Menagerie

by Rachel Vincent

  “There’s a weather line?” He stared at the phone as if he’d never held one.

  “Yeah. It’s archaic, thanks to the internet, but I think a lot of old people still use it.” Like my mother. I gave him the number, and he dialed, then hung up a few seconds later.

  “It’s going to rain tomorrow.” Gallagher slid the phone back into his pocket and when he left to return it, I huddled in the corner of my cage and let myself truly cry for the first time since waking up in the sheriff’s station, in my own hometown.

  Federal government rounds up more than 300,000 six-year-old “surrogate” children to be studied in secret labs

  —Headline from the Federal Inquirer, September 30, 1986 edition

  Nalah

  The ifrit tucked a strand of wavy red hair behind her ear. She turned toward the sun, and the strand fell in front of her face again, subtle streaks of orange and yellow lit like a living flame. Nalah let the warmth soak into her skin, and when she closed her eyes, she could almost pretend she was back at home, a child of five lying on the grass behind the barn, waiting for her brother to finish feeding the cows.

  The scent of manure fit. The warmth fit. The clanks and groans of wagons being hauled...that fit, too. The only thing left to ruin the illusion, as long as she kept her eyes closed, was—

  “I can’t stand this anymore.”

  Nalah opened her eyes and found Adira staring through the side of their cage, her pale fingers threaded through the wire mesh.

  “It’s too hot. Too dry. I’m going to shrivel up and blow away. Tell me we’re almost home.”

  “We’re almost home, Princess.” The ifrit’s fingers found their way into Adira’s long silver hair with no conscious thought, combing and gently untangling to provide comfort. “But the final mile is always the longest.”

  Adria twisted to frown at her companion, tugging her own hair in the process. “How can one mile be longer than any other?”

  “I only meant that the most difficult part of the journey is yet to come.”

  The princess huffed. “What could be harder than sweltering for a year, locked in a cage, surrounded by beasts?”

  “Overcoming distractions.” Nalah gazed out at the alley behind their open tent, where she saw Gallagher leading an exhibit on foot. It was the new one—the girl with no notable features, aside from a crass tongue. Adira called her a “mongrel of nonspecific origin,” but as was often the case, the merid could not see beyond the surface to the heart of the problem.

  Nalah understood that no matter what the new girl’s species turned out to be and no matter how diluted her bloodline, Gallagher did not think of her as a mongrel. She could see that in the gentle way he held her arm, as if he did not want to add to her bruises. In the subtle way his lips moved when he spoke to her, as if he did not want to be overheard.

  But the most telling evidence that Gallagher did not think of the new girl as just another beast was the fact that he spoke to her at all.

  In the year he’d been at Metzger’s, Nalah had never seen Gallagher converse with an exhibit other than Adira and herself. He gave instructions, of course. Sometimes he gave soft words of encouragement to the mute minotaur, along with a companionable pat on the shoulder. But he didn’t speak with the other exhibits, beyond the necessary exchange of information. Nalah couldn’t think of a reason the new girl might need so much private instruction, unless she were feebleminded.

  But Delilah was not feeble in any sense of the word.

  The only reasonable cause for Gallagher’s interest in her was, well, interest.

  Pain flared deep in the ifrit’s chest, and she gasped with the sensation.

  Nalah had felt quite a lot of pain in her fifteen years. She had been sick from want of home, when she was first given to Adira at the age of five. She’d been sick from drink not three months before they were imprisoned, the night Adira had told Nalah to sneak a bottle from the liquor stores, to wash away the fears accompanying the announcement of her betrothal to the ifrit crown prince. Nalah had been whipped by the menagerie’s lot supervisor when she accepted blame for Adira’s theft of a bottle of water, and she’d been consumed with the cramps of a consistently empty belly. She’d had hair pulled from her head, food taken from her hands, and flesh torn by the rough loss of innocence, but never in her life had anything hurt like the pain now stabbing at her chest like a spear of ice lodged deep in her heart.

  She didn’t realize she’d gasped again until Adira sat up with a frown. “Are you aware that the noises you’re making are quite audible? Are you so very distressed that you must disturb my rest?”

  “Apologies, Princess.” Nalah took Adira’s left hand and massaged it with both of hers.

  Adira closed her eyes and squared her shoulders, as if to settle in for meditation. “And what was the cause for such a lapse?”

  “Fear that Gallagher’s attention has strayed from the task.” Nalah’s fingers never faltered, but her heart was not on the task. When Adira noticed, she opened her eyes and looked to where Gallagher and the new girl were passing by in the opposite direction. “She has already delayed your return and now seems poised to derail it entirely,” the ifrit said softly.

  “That is unacceptable.” Adira pulled her hand free and turned to face the problem directly. Her pale blue eyes darkened like the ocean depths, and Nalah recognized the cruel edge in her voice. “How can we refocus his efforts?”

  “By relieving him of the distraction.”

  “Fine. Kill her.”

  Nalah swallowed her initial, visceral excitement over the thought in favor of temperate council, but the words she could not say burned in her gut like lit coals. “I will roast her at the earliest opportunity, if that is your will, Princess. But Gallagher may gravely object to the loss, and he is precious to your cause.”

  Yet Adira seemed unconvinced that losing the mongrel to an agonizing, fiery death could sour the handler’s loyalty to her.

  “Also, in the aftermath of the roast, I will be executed, and you will have no companion,” Nalah added. “No one to serve at your side.” The ifrit had no doubt that if they’d been in the merid’s homeland, among flowing rivers, glistening lakes, and an entire population eager to serve, the princess would not have hesitated to sacrifice her lifelong companion—her best friend in the world—for even the slightest comfort. But such a loss could not be endured under the current cruel circumstances.

  “What recourse have we, then?” Adira asked with a resigned sigh.

  “A wildfire consumes both the crops and the weeds together, Princess. What we need is a controlled burn...”

  Delilah

  “Dreeeaa...”

  My eyes flew open and I struggled to bring the ceiling of my cage into focus in the gloom. I’d fallen asleep after Gallagher left to return Alyrose’s phone, but the light in my tent had been on. He must have turned it out to let me sleep, when he’d returned.

  “Someone wants to see you,” Clyde’s voice taunted, and something clanged against the side of my cage.

  I sat up, my heart pounding in alarm.

  Bright lights came on in the empty tent with a low-pitched buzz and I sat up, rubbing my eyes to shield them from the sudden painful gleam. While I blinked, wiping defensive tears from my face, I heard a new sound—a soft, wordless mewling I recognized instantly.

  “Genni?” I spun around on my knees, blinking against the glare, still sluggish from sleep and half-blind.

  The mewling grew louder. I rubbed my eyes again, then fell backward, startled, when Geneviève’s face was smashed into the side of my cage. Wire mesh dug into her cheek, her brow bone, and half of her nose. Her eyes were damp and wide with fear, her mouth covered with duct tape.

  “Let her go!”

  Clyde pulled her back, brandishing a cattle prod in his f
ree hand. “Gallagher may let you order him around, but that’s not how I run things.”

  “Where is Gallagher?” I demanded, when my brain finally caught up with the rest of me.

  “There was a sudden crisis in the mermaid tank. Some asshole clogged the filter with a handful of hay—can’t imagine who would do such a thing. Since Gallagher’s fixing things in the hybrid tent, I thought I’d fix things in here.”

  “What is this? What are you doing?” I scooted to the end of my wagon, trying to follow as he hauled the poor werewolf cub out of sight.

  Genni whined.

  “Sit still, or I’ll kick your teeth in.” Clyde reappeared on the left side of my tent and hooked the corner of one canvas panel to another, so that it was held open like living room drapes.

  He ducked out of sight for a second, then rose, hauling Genni up by her hair while her squeals crescendoed behind the makeshift gag. “We’ll be right out there.” He gestured with the cattle prod toward the space behind a large game booth, and I frowned, trying to figure out what he was up to.

  Genni’s cage stood open behind the game booth, visible to me, but not to the crowd I could hear talking and laughing on the midway.

  “What are you doing? What do you want?” I demanded. “Take her back to her dad. She has nothing to do with...whatever this is.”

  “Oh, but she does, thanks to you.” Clyde stretched toward a portable stereo on the table and pressed a button with one knuckle of the hand holding the prod. Music blared, dark and melodically haunting, and loud enough to make my ears ring. Clyde set his prod on the edge of the table and held his free hand out toward me, fingers spread.

  One, he mouthed, lowering his index finger. Two. When he got to five, he folded his thumb around his fist, then twisted to grab the cattle prod. Less than a second after he’d hauled Genni out of the tent and into the shadow of the game booth, two sidewall panels began to fold up at the front of my tent.

  My pulse racing, I turned to find Abraxas standing at the entrance, wearing a red sequined vest. Sneakers peeked from beneath the hem of his baggy black pants. He held a battery-powered megaphone. Before I could ask what he was doing or demand that he go get Gallagher, he lifted the megaphone and began shouting into it.

  “Step right up, ladies and gentlemen! Step right up! Metzger’s Menagerie is proud to announce a brand-new exhibit, opening right here, right now, for the first time ever. How special is this creature? So special that we don’t know what she is yet!”

  People began to wander into my tent, attracted by the music and the fledgling “talker” and I noticed that a red-velvet rope had been set up several feet in front of my cage. When I looked through the side exit of the tent, I realized the rope wasn’t meant to protect the audience from me, but to keep spectators too far back to see what was behind door number two: Clyde, holding the little-girl-werewolf by a handful of her hair while he brandished the cattle prod in his other hand.

  “We know her name is Drea, and that she’s not the innocent, harmless creature she appears,” Abraxas continued, while I struggled to slow my breathing and keep the world in focus. “But her species has yet to be identified, so step right up and take a look! Maybe one of you has the knowledge to unlock the mystery! If you can correctly identify the species of our mystery monster, you will win a set of four deluxe tickets to tomorrow night’s show, which includes a private behind-the scenes tour for you and three friends.”

  “She doesn’t look like anything special,” one man shouted over the music, twisting to glance at Abraxas. “She looks human.”

  “Is she a surrogate?” a woman called out from the back. “Is this safe? I read that they can influence your thoughts just from looking at you.”

  The nervous buzz of the crowd swelled and they moved as one toward the midway.

  “Wait!” Abraxas held both arms out as if to block their path, his eyes wide with panic. He was losing his audience.

  I resisted the urge to deny that I was a surrogate, because their fear was working in my favor.

  “She’s not a surrogate!” Abraxas called out. “We don’t know what she is, but we know that for sure, and if you’ll hang out for a minute—” He stopped when he realized he’d broken character, and the kid looked so flustered I almost felt sorry for him.

  But then Abraxas stood straighter and relaunched what was obviously a prepared spiel. “Don’t let her appearance fool you, ladies and gentlemen! Behind that innocent face lies a monster capable of scrambling a man’s gray matter with her bare hands. And you lucky folks will be the first to witness her live transformation.”

  I gaped at Abraxas, but he only grinned and extended a broad-armed gesture my way, as if we were coconspirators in Clyde’s outrageous ambush.

  I gripped the wire mesh, and my gaze flitted from face to rapt face within the growing audience. They stared. They pointed. They whispered in their friends’ ears while they waited, and all I could think about was that I was wearing a short, grimy linen dress, with unwashed hair and dirty feet.

  Yet that was just the latest in the string of mortifications that my existence had become.

  If I couldn’t figure out how to transform in order to save my own life, what made Clyde think I could do it for their entertainment? Or that I would, even if I could?

  Rage built in my belly. He was conspiring against Gallagher and trying to humiliate me, and I didn’t need creepy eyes or sharp claws to give him what he deserved.

  “You’re all being scammed!” I shouted, riding high on the sudden vengeful impulse.

  The chatter stopped, though the music kept playing. Abraxas stared at me, the megaphone hanging limp in his hand.

  “No, seriously.” I stared straight at the man who’d said I looked like nothing special. “I’m human. Less than two weeks ago, I was a bank teller. I had a boyfriend, and an apartment, and a mother. They took me right off the street and threw me into this cage, and if they can do that to me, they can do it to any of your daughters. They don’t even need proof that she’s not human. They just need an accusation, and once they have that, they’ll haul your daughter off and sell her to a carnival, or a lab, or a private collection, where they’ll torture her to try to get her to show you what kind of monster she is, and when that doesn’t work—because she’s not a monster—they’ll let her starve to death and inventory her corpse as a dead cryptid of unspecified origin.”

  Wives looked at their husbands. Parents clutched their children close. No one seemed to know what to say or do.

  “Don’t believe me? Look in that backpack over there.” I pointed to the table near the entrance, where Gallagher’s bag still sat. “Folded in the front pocket, you’ll find the results of the test they ran on me. You!” I pinned a woman near the back of the crowd with my gaze. “Go look.”

  She hesitated for a second, while Abraxas stared, obviously at a loss. Then she picked up the bag and unzipped the front pocket. She pulled the paper out and unfolded it. “It says she’s human,” the woman said, and the audience gasped.

  Abraxas’s eyes widened.

  Several of the teenagers had their phone cameras aimed at me, in spite of the menagerie’s rules, so I picked one and looked right at it. “Any minute now, they’ll come out with a whip or a cattle prod, to try to shut me up, and when I collapse on the floor of this cage, still completely human, you’ll know that what I’m telling you is true. And that if it can happen to me, it can happen to anyone.”

  I turned, ready to dare Clyde to come after me with his electrical prod, but he only glared at me through eyes narrowed into furious slits, his jaw bulging from being clenched.

  Then he shoved the forked tip of the cattle prod at the inside of Geneviève’s right thigh.

  Genni convulsed and made a horrible sound from behind her duct tape, but no one in the tent could hear her over the music. Her legs folded,
and she fell to the ground, but a thick clump of her hair remained in Clyde’s hand.

  I clutched the wire mesh so tightly it cut into my hands, but I couldn’t make my fingers unfold. Let her go! I shouted, and only afterward realized the shout was trapped in my head, reverberating against the inside of my skull because my jaw would not unclench and release the words.

  Clyde leaned over Genni and looked right at me. He brandished the cattle prod, then shoved it at her stomach.

  Genni convulsed again. Her hands twitched and her head slammed into the grass over and over, and this time she seemed to be choking behind her gag.

  No!

  My skin began to itch, and my scalp started to tingle. My fingertips burned, and I let go of the wire mesh, under the impression for just a moment that it was actually shocking me.

  The audience stared at me, stunned, and whatever they were seeing—whatever my body was doing—had completely undermined everything I’d just said and everything printed on the report that woman at the back still held. It’s much easier to believe what we see than what we are told.

  The tingling in my scalp became a full-fledged burning, and on the edges of my vision, I saw strands of dark hair twisting around my face. Lights flashed as people took more forbidden pictures and video footage. Then the room slid into crisp, hyper-clear focus. Colors looked brighter. Edges looked sharper. I could see a tiny mole on the earlobe of the woman at the back of the tent, who still clutched my blood test results while she stared.

  My fingers ached like knuckles in need of a crack, and when I held my hands up, I saw that my nails had tapered into curved, thin black points, more like needles than claws. I felt a steady pull to my left, as if the gravitational force had been reoriented to draw me toward Evan Clyde. I could practically feel his skin break beneath my hands, even with a steel cage and twenty feet of space standing between us.