The Menagerie

by Tui T. Sutherland

  “What?” Melissa popped right back up again. “But the forms! The confidentiality agreement! The outsider-inclusion-and-intruder-override application! The background check!” She pressed her hands to her perfectly smooth hair. “We’re in enough trouble with SNAPA. If they find him here on Sunday . . .”

  “Relax, Mom. He’s helped us get three of the cubs back already,” Blue said.

  “Well, I hardly—” Logan started, and Zoe kicked him under the table.

  Melissa sat down, looking a little less panic-stricken. “Really? Three already. That’s promising.” She served herself a bowl of salad and then picked out all the cucumbers with her fork, carefully putting them in a separate bowl. Blue had done the same thing, Logan noticed.

  “Sorry about this, Logan,” said Mrs. Kahn, “but we have to go over our SNAPA list during dinner.” Logan realized everyone had a notebook next to his or her plate except for him and Blue.

  “There’s a lot to get done before Sunday,” Mr. Kahn said, rubbing his forehead exactly the way Zoe always did. “Somebody please tell me you fixed the security camera over the roc’s nest today.”

  He sighed into the silence and made a note. “I’ll do it after dinner.”

  Logan reached for his iced tea. A bowl of shredded cheese intercepted his hand halfway.

  “The sauce is even better with cheese,” Blue insisted. “Seriously, try it.”

  “Okay,” Logan said. He looked across the table as he sprinkled the cheese and noticed Zoe staring at him and Blue oddly. “SNAPA seems kind of scary,” he offered.

  “Oh, yeah,” Blue said. “Lots of rules, especially for merpeople.”

  “Rules are there for the protection of the animals and humanity,” said Melissa.

  “But even you have to admit not all of this seems necessary,” said Zoe’s mom, waving her notebook. “They’re being unreasonably hard on us, considering the jackalope is perfectly safe and sound.”

  “Like the den for the Chinese dragon we never got,” Matthew said through a mouthful of spaghetti. “It’s only been a few months since we were expecting it, after all. I don’t understand why we have to convert that space into something else already.”

  “SNAPA doesn’t like us much,” Zoe said glumly.

  Melissa shook her head. “And if they find out about the griffin escape, they will shut us down with no hesitation.” She took one meatball and started slicing it into small pieces in her salad.

  Shut down the Menagerie? Logan’s heart sank. But he’d just found them. He couldn’t imagine going back to normal life now that he knew griffins and unicorns and dragons were out there somewhere.

  “Didn’t something like that happen in the Amazon?” Zoe asked Melissa. Her dad gave Zoe a sharp look.

  “Oh, yes.” Melissa took a tiny bite of tomato. “It was terrible. One of the dragons went mad and killed a couple of people. It only takes one bad creature to ruin everything. The whole place had to be closed. You can’t imagine the paperwork that must have been involved.”

  “What happened to the rest of the animals?” Zoe pressed.

  “Who’s ready for dessert?” Zoe’s dad stood up in a hurry. “Pear cobbler, anyone?”

  “Well, of course they terminated half of them,” Melissa said, focused on her salad. “If they were too big to move or too much trouble. Only the most endangered ones can be saved after something like that. Here, for instance, the phoenix and the goose and the kraken would be worth saving, but probably not the griffins or the dragons.”

  Logan stared at her. She didn’t really mean terminate, did she?

  Melissa looked up at the silence with a surprised expression.

  “So it is true! Dad!” Zoe dropped her knife and fork on the plate with a clatter. “How could you not tell me?”

  “We thought you were worried enough,” her mom said, giving Melissa a withering look.

  “Well, you should be more worried!” Zoe said. “I didn’t know any of the animals might die! We should be out looking for them right now!” She sounded like she was about to cry.

  Logan’s throat felt like it was closing up. The griffin cubs—Squorp and Flurp and Clink—how could anyone do anything to harm them? He grabbed his iced tea and lifted it to his mouth.

  Suddenly the glass was knocked out of his hand. Purplish-brown tea spilled across his pants and splashed on the mammoth below him. Fuzzbutt looked up, startled, as Logan leaped to his feet with a yell.

  “Blue, what on earth was that?” Melissa said, shocked.

  Logan blinked down at the blond boy who was pointing at Zoe accusingly.

  “I know what you were about to do,” Blue said. “And it’s not okay with me.” He met Logan’s eyes. “Sorry, Logan. Zoe was just about to wipe your memory.”

  NINETEEN

  “Zoe!” her mom gasped.

  “Blue!” Melissa set down her fork and frowned at him. “We never, never talk about that in front of outsiders.”

  Logan’s head was spinning. He felt confused and betrayed and also very wet. “You’re not serious,” he said to Blue. “You can’t really do that, can you? Wipe my memory—like in Men in Black?”

  “A lot like that,” Blue said. “But with kraken ink instead of alien technology.”

  “Blue!” Melissa stood up. “That is enough! Go to your room right now.”

  “I will, but I’m taking Logan with me,” Blue said. “Come on, I’ll lend you some dry pants.” He stood up, giving Zoe a challenging look. She buried her face in her hands.

  “It’s all right, Melissa,” Mr. Kahn said. “Zoe. This is serious.”

  Logan didn’t know what to say as he followed Blue through the kitchen to the wide staircase in the front hall. His sneakers squished and his pants stuck to his legs. “This place seems determined to ruin my clothes,” he tried to joke.

  “My advice,” Blue said, “is, don’t drink anything but water while you’re here. If someone puts kraken ink in it, it’ll turn purple.” He paused thoughtfully, then added, “So, you know, don’t drink any purple water.” He was carrying the bowl of cucumbers he and Melissa had picked out of their salads.

  “Why would Zoe do that to me?” Logan said. He stopped at the top of the stairs, clenching and unclenching his fists. Anger was starting to build in his chest. He hadn’t done anything to betray their trust. He’d helped as much as he possibly could. He’d brought Squorp back instead of keeping him. He’d given Clink his mother’s bracelet, for crying out loud.

  “It’s what we always do,” Blue said. “It’s Menagerie policy. But you’re different, I think.” He shook his hair out of his eyes and checked one of the small video screens that hung at eye level all the way along the hall, where family photos might be in any other house. The only thing Logan could see on the screen was a large, dark blob with small bubbles blipping out of it; underneath the screen was a printed label that said KRAKEN MONITORING SYSTEM. Blue nodded in satisfaction, opened the door next to the screen, and beckoned Logan after him.

  Blue’s room was both totally normal and weirdly Blue at the same time. The walls were painted a muted aqua color, and the carpet was shaggy and dark green like seaweed. Brightly colored glass fish hung from the ceiling like model airplanes. On the wall above the bed was a poster of Michael Phelps swimming, with water flying out around him. The opposite wall held a bulletin board crammed with deep-sea photographs of underwater life, which Logan realized Blue had probably taken himself. A few more photos were hung around the walls in plain black frames with labels on them such as MADAGASCAR and GREAT BARRIER REEF.

  Bubbles and small white sea horses drifted across the computer monitor on the desk. The Crucible was stacked on top of a couple of books about Thomas Jefferson. Next to the computer was a framed photograph of Melissa with a tall, green-haired, bearded man on a beach somewhere. It took Logan a moment to recognize her, because Melissa’s hair was down and she was laughing. The green-haired man was helping a blond toddler walk with his feet in the sand.

&nbs
p; Blue set down the cucumbers next to a giant fish tank on a low bookshelf in the corner. The tank was half as tall as Logan and dark inside. Blue reached for a light switch hooked up to it, but before he could turn it on, Logan saw a small green hand with webbed fingers press up against the glass. It scrabbled at the side nearest the cucumbers.

  “Oh,” Blue said, pausing to look at Logan. “Uh, don’t be freaked out. It’s just a kappa. Okay?”

  “A what?”

  The light flicked on, illuminating the water in the tank and the tall, waving seaweed plants inside. Peering out through the dark fronds was a face. Logan jumped back in surprise, and the face grinned wolfishly.

  The creature in the tank was the size of a skinny one-year-old and covered in green scales. Its body was blobby, like a frog’s, but with a turtle shell on its back, and its monkey face had a beak—a beak with sharp little teeth. There was a tiny crater on the top of its skull. It poked at the glass again, ogling the cucumbers.

  “Don’t get too close,” Blue said. “Kappas eat kids, but they prefer cucumbers if they can get them.”

  “That—that would eat me?” Logan said, fascinated. “But it’s so small.”

  “Yeah, it’s stronger than it looks,” Blue said. “If it ever asks you to wrestle, seriously, just say no.” He slipped two slices of cucumber through a slot at the top of the tank. The kappa reached its webbed fingers up and snatched a cucumber out of the water, making it disappear in two bites.

  “Of course,” Blue went on, “you won’t understand it if it does talk to you. It only speaks Japanese. Sometimes Keiko talks to it, but I’m pretty sure she’s just riling it up.” He dropped a few more cucumber slices in and crossed over to his closet. The kappa stared at Logan with mischievous dark eyes.

  “You said it’s Menagerie policy to wipe people’s memories,” Logan said. “You mean everyone? You do this all the time?”

  “Well, we don’t get strangers in here very much,” Blue said. “So not all the time, but whenever it happens, yeah.” He pulled a pair of jeans off a shelf in the closet and threw them at Logan. “Try those.”

  “And you don’t warn them?” Logan asked, kicking off his shoes. “You just take their memories, like that?” It gave him the creeps to think of anyone messing with his head. Would he still have remembered his dad—or anything about his mom?

  Blue went back to throwing cucumbers into the kappa’s tank. “It’s not like we give them total amnesia,” he said. “The kraken ink targets supernatural encounters. The more you’ve had, the more you need. You’ve only been around a day, so a couple of drops would have you waking up tomorrow with this fuzzy feeling, like you’d slept through a whole afternoon. You might remember going to the library, but not why, and definitely not the griffin cubs or the Menagerie.”

  “What about my mom’s bracelet?” Logan burst out. “Would Zoe have given it back? Or would she have left me thinking I lost it somewhere?”

  Blue shoved his blond hair off his forehead and gave Logan a rueful look. “I don’t know. Listen, we don’t like the policy. But it’s to keep the Menagerie safe.”

  “You don’t have to keep it safe from me,” Logan protested. “I want to help. I would never tell anyone.”

  “I believe you.” Both boys jumped, and Logan spun around to find Zoe standing in the doorway, holding her elbows and looking downcast. He was glad he’d gotten the jeans on before she appeared. Assuming she hadn’t been standing there for a while. He frowned at her.

  “I mean, I want to believe you,” Zoe said. “But the Menagerie is in so much trouble right now. I just . . . Don’t you get it?”

  “Not cool,” Logan said, pointing at her. He sat down on Blue’s bed.

  But the problem was, he did understand. He already felt like he’d do almost anything to protect the griffins and this place. In his mind, though, that included Zoe and Blue. He’d thought they were starting to be a team. Or friends, or something.

  But friends didn’t wipe other friends’ memories.

  “I’m really sorry,” Zoe said. She rubbed her forehead. “Dad is pretty angry. He says we need you. I know he’s right, it’s just—my sister got me all scared. The last time we let a stranger come in and out of the Menagerie . . . well, we thought we could trust him, too, and it turned out we really couldn’t, and lots of things went wrong from there.”

  “How about this,” Blue said. “What if Logan stays over tonight? Then he can help us hunt for griffins tomorrow, and we can all keep an eye on him to make sure he doesn’t go home and sell our story to the dragon-conspiracy blogs.” He tossed a cucumber slice at Logan. “You up for that? Saturday is Zoe’s day to make breakfast.”

  Logan caught the cucumber and lobbed it at Zoe. She ducked, and it hit the hallway wall with a splat. “How do I know you won’t wipe my brain while I’m sleeping?” Logan asked.

  “Because that’s impossible,” Zoe said huffily.

  “Hmm,” Logan said. “Not a reassuring answer.”

  “And you’ve got my word,” Blue said. He crossed the room and held out his hand to Logan. “Merman’s honor. I won’t let anyone wipe your memory unless you become a true danger to this place.”

  Logan looked over at Zoe. She nodded, kicking the carpet with her sneakers.

  “All right,” Logan said, shaking Blue’s hand. He knew his dad would let him stay over. And despite the wrenched, horrible feeling in his stomach about what Zoe had tried to do to him, he still wanted to be here. He wanted to meet dragons. He wanted to hang out with Blue.

  But more important than anything else, he had to help save Squorp and the other griffins.

  TWENTY

  “EWW!” A shriek woke Logan early the next morning. He squinted at the shades on Blue’s window. It was still dark outside.

  “Who left a CUCUMBER in the hallway?” Keiko’s voice roared. “Where anyone could STEP ON IT. GROOOOOOSS!”

  “Uh-oh,” Blue whispered over the side of the bed. “Pretend you’re still asleep.”

  Logan pulled the sleeping bag over his head as Blue’s bedroom door slammed open.

  “I know this is yours, fish boy,” Keiko snapped, flinging the cucumber slice at Blue’s head. Logan hadn’t actually seen her the night before, but he knew she knew he was here. She didn’t seem remotely interested in his existence.

  “Sorry,” Blue mumbled sleepily.

  Keiko growled and slammed the door behind her.

  “Maybe we should get up anyway,” Logan suggested. “We could do something else on the SNAPA list, or start looking for griffins.” Blue’s alarm clock said 6:42 a.m., which was a horrible hour to be awake. But Logan hadn’t slept well, and he felt restless.

  “Mmmmph,” Blue answered, burying his head under the pillow.

  Logan slid out of the sleeping bag, put on the jeans and sweatshirt he’d borrowed from Blue, and crept into the hallway. Keiko had vanished, but the sound of the shower running came from under the bathroom door. No one else was around. All the other rooms were dark.

  They’d all been up late working on SNAPA’s list. Logan hadn’t even seen Matthew or Mrs. Kahn come back before he and Blue went to sleep. Zoe had been sent off to bathe, brush, and feed something called a mapinguari, which she seemed to think she deserved. Logan had spent the evening helping Blue hammer a new roof on the Doghouse, where the hellhounds slept, next to the main house. All four hellhounds sat panting and staring at them with bright red eyes the whole time they were working.

  He walked toward the stairs, peering at the video screens as he went. One of them showed the griffin enclosure, where Squorp and Flurp were sleeping flopped over their mother’s back. Nira kept shifting uncomfortably, but they only burrowed in more deeply. Riff was sprawled in front of the gate as if to block anyone from coming in or out.

  Clink sat in the cave entrance, looking fierce and snapping at any leaves that dared to fall near her. Logan smiled. He wondered if she’d been awake all night guarding the bracelet, and whether she ever intended to
sleep again.

  He found his shoes and socks in the dryer in the kitchen closet and pulled them on. Captain Fuzzbutt wasn’t in the living room—Logan had heard some gargantuan snores coming from Zoe’s room, so he was pretty sure that’s where the mammoth was. He stepped over the pillows and rugs and slid open one of the glass doors to the Menagerie.

  Outside, the air felt chilly and gray and blurry in that before-sunrise kind of way. Logan rubbed his eyes and walked down toward the lake. Cleopatra and Charlemagne were standing at the edge of the water, drinking. They lifted their heads to stare at him, their horns glowing silvery pale in the dawn light.

  Logan remembered what they’d said yesterday and bowed deeply. The unicorns glanced at each other with arch, pleased expressions, then both gave him a regal nod in return.

  He followed the path around to the griffin enclosure and stood looking at the bolts on the gate for a moment. It wouldn’t be hard to unlock them from the outside—anyone could do it. But who would have?

  He wanted to go inside, but he didn’t want to cause any trouble that might get his memory wiped. So he circled the enclosure until he found a boulder close enough to it that he could climb up and rest his elbows on the top of the fence.

  Clink’s head instantly swiveled toward him with a beady-eyed glare. When she saw who it was, she relaxed and waved her tail.

  Treasure is safe, small human, she said. Not to worry.

  “I know,” Logan said, giving her a thumbs-up. Small human! He wasn’t short at all compared to most guys his age, although it was kind of embarrassing that he had to roll up the bottoms of Blue’s jeans. But anyone would be short next to Blue.

  “Pssst,” Logan called softly, trying not to wake Nira or Riff. “Squorp!”

  The tawny griffin cub stretched sleepily and dug his claws into his mother’s fur. She wriggled and spread her wings, knocking him to the ground. Squorp rolled over and sat up with a startled expression. His feathers stuck out all around his face, and his fur was rumpled. Logan waved.