The Menagerie #2

by Tui T. Sutherland

“Oh, so you do know your mom’s a Tracker,” Matthew said curiously from behind him.

  “Only because I told him,” Zoe said. “These are some of the other Trackers who have brought us animals.” She pointed to a few other photos on the board; in each one, Matthew stood beaming beside a grown-up, most of whom looked like they’d just leaped off a safari truck, rolled through the mud, wrestled a hippo, and dragged it all the way home with their bare hands.

  There were also words cut from magazines pasted all over the board, like BRAVE and ADVENTURE and CARING and CLEVER and AMBUSH and FAST. Each one made Logan think of his mom. There were also more animal sketches and an ancient-looking map of the world with HERE BE DRAGONS written in the oceans.

  “Anyway,” Zoe said. “I thought you’d like to see that. Matthew, did you find your application?”

  Matthew unearthed a file folder from the mess under his desk and tossed it to Logan. “It’s not as fun as it sounds,” he said. “You learn a lot, but it’s hard work.” He crossed to a table Logan hadn’t noticed before and lifted a towel off a giant glass cage that looked like an ant farm.

  “Because of all the animals there, right?” said Zoe. “You have to help take care of them in between training. I heard Camp Underpaw has a manticore.”

  “No way,” said Matthew, looking at her like she was crazy. “Those are really dangerous.” He pointed to a sketch on the wall beside him of a red lion creature with a creepy man’s face, sharp teeth, and nasty-looking spines poking out of its tail. “SNAPA never puts them anywhere near minors, and Camp Underpaw is for ages thirteen and up.”

  Maybe I could go next summer, Logan thought. If we can find Mom by then. I bet she could talk Dad into it. He opened the folder and saw a brochure with a bunch of grinning, dirty teenagers in the woods, looking exhausted and happy. There were no photos of the mythical creatures—that was against SNAPA’s rules—but Logan could still get an idea of the place from the photos of kids studying tracks with a magnifying glass, climbing a rocky mountainside, and pointing at the sky. It looked like more fun than tennis camp, that was for sure.

  “So what animals do they have?” Zoe asked casually, perching on the edge of Matthew’s bed.

  “Some of the same things we do,” Matthew said. “Griffins, unicorns, halcyons.” He picked up a small jam jar that seemed to be seething with movement inside. Logan squinted at it and realized it was full of ants. “Plus a pegasus, a chimera, a bunch of selkies and yawkyawks, a hippocamp, stuff like that.” He shook a few ants into the top of the ant farm and sighed. “And a bonnacon.”

  “What’s a bonnacon?” Logan asked, watching the ants curiously. Why were they in a jar instead of in the farm?

  “That,” Matthew said, pointing to another sketch. The dark blue creature looked like a bull, but with a horse’s mane, fierce red eyes, and two sharp, curving horns that pointed in toward each other. “It smells awful and it hates everyone in the world. But the worst part is that it poops fire. I mean, not just fire—giant poop that’s on fire. It is the worst.”

  “Oh, that’s the thing that caused the accident this summer,” Zoe said. “Right? It burned down some fences or something?”

  Matthew flushed and glared at his ant farm. “That’s right,” he muttered.

  A sudden movement inside the cage caught Logan’s eye. Something was tunneling rapidly up through the sand—something bigger than your average ant.

  An insect as long as Logan’s pointer finger erupted from the sand below the ants and gobbled them all in ten seconds flat. It licked its lips and gave the glass, and Matthew beyond the glass, a golden-eyed Is that it? look.

  “Whoa,” Logan said. He crouched and peered in at the insect. It had the body of an ant—but the head of a tiny lion. The lion’s face snarled at him, shaking its mane. “What on earth is that?”

  “It’s an ant-lion,” Matthew said. “Obviously.”

  “Obviously,” Logan echoed.

  “There are two more in here somewhere.” Matthew bent down to look inside the glass as well.

  “Hey, didn’t something escape during the fire?” Zoe asked. “Dad told us something got loose. It wasn’t a golden goose, by any chance, was it?”

  Matthew turned slowly and gave her a sharp look. “Zoe,” he said. “Now you’re asking weird questions. And your weird questions often lead to weird behavior, like throwing glitter up my nose. So what are you up to?”

  Zoe fidgeted with his comforter for a moment before blurting, “We think Pelly’s still alive.”

  “How—” Matthew started.

  “Those aren’t her feathers at the crime scene,” Zoe said. She told him about Marco and checking the SNAPA agent’s computer. Logan watched the ant-lion stamping around inside the farm, roaring hungrily. Another lion face poked through the sand and growled at it, and the first ant-lion growled back, and they stood there growling at each other and wriggling their ant butts fiercely for a while.

  “So we thought maybe you had access to the camp goose’s feathers . . .” Zoe trailed off.

  Matthew sat down heavily in his desk chair. “Zoe, what is up with you suspecting me of crazy things? First I’m a werewolf, now I’m a goose-napper?”

  “Well, obviously I don’t think you’re much of a suspect, since I’m telling you about it,” Zoe pointed out.

  “I didn’t kidnap Pelly,” Matthew said. “Camp Underpaw’s goose is only about sixty years old.”

  “So why are you acting so weird?” Zoe cried. “You’ve been different ever since you got back from camp, all moody and secretive.” She pointed to the scar on his arm. “I don’t believe a griffin gave you that. You are awesome with griffins. And you keep disappearing so even Mom and Dad don’t know where you are. What’s going on?”

  Logan shoved his hands in his pockets and studied the pictures on the wall, wondering if he should slip out of the room. There was a long pause as Matthew ran his hands through his hair and stared at the floor.

  “Fine,” Matthew said finally. He got up, unpinned a sketch from the corkboard with the Xanadu map, and handed it to Zoe.

  She blinked at it. “A qilin? A qilin didn’t give you that scar. They’re really gentle.” She passed the sketch to Logan. The slender creature Matthew had drawn was shaped a bit like a deer, but with horse hooves, blue fish scales all along its back, and one long horn pointing backward from its head instead of forward like a unicorn horn.

  “A qilin is what escaped from Camp Underpaw,” Matthew said. “Because of me.”

  He opened his computer and pulled up an email with a video attachment. The email was from a Geoff Landers with the subject line “The Great Matthew Kahn rides the Bonnacon Rodeo.” The message just said: “Worst cowboy ever. Watch whenever you need a laugh.” Logan noticed that it had been sent to a whole camp list.

  “Who’s Geoff Landers?” Zoe asked, leaning over his shoulder.

  “A huge jerk,” said Matthew. “Him and Bryson Polo. Every time I screwed up, they’d be there laughing at me. I felt like an idiot all summer. Turns out I was an idiot, because when they dared me to ride the bonnacon, I said yes.” He hunched his shoulders. “I didn’t want them to think I was a coward as well as a terrible Tracker.” He clicked on the video, which expanded to fill the screen.

  The video was blurry and jumpy, as if it had been taken by a camera phone at night. The primary sound was two guys laughing their heads off, but in the background there was also a bellowing ox-like noise, crashing, and the high-pitched shrieks of other animals. A large shape bolted across the screen, pooping fireballs in a long trail behind it. If he squinted, Logan could recognize Matthew in the figure clinging to the bonnacon’s twisted horns.

  “Whoa,” Zoe said.

  “Yeah.” Matthew exhaled slowly. “See that fence it’s running toward? The qilin lived on the other side of it.” As he spoke, one of the bonnacon’s fiery poops went tumbling toward the fence and instantly set it ablaze.

  In the video, Matthew twisted around, saw the fence o
n fire, and threw himself off the bonnacon. Logan couldn’t tell whether he’d hurt himself getting on the animal in the first place, or if he was slashed by the horns on the way off, but Matthew got up with blood streaming down his face and one arm. He staggered over to the fence and started beating at the flames with his jacket, yelling for help.

  “Geoff!” he called. “Bryson! Come on, we have to put this out!”

  “Loser,” snickered a male voice.

  “Let’s get out of here,” said the other. The video ducked toward the ground, catching a shot of shoes running, and then abruptly stopped.

  “The fence burned down and the qilin escaped,” Matthew said.

  “Have the counselors seen this?” Zoe demanded. “Or Mom and Dad? I can’t believe Geoff and Bryson just left you like that! Plus, taking a video of a mythical creature could get them barred from working for SNAPA for the rest of their lives.”

  “No, they only sent this to the other campers,” Matthew said gloomily. “But everyone knows this was all my fault, even though Ashley kept me out of the official report because she’s friends with Dad. Zoe, the only way I’ll ever get to go back to camp—the only way I’ll have a chance of becoming a Tracker—is if I find that qilin and bring her back myself.”

  He got up, went to the closet, and pulled out the wind chimes, letting them dangle from one of his fingers. “That’s why I took this. It’s like a mystical homing device that calls to this particular qilin. So she has to be nearby—she must have followed these chimes when I brought them back to Xanadu—but I haven’t even come close to catching her yet.”

  Zoe sat up suddenly. “A qilin!” she said. “Aren’t those the ones—”

  “That can sense guilt,” Matthew finished. “Right. That’s the other thing. If I can find the qilin by Thursday, we can bring her to court, and she can prove that Scratch is innocent.”

  Roaring suddenly erupted from the ant farm. Logan whirled and saw the two ant-lions grappling, each trying to bite the other one’s head off. Without paws and claws, all they had for fighting was their teeth, which they were using to viciously rip at ears and noses and manes. It looked like they were seriously about to hurt each other.

  Logan jumped forward, grabbed the jar of ants, and shook a handful into the farm right on top of the battling ant-lions. The fierce little creatures jumped apart and attacked the ants instead, ravenously chasing them down and eating them all.

  Logan looked up and found Matthew staring at him.

  “You’ve never seen an ant-lion before?” Matthew asked. Logan shook his head. “So you just knew that was the way to stop them from fighting? Somehow, with your magic powers?”

  “It was only a guess,” Logan said uncomfortably. He hadn’t even stopped to think about it. It just seemed logically like the right thing to do.

  “You know he has some kind of instinct for this stuff,” Zoe said. “So be smart and use him.”

  “All right,” Matthew said with a long sigh. He held out his fist to Logan. “Tomorrow, you and me, tracking a qilin. Deal?”

  Logan bumped his fist, trying not to look too thrilled. “Deal.”

  EIGHTEEN

  Wednesday was too drizzly and wet and cold to eat lunch in the courtyard. Logan and Blue wolfed down their food in the hallway and met Zoe outside the library.

  She put a finger to her lips and pointed through the door’s window at Miss Sameera. Nobody else was around, and the librarian was fast asleep with her head on her desk. Her hair had escaped its ponytail and was running wild across her keyboard. There were little Band-Aids all over both of her hands, and her ruby-red blouse was missing a few silver bells.

  Logan caught Zoe staring at Miss Sameera’s cup of chai tea, steaming quietly on the desk. Zoe’s hand went to the pocket of her backpack where he knew she kept a vial of kraken ink.

  “Don’t do it,” he whispered. “We still have no idea what she knows.”

  “We know she knows too much,” Zoe muttered.

  “I agree with Logan,” said Blue. “No messing with people’s heads if we can avoid it.”

  “Fine,” Zoe said, blowing her hair out of her face. “But if she starts telling people that she’s seen griffin cubs and anyone believes her, don’t blame me if we have to end up dosing the whole town.”

  “SNAPA can do that?” Logan asked.

  “They did it in Parkville, Missouri, when the menagerie there was exposed. I saw a note about it on Delia’s tablet next to one of the golden geese.” Zoe’s expression grew mournful. “They shipped her away—along with all the other creatures.”

  “That’s not going to happen here,” Logan told her firmly. “We won’t let it.”

  Zoe shot him a grateful look, then turned and led the way into the library.

  The school library was a lot smaller than the main library in town, with dark blue walls, sky-blue carpets, tall bookshelves, cheerful displays of new books that changed each month, and reading nooks in every corner with beanbags or armchairs. Whenever he walked in the door, Logan felt as if all the books were flinging themselves against a glass wall at him, like puppies in a pet store desperately wanting to be taken home.

  Logan followed Zoe to a back corner, where she pushed open one of the big windows that faced the back parking lot. Matthew popped out of the Menagerie’s van and ran over. He clambered through the window, scattering raindrops on the rug.

  “Shhh,” Zoe scolded him as one of his boots thumped against the radiator. Logan glanced at the other end of the room, but Miss Sameera didn’t wake up.

  “Why are we sneaking Matthew in the window?” he asked, keeping his voice low even though Miss Sameera was pretty far away. When Zoe had suggested a meeting in the library, he’d imagined Matthew would saunter through the front door like everyone else.

  “So he doesn’t have to sign in at the front office and give a reason for being here,” Zoe said. “Which might tip Mom and Dad off to the fact that he’s not in school, where he’s supposed to be.”

  “Plus it’s the cool stealth Tracker thing to do,” Matthew said, shaking water off his hat. “We’re—they’re like ninjas meets spies meets Indiana Jones.”

  “Ninjas climb in school library windows all the time, didn’t you know,” Blue said to Logan, deadpan.

  “Wearing everything in their closets, apparently,” Zoe said. She looked Matthew up and down. He had on at least two sweaters under his jacket, plus a green scarf and a fuzzy brown hat with enormous furry earflaps. “Are you hunting a qilin or trekking to the North Pole?”

  “It’s cold out there,” Matthew said. “Believe me, I’ve been searching the woods every day for two months. It gets really freaking cold after the first, like, hour.”

  Logan winced. He had a feeling Matthew wasn’t going to be too happy once he heard Logan’s theory.

  He’d spent the night reading about qilins in the books Zoe had loaned him, instead of doing his English homework. But Matthew had been training to be a Tracker his whole life. Surely he had thought of everything Logan had. Wouldn’t he hate Logan coming in with a bunch of suggestions, implying Matthew had done it all wrong?

  Zoe plunked herself down on a beanbag and looked up at Logan. “I can tell you have an idea,” she prompted him. “Just say it. We need that qilin before the trial tomorrow.”

  “Unless we can find Pelly,” Blue pointed out.

  “That’s why I think we should split up,” Zoe said. “After school, you and Logan and Matthew look for the qilin, and I’ll take Marco to look for Pelly.”

  “How is Marco going to help?” Matthew asked, looking ruffled. “He’s not a Tracker.”

  “By bringing along his werebear brother with the amazing sense of smell,” Zoe said. “We just need one feather that is really Pelly’s, and I’ll see if Carlos can follow her scent out of the Menagerie.” She exhaled. “If he can be helpful, maybe we’ll never need to bribe Keiko again.”

  “The feather outside the Aviary!” Logan said. He pulled out his camera phone
and showed Zoe the photo he’d taken of the feather on the grass. “I bet that one’s really hers. I’ve been wondering why it was around the front of the Aviary if her kidnapper or murderer or whatever went in and out through the back door. I bet somebody made it look like they used the door by the roc so we’d think it was a big predator, but really they drugged Pelly and took her out the front. So maybe you can use that feather, if it’s still there.”

  “Good idea,” she said, nodding.

  Matthew rubbed his hands together and breathed on them to warm them up. “I’d better get back to the woods.”

  “Wait,” Zoe said. “Logan, where would you start looking?”

  “Um,” Logan said awkwardly. “Actually, I think—I think she’s probably not in the woods.”

  Matthew stopped stamping his feet and stared at Logan. “Are you serious? Do you know how much time I’ve spent tramping around out there?”

  “I know, sorry,” Logan said. He pulled out a map of Xanadu that he’d printed off the internet. Zoe and Blue leaned forward to look at it.

  “The one thing all the books say about qilins is that they won’t harm any living things,” Logan said. “They even walk across grass without crushing it.”

  “Right,” Matthew said. “That’s one reason they’re impossible to track—they literally don’t leave any tracks. Of course I’d accidentally release the one creature that can’t be found.”

  “Also, they won’t eat living things,” Logan said. “They’ll only eat plants if they’re already dead.” He pointed to the woods on the map. “Right now there are plenty of leaves that have fallen off the trees in the forest, but it wouldn’t have been like that when she got here in August. So I don’t think she would have gone to the woods then—she’d have found somewhere with food she could eat. Right?”

  Matthew smacked his own forehead. “Obvious. I’m an idiot.”

  “No, no,” Logan said. “I just thought, maybe if she found a place to hide, with food, she’d probably stay there. Right? Especially if it’s indoors, since it’s getting colder.”