by K. E. Rocha
Spencer listened to the sound of doors sliding shut. He waited for Dora or Aldo to give him some sign it was safe to come out of hiding. After a few minutes, Dora spoke up.
“He’s gone.”
Spencer stepped out from behind the curtain. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Aldo climbing down from his hiding spot in one of Dora’s four trees. The glass doors had been closed and latched on the outside.
“We’re locked in?” Spencer could hear the nerves in his own voice.
“You think after all these years I haven’t figured out how to get in and out of here when I want to?” Dora asked bluntly.
“Oh … right.”
“Does he always lock you in at night?” Aldo asked, padding over to Dora and Spencer.
“No.”
“He said it was because you’ve been visiting someone,” Spencer said. “Pam doesn’t like it.” Wait … Suddenly, Spencer was bursting with questions. He blurted them out. “Is it my parents? And Uncle Mark? Who you’ve been visiting? Can you tell us where they are, Dora? Please?”
Dora looked away. “Tell me what else he said.”
Spencer hesitated, afraid telling Dora what Pam had said would make her angry again.
“What did he say?” the bear repeated.
“He said that B.D. will only be here until the wounds you gave him heal. Then, Pam said, he’s going to send B.D. to the animal dealer he sold him to last night,” Spencer started.
“What does that mean, Spencer?” Aldo stared at Spencer in confusion.
Spencer looked back and forth between Aldo and Dora. There was no sense holding back the truth now. “Last night, Pam sold some Bearhaven bears in an auction. B.D. was one of those bears.”
“But … he didn’t know he’d have B.D.,” Aldo said. “Why would he—”
“What else did Pam say?” Dora interrupted impatiently.
“He said he could sell you for a lot more than what he sold B.D. for,” Spencer watched Dora closely. Her eyes clouded with anger. “But he doesn’t want to sell you,” Spencer rushed to add. “He’s not going to. Yet. Then he said he was closing you in tonight because he didn’t like you visiting someone. That’s it. I swear.” Spencer held his breath, waiting for Dora to react. When she didn’t, he decided to try asking her about Mom, Dad, and Uncle Mark again. “Dora, do you know where Pam is keeping my family?”
Dora stared blankly back at Spencer. Aldo’s head was bowed low. He looked lost in thought, like he was still trying to make sense of the fact that Pam had sold Bearhaven bears.
“Dora, please—” Spencer was getting desperate.
“Yes,” she cut him off. “I know where your parents are.”
“Will you tell us?”
“Why should I?” Dora challenged him.
“Because if you tell Aldo and me where to find them, we can rescue them. Then all of us, including you and B.D., can get out of Hidden Rock Zoo. You will never have to worry about being locked in anywhere ever again, and you’ll never have to worry about Pam selling you. Ever.” Spencer tried to sound confident.
Dora started to pace. “I’ve trusted the Plains before, and that didn’t go well for me.”
“Give us another chance. Please, Dora,” Spencer pleaded. “We could both be reunited with our families.”
Dora padded over to the gray curtain. She sat back on her haunches and pushed it aside, revealing Pam’s house looming over her own. “You will have to earn it,” she said.
“Earn what?” Spencer asked.
“Another chance for the Plains. My trust. The information you want. All of it.” Dora let the curtain fall back into place. She turned around. “I’ll make a deal with you.”
A deal? Spencer and Aldo exchanged a look. That did not sound good.
“This isn’t going to be easy,” Dora said.
Spencer nodded. He hadn’t expected whatever deal Dora was willing to make to be easy. But he would do whatever it took to find out where in Hidden Rock Zoo his family was being held prisoner.
“I have a cub,” Dora started. “Darwin. He’s three months old, but I haven’t been allowed contact with him since the day he was born. Pam took him away. Now Darwin lives in Pam’s house with a special caretaker who stays with him during the day. He’s treated like a pet or a prince—but I am his mother. My cub should be with me.” Dora paused.
Spencer tried to make sense of what she was saying, but before he could understand why Pam would want to separate a cub from its mother, or what any of this had to do with him and Aldo and the information they needed for the mission, Dora spoke again. “I want you to bring him to me. Tonight.”
Spencer’s jaw dropped open. Aldo shifted uneasily on all fours. They both stared back at Dora in disbelief. She was asking them to risk everything. He looked at the glass doors Pam had closed when he left. Part of Spencer wished Dora didn’t know how to get out of here. Dora broke the silence.
“If you do this for me, I’ll give you the information you want. I’ll know I can trust you,” Dora said. “I’ll believe you’re not just here for yourselves, and you can convince me my family really does mean something to you. Darwin is B.D.’s nephew. If B.D. is as loyal to his family as you believe, he would never leave my cub behind. And if you understand what it feels like to be separated from your family like you say, you won’t let our family continue to suffer apart from one another.”
Spencer gulped. “So let me get this straight … your cub, Darwin, is in Pam’s house. And we have to … bring him to you … tonight.”
“In exchange for information about your family. Yes,” Dora confirmed.
“Why does Pam keep Darwin in his house instead of with you? Or in the Caves with the other bears?” Aldo asked.
“Pam is raising my cub himself for something special. I don’t know what he has planned, but Darwin is not just any black bear.”
Spencer watched Dora closely, but she didn’t go on. I guess I’ll have to find out for myself what that means, he thought. “Do you know where exactly he is kept in Pam’s house?” Spencer asked. He crossed his fingers, hoping Darwin was kept as far from Pam’s bedroom as possible.
Dora nodded. “In a special room off Pam’s private office on the second floor.”
The second floor? “What floor is Pam’s bedroom on?”
“The second floor,” Dora said, and for the first time, Spencer thought she sounded a little apologetic. “His bedroom is next to his office.”
“Dora.” Aldo sounded concerned. “Do you think it’s even possible for us to get Darwin without Pam finding out?”
Dora was silent for a moment. “It’s possible,” she said at last. “It’s risky. But it is possible. I wouldn’t suggest it if it wasn’t. But the Plain will have to go in alone. If a bear could do it, I would have done it myself long ago.”
“Spencer,” Spencer whispered, his mouth suddenly dry. “My name is Spencer.”
Dora nodded. “Spencer, if you bring me my cub tonight, I’ll tell you where to find your family. I will do what I can to help you.”
“Okay,” Spencer said. He looked at Aldo. “I’ll do it.”
“I wish I could go with you,” Aldo said. The bear looked as scared as Spencer felt. “But I’ll be with you through the Ear-COM the whole time.”
“I know,” Spencer answered. He turned to Dora. “How do I get out of here?”
Dora looked up. Spencer followed her gaze.
“This just gets better and better,” he muttered. Dora’s home didn’t have a roof, and the tops of the trees had grown above the glass walls. They reached up into the sky, their branches arching outward. A tree just outside Dora’s home loomed in the night. Its branches curved over the glass wall. The branches reached into Dora’s home, and intersecting with Dora’s tallest tree, created a tangled bridge of branches over the glass.
Spencer climbed up into the limbs of the tallest tree in Dora’s home. The farther he got from the ground, the more he wished he was on Aldo’s back, and that Ald
o was with him for this cub-napping mission. Spencer was confident Aldo would never fall from a tree. Spencer on the other hand … he hated climbing. But just before he could be gripped by the terrible sensation of blood and falling through leaves and branches that usually overcame him when he climbed, he caught sight of something familiar in the crook of the branch above him. It reflected the moonlight. He climbed toward it.
When Spencer reached the scrap of green-and-gold-sequined fabric he had seen from below he stopped to take a closer look. The fabric was tucked into a knothole in the tree, as though Dora had put it there for safekeeping. Spencer recognized the cloth, and he knew exactly where the fabric had come from. It matched the flag that flew in Bearhaven in Dora’s honor. He had been told by B.D. himself that it was a scrap of the sequined uniform the Benally siblings had been made to wear as mascots at Gutler University. And that it was flown as a flag to commemorate the original rescue and … Dora. Deeper in the knothole, Spencer also spotted a tuft of golden-white fur.
“Spencer? Is everything okay?” It was Aldo, watching from the ground below. His and Spencer’s Ear-COMs were still connected.
“Yeah, almost at the top.” Spencer got back to climbing. When he reached the highest branch that still looked strong enough to hold his weight, he stopped climbing and squinted, trying to make out which branches belonged to the tree he was in now, and which ones belonged to the tree rooted in the ground outside.
“Okay,” Spencer whispered, eyeing a sturdy looking branch that he could see led to the tree trunk a few yards beyond the glass wall. Dora was probably almost two hundred pounds heavier than Spencer. If the branch could hold her weight, and she could escape this way, it would be able to hold Spencer. “I can do this,” he said aloud.
“You can do this,” Aldo repeated through the Ear-COM.
Spencer crouched down. He wrapped his arms and legs around the branch that formed a bridge across the gap between the tree inside Dora’s home, and the one outside it. The bark scraped against him as he scooted across the branch on his belly, but Spencer barely noticed. He was so focused on not losing his grip and falling that nothing else mattered. Before long, Spencer was surrounded by the thick branches of the tree that extended outside Dora’s home. He climbed through those branches until he reached the tree’s lowest limbs and jumped to the ground from there, landing with a soft thud. He was outside, beyond the walls of Dora’s house.
Spencer glanced back through the glass wall. Dora and Aldo were watching him. He nodded, then crept into the dark toward Pam’s looming house. Dora had explained that since the security surrounding Hidden Rock Zoo was so tight the interior of the zoo didn’t need much additional security. Nobody was ever permitted to enter who didn’t work for Pam, and the only way into the property was through the front gates. Pam was so confident no one would be able to get through the outside walls of Hidden Rock Zoo, he didn’t even lock the door to his house. She’d said it as though it should make Spencer feel better about what he had to do. It didn’t.
“Front path,” Spencer whispered, updating Aldo on his location as he snuck up the white stone path that led to Pam’s front door. Spencer put his hand on the iron knob of the wooden door. “I’m going in,” he whispered as quietly as he possibly could. Spencer would have to use his best Bear Stealth operative training to move through the house soundlessly. He wouldn’t be able to speak once he was inside, so he didn’t expect to be able to update Aldo again.
“Good luck,” Aldo said.
Slowly, Spencer pushed the door open just enough to slip inside. He didn’t close it behind himself when he stepped into the black marble foyer but left the door open, afraid to make one more tiny sound than he had to. He tried to make out his surroundings in the strange house barely lit by the moon but couldn’t really see anything.
Spencer crouched down and carefully took off his mission pack. He unzipped it without a sound and pulled out the night-vision goggles. The slingshot slipped out of his bag and clattered noisily to the black marble floor.
No! Spencer tried hard not to gasp, panicking. He was totally motionless, all his muscles tense and ready to run if he had to. But nothing happened. The house was still quiet, or quiet except for the sound of rushing water. Spencer picked up the slingshot and slipped it back into his bag, then pulled the night-vision goggles on over his eyes. Through the special lenses, he could finally see the house around him.
He stood up from the floor of the large entryway. To his right was a living room. Its floor was completely covered in bearskin rugs. Spencer thought there must be dozens of them, laid out side by side throughout the entire room. He was glad to look away. To his left, a wide doorway led to a dining room with a long, dark table in the center. And straight ahead there was a big winding staircase leading upstairs.
“So far so good?” Aldo’s voice rang in Spencer’s ear, making him jump. “Stay silent if the answer is yes.”
Spencer was silent. Sticking close to the wall, he stepped on the first stair, setting his foot down evenly and putting his weight on it slowly. He strained his ears, listening for the tiniest creak of wood. Nothing came. Spencer’s silent walking was working. All that Bear Stealth training he had done with Kate and Aldo back in Bearhaven was paying off! He climbed the stairs in complete silence, focusing all his attention on each glowing green step.
When Spencer stepped off the top stair of the staircase and onto the second-floor landing, he heard a loud, wheezing snore. Pam!
Spencer crept down a long hallway toward the snores. Dora said Pam’s office was next to Pam’s bedroom, so Spencer was sure he was on the right track. He crept to the last door in the hall and was relieved to see it was Pam’s office. He spotted the door to Darwin’s room right away and silent-walked over to it, pulling off his night-vision goggles as he went. He didn’t want to scare the cub. Spencer opened the door and felt around on the wall inside the room until he found a light switch.
“A light just went on in the house,” Spencer heard Aldo report in his ear.
“It’s me,” he whispered back, closing the door behind him. He resisted telling Aldo how cool Darwin’s room was. Part of it had been made to look like a forest. Miniature trees took up half the space. Spencer walked over to them, searching the branches. He knew cubs liked to flop their limbs over tree branches and sleep, but he didn’t see Darwin anywhere. Before turning away from the little cluster of trees, Spencer reached out to touch the trunk of one. It’s fake! he thought, impressed by how real the artificial bark looked.
On the far side of the room, Spencer spotted a little cave. Spencer quietly approached it. When he was only a few steps away, a little paw poked out of the mouth of the cave, stretching straight out. Then another paw joined it. Spencer stepped closer. In the dark cave, he could just make out the rest of the cub’s slumbering body.
Spencer crouched down. “Maruh,” he quietly growled a hello.
The paws disappeared, quickly drawn back into the dark bundle of fur. Darwin scrambled clumsily to all fours and tripped over his paws, flopping deeper into the cave to hide.
“Shala.” Spencer whispered the Ragayo word for “safe.”
A second later, Darwin poked his head out of the artificial cave. His fur was jet-black, like Dora’s, but even darker somehow. The way the cub’s black fur gleamed reminded Spencer of the black jade of his bear figurine. Darwin blinked at Spencer, the big ears the cub hadn’t grown into yet twitched. His little black nose sniffed nervously. Spencer was careful to stay completely still as he watched the cub.
Darwin seemed to gain some confidence. He took a few cautious steps forward, until his whole body was framed in the mouth of the cave. Spencer caught a glimpse of white fur on the cub’s chest. A blaze mark! Spencer smiled, hoping for a better look at the cub’s marking. Just then, Darwin’s curious snout seemed to get the best of him. The cub wobbled up onto his hind legs. He nose sniffed rapidly in Spencer’s direction.
At the sight of Darwin’s blaze mark, Spencer
gasped.
Darwin dropped back to all fours, frightened.
“I’m sorry,” Spencer whispered, his eyes wide and locked on the shining fur in the middle of Darwin’s jet-black chest. The blaze mark was in the perfect shape of a crown. Spencer had never seen anything like it. Usually, blaze marks were swoops or blotches of white fur. Professor Weaver had a triangular blaze mark, but still … that was nothing like the perfect crown symbol that seemed emblazoned on Darwin’s chest in shining silver fur. The rest of Darwin’s fur was so dark that the crown practically glowed.
How had Pam managed it? Spencer wondered. He knew Pam had scientists who had already done crazy things with bears. After all, there was the microchipping technology that Pam used on the whole bear army. But this was different. Spencer knew that bears were born with their blaze marks. Somehow, Darwin had been born with Pam’s symbol of his power, the crown, on his chest.
Spencer looked up at the cub’s face. Darwin was peering out of the cave anxiously. “I wonder what else is special about you,” Spencer whispered, knowing there must be more. Darwin shrunk back even farther, and Spencer pushed the question out of his head. Now wasn’t the time to solve the mystery of Pam’s prized cub.
Spencer wasn’t sure if the cub understood his Ragayo, but he hoped the tone of his voice would communicate that he wasn’t going to hurt Darwin. “Shala,” he said. Darwin poked his head back out.
Darwin padded closer, sniffing first at the mission pack on the ground, then at the coil of rope, then finally at Spencer himself. Spencer tried not to laugh as Darwin’s snout tickled his shin. “Now I just have to get you to ride quietly in this sling I made for you,” Spencer whispered to the cub. “Shala, anbranda,” he added as he reached out to touch Darwin. “Wow,” Spencer whispered, petting Darwin. The cub’s fur was softer than anything Spencer had ever felt before. Kate’s fur was soft, like a fluffy dog, but Darwin’s was somehow softer still. Spencer retrieved the little knob of ginger root from his mission pack, then returned the backpack to his back.