The Midnight Zoo Read online

  But I’m only a boy, Andrej wanted to protest. What have I done? What can I do?

  Wilma gurgled, and he glanced at her. She had extricated a hand from the shawl and was wagging it at him, and Andrej heard himself think distantly that the lioness was right: his mother would be proud of how he’d cared for his brother and sister. Looking at them, she would see how he’d tried.

  He lifted his head, and his gaze circled the iron-bar wall of the zoo. The animals were watching him, tense and unmoving. Andrej stared back at them, feeling suddenly mulish, standing his ground. He would not be bullied by a pig into offering his sister to a hungry cat.

  But there are many kinds of hungers. The eagle, the bear, the monkey, and the seal; the wolf, the chamois, the llama, and the kangaroo; the lioness and Andrej, and Tomas and Wilma, and doubtlessly even the boar: all these had an echoing place inside them from which something vital was now missing. Andrej remembered the boy he’d been such a short time ago — a boy who had trusted that the world was strict but fair. Since then he had seen this faith upended and made laughable. In this new world, a kite could betray the children who played in its skimming shadow. A soldier was not an honorable warrior, but one who chose his victims from among the innocents. A woman would steal a baby, a man would obliterate a town. This wasn’t a world that made sense to Andrej: it was a hard wintry shell of a world, bare of compassion.

  Yet for all that, he still trusted. It amazed him to discover it: that underneath his grief and disenchantment, his belief in a good world was still there. And the more difficult it became to find the goodness, the more certain he was in his faith that it was there.

  He turned away from the boar’s cage, sure now that even with his back to it, the creature would not come for him. The lioness was standing in the corner of her cage, the moonlight laying stripes across her body. She watched him step closer, one step, another. A lioness is something distinctly other than a boy, but, close now, Andrej saw what it was they shared: a determination to endure.

  He shifted Wilma until she was sitting in his arms, the shawl peeled back from her face, her tiny hand tucked away. Then he lifted her up to the bars, so near that her forehead knocked the iron. The lioness was there instantly, all lashing tail and shivery muscle and cool, secretive eye. She pushed her face against the bars, her whiskers and jaw and heavy brow, her black lips and scarred snout and snowy chin. This near to her, Andrej smelled an ocher heat rising from her body, as if she’d spent a long day languishing beneath a searing sun.

  Her nose was tawny and angular, as wide as a man’s palm. It nudged Wilma’s face and the bristling muzzle must have tickled, because the baby grimaced and snuffled. The lioness breathed in the infant’s scent and breathed it out again loudly, ruffling the baby’s sparse hair. Once more she breathed, and Andrej felt the warm air gale past him — air that had been inside a lion, had moved through her heart and mind.

  Her muzzle wrinkled, and Andrej saw a glimpse of teeth and pale tongue. “They smell the same,” the lioness murmured. “My cubs smelled as she does. Like pollen.” She breathed deeply again, and Andrej saw the missing cubs returning to her on the wings of the baby’s perfume. “All young ones must come from the same place,” she said; then sat down on her haunches, seemingly satisfied.

  Dawn was coming. Night, who had been watching so closely, heard the feather-footed approach of Day in the east and drew his black steed nearer, ready to ride without effort away. The moon, which at midnight had shimmered so majestically, now seemed made of the dullest cloth. The sky that had been cobalt-blue was fading to the floury gray that would become clean morning. Dew gathered on the bars of the cages, and the kangaroo licked it up. The eagle on its perch shook its burden of wings. Smoky light slunk into the boar’s enclosure and found nothing to settle upon but a heaped pile of straw and the biscuits that Andrej had put into the cage. Tomas, sitting on the bench swinging his legs to keep warm, kept a wary eye on this pile of straw. For as long as he watched, not a strand of it shifted. The boar could be hiding under there, or it might have used the last of the dark to reach the pebbled path unseen and escape along the road from there. . . . Tomas wasn’t sure which he preferred.

  Andrej’s bag had been repacked with the siblings’ valuables and vital goods. Wilma had been fed what was left of her milk, had had her stale swaddling changed, and been nursed by Tomas until she’d fallen asleep. She lay now in the nest of Tomas’s pack, ready to be carried anywhere. She would sleep until the middle of morning, and when she woke she would be dirty and thirsty, needing everything to be done again.

  Andrej sat down on the bench beside Tomas, who didn’t stop swinging his legs. “Tom, we have to go.”

  Tomas looked at him. He knew that, after the encounter with Baba Jaga, his brother had vowed never to be caught in open daylight again. Nevertheless he asked, “Can’t we stay?”

  “No. We need to find food.”

  It was a good reason, one Tomas couldn’t deny. His stomach was grumbling. But, “We can find food in the village, and come back here,” he suggested.

  Andrej shook his head. “There’s nothing to eat in the village. You know that. The mice and birds will have taken everything that wasn’t bombed to pieces. Even if we did find something, it wouldn’t be enough. It wouldn’t be milk for Wilma.”

  Tomas’s eyes slid accusingly to where his sister slept in the pack. His gaze stalked around the zoo then, and Andrej saw all that tussled within him. “I don’t want to, Andrej.”

  “That’s what you said before.” Andrej smiled. “First you said you didn’t want to come here, and now you say you don’t want to leave.”

  Tomas pouted, ignoring this. The animals were moving lethargically behind the bars, stretching their muscles, licking their paws, sniffing the coming day. The wolf yawned redly. The llama shook its ears. In the light, the creatures were poorer than the night had made them seem. Their bones showed, their coats were scurfy, their cages looked small and unclean. Tomas’s face creased in vexation. “We can’t leave them.” He whispered it harshly. “It’s not right, Andrej!”

  “I know.”

  “There’s no one to take care of them!”

  “No, I know.”

  “They need help!”

  “I know, Tom.”

  “So what will we do?”

  Andrej said, “We’ll set them free.”

  Tomas gasped, and ogled his brother, who was brave and kind and capable of miracles and who would never have abandoned the animals to their fate, Tomas was ashamed he’d thought otherwise: scrambling to his knees he gabbled, “Yes! How? How can we?”

  Andrej shrugged. “These are cages, so there must be keys. We’ll find the keys and let them out, and they’re smart enough to find their way home.”

  Tomas looked wildly around the zoo, wringing his fingers with excitement. He pictured the kangaroo bouncing round the maple, the monkey racing gymnastically through the leaves. “They won’t bite us, will they?” he asked, suddenly unsure; Andrej shook his head and Tomas, feeling foolish, said, “No, I didn’t think so. We’ll open the cages and they’ll just run away. They probably won’t even look back. The eagle can fly. What about the seal?”

  Andrej hesitated, his dark eyes dipping, and Tomas saw he’d forgotten about the seal. They couldn’t leave it alone in the zoo swimming back and forth, back and forth until, like a shadow at dusk, there was nothing left of it; yet nor could they haul it from the pool to hobble awkwardly through the broken timber of villages and burnt stubble of the countryside. Tomas watched his brother thinking, his gaze following his thoughts as they moved around the problem. “Uncle Marin would know what to do,” he prompted.

  “A cart!” Andrej snapped his fingers. “We’ll find a cart, and put the seal in it, and push the cart to a river, and the seal can swim down the river to the sea!”

  “Clever!” Tomas rejoiced.

  Andrej stepped from the bench. “Let’s tell the wolf.”

  The dying night had turned the wo
lf’s russet coat the sleety gray of storms. The animal sat up watchfully as they approached. Stopping at the bars, Andrej wrapped his hands around the iron. “Wolf, Tomas and Wilma and I can’t stay. Soldiers are looking for us. But we’re not going to leave you trapped here. We’re going to open the cages and let you out. I know you won’t attack us. You and the bear and the chamois can find your way home to the mountains. The boar can go too, if it likes. The eagle can fly away. Maybe the lioness and the llama and the kangaroo and the monkey can go with you to the mountains. I know it’s not their home, but it’s better than being here, alone, in the zoo. We’ll put the seal into a cart and take it to a river. There’s one not far from here. It can swim down the river to the ocean. Then you’ll all be free.”

  In the wolf’s honey-colored eyes the mountains appeared, stark and windswept. The zoo animals looked at each other through the bars, the bear raising its rumpled head. “Did he say they’re opening the cages?”

  “He said they’ll open the cages!”

  “I heard him, he said it —”

  “That’s what he said, they’re opening the cages —”

  “They’re opening the cages, they’re letting us out!” The chamois sang it gleefully, prancing in a circle. The monkey screeched and pounced skyward, haring across the bars. The lioness trotted the perimeter of her cage, puffing out brisk roars. Tomas was jumping up and down, the eagle was pacing its perch. The chamois stopped prancing, and started demanding. “You must let me out first! I’ll need a head start on that cat!”

  The bear shuffled until it was sitting up. “Are you sure it will be safe?”

  Andrej turned to the big animal. “No, it won’t be safe. It will be dangerous. The mountains are far away, and the war is everywhere between here and there. You’ll need to travel at night, and be careful. Stay away from people, and don’t talk to them. There will be lots of danger — but it’s dangerous to stay here, too. There’s soldiers here. There’s rumblethings. You’re helpless in these cages.”

  “I will be scared,” the kangaroo decided.

  “Don’t be scared!” Tomas cried; his heart bled for the little beast. “You won’t be scared, you’ll be free!”

  “Freedom always sounds nice.” The llama spoke up primly. “But is it clever? If we leave the zoo, who’ll take care of us? Who’ll bring food and water? Who will change the straw? Where will I sleep? What will I do when it rains? What if I get lonely — who will I talk to? What if something bad happens — what if I fall down a hill?”

  “You’ll take care of yourself!” Tomas flung up his arms with the simplicity of it. “You’ll learn how to do it. Everybody learns to look after themselves. When I was young, I couldn’t tie my laces: but then I learned, and now I can!”

  “These kids have looked after themselves for two turns of the moon,” said the chamois with disdain. “If they can survive on what meager brains they have, one imagines you can too.”

  “We could look after each other,” offered the kangaroo, but the llama was not reassured. “I’d rather stay here. It sounds too scary.”

  “It is scary, sometimes,” Tomas admitted. “But the scary bits are what make you brave.”

  “You’ll just have to believe us,” said Andrej. “You’re not supposed to have iron bars around you — no one is supposed to have that. You’re supposed to fall down hills and get lonely, and find your own food and get wet when it rains. That’s what happens when you’re alive.”

  “When you’re filling your space,” said the bear.

  “It can be frightening, but underneath it’s fine. Like the sun is fine on a nice day, you know?”

  The llama looked determinedly doubtful; then, the next instant, reflective. It said, “Sometimes I have a dream that I’m eating blue flowers. They are very tasty, and in the dream I know they’re what I’m supposed to eat, and I’m happy. But I’ve never seen blue flowers in real life. I’ve only seen white flowers growing in the grass down there. Are there such things as blue flowers?”

  “There’s all kinds of flowers!” Tomas laughed. “Blue ones, yellow ones, red and pink and green ones — hundreds of flowers! When you’re free, you can eat them all!”

  “No,” said the llama, “I only want the blue ones. Something tells me they’re the most delicious. I don’t know how I know it, but I do. And I don’t care if no one believes me.”

  Andrej turned to the wolf. “We need the keys to the cages. Is there somewhere special the zoo’s owner used to keep them?”

  “There is,” said the wolf.

  “Where? They must be close — hidden under a brick maybe, or buried in a vat of grain —”

  The wolf said, “The special place where the owner kept the keys was in his coat pocket.”

  It took a moment for the meaning of this to sink through Andrej’s mind. Then he said, “Was he wearing the coat when he went away with the lions?”

  “He wore the coat everywhere he went.”

  Andrej nodded. He shifted his grip on the bars. “Are there spare keys? There must be.”

  “Of course there are,” the wolf replied. “It would be unwise to have only one set of keys.”

  “Well then? Do you know where they are? Wolf?”

  The wolf gazed at him without blinking. Andrej felt it would turn away, but it didn’t. It said, “I only heard of spare keys mentioned once, by Alice to her friends. It was the night before they blew up the train, and they were excited. They’d been using the spare keys to get into the zoo for their secret meetings. That night, Alice said she mustn’t forget to return the keys to the hook in the hallway of her house, where they belonged.”

  In his mind Andrej saw the annihilated village that lay beyond the zoo’s wrought-iron fence, the houses that were no longer homes but ranges of rubble, the streets that weren’t streets but repugnant obstacle courses made from the remains of lives. He laid his forehead against the bars and closed his eyes. Tomas asked, “What’s happening? Andrej?”

  Andrej opened his eyes. “I’m sorry,” he told the wolf.

  “What’s going on?” asked the chamois, craning to peer past the bars.

  “There are no keys,” the wolf announced into the dawn.

  “No keys?” The llama snorted. “Now you’re being silly. No keys! There are locks, and locks have keys, so there must be keys. . . .”

  The monkey had gone very still, its gemlike eyes darting. It looked at Andrej, at Tomas, at Wilma, and its pink lip lifted to show its white, flintlike fangs. Then it erupted, throwing itself screaming from rope to rope, sprinting howling across the bars. It dashed to the floor and began to bang its food bowl on the stone so the metal rang earsplittingly. The kangaroo, terrified, careered into a corner and fell kicking; the llama brayed and skittered and went down on the slippery stone. The lioness rushed to the bars that separated her from the monkey and tried to force a paw through, twisting and snarling. The bear rose titanically to its full height, loosed a furious roar. Tomas pushed past Andrej and threw himself at the wolf’s cage, pounding his fists on the iron. The fragile air rang with the catastrophic clangor of misery and rage and betrayal. Andrej caught at his brother’s collar, yanked him off his feet. “Stop!” he shouted. “Don’t do that!”

  “It’s not fair!” Tomas writhed. “It’s not fair, it’s not —”

  Andrej shook him. “Stop it, I told you! The soldiers will hear!”

  The monkey slammed the bowl one last time before hurling it into a corner and turning its back on the children. The kangaroo lay panting, eyes rolling to the sky; a twinge went through the coat of the collapsed llama. The bear went down on its four paws, then slumped onto the stone. Tomas’s eyes were brimming with tears; when Andrej let him go he lurched about blindly, unhappy everywhere. “Andrej!” he gasped. “It’s not fair! What can we do?”

  “Get the baby,” his brother said shortly. “You’ve woken her up.”

  Tomas mopped his face with one arm while he fished Wilma from the pack with the other, watching with t
ragic eyes as Andrej dug through the contents of his own pack until he found what he wanted. For the second time that night he held up to the light the corkscrew he’d discovered on the village street. “Yes!” Tomas nodded vigorously. “That’s clever, Andrej!”

  Bouncing the baby, he watched in complete and silent faith as Andrej slipped the corkscrew into the lock of the wolf’s pen and rotated the implement artfully. The wolf edged to the center of its cage, ears flicking to the grate of metal on metal. When the bolt ignored the first delicate touch, Andrej became more persuasive, jabbing and wriggling the corkscrew, pushing and shaking the gate: yet the knuckle of iron remained unmoved, slotted dutifully through the locking plate. Andrej swore and stepped back, swiping the hair from his eyes. Tomas and the animals watched as he crossed to the seal’s cage and tried again, stabbing and gouging the corkscrew into the lock’s innards. The bolt remained steadfast, and something ominous happened: the corkscrew bent like a bow. Tense in every muscle, Andrej tried one last time, digging the sway-backed corkscrew into the lock of the lioness’s cage. The feline watched him leerily, ears flattened to her head. Tomas couldn’t bear to see his brother doing his best, and failing: when Andrej’s shoulders dropped he hurried to say, “It doesn’t matter Andrej, it isn’t your fault! We’ll think of another way . . .”