“Well, let’s make sure we’re gone by the time they get here,” said Kit. “You think you can sniff your way through some more locks?”
“Never doubt the scent of cheese,” said Eeni. “There isn’t a problem in the world that a rodent can’t solve if it smells like cheese.”
Part III
GOING WILD
Chapter Eighteen
THE BURDENS BEARS BEAR
THE troop of baboons assembled with the rest of the Moonlight Brigade, who gave their reports.
“There are four deer on our side, ready to run!” Matteo the church mouse reported. He had a big cut over his left eye, which he’d bandaged with some sort of colorful sticker he’d found in a garbage can. It showed a baboon in a top hat. In their imaginations, People saw the animals more clearly than they did in their zoo.
“What happened to your eye?” Kit asked Matteo.
“A disagreement with a den of dingoes,” said the mouse. Kit cocked his head, and the mouse explained. “At first, they thought I was their dinner. We had a bit of a . . . discussion about that.” The mouse cracked his knuckles. “But once I showed them I’d be a better friend than snack, they came around. All of them are ready to join us.”
“Great,” said Kit. “Go with these two baboons and start sniffing out the locks. They’ll explain on the way.”
Matteo scurried into the palm of one of the baboons, and they ran off to start on the deer and dingo cages.
“No luck with the iguana,” said Fergus the frog. “Or any of the other reptiles. Even the tree frogs in the tree frog case. I tried to explain they weren’t even on real trees, but they wouldn’t listen. Half of them just plain love their cages, and the other half are too afraid of the snakes and the peacock.”
“We talked to the groundhogs,” said Guster. “They weren’t happy to be woken up, but they’re ready to run free when we give the signal.”
“The fish, however, could not be reasoned with,” said Guster Two. “They couldn’t hear us in their strange floating river, so we performed a dance to explain it. They did not understand. They just kept swimming in circles.”
“I don’t think fish can escape the water,” Eeni said.
“We don’t know what anyone is capable of unless we give them a chance,” said Guster.
“So we had to ask,” said Guster Two.
“But you’re right,” added Guster. “Freedom for a fish is totally different. I think we’ll just leave them be.”
“Okay,” said Kit, and he sent Guster and Guster Two off with another pair of baboons to start work on the groundhog cages.
Hazel went with Major Babi and another baboon to open the Ostrich Meadow and a place called the Barnyard, where a bunch of goats and sheep and a sleeping cow were waiting to do whatever it was Hazel told them to do.
The rest of the baboons deployed throughout the zoo, hooting and hollering and banging on riddle-boxes like mad, while Fergus hopped to and fro after them, trying to slow them down and get them to sniff the buttons. A frog didn’t have much of a sense of smell, but he could lick a button and learn a lot. He just had to get the baboons to hold him up to do it.
It was slow going, but Kit was satisfied that the work had begun. The sky was just beginning to turn pink in the far distance. Morning was still some time away, but it was coming. He and Eeni had to get back to the building where their neighbors, Uncle Rik, and his mother were held.
As they charged up the path, however, a bloodcurdling roar stopped them in their tracks.
There in front of them, blocking their way, stood the largest creature Kit had ever seen: a giant snow-white bear whose head was bigger than Kit’s entire body, and whose paws could crush ten Eenis beneath them at one time if it wanted to.
“A bear?” said Eeni. “Preston sent a bear after us?”
“My name is Jojo,” the big bear introduced himself, which was a good sign. Usually folks who meant to eat you did not introduce themselves first. “And yes, I am a bear. A polar bear to be precise. However, Preston did not send me. I came to meet you on my own.”
“Oh . . . well . . . hi.” Kit tried not to tremble at the sight of the giant white polar bear with teeth as big as Kit’s arms.
“I wanted to meet you so that I could convince you not to do what you are doing,” said the bear. “Not to break the animals from the zoo.”
Kit’s eyes darted around, looking for the dog or the peacock.
“They are not here,” said Jojo, like he knew what Kit was thinking. “I am Jojo Walrus-Bane and I swear upon the honor of bearkind that I am not going to harm you by tooth or by claw.”
“Okay . . . ,” said Kit. “But you are going to stop us?”
“I am going to try to convince you,” said Jojo. “The peacock wants to stop your breakout so that he can continue to have all the comforts the People give him. He is greedy. I promise you that I am not. I do, however, ask the same of you that he wants: I want you to turn back and to leave the zoo as it is.”
“But why?” Kit asked, staring up at the humongous bear. “You’re out of your cage already. Why wouldn’t you want to give that freedom to all the animals?”
“I will return to my enclosure,” said the bear. “I must. What you do not know, young raccoon, is that my kind are in danger. Our great northern wilds are shrinking away and year by year we polar bears are disappearing. We must hunt longer and harder for food. Our children starve; our fathers make war on one another. Families crumble like melting glaciers. The wild is failing us, but here . . . in this zoo . . . the People protect us. In places like this all over our world, they are restoring our numbers, keeping bearkind alive and safe.”
“But you’re a prisoner,” Kit said. “You’d choose safety over freedom?”
The bear nodded. “My freedom would cost my brothers and sisters dearly. The People protect us but they do not see us for who we are. They do not know my name is Jojo Walrus-Bane, nor that my grandmother was Rustalka the Mighty, the great-general of the ice sea, whose life is celebrated in bear music around the world. To the People, I am just another frightening bear. If I am not in danger and in need of protection, then I am a threat in need of destruction. If I flee from the People’s care, then every other polar bear will suffer. The People fear our freedom and will turn against us if we threaten them. So I stay. I stay to protect my kind . . . to show the People how to nurture us instead of hunting us. I stay to teach them.”
“You shouldn’t have to teach the People anything,” Eeni objected. “It’s not your job.”
“But if I do not, who will?” said the bear. “And you, Kit, should be wary as well. They do not know you are Kit, heir to Azban the First Raccoon, and hero of Ankle Snap Alley. To the People, you are a trash-eater and they do not mean that as praise. They imagine you have Foaming Mouth Fever. Your crimes against them will be punished on the backs of all raccoonkind. Raccoons you have never met or known or shared a feast with will suffer when the People take their vengeance for your actions tonight.”
“You make the People sound like monsters,” Kit said.
“They are not monsters,” said the bear. “They simply try to protect their own, just as we all do. But they have a ferocity that no animal folk can match. If you choose to carry out your escape, I fear the People will close this zoo. Many bears will suffer.”
“But many animals are suffering in here already,” Kit said. “You’re asking me to let them stay prisoners to keep your kind safe. Aren’t we All of One Paw?”
“I burn with shame from the tip of my nose to the claws on my toes,” said Jojo. “But I must think of my own kind first. There is a reason we say to bear a burden and not to peacock a burden. We bears do what we must and I must bear this burden for all bears.”
“I understand,” Kit told Jojo. “But my family and my friends and neighbors are being held here against their will and I have to free th
em. Anyone who’s a prisoner is my kind, and that’s who I’m setting free. If you change your mind, I see you know how to escape your cage on your own. You’ll always be welcome to join us in Ankle Snap Alley.”
“That does not sound like a good place for a bear,” said Jojo.
“It’s not a good place for anyone,” said Eeni. “But it’s home.”
“Be careful, little ones.” Jojo smiled sadly. “The fight for freedom can be a ferocious fight indeed.”
“Hey,” said Eeni, jabbing her tiny paw up at the giant bear. “You haven’t seen how ferocious we can get. We’re the Moonlight Brigade. We can teach them too. We can teach them that animal folk can’t be pushed around. I’m not afraid of some no-fur two-leggers.”
The bear nodded, then raised his paw to Kit and Eeni and clenched his massive fist. He pounded it three times on his chest like a drum. The bear salute.
Kit and Eeni returned the salute.
Jojo trudged sadly away into the night to climb back into his enclosure.
Kit marveled at his courage. If the bear wanted to, he could have smashed his way out of the zoo and torn the People who kept him there limb from limb. He could have been free any time he wanted, but he stayed a prisoner in order to protect other bears, bears that he’d never even met. It took bravery to run into a fight, but perhaps it took just as much bravery to avoid one.
Kit wasn’t looking for a fight, though. He was looking for his family, and if he had to, he would fight to free them.
Chapter Nineteen
RIVERS ROLL ON
KIT wanted to go alone into the exhibit hall where his mother was being held. He’d insisted in that stubborn raccoon way, but Eeni was not going to let her best friend just wander into a strange building by himself.
“I should come in with you,” she said. “I have a better sense of smell.”
“I’ll be fine,” Kit told her. “You just keep a lookout for Preston and Titus.”
Kit knew Eeni didn’t understand why he would want to go in alone, and he wasn’t sure how he could explain it to her. It had been so long since they’d seen each other, what if his mother didn’t recognize him? Or what if she’d heard about all the things he’d done—the tricks he’d pulled and the battles he’d fought—and what if she didn’t approve? Or what if she was angry that he’d failed to rescue her sooner? Or what if, even worse, she’d become like Preston and the snakes and didn’t want to leave the zoo at all? What if she would choose her life in a cage over him?
Fear kept him from speaking these worries aloud to Eeni, though. Sometimes a worry was like a spiky caterpillar and when spoken aloud it broke from its cocoon to fly away like a butterfly, but there were other times and other worries that hung on the tongue like stones. Kit wasn’t strong enough to lift his worry into words and he didn’t know that a friend can help with the lifting, so he said nothing.
“I’ll wait right out here for you,” Eeni told Kit at the vent they used to get in. “I’ll make sure nobody gets past.”
When Kit’s paws found the vent opening, he flattened his body and slipped inside. Before he vanished completely, he called back to Eeni from inside the vent, with just his behind and his tail sticking out.
“If you’re in danger before I come out and you need to run,” he said, “you can run. I won’t be mad. I don’t know how long it’s gonna take in here.”
Eeni could tell Kit was stalling.
Of course he didn’t know how long it was going to take, and of course Eeni wasn’t going to run off on her friend if trouble reared its ugly feathered head. “I’ll be fine out here,” she told him. “You gonna be okay in there?”
“I’m just nervous,” he admitted after a long, long pause. “What if my mother doesn’t want to leave the zoo and come back to me?”
Eeni reached out her paw and patted Kit’s tail, which was the only part of him she could reach. Having a heart-to-heart conversation with a friend’s backside wasn’t the best way to do it, but somehow not having to see each other’s faces did make it easier to be honest. “It’ll hurt if that happens,” she told Kit. She felt her own hot tears welling in her eyes, thinking of her mother bound forever to the Rat King. “Life’s more tangled and twisty than a tree root in a trash heap, but all the tangles don’t mean the roots aren’t strong. They just don’t go the way you want all the time. But they grow anyway. No matter what, they keep growing. You get me?”
“I get you,” Kit said.
“Anyway,” Eeni added. “It’s not gonna happen that way, because your mom will want out of this place right away. It’s creepy!”
Kit snorted a laugh. “Thanks, Eeni,” he said.
“You’re welcome, Kit,” she answered, and then the fur of Kit’s tail slid through her claws as he crawled away into the building to find his mother, and Eeni was alone outside in the quiet of the night.
She sniffed at the sky and realized it was more like the early morning. The sun would start on its way up soon, and one way or another, the day would begin.
It was amazing to her how every day the sun rose, no matter what crazy things happened in the night. Night and day didn’t know the worries of the folks who lived in them. They just flowed and flowed on past like a river, and every creature scurried along its current on claw and paw as best she could, never knowing which way time’s river might toss her next.
And even as she got tossed about by time’s rough waters, another creature would be floating by like a beaver on its back, carefree and unconcerned. Some night their places would switch and she’d be the one riding the smooth flow. The only thing folks stuck in time’s river could be sure of was that the river would change. Happiness would change to sadness and then back again, but as long as you kept riding that river, no stretch of rough going would stay rough forever. It was a thought that comforted her, even as it made her nibble the tip of her tail with worry.
She’d been so lost in the deep water of her river thoughts that she didn’t hear the scrabbling of claws or the gnashing of teeth that crept up behind her until the massive shadow cast from the lamppost rose overhead. She whirled around to face it, claws up.
“Oh,” she said. “It’s you again.”
Chapter Twenty
THERE IS NO I IN QUEEN
THE Rat King had come to the zoo and towered over Eeni, silhouetted against the sinking moon behind them.
“You look worried, child.” The Rat King spoke in a hundred voices from a hundred mouths. “Do you fear the failure of your plan or do you fear its success?”
“What?” Eeni replied, startled by the Rat King’s sudden appearance, but also by the question. She lowered her claws and shook her head. “What are you doing here?”
“We are here to see you,” said the Rat King. “But you did not answer our question. Do you fear that your friend Kit may fail or do you fear that he may succeed?”
“Why would I be afraid of him succeeding?” Eeni rolled her eyes.
“Told you she’d be offended by the question,” one rat voice in the tangle said.
“She doesn’t look offended,” said another.
“Maybe she has gas,” said a third.
“I don’t have gas,” Eeni told them. “That was an offensive question.”
“It is very rude to listen in on someone else’s thoughts,” the Rat King scolded her.
“Sorry,” she said, “but I can’t very well not listen when you’re saying them out loud right in front of me.”
“That is how we think,” said the Rat King. “We cannot keep secrets from ourselves.”
“Whatever,” Eeni said. “Anyway, I’m not afraid of Kit succeeding. That’s crazy. I’m a little busy right now, and I’ve already had enough riddles tonight and the baboons are a lot more fun than you are, so if you’re just going to ask dumb questions, you can scurry on off with your mystic wisdom to some other rodent. I need it as
much as I need my tail in a mousetrap.”
“She’s still angry at us,” said one rat voice.
“But we came all this way,” said another.
“She’s not angry at us,” said a third. “She’s angry at . . . me.”
There was a gasp, ninety-nine rats gasping as one and ninety-nine heads turning to look at one rat in the middle of the tangle. Ninety-nine voices spoke. “There is no me,” they said. “We gave up me when we became us.”
And then one rat spoke to the ninety-nine. “She is our daughter,” the rat said. “She is my daughter and will always be. That is why we have come here.”
Eeni looked at the rat in the middle of the rats and knew her instantly. It had been more seasons than she could remember that her mother had been gone, but there she was, tail tangled with the rest, fur-matted like the rest, nearly identical to every other rat who was a part of the Rat King, but still, Eeni knew her.
“Mom,” she whispered.
“Eeni,” her mother whispered back.
“Well, this is getting weird,” said another rat.
“Are we just letting this happen?” said a second.
“I’m not sure I like this,” said a third, then covered his mouth with his paws. “Eek! I just said I! Ack! I said it again! What am I doing?! Ah! Someone stop me! Ah! Me?! Eek!”
A general mumbling broke out in the Rat King as all the rest began arguing among themselves, squeaking out loud all the thoughts a creature normally keeps to herself when she’s having a bit of a panic. It was chaos and it was far too loud and Eeni had no interest in the Rat King’s identity crisis. She wanted to talk to her mom.
“QUIET!” she yelled, then lowered her voice again. “We’ve got enemies at the zoo and you need to keep your voices down. Voice. Voices. Whatever.”
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