by N. D. Wilson
“Why would you be thrown out?” Cyrus asked. “Sterling’s the one who’ll be in trouble.”
Dennis shook his head. “Who will they believe? Dennis Gilly, failed Acolyte, failed porter? Or Benjamin Sterling? Everyone loves him. He’s been the cook for—I don’t know how long—since he lost his legs. Greeves will think I’m crazy.”
“Well,” said Antigone. “We’ll tell him you’re not crazy.”
“How do you know?” Dennis asked. “Maybe I am.” He sighed. “I’m not like you two. I had to go into the service corps and now I’ll even lose my bed in the porter’s dorm. I don’t have any family. Where will I go? What state is around Ashtown?”
“Wisconsin,” said Cyrus.
“I’ll be out in Wisconsin. What do they do in Wisconsin? Nothing I’m good at, I’m sure.”
Antigone stepped in front of the damp porter. “Cyrus and I think you’re great, Dennis. Don’t we, Cy?”
“Sure,” said Cyrus.
Dennis looked up and shook his head. “You’re both 1914 Acolytes. I wouldn’t have made the 1969 standards … even if I could have afforded the dues. I just wanted to sail. Who cares about Latin?”
“Not me,” said Cyrus. “Not at all.”
Antigone nodded at her brother and slowly rolled her hands for him to go on.
Cyrus smiled. “Hey,” he said. “How would you like to be a Polygoner, Dennis?”
Antigone dropped her hands, surprised.
Cyrus continued. “If you get kicked out, you can stay with us. We’ll hide you. But if you don’t get kicked out, you can still be a Polygoner.”
Dennis looked at Antigone. She smiled. He turned back to Cyrus.
“Really? Are you just trying to get me to feel better? Are you making something up?”
Cyrus shook his head. “We’re not making it up.” He slapped the boxing monkey on his leather shoulder. “That’s our symbol or logo or whatever. But there are only two Polygoners right now. Three if we count Nolan. We need more.”
“What do I have to do?”
“Well.” Cyrus grinned. “You have to help us, and that will mean doing whatever we say.”
“Cyrus …” Antigone’s voice was all warning.
“There are other rules, too,” Cyrus said quickly. “But we can explain those later.”
Dennis straightened. “Do you really think I’m good enough?”
Cyrus laughed. “What do you think, Tigs? Is he good enough?”
“Dennis Gilly,” Antigone said. “You just swam with a shark. How many people do you know who have done that?”
Dennis thought for a moment. “You two and Mr. Douglas.”
“Right,” said Cyrus. “You’re as good as we are. And you like to sail? Are you good at it?”
Dennis nodded solemnly.
“Good,” said Cyrus. “Then you can be our sailing tutor, too.”
“Mr. Cyrus—”
Cyrus shook his head. “Don’t ever call me that again. If you do, we’ll kick you out.”
Dennis nodded seriously. “Right. I won’t. What do Polygoners do?”
“Whatever needs to be done,” said Cyrus.
“And right now,” Antigone said, “we need to find a way out of here.”
Dennis looked in both directions. “But I’ve never—”
Cyrus raised his hands, and Dennis’s mouth clicked shut. “This is the first test, Dennis. We’re not going to help you.”
Nodding slowly, Dennis squinted down the hall, and then turned and moved to the first metal door. He opened it and walked in.
Gasping, he staggered back out. “Stuff,” he said. “Rotting stuff.” He pointed down the hall. “I think we should go that way.”
“Don’t think, Dennis,” Cyrus said. “Do. We’re following you.”
The porter threw his wet cape against the wall. “Wait here,” he said, and strode down the hallway, opening doors.
“Cyrus,” Antigone whispered. “You’re evil.”
“What are you talking about? Look at him! He just turned into Napoleon.”
“Yeah, but what will he do when he finds out that there’s no club? It’ll break his heart.”
“He won’t find out, because there is a club—maybe a gang or a full-on league. And we’re in charge. Well, technically I’m in charge, but you can be the secretary or something.”
“Yeah,” said Antigone. “Sure. That’ll happen.”
“Treasurer?” Cyrus asked. “Or do you want to be the Avengel, like Greeves? You can enforce my proclamations. Or you can just be the mascot. Your call.”
“Copresident.”
“Ha.” Cyrus eyed his sister. “A second ago, you were denying that the league existed, and now you want to muscle in on my leadership?”
“Shut up, Rus, or I’ll drop the ‘co.’ ”
“Hey!” Dennis yelled. “I’ve found a way … somewhere.”
When Cyrus and Antigone reached him, Dennis was beaming with pride beside an open rusty door. Ancient hay bales had been stacked on one side of the room. On the far wall, a ladder ran straight up to a trapdoor in the ceiling.
“I’ll bet it goes up to the feeding rooms behind the cages,” Dennis said. He scurried up the ladder and lifted the trap. “At least, I think so. It’s a little dark.”
“Okay,” Cyrus said. “Hop down, Dennis. We’ll check it out.”
Dennis stared at him. “No. You said this was a test. There are rules. You can’t trick me. I always follow rules.”
Cyrus opened his mouth and then shut it. He had nothing to say. Dennis climbed up, wriggled through the trapdoor, and let it bang behind him.
“Terrific,” said Antigone. “Dennis always follows rules, and you are now his rule book. Pull the plug now, Cy.”
“Pull the plug on this new, amazing Dennis?” Cyrus shook his head and moved out of the way. “Go ahead. Ladies first.”
Antigone climbed the ladder, and Cyrus climbed behind her. With each step, leather water dripped out of her boots and onto Cyrus’s head.
When she reached the top, she threw open the trap and climbed through.
When Cyrus reached the top, he stuck his head up and into pure reek.
“Oh …” He groaned, gagging.
“Get up here, Cy. Plug your nose. I think Dennis passed out.”
The room was extremely dim, but Cyrus could just make out his sister’s shape. The only light was seeping in through the seams around a heavy door and a smaller, square hatch set into it at head height.
Cyrus stood up and covered his nose. “Did an elephant die? I can taste it.”
“It smells like skunk plus last year’s fish,” Antigone said. She nudged Dennis’s crumpled shape with her toe. “What do we do with him?”
“What do we do with us?” Cyrus asked.
“No! Leon, down!” A boy’s shout echoed through the darkness. “Down!”
A bubbling bellow drowned out the voice. A second later, the floor shook with a crash. Birds shrieked. Unknown animals whooped with excitement.
Cyrus and Antigone jumped to the light-outlined door. Cyrus found a bolt and jerked it back with a loud crack. The heavy metal door swung open into a cage.
The two of them stepped through onto a dry floor dusted with old straw. The walls on each side were gray stone. In front, thick iron bars separated them from a bright and immensely large room lined with cages.
Cyrus walked to the bars and pressed his face between them. Antigone squeezed beside him. The foul-smelling zoo was beautiful, but battered. Marble floors were smeared with filth. Cracked stone columns grew into steel girders, which peaked in Gothic arches, carrying a paned mountain range of skylights that ran the length of the room.
The place was alive with daylight.
Cages lined the walls and mezzanines, but Cyrus didn’t look to see how many were full. His eyes were on an armored white shape attempting to run down the middle of the room. It looked part astronaut and part white fire hydrant, rocking forward on thick, awkward limbs
.
Chasing it, clattering and clawing, grunting and snapping, was a turtle the size of a van. A tail that looked like a whole crocodile dragged behind it. Clawed, elephant-size feet thumped beneath it, and its long, rocking, spiny shell was the size of a smaller car all by itself.
“Leon!” the white shape shouted, hopping slowly. “Stop!”
The turtle stretched out a wrinkly, scaled head that would have been big on a buffalo and opened a mouth large enough to swallow pumpkins. Its neck sprang forward, and its mouth snapped shut around the white shape’s head. It clamped and reclamped, while thick white legs kicked and thick white arms flailed. Then, lifting the shape up off the ground by its head, it began shaking its prey from side to side, banging legs against its spined shell.
“Hey!” Antigone yelled. “Over here! Come over here!”
“What are you doing?” Cyrus asked. He reached for his sister’s mouth.
But Leon the turtle had already heard. The thick white chew toy clattered to the floor.
“We have bars,” Antigone said. “We’ll be fine.”
Cyrus looked at the iron in his hands, and then he looked at the turtle as it flared its lopsided nostrils and stepped toward them.
“I don’t think these bars have a chance.”
The white thing tried to sit up but couldn’t. It flopped side to side and managed to roll onto its face. When it looked up, Cyrus blinked. It had two large silver mesh eyes and an upside-down triangle for a mouth.
“What are you doing in here?” it asked. “You better get out fast.”
Leon the turtle was approaching slowly. And then he levered open his enormous mouth. A long piece of skin in the back of his throat writhed like a snake.
Cyrus and Antigone took a step back from the bars. When they did, the turtle bellowed, raised its shell off the floor, and thundered forward.
Before it hit the bars, Cyrus and Antigone shot back through the rear door, tripped over Dennis as he sat up, and tumbled into a wall.
The iron bars screamed under the turtle’s impact.
So did Dennis.
The bars bent, but they did not break. The turtle twisted his head to the side, hooked a single bar with his beak, and ripped it free.
“That’s Leon!” Dennis yelled. “We’re going to die!”
A second bar clattered to the floor.
Antigone stood and kicked Dennis. “Get up and start acting like a Polygoner!”
The white shape appeared behind Leon and pointed. “Four doors down!” it yelled. “That way!” And then it lumbered off.
Leon tore two more bars out at once, then he wormed his head through the gap. He needed to show off his bait.
The huge turtle dropped its shell belly to the floor, cranked open its mouth, wrinkling its puckered old-man face, and held very still—all but the attractively wiggly bit of skin.
Cyrus grimaced, watching the turtle’s snake-size uvula twist and slither. “That’s disgusting.”
Antigone grabbed him by the arm and dragged him down the dim hallway behind the cages.
Leon writhed and snapped as they left, banging his shell forward, bending iron.
Four doors down, Cyrus threw another dead bolt and opened the door, and the three of them stepped into another cage. Wooden roosts were mounted to one wall in an enormous tangle. Bones were strewn across the floor. The bars of the cage were not bent and were not merely missing. They had been torn to pieces.
Dennis froze, giggling nervously. Cyrus and Antigone pulled him through the bones, through the fragmented bars, and out into the main room. The three of them stopped and stared.
“Oh my,” Antigone said. “Cy, are you seeing this?”
Cyrus nodded. He had no words. Leon the impossible turtle was still grunting and trying to fight his way into the cage, but Cyrus couldn’t even be bothered to look at him. The room was much bigger than he’d been able to see through the bars of a cage, and it was not a room. It was a neoclassical indoor jungle. Second- and third-story mezzanines held open cages and palm trees. Vines climbed eighty feet from the floor to the upper peaks of the skylights. At the far end, so distant as to be visible but noiseless, a small waterfall flowed off the upper mezzanine and into a pool. A few long-tailed birds circled high above.
“This was the biggest wing of the zoo,” Dennis said quietly. “It’s slightly amazing.”
“Slightly,” said Antigone. “I’d say.”
The white astronaut was waiting for them. He glanced back at Leon and up at the birds.
“Cheese, Leon!” it yelled. “Go get your cheese!”
Instantly, the turtle tore its head free and began scraping its way quickly back in the other direction, its tail slithering and its huge spiny back bobbing as it went.
The white shape put club fists on wide hips. “Now maybe you’ll tell me how you got in here. Not that it matters. The O of B will have your bags packed in the morning for this. Some of the Keepers don’t even want me in here.”
“What are you?” Antigone asked.
The white thing reached up and twisted its head counterclockwise until it popped off.
On top of the enormous white body was the small, red, sweating face of a twelve-year-old boy, wet hair glued to his forehead. “I’m James Axelrotter, zookeeper. You can call me Jax. Who are you?”
“Jax!” Cyrus said. “We needed to find you. We have to get some animal tutoring or something.”
The boy scrunched his face. “I don’t tutor. And if I did, why would I start with trespassers and rulebreakers?” He glanced up at the birds in profile against the skylights, and then back over his shoulder.
“We can talk about that later,” said Antigone. “We need to get out of this place and find Greeves. Right away.”
Jax nodded and pointed them toward a distant door at the end of the room. “That is the closest exit. Stay with me.” He began waddling, and Cyrus followed him, examining the boy’s white suit.
“What are you wearing?”
“An artificial exoskeleton,” Jax said, scanning the room while he walked. “Made from more than half a million interwoven and rubberized Golden Orb-weaver webs—among other things. It’s the only way I can survive very long in here. This place was the Crypto wing—unusual, bizarre, especially deadly, and supranatural creatures. Construction began after the Civil War. Axel-rotters have always overseen it. Leon was one of the first to be housed here.”
“But they lost control of the animals,” Dennis said. “That’s why it’s closed.”
Jax tried to glare at him over his enormous white shoulder. “They did not lose control of the animals. Twenty-four years ago, a Keeper named Edwin Laughlin—Phoenix to everyone now—was inspired by Leon and altered these animals. My grandfather and a number of his staff were killed as a result.”
“I don’t understand,” Cyrus said. “Inspired by Leon? You mean he made the animals big?”
Jax again glanced up, and then turned a full circle as he moved, eyes all over the room. “No. He did not. Though it can have that effect eventually. At first, he modified the personalities—animalities, I guess—of particular animals. Then he exchanged consciousnesses—animal to animal. He ended by modifying and blending animals physically. That is when he was caught. But not before his final phase was executed on more than a few of them—the Leon phase.”
Jax looked up and around. “Stay close. I want you alive when I turn you in to Mr. Greeves.”
“Terrific,” said Antigone. “Right. That’s what we want, too.”
Cyrus looked over his shoulder. Dennis was huddling quite close to him. “What’s the Leon phase?”
“Leon is named after Ponce de León.” Jax glanced back. “Spanish explorer. Found the Fountain of Youth in Florida. But it wasn’t much of a fountain. It was a murky swamp pool deep in the Everglades. They were even swampier then. Leon is how he knew he had found it.”
“Are we joking right now?” Cyrus asked.
Jax shook his head while he walked. �
�That was five hundred years ago, and Leon was already huge and ancient, snacking on gators. Leon is what happens when an alligator snapping turtle lives in the Swamp of Youth for a few centuries. He’ll still be alive after our grandchildren are dead. Ponce told the Order about the huge turtle, and they put Leon on the Sage lists and sent Journeymen out to check on him every so often. Then when the swamps were drained off for farming and the fountain was lost, Leon went on the move. He started eating horses on some ranch. That’s when the O of B collected him.”
“I would never believe any of that,” Antigone said. “But I’ve already seen the turtle. So the Leon phase of the experiments …”
Jax sighed. “Transmortality. Nearly immortal animals.”
“Nearly immortal?” Cyrus asked.
“Not one has died yet,” said Jax. “But it’s only been two decades. The Sages in the Orbis put all the transmortaled creatures in here, and then they sealed it up. I come in, do my best to clean, and feed them and try to keep everything from going too wild. Not much else I can do.”
Something slapped onto the floor behind them.
Cyrus spun around, and Antigone grabbed his arm. Dennis squeaked. Jax swore.
The birds were descending. But they weren’t birds.
A fat-bodied red snake slithered toward them, rearing to strike. When it reared, it spread two wings, glistening with white feathers.
Another snake hit the floor. And another.
Jax shoved Cyrus toward the end of the room. “Get to the door! Run! And keep your eyes up!”
Raising his helmet, Jax twisted it back into place. “Now!” he yelled. “Go!” And he lumbered toward the snakes.
Cyrus, Antigone, and Dennis ran.
White wings churned the air above them.
nineteen
BRENDAN
A RED CURLING tail brushed through Cyrus’s hair, and the viper dropped to the floor six feet in front of him. Others were dropping farther ahead, closer to the door.
Behind him, Antigone screamed.
Cyrus spun around, nearly colliding with Dennis. The porter veered off, but he didn’t stop sprinting.
While Cyrus watched, his sister grabbed a snake by the tail and plucked it out of the air. Swinging it hard, she knocked two others to the ground behind her, hurling her serpent club away as she did.