bad. This cave is sharp.”

I could run back to the worker barracks and wake up Charro, our healer. Father had fired our proper doctor last month and hadn't found a replacement. Charro could handle a cut, though; I knew that.

But there would be questions. Why had I left the house at night? What was I doing in the Ruby Palace? After my complaints about the robbers, Father would think I'd gone mad.

“Give me the hand,” the jaguar commanded. “Are you afraid of a captive like me?”

“You're a man-eater,” I said. My hand was crying in pain.

“Where did you hear something like that?” the jaguar purred.

“Don't lie,” I whispered. “You killed Nathtam, one of our men, when he was out in the jungle.”

The jaguar considered this for a moment.

“I do not remember eating a man,” he said. “Besides, I find your scent disagreeable.”

“How'd he end up half eaten and hung from a tree?”

“I don't know. Perhaps he climbed it for fun but got so hungry on the way down, he ate himself.” The jaguar laughed at his morbid joke.

“The workers say that jaguars are tricksters.”

“That we are,” cooed the jaguar. “Do you think this is a trick?”

I did, but my shirt was now completely soaked through, and the walls had begun to bend.

“Don't make me your enemy, as your father has,” the jaguar said. “You will like me much more as a friend.”

“What's your name?” I asked.

“My name?” He snorted. “Names are for men and their pets. I have my toes, my tongue, and my teeth. That's all the name I need.”

“All the animals here have names, and you're one of them now,” I said. “How can we be friends if I don't know your name?”

“Well, in that case you may call me Jaguar,” he said. “I see no other jaguars here. If there were, I'm afraid I would be free and you would be dead.”

I pulled my hand to my chest.

“Joking, only joking,” the Jaguar purred. “Now, give it over.”

The lightness in my head made it much easier to put my hand through the cage. I didn't feel any fear.

“This may sting,” the Jaguar said, and he licked me.

His long tongue was like sandpaper, and it felt like he was lapping the skin right off my hand. A burning sensation spread from my palm to my shoulder and forced my hand away from him. I crumpled to the floor and rolled on the stone to try to put out the heat, but there were no flames. The glowing lights of the Ruby Palace blurred together. I could hear the Jaguar choking and gagging and hacking something horrible.

Then my arm went cool. The room came into focus and the sweat on my forehead felt cold.

The Jaguar gasped for air. His black-as-night coat lightened to a charcoal gray, and he foamed at the mouth.

I turned over my hand and was shocked. The gash was gone, the skin unbroken. But more than that, the lines on the palm of my hand were missing. I closed it and watched them form, as if for the first time. It was new skin, untanned, untouched, unblemished, like a baby's. I felt a gentle throbbing in the soft flesh, as though a quiet power was resting there.

The Jaguar looked terrible. His face was drawn and thin, he shook on unsure legs.

“Some strange magic . . . ,” I said.

“That's enough,” the Jaguar heaved, “for tonight.”

“My hand,” I said. “You healed it!”

“Want me to bite it off?” the Jaguar barked. He coughed and retched at something in his throat.

“Enough,” he growled. His eyes were glassy and terrifying. The moons had become as narrow as slits.

“G-good night, Jaguar,” I said, grabbing the lamp from its hook. I backed my way out of the Ruby Palace, and a moan rose up behind me as I crept down the Golden Path.

All along my way, the animals were awake, but now they stared at me silently. In awe or in fear, I don't know.

Back at the house, I hunkered into bed but was unable to sleep until I stuffed cotton in my ears to muffle the endless bickering of the mice.