The Zoo at the Edge of the World (2 page)

2.

T
here was a metallic clatter in the pen to my left, and then a powerful snort.

Leedo Flute flipped himself over the railing of the Boar Den and rolled onto the Golden Path. He looked at me, spit, and then walked away.

Leedo is one of our native workers, and he must have had a tangle with Tuskus, our male forest boar. Tuskus had never liked Leedo, who held his dung shovel in the air like a meat cleaver, scaring the boars. Leedo wouldn't pay attention when I tried to show him the proper way.

Father might be back that afternoon, and if the Boar Den wasn't clean, there'd be a price to pay. So I unlocked the door to the den and found the shovel lying in the muddy pit. When I picked it up, I was sure to hold the blade downward like I was stirring a kettle of awful-smelling soup.

Tuskus lifted his head and snorted at me. He quickly trotted between me and the two female boars, Gray Beard and Belly Wart. Tuskus is very protective of those two.

“It's your poop I'm after,” I said. “Not your girlfriends.”

I went about my business clearing his business, and Tuskus began circling me. I let him sniff at my pants legs and shirt while Kenji hung tight to my neck, keeping a cautious eye on the boar. Finally, Tuskus whined and pressed his cheek against my thigh. I scratched his forehead and he grunted happily.

He's a piglet at heart. It's just that most people can't see past the eight-inch tusks we've named him for. I can't say I blame them for that.

“You stinky thing!” I said, as a great bubble of spit slimed its way onto my pants leg. “I come in here to get you cleaned up, and look what you duh-dd-d—”

The words caught in my throat. I saw Leedo leaning over the fence, leering at me.

“Make friends with a pig, smell like a pig.” He laughed.

I kept shoveling.

“How come you talk to animals but you won't talk to me, little Marlin?”

I didn't look up.

“Why's your brother making us clean everything when the boss isn't even back yet?” Leedo leaned over the fence and picked up a clump of wet dirt. He crumpled it between his reedy fingers. “Maybe the boss isn't coming back.”

I stuck the shovel in the ground and faced him. Leedo was, without question, my least favorite employee. He was rude to the guests and always late with his duties. But no matter how often Tim complained, Father would never fire him. Father would say that everyone was good at something.

“He's c-cc-cuh-cuh—”
He's coming back,
I tried to say, but immediately regretted it.

“What's that, little Marlin?” Leedo laughed. “I don't speak your language.”

I felt blood rush to my face. I wanted to take the shovel out of the ground and slap him on the side of the head with it.

“Hunting jaguar is not like hunting a little boar,” Leedo continued, throwing a clump of dirt at Tuskus's head. It spooked him and he jumped up snorting. “When you hunt a jaguar, he hunts you right back.”

I thought about opening the gate and letting Tuskus have his way with Leedo. But that wouldn't be the right thing to do. Father was counting on Tim and me to act responsibly in his stead.

So I picked up the shovel and got back to work. Behind me Leedo cursed and walked off.
My father is Ronan Rackham,
I thought;
he is smarter and stronger than anything on earth. No one can kill him.

Or so I hoped.

It was our employees' fault that Father had to risk his life in the first place. Our zoo is built on an ancient pyramid, and we'd turned every part of it into an attraction except for one: the Sky Shrine. The biggest and highest point on the pyramid is set up like a stadium, with a large pit surrounded by stone benches. Father thought it would be an excellent place to make a circus ring and put on animal shows.

Construction was going fine until one of our cage keepers, Nathtam Leent, told everyone a seer from the Tribes had claimed the Sky Shrine was holy and it was sacrilege to make a circus there. “The Tribes” is what we call the various communities of Arawaks and Caribs that still live in their villages and do things the old way. Most of our employees are former Tribesmen as well, so Father gives the native communities respect. He even bought the fabric for the circus tent from the Tribes. That's how they learned what he was up to.

We raised the tent last week, and Nathtam led a third of our employees on strike and into the jungle. They planned to rejoin the Tribesmen there.

Father was as angry about this as I had ever seen him. He was missing all through dinner and then appeared at my bedroom door at midnight, his eyes like stone.

The circus was going to be the most impressive part of the resort, Father told me, the centerpiece of the new zoo experience. It was the reason he would be able to raise the fees he was charging the guests for the coming season. He said he'd made some very expensive land deals recently, and if we had to close the resort for even one week, it could be disastrous.

I didn't sleep well that night, fearing our zoo would close. All the animals would be released into the jungle, and I would have to return to Georgetown. I'd lose my friends and have only Kenji to talk to.

But the next morning our striking workers were waiting at the gate. They were all there, except for one.

They had made camp in the jungle that first night, but after sunset Nathtam had gone missing. It was a moonless night, and they couldn't search for him until morning.

The found him just after sunrise. He was hanging from a tree. Or part of him was.

A jaguar had got to him.

When a jaguar turns man-eater, he learns a bad lesson: people taste good and are easy to catch. Whole tribal villages had been terrorized when a jaguar learned to hunt humans. That's why the workers came back. They needed the protection of our walls—the protection only my father could provide.

Father opened our gates to the men, and let them have their jobs and quarters back with no punishments. When they feared for the safety of their families still living in the villages, Father told them he'd go out and kill the man-eater himself.

“We are Rackham men,” he told Tim and me. “And Rackhams always do what's right.”

3.

T
im and I were at the boat only to greet the guests, but the employees did all the work, carrying luggage and directing everyone to their carriages. Father would usually make a big show of taking one guest's luggage personally, often that of the most important visitor. Some of the richest and most powerful people in the world come to our resort. I've seen Father's account books, and what these guests pay for a week's vacation could get you a modest house in Georgetown.

As the guests came off the boat, Tim leaped right into Father's shoes, complimenting the sweating ladies on their beauty and slapping the overstuffed gentlemen on their backs. A wet sound, that slap. These rich ladies and gentlemen have no sense of proper jungle wear.

A lady in a drooping red hat tapped her husband on the shoulder and whispered, “That's them, right behind us!”

The couple stepped to the side of the gangplank and made a deep bow, and the other guests around them followed suit. I looked for the people they were talking about, but before I could see, Tim nearly pushed me over, pressing down my head.

When I looked back up, a family of three was slowly making their way toward the dock. The first was a giant white-haired man whose beard radiated from his cheeks into two perfect corners below his ears. He wore a dazzling vest with what looked like actual silver thread woven into the fabric. A gold watch peeked up from his pocket. His manner was stately and regal and was betrayed only by the fact that his linen pants were so soaked with sweat, it looked like he'd just sat in a bathtub.

Next to him strode a tall, elegant woman who I assumed was his wife. Her beauty was so striking, I hardly noticed the rouge and mascara melting down her face in the heat.

And in front of them was a girl. At first glance I took her for a servant, because she was so out of line with the other two in both pace and demeanor. She walked with a broad step and had hitched up her dress and rolled up her sleeves to keep cool. I'd never seen a guest do that right off the boat before when they were still trying to impress the other guests.

She also didn't have the melting makeup problem, because she wore none.

“Duke, Duchess.” Tim stepped between the family and me, and bowed. Then he turned to the girl, who looked about my age, twelve or thirteen. “Lady Bradshire. I am Timothy Rackham, and I bid all of you welcome to the Zoo at the Edge of the World. Allow me to take your bags.”

Tim reached out his hand and grabbed an ornate bag from the porter.

“What a gentleman!” the duchess cooed.

“You, my boy,” said the duke as he shook Tim's unencumbered hand, “are the very image of your father.”

I'd heard we had some noble family coming this week. Father said he knew the Duke of Bradshire from his brief time in the navy and that he'd be bringing his wife. He didn't say anything to me about the daughter.

“And you're a Rackham, too?” The girl pushed past Tim and curtsied for me. “You're all famous back in England, you know.”

“Yes, that's my younger brother, Marlin,” Tim said, smiling through his teeth.

“Oh!” she said, tittering. “You have no idea how boring life is back there. What's it like to be an adventurer?”

She was speaking directly to me. None of the guests ever spoke directly to me. Her eyes were green and so innocent in their inquiring that I could tell she actually expected an answer. The last thing I wanted to do was stutter in her pretty face.

“That's the dullard son,” the Duchess of Bradshire whispered behind her hand loudly enough for everyone to hear. She gave me a squinting smile through her melted makeup. The girl looked embarrassed and dropped her eyes.

A weight smacked my chest and I reflexively grabbed it. Tim had shoved the duke's bag at me and was fighting with the devil to contain his laughter. He just managed to choke out, “Show them to their carriage,” before bolting off in a hysterical fit behind a donkey.

I slowly lifted my chin from the bag but made no eye contact with the duke and his family. I nodded in the direction of their carriage and led the way forward.

The length of boardwalk from the gangplank to the duke's carriage was short, but the bag was large; even with my arms wrapped around it, my hands barely touched. It was a struggle to open the door without losing my grip on the bag. Once the bag was safely inside, I stepped back, bowed, and gestured for the duke's family to enter. One by one I watched their feet walk by, until their daughter's knobby knees stopped in front of my view.

I kept my head bowed until she tapped my shoulder.

“Would you like to ride with us?” she asked.

Tim reappeared from behind the donkey. “That's not customary,” he said. “We walk up.”

The girl smiled at Tim. “He brought our bag to the carriage; why not see it the rest of the way?”

The dumfounded look on my brother's face was delicious, and I wish I'd had more time to enjoy it, but as soon as she'd dismissed him, the girl took my arm and pulled me into the carriage with her parents. The door swung shut behind me, and then I was there with the Bradshire family, nobility of a country I'd never seen.

“Let the boy go about his business,” said the duke.

“What better business does he have than getting acquainted with us?” his daughter replied. “We are his guests, after all.”

With that she knocked twice on the wall of the carriage, and the driver set off.

We hit a bump, and the duchess nearly fell out of her seat. “You behave yourself on this trip, young lady,” she tried to scold the girl, but between the streaks of red and black makeup on her face and the way she clung to the walls of the carriage, she was hard to take seriously.

“Don't be so stiff, Mummy,” her daughter chided. “We're here to have an adventure!”

The duchess considered her grimly. Adventuring, I wagered, was not her cup of tea.

The girl looked at me happily from the opposite bench and squinted as though she were puzzling me out.

“My name is Olivia,” she said.

“Lady Olivia,” corrected the duke.

“Oh, you don't need to say that part among friends. What's your name? I don't think I got it.”

“Livia! Stop torturing that boy,” said the duke as he tried to steady himself in the bouncing carriage. “He's a mute.”

My face heated up. Olivia looked away to hide her disappointment.

I closed my eyes and remembered the techniques the speech doctor had taught me in Georgetown.
Lips, tongue, teeth, air.
I am not a mute.

“Mmm-mm—muh, ma ma,” I stuttered, and stopped.

The duke huffed, and the duchess shot a knowing look toward her husband. But Olivia sat still and considered me calmly. I started again, deliberately working the mechanics of my mouth.

“MM-mm—MUH—MUH—Marlin,” I managed.

Olivia smiled. “Marlin! Good to meet you.” She took my hand in hers and very enthusiastically shook it. Her hands were much softer than mine, and way more clean.

“I can't believe I'm actually meeting the world-famous Rackhams! This is my very first time in South America,” she said. “Daddy's here to buy land for a sugar forest. He says we might move here!”

The duchess kicked Olivia in the shin from across the carriage.

“Ow!” she cried.

The duke stiffened up. “I'm not sure where my daughter comes up with these stories.”

Olivia opened her mouth to say something but seemed to think better of it, and sighed.

My father was born to a wealthy family like the Bradshires back in England, but he hated the stodgy life he led there. He longed for adventure in the colonies. So first chance he got, he hopped a ship for Guiana, Britain's colony on the South American mainland. But in the port city of Georgetown he found men not too different from the ones he was fleeing in England: merchants and landowners obsessed with reaping riches from the mines and sugarcane plantations around the coast. He spent the next thirty years traveling the jungles of the Amazon and writing dispatches for British newspapers.

On a rare visit to Georgetown, he met Marion Coates, the daughter of a ship's captain. They fell in love and she convinced him to give up his adventuring and settle in the city. They lived there together for three years, very happily. But Marion, my mother, died of illness soon after I was born. Neither Tim nor I have any memory of her.

Father wrote to his brother back in England with instructions to sell his estate there, and he used the money to move us upriver and into the jungle. That's where he built this resort, the Zoo at the Edge of the World.

The idea was to make a destination for the rich merchants in Georgetown, demonstrating the beauty of the natural world. But I suppose it caught the attention of the wealthy back in England as well, because soon loads of them were boarding steamships bound for South America just to visit us.

I can't tell you if we're famous or not, but the resort is always booked.

“Daddy, look!” Olivia squealed as the carriage pulled onto the Golden Path. “The Grand Gate! It's even better than in the books!”