Krakens and Lies

by Tui T. Sutherland

  Zoe tucked her hair behind her ears. Was this a terrible idea? How much trouble would she be in when her parents found out? Less trouble than Ruby, surely. And they had to understand it’d be worth it for Jasmin . . . if she was really sick.

  Zoe eased forward to a break in the hedge and threaded her way through two of the wooden planks of the fence. Logan copied her and she was glad to note that he moved quietly. Those natural Tracker skills again.

  The long grass tickled her ankles and she wished she were wearing socks. As she and Logan approached the hutch, she turned, caught his eye, and motioned that she’d go in from the left. He nodded and started curving to the right.

  We should have brought the night-vision goggles. Zoe mentally kicked herself. Matthew would have remembered them. He had a whole checklist pinned to his bulletin board for what Tracker equipment to pack depending on which creature you were hunting.

  But even without goggles, Zoe was close enough now to make out the details of the hutch. It was raised half a foot off the ground. The water bowl sat in one corner, next to a pile of alfalfa sprouts. A plain cardboard box took up most of the hutch’s space. It was stuffed with shredded paper and she could see two pairs of antlers sticking out the top.

  The sound of gentle whuffling breaths told her the pair was sleeping. Maybe this will be easier than I thought.

  Just then, Logan stumbled. His feet scuffed the ground as he righted himself, and then he froze in place. Zoe eyed the hutch, not daring to move.

  One. Two. Maybe they’re still sleeping. Three. Four.

  WHOOSH.

  The two jackalopes leaped from the box and sprinted out of the hutch in opposite directions.

  Zoe let out a little cry of dismay and bolted toward Clover. She could only tell it was the female jackalope from the slightly smaller size of the antlers. Logan followed Zoe and tried to head Clover off.

  “Over here!” Zoe heard her own voice call from behind her. It was surreal. Did she really sound that high-pitched?

  “Fish sticks! Blue, she’s heading for the fence!” Zoe called out.

  “Fish sticks, on my way!” he answered.

  “Wait, Blue, you’re going the wrong way!” a jackalope squeaked in Zoe’s voice.

  Clover turned sharply and darted under a patch of scrub, emerging on the other side at full steam. Logan vaulted after her as Zoe ran around the bush.

  “I’ve got one!” Blue’s voice shouted triumphantly from her left. Zoe nearly turned toward him, before she realized there was no code word. She swerved back and spotted Clover bounding over a rise.

  “Fish sticks, Zoe, Logan, where are you?” Blue’s voice came again, this time from in front of her.

  “Fish sticks, right here! Keep coming, we’ve almost got her,” Logan shouted back.

  “Fish sticks, what are you doing? That’s not the one we want!” Blue said.

  Logan slowed and sent a questioning look over his shoulder at Zoe. Zoe squinted at the jackalope she and Logan were chasing. No, she thought, that’s definitely Clover. They must have figured out our code.

  “Banana, they’ve caught on. Logan, keep going!” she cried.

  Logan picked up his pace as Clover pelted toward the border of the field. Mooncrusher’s yurt was visible up ahead. Zoe hoped they wouldn’t wake the yeti. For a nocturnally named guy, Mooncrusher was an early-to-bed kind of yeti, and would not appreciate three twelve-year-olds and a jackalope crashing through his ice sculptures at this hour.

  Blue suddenly appeared out of the darkness, racing toward them. Clover’s back legs slid sideways as she veered away from him, but Logan took a chance and dove forward, pinning the jackalope’s back half down and tucking his head between his arms to avoid her antlers.

  Clover squeaked in alarm and twisted her head frantically to see what had her.

  “Fish sticks, let her go! You’re hurting her!” Zoe’s voice cried out in alarm.

  “Banana, no! It’s okay,” Zoe panted as she dropped to the ground next to Logan and Clover. “I’ve got her.” She reached out and gently scooped Clover up, flipping the jackalope over onto her back so her antlers dangled down on either side of Zoe’s left arm. Clover’s hind legs pushed against Zoe’s chest—that was going to bruise. “Shh, Clover, it’s okay,” Zoe crooned.

  “You’re going to be in big trouble for this, young lady,” the jackalope said sternly in Zoe’s father’s voice. Zoe winced. It really sounded exactly like him.

  Blue joined them, resting his hands on his knees as he caught his breath.

  “Whew, I’m glad that’s done,” Logan said.

  “Well, next is the hard part,” Blue said. “Now we’ve got to milk her.”

  “I BEG your pardon,” said the jackalope, sounding like Melissa Merevy, Blue’s mom, this time. “Under whose authority? Where are your SNAPA badges? I demand to see your requisition forms!” Even coming from an upside-down rabbit with antlers, Melissa’s voice was intimidating.

  “Clover, it’s really important,” Zoe said, stroking her fur softly. “Please don’t be mad.”

  “Have you ever done this before?” Logan asked.

  “Nope,” Blue said. “Can’t say that we have. SNAPA sends in special vets to do it occasionally, but it’s not exactly standard procedure around here.”

  “I’ve read how to do it, though,” Zoe said. “We just need to calm her down first.”

  “Calm me down, indeed,” Clover grumbled in, hilariously, Pelly’s voice. “After barging through my home and waking me up and practically traumatizing my antlers right off, what makes you think I’ll—oooh, right there, that’s been itching all day.”

  The jackalope nestled into Zoe’s arms as Zoe scratched under her chin. Clover’s mate, Parsnip, peeked out of the bushes nearby, but once he seemed satisfied that Clover was not being harmed, he slipped away.

  After five minutes or so, Clover’s heart rate finally started to ease off turbo-speed, her legs relaxed, and her eyelids drooped. Zoe nodded toward Blue’s jacket. “Get the bottle ready.”

  He produced the empty water bottle as Zoe flattened Clover’s fur. She told Logan how to hold it, and then she began massaging Clover’s belly. Gradually, some milk began to drip into the bottle. Zoe nearly cried in relief. She hadn’t been sure this would even work. Logan looked up and met her eyes, a grin spreading across his face. Zoe felt herself beaming back at him.

  “How cool is this?” he asked. “Although, wow, with the smell. That is . . . going to haunt me for a while.”

  “This is very undignified,” the jackalope pointed out in Zoe’s voice.

  “Sorry, Clover,” Zoe said. “It’s for a good cause.”

  Clover flopped her head sideways and rolled her eyes up toward Blue. “You don’t look busy, young man,” she said, switching back to Melissa’s voice. “You could at least be scratching my ears.”

  “Okay,” Blue said, crouching at Clover’s head. “But could you use a different voice, please? I could have gone through life without ever hearing my mom ask me to scratch her ears.”

  “And you should comb your hair, too,” the jackalope said, obstinately staying in Melissa’s voice. She closed her eyes and poked Blue’s hand with her little nose. “Also shower. You smell like you’ve been bathing with squid.”

  Zoe giggled. She’d heard Melissa say almost those exact words to Blue before.

  “Okay, that’s just eerie,” Blue said.

  Gradually, the pace of the milk picked up until the bottle was halfway full.

  “That’s probably good enough,” Zoe said.

  “Are you sure? I don’t want to have to do this again,” Logan said.

  “Hmm. Good point.”

  SPLOOOOSH!!

  Streams of milk shot up from several different points on Clover’s belly all at once. Zoe felt one hit her chin, while Logan got some in his eye and even more in his mouth.

  “YERGH,” he sputtered. “Ugh. Holy cow. That tastes even worse than it smells.”

  “AHEM!
There is no need to be rude,” Clover said sniffily, back in Pelly’s voice. “Considering I am doing you an enormous favor in the first place.” She waggled her upside-down antlers at Logan, not very menacingly. “A little gratitude would be in order, I do think.”

  Blue started cracking up. Zoe looked at the milk dribbling down Logan’s face and giggled. Logan grinned back as he wiped his face with his sleeve.

  “Seriously, though,” he said. “I have no idea how we’re going to get Jasmin to drink that.”

  Zoe’s joy fizzled out. She had no clue, either . . . but for Jasmin’s sake, she knew they had to try.

  FOUR

  Logan’s cell phone rang while Zoe was hiding the jackalope milk between two blocks of ice near Mooncrusher’s yurt.

  “It’s my dad,” Logan said to Blue. They were leaning against the wall of the Aviary, waiting for her.

  “Something wrong?” Blue asked. “You usually look a lot happier than that when he calls.”

  “We had a fight on the way over here,” Logan said. “Which never happens.”

  “A fight about what?”

  “About being friends with Zoe, basically. Hang on.” He answered the phone. “Hey, Dad.”

  “How’s the party going?” Dad was trying to sound upbeat and enthusiastic, maybe to make up for how they’d left things.

  “Great,” Logan said. “Fine. Normal.”

  “Super. Well, I can come get you at Jasmin’s anytime you’re ready.”

  Logan thought about sticking around the Menagerie for a while, but most of the animals—including the griffin cubs, his favorites—were asleep. And he didn’t particularly want to hover around the edges of the massive Ruby fight that was probably still going on. Safer to come back tomorrow, when things had calmed down.

  “I’m ready now,” he said. “But can you pick me up at Blue’s?”

  There was a short silence.

  “Yes,” Logan said. “I mean Zoe’s.”

  “I’m on my way,” Dad said, in his let’s-not-argue-about-this voice. “Love you.”

  “You, too.” Logan hung up and shoved the phone back in his pocket. “It’s weird, Blue. I think my dad must know about the Menagerie—why else would we be here in Xanadu? He must know my mom knew you guys, and that she was on her way here with something. But then why wouldn’t he come talk to the Kahns about her, and why is he acting so crazy about me being friends with Zoe?”

  “Maybe he’s worried that the Kahns will wipe his memory,” Blue said with a shrug.

  Logan scratched his head. He hadn’t thought of that. “You’re right—if he knows about kraken ink, he’d be smart to be careful. I wish there was a way to figure out how much he knows.”

  “Maybe it’s time to talk to him about all this,” Blue suggested.

  “I was kind of hoping he’d talk to me first,” Logan said. “But yeah, maybe.”

  Logan only knew that his mother was a mythical creature Tracker because Zoe had told him. Abigail Hardy had brought in Captain Fuzzbutt—rescuing him from a cloning facility in Siberia—and the unicorns and several other inhabitants of the Menagerie.

  But then she had disappeared six months ago, on her way to the Menagerie with a Chinese dragon, and no one had seen her since.

  Could the Sterlings have had anything to do with her disappearance?

  Logan shook his head. He didn’t know where to go with those thoughts.

  Zoe emerged from the darkness and they all headed around the Aviary and back to the house. Logan could hear tiny splashes coming from the lake. He wondered if it was the kraken, who was supposed to be hibernating but had popped out at least twice in the last week.

  “I’ve been thinking,” Zoe blurted suddenly. “What if the Sterlings are the ones sabotaging the Menagerie?”

  “I had the same thought,” Logan agreed.

  “Sabotaging?” Blue echoed, startled.

  “Logan and I think someone’s been trying to get us shut down,” she said. “First by letting the griffin cubs escape—someone cut that hole in the river grate so they could get out. And then we think that same someone stole the golden goose and framed Scratch for her murder. I thought they wanted us to get in trouble with SNAPA. But maybe it’s the Sterlings, and they’re hoping we’ll lose control of the Menagerie so they can swoop in, expose us, and take it over.”

  “How could they have done any of that?” Blue asked. He pointed back at the dragon caves in the cliff. One of them glowed with a small, eerie red light—the fire of whichever dragon was on duty tonight, Logan guessed. “I mean, you know I don’t trust the dragons, but surely at some point they would have sounded the intruder alert if the Sterlings kept coming into the Menagerie.”

  “Not the night Pelly was stolen,” Zoe reminded him. “There was no alarm. Scratch was out eating sheep, remember?”

  “But he could only do that because someone had already tampered with his chain and the electric fence,” Blue argued back. “The Sterlings couldn’t have done that.”

  Zoe fell silent.

  “So if the Sterlings are the saboteurs,” Logan said slowly, “then either they found a way around the dragons’ intruder alarm, or . . .”

  “Or someone inside the Menagerie is working with them,” Zoe finished.

  “It’s not me,” Matthew said, popping out from behind the Doghouse. Zoe shrieked and jumped back, nearly knocking Logan over.

  “Sorry, sorry,” Matthew said. He held up his hands with a grin. “I just wanted to put that out there, since you always think it’s me. I swear I am not working with the Sterlings.”

  The ground shook as Captain Fuzzbutt came barreling up the hill, trumpeting anxiously. He threw his trunk around Zoe and lifted her off the ground.

  “I’m all right! It’s okay, Captain, put me down,” she said.

  Grudgingly he set her on her feet and patted her all over with his trunk.

  “What did Mom and Dad do to Ruby?” Zoe asked Matthew, rubbing the mammoth’s forehead.

  “They were still discussing it when they kicked me out,” he said, shaking his head. “I heard them say something about sticking her in a SNAPA OOPSS course during all her school breaks for the next three years.”

  “No way,” Zoe said in a voice that was equal parts awe, delight, and horror.

  “What’s an oops course?” Logan asked.

  “Official Overview of Protective Security Standards,” Zoe said.

  “Essentially the most boring thing associated with mythical creatures ever,” said Matthew. “It’s, like, remedial ‘don’t tell anyone about the animals’ classes. Shut Your Yap 101. You’re stuck in an underground facility for months on end, reading long boring articles about the rules and what happens when people break the rules. Ruby would haaaaaaaate it.”

  “Perfect,” Zoe said firmly. “I hope they really do it.”

  “I voted for sending her to the Tanzania menagerie to work with the Giant Mythical Insect research team,” Matthew said. “I think feeding enormous talking cockroaches and cleaning out monster spider dens would serve her right.”

  “That’s a good one, too,” Blue said. “I guess SNAPA will have to decide.”

  “As long as it’s awful,” Zoe said, shaking her head. “I still can’t believe what she did.”

  “I’m going to head out front,” Logan said. “My dad will be here soon, and I’m guessing nobody wants him ringing the doorbell right now.”

  “All right,” Zoe said. To his surprise, she came over and gave him a hug. “Thank you for your help. And for finding that map. I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I know it would have been a lot worse if you hadn’t found it.”

  “I’ll be back in the morning,” Logan said. “If that’s okay?”

  “You better be,” Blue said, punching his shoulder.

  Nobody was in the kitchen as they went through, but they could hear the murmur of voices from upstairs. The Halloween candy bowl sat abandoned on the table. But as Logan went past it, he could have sworn he
saw a Three Musketeers bar suddenly . . . disappear from the bowl. He stopped and blinked at it.

  I’m just tired and imagining things, he told himself.

  He slipped out the front door and found his dad’s car parked in the driveway, its front windows rolled down.

  But his dad was nowhere to be seen.

  “Dad?” Logan said, glancing around at the dark woods that surrounded the Kahn property. “Dad?” he called, a bit louder.

  Is this what happened to Mom? Did she just vanish like this?

  A bolt of fear shot down Logan’s spine. He reached into the car and grabbed a flashlight from the glove compartment. The light did hardly anything to illuminate the spaces between the pine trees, but he stepped closer to the wall, sweeping it around.

  “DAD!” he shouted.

  Twigs cracked in the woods off to his right. Logan whirled around and caught his dad right in the beam of the flashlight.

  Jackson Wilde threw up his hands to shade his face. “Whoa, buddy. Spare an old man’s eyes.”

  Logan lowered the light and frowned at the darkness behind his dad. “What were you doing out there?”

  “I thought I saw something moving,” his dad said. “Some kind of animal, maybe a coyote. You know we’ve had something eating the sheep around here. I figured I should investigate. Wildlife department and all.” He tapped his shirt, although he wasn’t wearing his badge.

  “Without a flashlight?” Logan said skeptically. “Or a weapon? You may be taller than a sheep, but you could be just as edible.”

  Logan’s dad laughed and slung an arm around Logan’s shoulder, a little awkwardly given how tall Mr. Wilde was. “I’d like to meet the coyote who’d dare to try and eat me.”

  How about a dragon? Or a kelpie? Logan thought. He glanced back at the woods as they climbed in the car. Had his dad really seen something? Or was he trying to snoop around the Kahns’ house?

  “Those are some tall walls,” his dad said. “What do they keep in there? Cattle? I don’t recall seeing a license for them in our files. . . .”

  “I’m sure they have one,” Logan said, evading the question. He knew SNAPA would have given them some kind of cover story and paperwork to guarantee no one from any other government agency came poking around.