The Menagerie #2

by Tui T. Sutherland

  “Oh, we’ve had lots of great conversations with piles of ashes,” Zoe said with a sigh. “That bird needs serious anti-anxiety meds. Matthew went to see if he could get Nero to stay nonflammable long enough for the voir dire, but I’m not holding my breath. He’ll probably set himself on fire again at the very idea of serving on a jury.”

  Mrs. Kahn clapped her hands, but between the unicorns complaining loudly, the griffins and dragons growling at each other, and the yeti still blaaaarghing grumpily in the background, the noise level was too high for anyone to pay attention to her.

  Agent Runcible stood and blew a short, sharp whistle. The crowd fell silent as he stalked up to join Mrs. Kahn at the front.

  Runcible surveyed them, looking displeased. “All prospective jurors need to line up, single file, along the wall. We’ll call you forward one at a time. Predators at the front.”

  “Quickly, please!” Ruby called, bustling up to join him. “Dragons first!”

  “She’s really going to defend Scratch?” Logan asked Zoe.

  “Well, she thinks she is.” Zoe frowned at her sister’s tailored red suit and the clipboard Ruby was waving at everyone. Ruby caught her expression and sent an equally disapproving look at Logan. “Excuse me.”

  Zoe went to help escort Riff and Nira into place. The two griffins turned to nudge her affectionately with their beaks. Logan had visited the cubs before coming over here and had gotten an earful about how unfair it was that they couldn’t be on the jury and why didn’t anyone care about their opinions and did juries get snacks? Or treasure? And they would be great jurors and hey while Mom and Dad are gone let’s have a contest to see who can eat the most pears hooray bye Logan!

  Logan smiled, thinking about them, but his smile faded as he glanced over at the SNAPA agents. If this trial went badly . . . not only would it mean Scratch’s extermination, but most likely the whole Menagerie would be shut down, with all the animals sent elsewhere, or worse.

  Finally the potential jurors were arranged, more or less, in a line. Mr. Kahn led Clawdius forward to a spot in front of the tables, while the agents, Mrs. Kahn, and Ruby took their seats.

  Agent Runcible studied the silver dragon. “What are your feelings about Scratch?” he asked carefully.

  “Neither wise in years nor stars is Scratch the young.” Clawdius inspected his talons and gave the mountain caves a faraway, pensive look. “To leap before time is to break one’s wings.”

  Ruby cleared her throat loudly, then paused to flip a page on her clipboard and jot something down. Finally, she looked up at Clawdius. “Do you think Scratch could have committed this terrible crime? Would he kill Pelly if given the chance? Could he, perhaps, have been acting on natural instinct?”

  Logan was no expert, but it seemed counterproductive to ask that many questions at once. Particularly of a dragon, whose speech was a little convoluted to begin with.

  “Of little consequence is loss of fat the honk-bird,” Clawdius observed. Behind Logan, Melissa snorted. “Evermore after-dragon meets not the honk-birds.” His silver scales caught the afternoon sunlight as the dragon cocked his head before continuing. “Caring not about honk-bird or eating of honk-bird is Clawdius. Only hopeful is Clawdius for delicious the meal and trouble the worthwhile for Scratch.”

  “I see. Very clear,” said Agent Runcible. “We respectfully dismiss this juror.”

  Ruby frowned, but the other SNAPA agent was already waving Firebella forward. Agent Dantes looked up at the female dragon, then quickly down at her notes with a deep breath.

  While Clawdius reflected light, Firebella seemed to absorb it. Her scales were velvety black with an occasional flash of purple. Logan did not want to encounter her in the dark of night. Well, he didn’t particularly want to encounter her anytime without a fireproof, bite-proof, claw-proof suit and lots of backup.

  The graceful dragon stopped in front of the yurt and blinked her yellow eyes at Runcible and Ruby.

  “Could you be impartial in this trial?” Runcible asked her.

  “Sssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss,” hissed Firebella, flicking her tongue at him.

  Runcible glanced at the electric shock wand in Mrs. Kahn’s hand, perhaps wishing they were all wearing fireproof suits. “If we promise not to wake you with any more inspections?” he offered.

  “Rrrrrrrrrll,” growled Firebella.

  “Wait,” said Mrs. Kahn as Runcible reached for the wand. “Firebella, we just want to know—do you think Scratch is guilty or not?”

  “No,” said Firebella. And then, with equal force, “Yes. Guilty. Not guilty. No scales off my tail to both. Prefer to be sssssleeping would be Firebella.”

  Ruby stepped forward, but with a wary glance at Firebella’s narrowing eyes, she didn’t waste any time. “How do you feel about Pelly’s death?”

  “Long the march of time is on and on. Moonrise to sunset and ever the star-time, but all things to death in close of brief years. Briefer for man-things. Briefer also but less brief for golden honk-birds.”

  “I’ll take that as a not bad,” Ruby muttered. She turned to Runcible. “The defense has no objections.”

  “Nor the prosecution. Firebella, you will be on the jury.”

  The dragon narrowed her yellow eyes still more and breathed a long plume of white smoke. “So-ever and ever delighted is Firebella.”

  “Yes, well,” said Dantes, clearing her throat. “Both dragons should return to their caves now.”

  “I’ll take them,” Matthew said from the back. Logan and Zoe twisted to look at him and Zoe mouthed “Nero?” Matthew made a face and waved his hands like a puff of smoke. He took the wand from Mrs. Kahn and led the dragons back to the mountain path.

  Logan hoped he’d be fearless like that by high school. Maybe he could go to Tracker camp, too, like Matthew, and become a Tracker like Mom one day.

  He glanced at the griffins. Then again, he wouldn’t mind staying in one place, either, and taking care of mythical creatures instead of chasing them around the world.

  Riff was next, flapping his wings and strutting importantly. It quickly became clear that his only opinions about dragons were that they had entirely too much treasure and that he’d be a better guardian of the Menagerie than they were.

  Griffins have been noble guardians of precious things for thousands of years, he declared with another wing flap. No geese would ever have been eaten on our watch. Ahem. He shot an arch look at Mr. and Mrs. Kahn.

  “And how did you feel about Pelly?” Ruby asked.

  The giant griffin clacked his beak. Nasty bundle of feathers, always snapping at my cubs. But I certainly don’t approve of anyone getting eaten around here.

  “He’s okay by me,” Ruby said to Runcible, who nodded.

  “Griffins!” Marco whispered to Logan.

  “Actual griffins,” Logan whispered back, and Marco grinned.

  Nira looked less smug but more powerful as she stalked up in front of the agents. She sat down purposefully and ruffled her neck feathers once before settling.

  “Nira, what are your preconceptions of Scratch?” Ruby asked.

  The white griffin yawned. That scrawny dragon? No match for me or my family. My cubs could take him down with their wings tied behind their backs.

  Logan had seen enough of the six griffin cubs playing with their mother to believe she was probably right.

  “Do you think he’s guilty?” asked Agent Runcible.

  Nira shrugged. I haven’t seen the evidence yet, have I?

  Ruby and Runcible consulted for a minute, then passed Nira through to the jury. The two griffins paced off to the side and sat down with their tails curled around their paws, watching the rest of the crowd with their sharp gaze.

  The merpeople went next. The first mermaid was named Coral; she had long dark hair and blue fingernails, and she snorted with disgust when she found out there would be no pay for jurors. She shot Blue a disgruntled look before turning back to Runcible and Ruby. “Why would I waste my t
ime then?” she asked.

  “Because one of the Menagerie’s charges is dead and another is suspected of killing her. We need a jury of Scratch’s peers to evaluate the evidence and decide if he’s guilty,” Mrs. Kahn explained patiently.

  “I would hardly call mermaids and dragons peers,” Coral said haughtily. “And he’s definitely guilty. But I don’t know how much of a crime it really was. That goose was obnoxious—always demanding the best fish from the lake. As if she were the only one—”

  “I think we’ve heard enough. Coral, you may be excused,” Ruby interjected.

  The mermaid tossed her hair and flounced back to the lake without waiting for the other merfolk. The next one, a stocky merman named Baleen, was placid and agreeable and had no opinion on the case; he was passed straight through to the jury. Then came Sapphire, who kept winking at Blue and flirting with Runcible, but managed not to say anything terribly awful, so she ended up on the jury as well.

  While Runcible was interviewing Charlemagne, Mrs. Kahn leaned over and whispered something to the other SNAPA agent. Dantes nodded and slid a box out from under her chair, then passed it down the table to Zoe’s mom and Ruby.

  Logan noticed that Zoe was watching the box with fierce concentration. “What is that?” he whispered.

  “The evidence,” she whispered back. “SNAPA said we could look through it today in order to prepare for Thursday.”

  “Looks like they’re wrapping up,” Marco said as Runcible and Ruby compared notes, then waved Charlemagne through to the jury. “Can we get closer to the unicorns?”

  “Let’s introduce you to the griffins instead,” said Logan. “They’re a bit less . . . megalomaniacal.”

  “Oooo, spelling bee word,” Marco said.

  “Who’d they pick?” Blue asked. “I stopped paying attention.”

  “Looks like the jury is Firebella, Riff, Nira, Baleen, Sapphire”—Zoe made a face—“and Charlemagne.” She grabbed Blue’s shoulder. “Quick, while they’re finishing up, let’s see if we can look at the evidence first.”

  She sidled up behind her mom and gave her a nudge. Mrs. Kahn was listening to Ruby argue with the agents and distractedly slid the box toward Zoe.

  Logan shivered as Zoe pulled out a sealed clear plastic bag with one bloodstained feather inside. Underneath it were a set of photos of the crime scene—blood and feathers everywhere—followed by a picture of Scratch’s bloodstained teeth.

  “Oh, no,” Zoe said. “They just have to show these to the jury and the trial will be over. Who wouldn’t convict him?” She glanced up at the mountains. “Poor Scratch.”

  “We have two more days,” Logan said, although the pictures made him feel pretty discouraged, too. “We’ll find the real killer.”

  “Yikes,” Marco said, peering over Zoe’s shoulder at the photos. “Oh, man, I am totally having nightmares tonight. Remind me not to hang out with any dragons while I’m a rooster.” He took the bag from her and held it up so the afternoon sun shone through the feather. “Wow, and she was super-old, too. Imagine making it all the way to four hundred and then getting eaten just like that.”

  Zoe turned slowly to stare at him. “What are you talking about?”

  Marco fluttered the plastic bag with the feather in it. “Four hundred and twelve? Four hundred and sixteen? Somewhere in there, I think.”

  “Pelly was a hundred and three years old,” Zoe said.

  “Oh,” said Marco. He lifted a few more thin bags of feathers out of the box and studied them for a moment, then looked up at Zoe, Logan, and Blue. “Then these feathers came from some other goose.”

  SIXTEEN

  Pelly could be alive.

  Zoe felt weird tingles up and down her arms. If Pelly was alive—if they could get her back—

  She glanced down the table, but her mom and the agents hadn’t heard Marco. Ruby was arguing loudly for a later court date, so no one was paying attention to Zoe or the others. Except for Captain Fuzzbutt, whose big brown eyes were watching her curiously from the island of ice.

  “In here,” Zoe whispered to the others, pointing at the yurt. She dropped the photos and feather bags back into the evidence box, climbed over the low concrete wall, and slid across the ice to Mooncrusher. Behind her she could hear Logan and Marco and Blue wobbling and crunching carefully between the ice sculptures.

  “Blaaaaaargh,” the yeti observed, looking down at her with his arms folded.

  “I know,” Zoe said. “I wouldn’t want a crowd like this outside my room, either. Can we use your yurt for a minute?”

  Mooncrusher lifted his sunglasses and squinted at her.

  “It’s for a good reason,” she promised.

  “Blaargh blaargh,” he said, waving one paw at his front door. Captain Fuzzbutt scrambled to his feet and edged out of the way. Zoe kissed the tip of his trunk as he went by, and he patted her on the head with it.

  Zoe lifted aside the thick red wool curtain and beckoned to the others. As they ducked inside, Logan and Marco both made strangled “gaack” noises.

  Which wasn’t entirely fair. Zoe knew that Mooncrusher kept his yurt as neat as possible. He swept it every day, made the bed in the corner, cleaned up the scraps around his weaving loom, and only watched the small TV at night, when all his groundskeeper duties were done. It wasn’t his fault that he shed like a normal yeti—which is to say, all over the place all the time. Or that he hated to take baths, also like a normal yeti, so the whole yurt smelled like a herd of damp yaks.

  Blue sat down on Mooncrusher’s weaving stool. Logan and Marco eyed the furry futon and the furry recliner and opted to stay standing. Zoe peeked through the curtain, making sure her parents and the agents were still occupied and out of earshot, then turned back to Marco.

  “Okay,” she said. “Explain. Those aren’t Pelly’s feathers?”

  He shrugged. “Those feathers come from an old goose, at least four hundred years old. I can’t really explain how I know. It’s sort of a wererooster thing.”

  “I’m sure that’s going to stand up in court,” Logan said. “This is our feather expert, who is twelve and an unregistered werecreature, but he’s going to crack this case wide open.”

  “I wonder if there’s a way to verify it,” Zoe said. “Like DNA testing or something.”

  “On goose feathers?” Marco said. “Sure, I bet the FBI will get right on that.”

  “But they aren’t ordinary goose feathers,” Logan said. “They’re huge and kind of sparkly, like Pelly’s. You can’t just pick up feathers like that on your average farm, right? Nor do average geese live to be a hundred, let alone four hundred.”

  “So they must have come from another goose who lays golden eggs,” Zoe said. Seeing Logan’s surprised look, she added, “There are about ten or twelve of them, I forget exactly. Not like Nero, who is the only phoenix in the world.”

  “So someone got those feathers from another golden goose and brought them here,” said Blue.

  “The blood probably isn’t hers, either,” Logan said. “Which means whoever it is wants us to think Pelly’s dead, but they actually stole her.”

  “For her golden eggs,” Blue guessed.

  Logan and Zoe exchanged glances. Or because they knew that without those golden eggs, the Menagerie would financially collapse, Zoe thought. Because they hate us, although I have no idea why.

  “So all we have to do is track down the thief, rescue Pelly, and clear Scratch, and then we save the Menagerie!” Zoe said.

  “No problem,” Blue said. He shot her a wry smile. “At least it’s better than going after a werewolf on a full moon.”

  “And now we know where to start,” Zoe pointed out. “We find out where the thief could have gotten the fake feathers—which other menageries have golden geese, and if any of them are that old.”

  “How would we check that?” Logan asked. “Do you have some kind of database?”

  “Sort of, but ours is way out of date,” Zoe admitted. “The best way to chec
k would be on one of the agents’ tablet computers.”

  “So we tell them—” Blue started.

  “No!” Zoe said quickly. “We shouldn’t tell anyone yet—they won’t believe us until we find Pelly, and they’ll just have lots of questions for Marco. We need to focus on getting her back before the trial.”

  “And then they can’t exterminate Scratch,” Logan said. “Right? He won’t be in trouble for the sheep?”

  “Some trouble, but not extermination-level trouble,” Zoe said. “The fact that he came back to the Menagerie instead of escaping after eating the sheep will help.” She went to the door and peeked out at the agents. Mrs. Kahn was sorting through the evidence with Ruby; Runcible stood next to them with an impatient expression on his face. The strap of his computer bag crisscrossed his chest, and he held on to it with one hand as he waited. Zoe couldn’t imagine getting his computer away from him.

  But Delia . . .

  The other agent slipped her tablet into a case and put the whole thing inside her purse, which was brown leather with brass buckles and hung from one shoulder. She unclipped her long dark hair, shook it back, and clipped it up again. Her gray gaze drifted to the dragon mountain caves and Zoe thought she looked a little sad. She’d always seemed so nice—asking them to call her Delia, saying reassuring things about the Menagerie. Maybe she wouldn’t even mind if they asked to look at her computer . . . but just in case, it was safer not to ask.

  “We’ll need a distraction,” Zoe said.

  “Can we download the database somehow?” Logan asked.

  “Not on one of those computers,” Marco said. “Not in a hurry without a particular attachment. Victor has a tablet like that, which, by the way, is totally unfair, because it’s not like he really needs it for high school and I’m pretty sure he just uses it for video games and watching YouTube videos about eating mice.”

  “Gross!” Logan yelped.

  “Owls eating mice,” Marco pointed out. “Not people. Obviously.”

  “Slightly less gross,” Logan amended.