Kit spread his arms and legs out wide and pressed his belly flat against the roof. He lowered his head so he didn’t have to see how fast they were going. Still, he could hear the screech and honk of the cars and feel the thump of the road rumbling below. This was not how a raccoon was meant to travel.
“Kit, look up, you’re missing it! This is amazing!” Eeni cheered, clinging to the fur on his back with her tail flapping like a banner behind her. “Is this really how People get around? If I had a car I’d never use my legs again! Woohoo!”
Kit looked up and immediately wished he hadn’t. Buildings whooshed by on either side of them while smaller cars zipped past, and Kit shuddered, imagining his bones pulverized underneath their tires. He slammed his eyes shut again, but still he felt the car racing along, taking him farther and farther from Ankle Snap Alley, and deeper and deeper into the unknown corners of the city, to places where People ruled and wild animals did their best to disappear. Kit really wanted to disappear.
“Kit!” Eeni tugged at his fur. “We need to disappear!”
Kit opened one eye and then the other. Eeni had a way of plucking the thoughts from his head and speaking them aloud. She was an expert at that particular kind of friend-magic.
The car had stopped. They were at a big gate, and a person in a blue uniform was opening it for the car to go through. Kit pressed himself as flat as he could against the rooftop, and Eeni scurried off his back and slid underneath him. Luckily, the Person didn’t bother looking up.
The metal of the gate squealed as it opened and Kit studied it as the car passed through. The iron bars were bent and twisted into the shapes of trees and animals. Kit’s nose picked up scents of flowers and grasses. He also smelled animals—deer and wolf and wild dog. There were water smells too, fish and salt and beaver fur. These weren’t city smells at all; these were Big Sky smells, smells from the wild world beyond the city, the world Kit had come from. The world he never thought he’d see again.
Those smells didn’t belong here.
“I think we’re inside the zoo,” Kit told Eeni, and then he shuddered. As the car crept forward, he smelled another smell, one any animal who hopes to live past suckling age learns to catch on even the faintest breeze.
He smelled fear.
Chapter Five
A QUESTION OF THE Q
THE People drove and drove along winding roads, and Kit marveled at the way they had built a fake forest in the middle of the city, and beside the forest, a fake grassland, and a fake riverbank. There was a giant cage filled with trees and inside it, Kit heard birds singing their songs of sadness.
Ohhhh, my feathers are for flying
And ohhhh, my feathers grow and grow.
Ohhhh, the sky is high above me
And ohhhh, I’m down here below.
Oh, oh, oh, when will I ever go?
Oh, oh, oh, does the wind still blow and blow?
“They can see the sky,” Eeni gasped, and squeezed tighter on Kit’s fur as the mournful song rose. “But they can’t fly to it.”
Kit looked from the giant birdcage to a large pond behind a low fence. There were benches set up along the fence so People could look at the pond from one side. The other side was blocked off from view by plants and trees that Kit didn’t recognize. It was a pond from somewhere else, a pond that should have reflected a different sky.
The whole place was a theater set, but instead of telling the ancient stories of the animal folk who lived and spoke with People, like real plays did, the People had made a pretend version of the world as it was now, and somewhere in it all, they’d trapped the animals.
“Is this a dream?” Eeni asked.
“More like a nightmare,” Kit said. “Uncle Rik said the zoo wasn’t a jail, but it sure looks like one to me.”
The car pulled up to a squat brick building and the People got out—without looking up to the rooftop either—and opened the car’s back doors. Kit saw his uncle huddled in the dark cage, shaking with fright. Uncle Rik’s eyes instantly darted up in Kit’s direction.
They went wide when he saw his nephew and he shook his head no.
Kit knew Uncle Rik didn’t want him to endanger himself with some daring rescue, but he also must have known that Kit was not going to let Uncle Rik get kidnapped. He didn’t dare make a noise, but he wanted to tell his uncle it would be all right, so he put his claws together with his thumb tips touching in the middle to make the symbol of Azban, the First Raccoon, founder of the Moonlight Brigade and Trickster Prince of the wild world.
He felt pretty cool every time he did it.
The People hauled the crate away and disappeared inside the building. The last thing Kit saw was his uncle Rik, still shaking his head at Kit, warning him not to do anything risky, but risky was Kit’s middle name.
Actually, he didn’t have a middle name, but if he did, he’d want it to be something as cool as “Risky.”
Only when Kit was sure the People were gone did he and Eeni climb down from the roof of the car. They scurried over to the bushes that ran along the outside of the building, looking for a way to sneak in. All the doors and all the windows were closed. Eeni found a good rat hole, but it had been stuffed with metal wire to keep rodents out.
“These People know what they’re doing,” she said. “This building’s sealed tighter than a dog’s nose at a skunk parade.”
“Since when do skunks parade?” Kit asked, although he knew better than to question one of Eeni’s sayings. She just liked making them up. They didn’t have to make sense as long as they sounded true. “We have to find a way in,” Kit said, sitting back on his haunches to wrangle his thoughts together. Eeni sat beside him, wrangling her own thoughts.
Neither of their thoughts were so easily wrangled.
“Oh, my dear darling flea-bitten fellows, you are quite far from home, aren’t you?” The lilting voice of a bright peacock interrupted them as he strutted around the corner of the building, calm as could be, his broad-plumed tail flowing out like a gown behind him. “I should warn you to hide yourselves, and yet I am so very curious what brought you here all the way from”—the peacock paused and looked them up and down with the eye on one side of his head—“Ankle Snap Alley, yes?”
“How did you know that?” Kit asked.
“Oh, a peacock like myself knows how to size up friend and foe alike with a glance,” the peacock said. “I can see by your clothes that you come from a place where People pay you no attention, and I can see from the dirt on your claws that you’re the sort who doesn’t care much for appearances either. And of course, it is plain as the daylight above us that you belong beneath the moon, not our bright daytime sun. So I asked myself, what would bring two filthy-clothed tricksters, awake in the daylight, all the way here to our peaceful zoo?”
“We’re here to—” Kit began, but the peacock wasn’t interested in Kit’s response. He had an answer to his own question already.
“You are here to find your friends from Ankle Snap Alley,” he said.
Kit and Eeni nodded together.
The peacock fluffed his bright feathers, preening, proud of himself.
“Do you know where they are?” Kit asked him.
“I know everything about this place,” the peacock said. “My name is Preston Q Brightfeather the Second, eldest son of Preston Q Brightfeather the First, Squire of the Great Order of Peacocks, and Captain of the Southeast Corridor of the Zoo.”
“That is a long name,” Eeni observed. “What’s the Q stand for?”
“Rat! How dare you insult my father’s middle initial! The Q does not stand for anything!” the peacock hissed. “A peacock’s initial stands only for itself! To stand for anything else would be beneath its dignity! I should never have assumed such alley trash was worth my time!”
The bird began to turn away, but Kit called out to stop him.
&nbs
p; “Sorry to offend you and your—uh—glorious middle initial.” Kit tried to make peace. He added a little bow to his apology on Eeni’s behalf because he’d figured out right away this peacock needed to feel superior, and it cost Kit nothing to let him. “We would be most honored if you’d show us where our friends from Ankle Snap Alley are. I know they are nothing but dirty crooked liars and alley-trash-eating cheats, but they’re our friends nonetheless and we’d love to find them. You, noble peacock, are the only one who can help us.”
“Hrmpf,” said the peacock, still angry at the accidental insult Eeni had given him, but Kit’s humility and praise worked its way into his heart and he relented. With a polite bow of his plumed head, the peacock smiled gently. “Very well, follow me.”
They walked after the peacock, following his strutting steps on a path around the building to a window by the front door.
The peacock stopped and looked to the large metal gates across an open courtyard from the building. “Climb up and have yourselves a look,” he said. “But be quick.” He pointed his claw at a Person in the distance, walking around to check all the locks. “The zoo People do a final check to make sure the animals are secure just before they open for the day. Once that one is done checking, the People will flood this place full. You do not want to be here when they do.”
“Thanks,” said Kit, following the peacock’s gaze to the spot at the entrance where a large group of young People were lining up to enter. Kit turned around and stretched up his paws to reach the window ledge, then began a straining pull-up to bring his chin above the sill, where he could see inside.
“Brace yourself,” Preston warned. “I believe what you are about to see might smash your senses to smithereens.”
“I’ve seen a lot in my time,” Kit said. “I think I can handle whatever is on the other side of this—”
He never finished his sentence because what he saw through the glass had smashed his senses to smithereens.
Chapter Six
WEIRD WINDOWS
“LET me up there to see,” Eeni said to Kit, scurrying up his tail like a ladder and climbing onto his head to look for herself.
When she saw, she gasped and nearly fell down his face. She had to grip his ears for support.
“Ow!” Kit yelped, which brought him back to himself.
“Are you seeing what I’m seeing?” Eeni asked him.
Kit nodded, which nearly knocked Eeni off his head again, but he still couldn’t find the words to describe what was on the other side of the window in the zoo building.
There was a big open area of floor and in front of it were three huge windows that went from the floor to the ceiling and were even wider across. The windows didn’t look outside, though, at least not to the outside that was outside this building.
One window was filled with water and fish swam on the other side of it. It was like a window to the underside of a river. Kit had never seen so many different kinds of fish so clearly before. He’d jumped in rivers as a little child in the forest beneath the big sky, and he scooped fish from the rivers for dinner, but he’d never just seen them swimming calmly in their endless blue circles. It was beautiful to see and yet unsettling.
The window beside the fish looked out on a desert. The People had made it look like the desert went on forever to the horizon, but it was a trick of their art. The People who’d made this fake desert were skillful, but still, a keen eye could see it was false.
But the animal folk inside were not false. They were real creatures of a kind Kit didn’t recognize. They had long furry bodies and little black-and-white faces. They looked something like weasels, but like no weasels Kit had ever met before. There were three of them. One was sleeping, one was doing little push-ups, and one was staring off into the fake horizon.
But it wasn’t the fish or the desert weasels that had made Kit fall speechless. It was what he saw in the third window. It was Ankle Snap Alley.
Somehow, the People had built a model of Kit’s home. There was Possum Ansel’s bakery—although it was missing its sign—and there were the Gnarly Oak Apartments where Kit lived, but only part of them. He saw the Dancing Squirrel Theater, but it had no stage or curtains, and the Dumpster Market where the scavengers traded goods, and the old van where the Rabid Rascals lived, and even the big stone slab of the Reptile Bank and Trust. Everything was there, but in smaller size, and parts were only painted on, just like the horizon in the desert next door. The People hadn’t gotten it totally right; they’d created the space but not the feel of the place. It looked even more false than the painted desert.
But inside, sitting by a broken bicycle wheel that was painted to look old and rusted but still had shiny new parts, was Dax the squirrel, nibbling a peanut, while his mother napped beside him. And there were the Liney sisters and one of the gecko bankers and a news finch Kit hadn’t even known had been taken, and then his eye lingered on the narrow space where Enrique Gallo’s Fur Styling Shop and Barbería should have been. Instead of the shop, the People had put a fake trash can and on top of the trash can was a big lump of gray-and-black fur, curled up to sleep for the day, and even though he couldn’t see the lump’s face, he knew it was a raccoon and he knew just the raccoon it was.
“Mom?” he said out loud, his voice caught in his throat like a mouse in a trap.
She couldn’t hear him.
He tried to think so hard in her direction that she’d wake up and look his way, but thoughts didn’t work like that and all he managed to do was make his eyes tear up and his head go spinning dizzy.
“They call it the Urban Wild,” Preston Q Brightfeather called up to them. “A new show for the People, highlighting the animal life of the city that they think is theirs.”
“But . . . that’s my mother!” Kit shouted. “She never even lived in Ankle Snap Alley! They have my mother! My uncle and my mother! They’re my whole family! I have to get them out!”
He scratched at the glass.
“Calm down, child,” the peacock told him. “Look around this place. They have a lot of folks’ mothers and uncles. You’ll never get them out by throwing a fit. They’re locked in tight.”
Kit took a deep breath and looked at the glass wall again, searching for a locked door into the Urban Wild cage. Kit had yet to find a lock he could not pick open, but he couldn’t even see one here. Inside the cage, along the back wall, there was an outline of a door, painted like the rest of the wall so it was almost invisible. It didn’t have a lock that he could see, though, just a little box next to it with a bunch of buttons and symbols on it. He had no idea what sort of lock that was.
“I need to break them out!” he cried.
“You won’t get them out now, Kit,” the peacock told him. “The People are the only ones who know how to use those locks, and not even all of them know how. But they will have you locked up too if you don’t get moving.”
The peacock pointed to the front gates of the zoo as they opened and a herd of People rushed in, mostly the People’s children, with a few full-grown ones mixed in, shouting and pointing. The herd stampeded straight for the building where Kit was hanging off the ledge.
He and Eeni dropped into the bushes below the window and hid.
“You can get out behind this building,” Preston told them. “Follow the path through the false forest and you’ll reach a fence. From there, you’re on your own.”
“But I can’t leave!” Kit cried. “I need to figure out that strange lock and free my family!”
“Kit.” Eeni put her paw on his. “We can’t rescue them right now, not with all these People here. We have to do what we do best. We have to make a plan and we have to get help. We have to go back home.”
“Your friend is right,” said the peacock. “There is nothing you can do right now. Your family and your friends are part of the show. And as the great bird poet William Shakesparrow once said, The
show must go on. Go home, child. Plan your plans. These People are cleverer than you think, but you have a friend in me. No one knows the zoo better than Preston Q Brightfeather and I will help you set your friends and family free from the Urban Wild.”
Kit hesitated. He wasn’t used to trusting strange birds and he was in shock from seeing his mother alive after all this time. But then he nodded. “Thank you.”
“No need to thank me,” said the bird. “I’ll be happy to see your kind on its way from my zoo. They are not meant to be here after all. We are a place for magnificent animals who fill the world with beauty and grace, not animals who”—he looked Kit and Eeni up and down with one side eye—“scurry,” he sneered.
Then the bird strutted out from behind the bush and raised his tail feathers, spreading them out in a glorious fan of color. The young People oohed and aahed at the peacock. Kit and Eeni tried to decide if the bird’s offer to help them was worth accepting his insult, but the bird glanced back at them and screeched, “Go, you fools, or they’ll put you in the cages too!”
Kit and Eeni ran.
No one paid any attention to the flash of grimy gray-and-white fur as a rat and a raccoon slipped away around the back of the building. Preston had caused enough of a distraction for the two of them to escape, but it would take more than a flash of fabulous feathers to break Kit’s mother and his uncle Rik, and all the other kidnapped creatures of Ankle Snap Alley, out of that cage.
If he was going to pull off a breakout like that, Kit was going to need to come up with a plan as clever as any raccoon ever had since the days of Azban, the First Raccoon. And to do that, he was going to need to get some help from some animals who were surely in no mood to help him after he’d set that hawk free.
His neighbors in Ankle Snap Alley.
Chapter Seven
FOLLOW THE LEADER(S)
The Wild Ones--Great Escape Page 4