Krakens and Lies

by Tui T. Sutherland

  They all looked so peaceful. Logan wished he didn’t have to be the one to tell them that their troubles weren’t over after all. It was only yesterday that the Menagerie had escaped being shut down by SNAPA, the SuperNatural Animal Protection Agency. Logan and Zoe had found and returned Pelly, the abducted goose who laid golden eggs, and they’d rescued Scratch, one of their dragons, from being exterminated for Pelly’s supposed murder. He’d hoped that maybe they’d all have a minute to relax—and perhaps even think about trying to find his mom.

  But that wasn’t happening tonight. He opened the photo of the map and held it out to Zoe.

  “We found this in Mr. Sterling’s study,” he said.

  Zoe stared at it for a long moment, and then passed it to her mom, blinking away tears. Captain Fuzzbutt crowded up beside her and wrapped his trunk around her arm. She turned to bury her face in his fur.

  Mrs. Kahn took one look at the picture, gasped, and covered her mouth with one hand.

  “The Sterlings know about the Menagerie,” Zoe said in a choked voice.

  “That’s impossible,” Mr. Kahn said, taking the phone from his wife. He zoomed in to the picture and studied it, running one hand through his hair so it stood up in horrified tufts. “A theme park,” he said. “This must be why Mr. Sterling has been buying up so much nearby land. But how—why—”

  Keiko snatched the phone and scowled at it. “Oh REALLY. ‘Kitsune Pavilion’? I’ve got a better idea: how about a ‘Sterling Pavilion’ featuring the stuffed heads of all the Sterlings I’m going to hunt down and disembowel?”

  “Let me see,” Matthew said, leaning over the pass-through. Logan took the phone from Keiko and handed it to him. “Holy chupacabras.” Zoe’s brother whistled softly. “This is a major kraken ink situation. Right? Like, we might need SNAPA for cleanup. And a massive dose for the whole family, obviously. I hereby volunteer to hold down Jonathan.”

  “I don’t understand.” Mrs. Kahn’s voice faltered. “Ruby—Ruby said—”

  “RUBY!” Zoe’s dad bellowed. “RUBY, GET DOWN HERE RIGHT NOW!”

  “Ooooh,” Keiko said, hopping up to sit on the counter. “Now this is going to get fun.”

  “I knew Jonathan was a weasel,” Matthew said vehemently. “I knew Ruby was wrong; I knew he would tell his parents. He’s always trying to impress his dad by doing stupid things like going out for sports when he hates them. I bet he was taking that jackalope to show Mr. Sterling. I bet they’ve been planning to expose the Menagerie for months.”

  “We’re getting to the bottom of this,” said Mr. Kahn. “RUBY!”

  “WHAAAAAAAT,” said Ruby, flouncing into the kitchen. She threw herself into a chair and started picking through the candy in the Halloween bowl. “You don’t have to shout at me. Ew, who got all this candy corn? Tell me there’s something chocolate in here.”

  “Ruby,” Mrs. Kahn said in a dangerously quiet voice.

  Zoe’s sister looked up and finally noticed their expressions. “Uh-oh,” she said. “Oh no. What’s wrong? What’s Zoe done now?”

  “ME??!!” Zoe yelled.

  “Ruby,” said Mr. Kahn. “Did you lie to us about dosing Jonathan and his parents with kraken ink?”

  “What? No!” Ruby cried—a little too quickly, Logan thought. Her eyes darted sideways and she stood up, flinging the dark hair of her wig back over her shoulders. “How could you even ask me that? You know what a huge sacrifice I made! I gave up what might be my only chance at true love! I may be emotionally scarred for life!”

  “You definitely gave them all kraken ink?” Mrs. Kahn said. “All three of them?”

  “Of course I did,” Ruby said, putting her hands on her hips. “This is an outrage! I can’t believe you don’t BELIEVE me!”

  Her parents stared at her for a long moment and she stared back with her chin lifted defiantly.

  “Matthew,” Mr. Kahn said. “Go get the qilin.”

  Ruby and Zoe both gasped. Matthew dropped Logan’s phone on the counter and bolted out the sliding doors into the dark night.

  Logan hadn’t thought of that, but it was smart. The qilin—a kind of Chinese unicorn—could determine a person’s guilt or innocence. This one, Kiri, had been a part of Scratch’s trial and was set to be sent back to Camp Underpaw on Sunday. Her horn would turn yellow for innocence or blue if the person was guilty.

  “You would use a qilin on me?” Ruby demanded, waving her hands dramatically. “How could you? Where is the trust? Where is the faith? I am your daughter. I refuse to stand here and let you interrogate me like some common dragon!”

  “This is very serious, Ruby,” Mrs. Kahn said. “Beyond serious.”

  “I know!” Ruby said. “Doubting your own flesh and blood! Threatening her with backward unicorns! If I could tell my Facebook friends about this they would be so totally appalled!”

  Mr. Kahn picked up Logan’s phone and held it out to her. “Can you think of another explanation for this, then?”

  Ruby scrunched up her face, studying the map. She prodded the screen, moving it around and zooming in and out.

  “Is this some kind of joke?” she said finally.

  “That,” said Mr. Kahn, “is what your friends the Sterlings are planning on doing with our Menagerie.”

  “Look how much they know,” Mrs. Kahn said. “They couldn’t have remembered all that if you really gave them kraken ink.”

  Ruby reached up unconsciously and touched one of the shimmering red hearts dangling from her ears. “No,” she murmured. “There’s no way! Jonathan would never let this happen. He loves me!”

  “Loves?” Zoe said accusingly. “Present tense?”

  The glass doors slid open and Matthew came in, leading the delicate qilin. Captain Fuzzbutt waved his trunk cheerfully at her, and the qilin tiptoed lightly across the kitchen tiles. Her little hooves didn’t even make a sound. Logan felt the quiet peace of her aura calming down the turmoil inside of him.

  He held his breath. Was Ruby lying?

  The qilin took one look at Ruby and her horn instantly turned blue.

  Guilty.

  THREE

  Zoe stared at the qilin’s glowing blue horn.

  Ruby had lied about the kraken ink. She’d put the whole Menagerie in danger for a stupid, backstabbing boy. She’d broken all the rules they’d grown up with. Zoe couldn’t even imagine it—if her parents told her to do something for the safety of the animals, she would have done it in a heartbeat.

  In fact, she had done it. She’d given kraken ink to Jasmin. She’d given up her best friend.

  Zoe reached for Captain Fuzzbutt and felt the mammoth’s trunk wrap around her waist.

  “Thank you, Kiri,” said Zoe’s dad.

  The qilin gave a little bow with her head, then turned and trotted back out into the Menagerie.

  “All right, fine,” Ruby said. She slammed Logan’s phone down on the counter and Zoe saw him wince. “I didn’t give Jonathan the kraken ink, okay? What we have is true love forever!”

  “But didn’t you care about the danger to the Menagerie?” Mr. Kahn asked. “He tried to steal a jackalope—can you imagine what would have happened if he’d succeeded?”

  Zoe had never heard him sound so bewildered. Or maybe a better word was betrayed—that was certainly how she felt. Mom and Dad had always trusted her and Ruby and Matthew. They’d let them do almost anything as long as everyone followed one rule: keep the Menagerie safe.

  “I can’t believe you lied to us,” Mrs. Kahn said.

  “I can,” Keiko offered. “She’s an enormous liar. I mean, that is not her actual hair color, for one thing.”

  “And for Jonathan, of all people!” Matthew said. “That double-crossing jerk!”

  “He is not!” Ruby flared. She threw her hands up dramatically, waving her sleeves like wings. “You don’t understand him! None of you do! He’s a good person! He’s wonderful and heroic!”

  “He’s a thief,” Matthew said, “and he obviously lied to you, if
you don’t know about this theme park plan.”

  “I’m sure he knows nothing about that,” Ruby said. “He was stealing the jackalope for a noble reason! Which nobody even bothered to find out except me!”

  Matthew crossed his arms. “Oh, right. And what noble reason is that?”

  “He did it for Jasmin,” Ruby declared, as if she were standing in the middle of a Broadway stage with one spotlight on her and dim blue mist all around. She pressed her heart with one hand and gave Zoe a pitying look. “He was trying to save her.”

  “Save her from what?” Zoe demanded. Something jumped and twisted inside her stomach. “Save her from what, Ruby?”

  “I’m sorry, Zoe,” Ruby said. “Jasmin is very sick.”

  “She is not!” Zoe yelled. Captain Fuzzbutt let go of her and backed away, trumpeting anxiously. Zoe clenched her fists, her heart pounding. “That’s another lie!”

  “It’s true!” Ruby hollered back. “Jonathan told me!”

  “Everyone calm down!” Mr. Kahn said. “Ruby, what are you talking about?”

  Ruby paused again, like the most annoying Hamlet right before his big speech. “Jasmin . . . has a terrible secret disease,” she said in a hushed voice.

  “No. I would know if she did,” Zoe said furiously. “She would never never keep that from me.” Would she? Has she been sick all these months? Did I abandon her when she needed me the most?

  “Jonathan told you he was taking the jackalope to save his sister?” Mr. Kahn asked, giving Zoe a worried look. “From what? What does she have?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Ruby said, waving her hands. “Something that sounded like sarcophagus? I can’t remember. Anyway, whatever, it’s terrible.”

  “Maybe he was completely lying,” Matthew suggested. “That would fit with everything else he’s done.”

  “Why didn’t you tell us?” Zoe asked. “How could you not tell me, if you think it’s true?”

  Ruby wound a strand of the wig’s hair around her finger and sighed. “Jonathan said the family didn’t want anyone to know. Anyway, by the time he told me, it was too late. You’d already sent me over there with the kraken ink. And I did give it to his parents, by the way, whatever you think. But once I found out about Jonathan’s true, heroic reasons, I couldn’t do that to him, so we just . . . pretended I gave him the kraken ink.”

  “Wait,” Mr. Kahn said, rubbing his forehead. “Are you telling me that you told Jonathan about what the kraken ink does?”

  Ruby bit her lip. “Well, I—I mean, I had to explain why he needed to act as though we’d never dated.”

  “Ruby.” Mrs. Kahn shook her head sadly. “How are we going to get the Sterlings to forget about the Menagerie if they’re already on alert for kraken ink?”

  “Jonathan wouldn’t tell them! He wouldn’t do that to me! This is insane!” Ruby shouted.

  “AAAOOOROOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!” Captain Fuzzbutt charged out from behind Zoe and started blundering around the living room. The vibrations from his feet shook books off the shelves and overturned a vase of yellow lilies on a side table.

  “Fuzzbutt!” Zoe yelled. She ran to the doors that led out to the Menagerie and slid them open. “Help me get him outside!”

  Logan, Blue, and Matthew ran to cut the mammoth off and herd him toward the doorway. Fuzzbutt rolled his eyes and trumpeted again, stamping his feet, then suddenly bolted out into the darkness.

  “I’m going after him,” Zoe said to her parents.

  “Are you all right?” her dad asked.

  “Yeah, I just—need some air.” She ducked out the door and ran down the hill.

  Captain Fuzzbutt was sitting by the unicorn stable, his shoulders slumped gloomily. The cool air smelled of pine trees, and a chilly wind swept right through Zoe’s skin. She wished she’d brought a jacket, but she wasn’t going back into that house or anywhere near Ruby right now.

  “Don’t worry,” she said, hugging one of the mammoth’s giant legs. “It’s just a fight. Everyone will be fine.”

  She wished she believed that. She wished she knew what to believe. Was Jasmin really sick? Or was Jonathan a totally evil liar as well as a sneak and a thief?

  Sneakers swished in the grass and she turned to find Blue and Logan behind her.

  “You know what we have to do,” she said.

  “Catch a jackalope, milk a jackalope, and then find some way to slip the world’s most disgusting-smelling substance into Jasmin’s Coke at lunch on Monday?” Blue guessed. “No problem.”

  “WHAT?” Logan said.

  “Exactly,” said Zoe. “Except I can’t wait until Monday. We find a way to get it to her tomorrow.”

  “She seems fine,” Blue said. “It’s much more likely that Jonathan was lying, right? Really, Zoe, I think she’s okay.”

  “But if she’s not—” Zoe said. “If there’s even a chance Jasmin is awfully sick, and I—I just left her—I’ve been the worst friend, and she might . . .”

  She covered her face with her hands. A warm arm went around her shoulders and she turned to let Logan hug her. It was comforting, but at the same time, she kept thinking that Jasmin hadn’t had anyone to comfort her all these months.

  “Let’s go now,” she said, pulling free. “The jackalopes might be sleepy and easier to catch in the middle of the night. Captain, you stay here.”

  The mammoth made a mournful noise and flopped down on his side. Zoe rubbed his head once more, knowing exactly how he felt.

  “Um, so,” Logan said as he followed her down to the path around the lake. “I’m totally on board, of course. But what are we doing?”

  “Jackalope milk is supposed to cure anything,” Blue said. “But it’s kind of unpredictable. SNAPA has been studying it for years, trying to figure out a way to reliably reproduce it and get it into the world as medicine, but for one thing, it doesn’t always work, and for another, they’ll have to invent an explanation for where it comes from. Also there’s this rare side effect where one percent of people who take it grow antlers. So there’s a lot more testing still to do.”

  “But Jasmin—” Zoe said.

  “Oh, I agree,” Blue said. “No need to convince me. We’re doing this. I’m ready.”

  “Then go get a thermos or something,” Zoe said. “Don’t let my parents see you.” He turned and ran back toward the house.

  They crept up to the jackalope enclosure, a small fenced-in field near the pine grove between the Aviary and the yeti’s ice sculpture garden. Everything was quiet. Zoe guessed the jackalopes were asleep in their hutch, which looked much like an ordinary rabbit hutch, except that the entrance and the roof were extra-tall to accommodate their antlers.

  She crouched behind the hedge, waving Logan to the ground as well, and held up a finger to her mouth.

  “Be vewy, vewy quiet. We’re hunting jackalopes,” Logan whispered.

  “What?” Zoe said.

  “Seriously?” Logan said. “From the . . . cartoon . . . do you even own a TV?”

  “What’s a TV?” Zoe asked.

  He goggled at her for a minute, and then she couldn’t keep a straight face anymore and collapsed into giggles.

  “Would you quit teasing me?” he said, punching her shoulder. “I’m still figuring you all out.”

  “We’re not aliens, goofus,” Zoe pointed out. “And seriously, yes, we should be quiet. Jackalopes can mimic any voices they’ve heard, so the best way to approach them is without talking. That way, we know not to follow someone’s shout when they try and throw us off track.”

  “Oh,” Logan said, “good call.”

  “It’s okay, Logan.” Zoe smiled at him. “I know you haven’t had time to memorize all the tips in Matthew’s Tracker guide yet. We don’t expect you to be an expert until, say, next week.”

  “Funny,” Logan said, pointing at her. “I got it that time.”

  Blue came jogging up with an empty water bottle in his hand. “Hope this’ll work,” he whispered, crouching beside them.
/>   Zoe peeked at the hutch again. “We can’t just reach in and get them—the hutch is designed to make them feel secure, so they can hide in there as long as they want—which is what they usually do when they see us coming. So Logan and I will go around to the back opening and Blue, you take the front. Sneak up and then make a loud noise, and hopefully they’ll bolt out the back. We need to grab the female one, so follow my lead, okay, Logan? And try not to get impaled by their antlers.”

  “Ha-ha?” Logan said. “Hilarious?”

  “No, that’s real,” Zoe said. “They’re not as sharp as deer antlers, but you still don’t want to get stabbed in the neck with one.”

  “Someone should get you an ordinary pet one day,” Logan said. “Something that doesn’t impale or bite or breathe fire or plan to take over the world. Like a goldfish.”

  “Oh, you’d be surprised what some goldfish are planning,” Blue said.

  “I have Captain Fuzzbutt,” Zoe said. “All he can do is break my foot if he steps on it. Otherwise, he’s perfect. Okay, Blue, are you ready?”

  Blue nodded.

  “Remember, no talking. Or if you really have to tell us something, say the word ‘banana’ first so we know it’s you and not the jackalopes.”

  “Banana? Really? That’s the best code word you can come up with?” Blue said.

  “Okay, fine, what do you want to use?”

  “How about ‘merfolk rule!’?” Blue suggested.

  Zoe rolled her eyes. “Way too long.”

  “Gadzooks?” Logan suggested.

  “Are you ninety-seven years old?” Zoe asked.

  “Fish sticks!” said Blue.

  Zoe sighed. “‘Fish sticks’ it is. Now get out of here.”

  Blue saluted her and they split up, circling around the hutch.

  “This fence is mostly to keep the hellhounds out,” Zoe explained to Logan. “The regulations say we need to provide a separate enclosed space for the jackalopes. Plus they like to rub up against the wooden barriers; it helps when they’re molting.”