“We don’t know,” Hamlet replied. “Because he wasn’t there.”
“The circus was gone?” Wombat asked.
“Not the circus,” Buck said. His black-and-white mane bristled. “Just Lord Jest.”
“It took us a few days, but we found the circus caravans not far from our last venue,” Juliet explained. “They were parked in an empty lot, with big FOR SALE signs tacked onto each one of them.”
“It was like some kind of circus ghost town,” Buck chimed in. He kicked up an acorn, popping it into his mouth. “No people, no animals, no circus tent. Just silent, empty caravans.”
“And Claude,” Hamlet added.
Smalls and Wombat both sucked in a breath. Alfie, who was busy sharpening his quill sword on a rock, looked up. “Who’s Claude?” He waved his sword excitedly. “Is he the circus sensei?”
“If that means boss, then sure,” Hamlet replied. “Claude Magnificence was the head of the Most Magnificent Traveling Circus. He was everything: owner, ringmaster, trainer.”
“More like torturer,” Buck grumbled.
“Well, when we found him, he looked like none of those things,” Juliet went on. “We spotted him through the window of his caravan and he looked . . . terrible. He was wearing his pajamas, which clearly hadn’t been washed in days, judging by the cocoa stains on them, and his beard was a mess, tangled and filled with crumbs. And strangest of all, he was crying. Not just a few sniffles, either. I’m talking red-faced, snotty-nosed sobbing. He kept looking down at a photograph of Lord Jest when he was just a baby elephant, blubbering on about how he couldn’t believe he was gone.”
“Gone?” Smalls repeated. “Does that mean . . . ?” He trailed off, unable to finish the sentence.
“At first we thought so,” Juliet said. “Buck started wailing immediately—”
“I wouldn’t call it wailing,” Buck cut in.
Juliet swished her long tail. “Okay, sniveling then. The point is, we were sure Lord Jest hadn’t made it, that the impact of the motorcar had been too much for him. But then . . . then Claude said something peculiar.”
“What was it?” Alfie burst out. All five animals’ heads swiveled in Alfie’s direction. He was standing on the tip of his paws, his quills trembling in anticipation. “What?” he said with a shrug. “Even a sensei-in-training likes a good story.”
Smalls pawed anxiously at the horseshoe on his chest. “So what did Claude say?” he asked.
Buck lifted his gruff voice into a spot-on imitation of Claude’s nasal whine. “You just walked away,” he fake-sobbed. “After everything we’ve been through, Lord Jest, you just stood up and walked away! You didn’t even look back!”
Hamlet gave a nod of approval, making his thick mane swish through the air. “Pretty accurate.”
Juliet exchanged a look with Smalls. “If that’s true, it means Lord Jest is out here somewhere,” she said. “Free.”
“And alone,” Hamlet added.
“And possibly hurt,” Buck finished.
“So now we’re searching for him,” Juliet concluded. “We haven’t found anything yet, but Hamlet thinks he caught a whiff of elephant on a breeze from down south, so that’s where we’re heading.”
Smalls thought of Lord Jest wandering around alone, hurt and lost. For most of the time he’d known him, they hadn’t gotten along. But when it mattered most, Lord Jest had proved himself to be a true friend. “If only Rigby were here to help us sniff him out,” Smalls said softly.
Suddenly he straightened up, jostling Bertie. Rigby. For a minute he’d gotten so caught up in the Lifers’ story that he’d almost forgotten their mission at hand. But Bertie clearly hadn’t. He kept looking longingly over his shoulder, as if he hoped to find Susan and Rigby waiting on the other side of the pond. “We really should get going,” Bertie murmured, scratching Smalls under the chin.
“Bertie’s right,” Smalls said quickly. “We need to get on the road. But to do that, first we need to figure out where, exactly, we are.”
Smalls swiveled around, studying the landscape surrounding them. In their race to escape the herd, they’d ended up in a new section of the woods. The trees were taller and denser here, and the air was eerily quiet, the din of civilization—and train tracks—nothing but a distant memory. “I think we might be lost,” he said slowly.
“Nonsense,” Wombat retorted. “We can’t be lost.” He lifted his snout to study the position of the sun. “We’ve simply gone due north, or, I mean, due south, or, erm, well, maybe it was southeast . . .” He trailed off, looked befuddled.
“According to the sensei of hedgehogs, one can never truly be lost,” Alfie piped up. He tossed his sword into the air, then leapt up to catch it. “We simply have to let our inner compass lead the way.”
“Well, unless your inner compass can give us directions to Hoolyloo City, I don’t think that’s going to work for us,” Smalls said gently.
Juliet’s head snapped up. “Hoolyloo City?” she asked with a shudder. “Why would you want to go there?”
“It’s where we’re hoping to find Tilda, Rigby, and Susan.” Smalls sighed. “But now that we lost the train tracks, we have no idea how to get there.”
“Well, it’s your lucky day then.” Juliet flicked her tail out, tapping the four-leaf clover tucked behind Smalls’s ear. “Because we do.”
• • •
Susan stood on a wooden platform, looking up at the old, worn sign hanging above it. MULBERRY, it said, the letters softly faded.
It had been a split-second decision. If she jumped off the train, she could finally return to her parents—and then they could help her get to Toddle’s to find Bertie. She patted Rigby on the head. She wasn’t sure she could have done it without him by her side. But now they were in Mulberry. Or, at least so she thought.
She looked around at the empty, closed-up train station and the dusty dirt road that branched off in several different directions. She kept trying to conjure up some memory—any memory—of this place, but each time she drew a blank. She’d never seen this station before in her life. And why would she have? Until the circus, she’d never once left her hometown, on a train or otherwise. Besides, this station looked like it hadn’t been used in a long, long time.
She glanced down at Rigby. “Now what?” she asked. “How are we supposed to find my house?” She let out a weak laugh, shaking her head. Asking a dog for advice was never a good sign. “Think, Susan,” she said out loud. She took a deep breath, inhaling the salty scent of ocean air. “What I need to do is figure out which one of these roads leads to the ocean. That will at least get us closer to my house.”
At the word ocean, Rigby’s ears perked up. He barked several times, making the fur on his snout rustle. His words were simple—“I can smell my way to the ocean!”—but Susan, of course, only heard a string of barks.
“What’s wrong, Rigby? Are you hungry?”
Rigby barked out a no. Then he sniffed the air several times. “Got it,” he sang out. Leaping down from the wooden platform, he trotted over to the very last road, the one that wound off to the right. He planted his paws firmly in the dusty ground. “This way to the ocean,” he barked.
Susan twirled a strand of hair around her finger as she watched Rigby. He was standing on the very last path, looking so . . . resolute. With a bark, he tossed his head, almost as if he was gesturing for her to follow him.
Susan looked to her right. She looked to her left. No matter how hard she studied her surroundings, she recognized nothing at all. “I guess it couldn’t hurt . . .” she murmured. She hopped down from the platform. “All right, Rigby. I’m following.”
A Goodbye
The animals were up to something. Bertie was sure of it. First of all, none of them could sit still. Wombat was burrowing a hole and Buck kept twitching his striped tail and Smalls was walking in tight circles around all of them, pausing every so often to paw at the four-leaf clover behind his ear. Yes, Bertie decided. The animals were
definitely up to something. The question was what?
Bertie watched as Smalls walked over to Juliet. He grunted several times, nudging her with his muzzle. Juliet ducked her head, swishing her tail against the ground. Nearby, Wombat waddled over to Buck, letting out a soft snort. Buck brayed loudly in response. As Bertie watched, Smalls moved from Juliet to Hamlet to Buck, nudging each of them with his muzzle. Grunts and growls and whinnies were exchanged, and a look of sorrow flashed across Smalls’s face. They’re saying goodbye, Bertie realized.
Smalls let out a final grunt, his glance lingering on Juliet. Then he walked over to Bertie and gave him a lick on his cheek. By his feet, Alfie twittered louder than ever, and Bertie knew, deep down, that things were about to change.
• • •
In the tall stone house, Tilda was counting leaves. “Seventy-four, seventy-five, seventy-six.” She watched as they spiraled past the window, flashes of gold and orange and deep, dark reds. “Rigby would know the exact colors,” she said with a sigh. “And Wombat would know how to translate them to French. And Smalls would think of the perfect game to play with them.” She paused, counting out several more leaves. “Seventy-seven, seventy-eight, seventy—oh who cares.”
She slumped down on the ground. Her fur was a tangled mess, and there were several Cheerios caught in her ears. It had been a long time since she’d lifted a paw to groom, since she’d even uttered the words “sixteen-step grooming process.” She was dirty and she didn’t care, which was a very dangerous state for Tilda the Angora rabbit to be in.
“Going for the dreadlocked look, sugar pie?”
Tilda’s eyes flew back to the window. Kay was perched on the ledge, her blue head cocked to the side as she studied Tilda’s sullied fur.
“Maybe I am,” Tilda said defensively. “What does it matter, anyway? She’s the only who sees me these days.” She gestured toward a framed photo of Chrysanthemum hanging on the wall.
Kay fluttered her blue wings, their silver lining winking. “Life can change at any minute, honey. The way I see it, you might as well have clean fur when it does.” She looked like she might say something else, but at that moment, the sound of Chrysanthemum’s stomping rang out on the stairwell. It was heavy, loud stomping: the kind that signaled trouble. “That’s my cue,” Kay chirped. She spread her wings and, in a flurry of blue and silver, glided away.
“If only I had wings,” Tilda muttered. But she was stuck with paws. Which meant all she could do was wait as Chrysanthemum’s stomping drew closer.
Chrysanthemum, as Tilda had come to learn, was a fiery little girl. She angered easily, she whined constantly, and she wielded her stomping foot like it was the most dangerous of weapons. The only thing Chrysanthemum wasn’t was a crier. She chose shouts over tears every single time. So when Chrysanthemum stormed into her bedroom, collapsed on her bed, and burst into tears, Tilda’s round black eyes shot wide open in surprise.
“That stupid Lauren Nicola,” Chrysanthemum choked out through her tears. “All I wanted was to sit at her lunch table, but noooo, Chrysanthemum Toddle isn’t good enough to sit with Lauren Nicola.” She spit out the name as if it tasted like rotten fish. “Even though I had Golden Eggs! I wish Miss-Queen-of-the-School would come back from her stupid, fancy new life and kick Lauren off her throne. At least she was nice to me!” She paused, sniffling. “I just don’t understand what I did wrong, Tilda,” she said softly.
At the sound of her real name, Tilda looked up so quickly that her dirty, Cheerio-crusted ears flopped into her face.
“What did I do to deserve to be so alone?” Chrysanthemum went on. Tears ran down her face, leaving tiny streaks behind.
Tilda blinked. “I’ve been wondering the very same thing,” she said.
“At least I’m not alone here.” Chrysanthemum pulled Tilda onto her lap. A single tear rolled down her cheek, landing silently in Tilda’s downy fur. “Not anymore.” She picked up a brush and began combing it absently through Tilda’s fur. “We have each other now, right?”
Tilda leaned into Chrysanthemum, letting her brush out her fur. With each stroke, she could feel the dirt and tangles falling away, until she began to look more and more like the Tilda she really was. “Yes,” she said softly. “I guess we do.”
Pandemonium in the City
The smells hit Smalls first: smog and cement and perfume and steel and ivy and rubber and garbage and food—every type of food imaginable. Bread and meat and fruit and fish and bagels and cream and sugar and coffee and pizza and pastries and even foods Smalls had never smelled before, foods that smelled spicy and doughy, fragrant and sweet. The aromas crashed and collided in his nose, tempting and teasing him, making him hungry and nauseated and confused all at once.
Before he could even begin to digest the smells, he was met with the sounds. The voices struck him first, hundreds upon hundreds, a toppling tower of words. And the movement: motorcars roaring and footsteps pounding and doors doing everything doors did, slamming and opening and creaking and slamming again. There was honking and screaming and laughter and the clatter of dishes and the crunching of gravel, and it all blended together into a dull, melodious roar.
Smalls, Wombat, Alfie, and Bertie had reached the city of Hoolyloo.
“Look at the buildings,” Wombat said in amazement. His tilted his snout up as he took in the structures soaring above them. But it was the streets that Smalls couldn’t tear his eyes away from. Traffic lights blinked as throngs of people wove their way through lines of motorcars, fumes lingering among them like a layer of mist. Smalls had heard people talk about city life, had caught snippets and anecdotes from the city dwellers that used to visit Mumford’s Farm & Orchard, but never had he seen it for himself.
“Like I said,” Alfie said darkly. “It’s a dangerous world in there.”
Wombat looked up at Smalls. “It can’t be worse than the circus, right?”
Smalls took a deep breath. Wombat was right. They’d faced tight ropes and fire sticks and Claude in the circus. How much worse could the city be? “Let’s go find Tilda,” he said.
“Let’s go save Tilda,” Wombat corrected.
“And recover my lost gem!” Alfie chimed in.
Smalls was about to take a step forward when something off to the side caught his eye. It was a tiny green stalk, poking out through a pile of leaves at the edge of the woods. He cocked his head, studying it. It was a bright, springy green, its petals glistening in the sun. A clover. Forgetting everything, he pushed his way toward it. He counted one petal, two petals . . . but the rest of the clover was obscured by leaves.
Carefully, he began pushing the leaves aside with his nose. His insides were tingling like they always did when he spotted a four-leaf clover—right before he plucked it with his teeth and tucked it behind his ear, filled with a newfound certainty that luck was on his side. Breathing fast, he pushed the final leaf aside, revealing . . . a three-leaf clover.
“No,” he whispered. He sank back on his haunches, the tingling dying instantly. He’d been so sure his luck was finally returning, that things would finally go right for him again.But this clover wasn’t lucky. It wasn’t anything at all.
“What are you doing, Smalls?” Wombat asked.
“I’d just thought . . . I’d hoped . . . never mind.” He looked back down at the three-leaf clover. How would they ever find Tilda and Rigby if he couldn’t get his luck back? He cleared his throat, looking back up. Wombat, Alfie, and Bertie were all staring at him. “Let’s go,” he said, as cheerfully as he could manage. Smalls nudged Bertie forward, and one by one, the animals stepped into the city.
The concrete was hot against the pads of Smalls’s paws, nothing like the squishy coolness of grass. Everywhere he looked, there was something or someone to run into: people and bicycles and motorcars and pigeons, so many pigeons. “Hello,” Smalls said politely as a line of them waddled past. “Humph,” he muttered when not one of them replied. “They must be hard of hearing.”
He did
n’t have more time to ponder it, though, because suddenly he found himself sidestepping left to avoid a bicycle and then sidestepping right to avoid a person and then leaping up to avoid squashing a straggling pigeon. He landed on the edge of the sidewalk with a frightened yelp, yanking back his claws before they could be flattened by an oncoming motorcar. Smalls’s chest heaved up and down. In his natural setting, Smalls was an active bear; he could bound up trees and catch a fly with a single dart of his tongue. But they’d been in the city two minutes and already all the starting and stopping was making him short of breath.
“I do believe we’re creating a spectacle,” Wombat said wanly, distracting Smalls from his own troubles.
Smalls followed his gaze. He’d been so busy avoiding collision that he hadn’t noticed the chaos unfolding around them. But now everywhere he looked, he saw it: gaping jaws and widened eyes and the outraged screams and mangled shouts of terrified humans.
“A . . . a . . . bear!” a woman shrieked, fainting into the arms of a nearby man. The man himself wasn’t faring much better. His face turned ghostly white as he scrambled to back away from Smalls with the woman in his grip. In the street, a car screeched loudly as it slammed to a stop, the driver’s eyes glued to Smalls instead of the road.
Bertie wrapped a protective arm around Smalls as pandemonium mounted on every side of them. People were shouting and crying out as they scattered left and right, cutting off motorcars and bicycles in their haste, and making traffic halt in the street. “Someone call the zoo!” a woman yelled.
Panic clawed at Bertie’s throat. “There will be no zoos on my watch,” he hissed. “Or circuses.” Down on the ground, Wombat pressed himself against Bertie’s leg, trembling furiously. The hedgehog stood behind him, clutching a quill tightly between his paws. “We need to get you guys out of here,” Bertie said. “Especially Smalls.”
A Valiant Quest for the Misfit Menagerie Page 7