As he did, a gust of wind blew open the back door of the house. It swept inside, rattling the empty glass and sending the slip of paper floating through the air. The paper landed faceup on the floor. Scrawled across it, in Mumford’s sloppy handwriting, was some kind of list. The list was illegible, but the four red letters stamped on top of it were not. Separately, those four letters were harmless. They could mean anything. But when strung together, in just the right order, they built a very powerful word.
SOLD.
Of course, Smalls knew nothing of this word as he made his way to his favorite oak tree. His mind was crowded with other words: boy and warm and honey. Sinking his claws into the tree’s trunk, he began to climb. But when he was only halfway up, the fur on his paws suddenly stood on end.
A loud rumbling noise was coming from inside the blue-shuttered house. Snoring.
Smalls looked at Tilda. Tilda looked at Wombat. Wombat looked at Rigby.
Mumford had fallen asleep without preparing their evening meals.
In all the years the animals had lived with him, Mumford had never once forgotten their bedtime ritual. He always made sure that Smalls’s bowl of warmed honey didn’t drip into Wombat’s lemongrass stew and that none of Tilda’s carrot soup got on Rigby’s jasmine roast. Smalls felt a cold shiver run down his back.
Something was ominous indeed.
No sooner had the thought entered his head than a second sound rang out through the air. It was a loud clanging coming down the street. As it drew closer, it blended with Mumford’s snoring until an eerie melody echoed through the farm.
Snore-CLANG!-Snore-CLANG! Snore-CLANG!
“What, pray tell, is that cacophony?” Wombat asked.
Smalls didn’t bother with a response; it would have been drowned out. Because suddenly, the cacophony was louder than ever. And it was coming from right behind them.
Chapter Ten
A Gilded Caravan
CLANG! CLANG! CLANG! The noise drew closer, drowning out Mumford’s snores. CLANG! CLANG! CLANG! Smalls was just about to hide his ears under his paws when the source of the noise came into view.
It was the old black motorcar that had been parked in Mumford’s driveway only minutes before. But now, hooked onto the back of it, was a caravan. Once upon a time, the caravan must have been a splendid affair: a deep red the color of rosebuds, with gilded curlicues that looped up and down and forward and backward, so every inch gleamed like a chest of gold. The caravan even had golden wheels that once must have glittered like sunlight as they spun.
But now, the caravan was old and grimy. Its red paint was faded and worn, its gilded spirals were dirty and chipped, and its golden wheels were caked in a layer of rust and dirt. Something must have once been emblazoned above its single, barred window, but now only a few of the golden letters were left. T e ost M g i ce r v li g C r
Two doors in the black motorcar swung open, and Lloyd and Loyd climbed out. Slung over each of their shoulders was a strange-looking contraption. “That’s them,” Rigby whispered excitedly. “The men from the card game.” Behind them, Claude leaned out the window, his crimson top hat sitting firmly on his head.
“That’s Claude,” Rigby said at the same time Tilda cried, “That’s the man who kicked me!”
“He kicked you?” Wombat growled. “Mon bel amour?” He lifted a brown, furry leg in the air, which, although short, was rippling with muscles. “Don’t fret, Tilda. I’ll protect your honor with my own kick of retribution!”
“Wait.” Smalls signaled for them to be quiet. Claude was saying something.
“Time for some action, boys,” Claude said, rubbing his hands together eagerly. “I want one of you to take the rabbit and the dog and one of you to take the bear and that rat thing.”
“Rat thing?” Wombat bristled.
“I choose the rabbit and the dog,” Lloyd said immediately.
Loyd crossed his arms against his chest. “Why should I get stuck with the bear?”
“Because I said so?” Lloyd offered.
“Well, I said no,” Loyd retorted.
“Yes.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“Lloyds!” Claude interrupted. “Is there a problem?”
“No, Boss,” Lloyd said quickly. “Loyd was just saying that he would take the bear.”
“Then get to it,” Claude snapped.
Grumbling under his breath, Loyd stomped over to Smalls. “All right, you blimey bear. Make this easy for me and get in the caravan.”
Smalls took a step back, eying the man warily. The man’s muscles were bulging out of his black shirt, and his fedora sat crookedly on his head. Instantly, Smalls disliked his smell. He didn’t smell like raspberry sugar cookies like Mumford or lavender essence like Tall Thomas or even broccoli stew like Larry the Spitter. He smelled rotten, like something inside him had gone bad.
“Get in the caravan!” Loyd ordered again.
Fear gurgled in Smalls’s stomach. “Get in the caravan?” he repeated. “Why would I want to do that?”
Of course, all Loyd heard was a long series of bear grunts. “Don’t mess with me, bear,” he warned.
Out of the corners of his eyes, Smalls saw Lloyd scoop up Tilda. She wriggled desperately, trying to bite him, but Lloyd just laughed, easily snapping her mouth shut. A growl escaped from Smalls’s throat.
“Fine.” Loyd glared at Smalls. “You’re not going to get in yourself? Then we’ll do this the hard way!” Pulling the strange contraption off his shoulder, he snapped it over Smalls’s face. Suddenly, Smalls’s mouth was clamped shut. He couldn’t move his tongue. He couldn’t snap his jaw. Something hard was pressing against his nose. He was locked in a muzzle.
Smalls shook his head wildly. Who was this man? And where was Mumford? He tried making a list in his head to keep calm—the top ten games he’d ever invented—but it didn’t help. Another growl escaped him, echoing off the oak trees.
“Don’t try anything funny, bear.” Loyd grabbed his muzzle, yanking him toward the caravan.
Over by the hammock, Lloyd clamped a similar muzzle onto Rigby. Rigby reared wildly, but Lloyd just jerked him down with a laugh. Rigby’s eyes met Smalls’s. There was a frantic look in them. Do something, they seemed to beg.
Smalls clawed angrily at his muzzle. Who did these men think they were, coming onto his farm and hurting his friends? He reared into the air, his claws glinting like knives. As far as bears went, Smalls was small. But as far as animals went, Smalls was big. He was strong. And he had claws that could slice straight through wood.
“I said not to try anything, you stupid bear,” Loyd snarled. He gave the muzzle another yank and Smalls swiped at him automatically. Instantly, Smalls recoiled. He’d never, ever taken aim at a human before.
Loyd’s face turned bright red as he sidestepped Smalls’s claws. “I warned you, bear.” He pulled something out of his pocket. It was long and thin and sharp. Smalls’s eyes widened as he realized what it was.
A syringe.
Inside Smalls, something snapped. Suddenly, he wasn’t Smalls anymore. He wasn’t even a bear. He was anger, pure and red and fiery. Grabbing Loyd with one paw, Smalls drew the other one back, taking aim. Loyd writhed in his grip, but Smalls held on tight. He had him this time. One swipe and he’d be free.
With all the force he had inside him, years of bear instincts long buried and hidden, Smalls sliced through the air with his sharp claws. His paw was inches from Loyd’s neck when something in the caravan caught his eye. A small, freckled face, peering out at him through the window.
Bertie.
Smalls looked into Bertie’s bright blue eyes. Whatever had snapped inside him slowly clicked back together. The fiery anger was gone. He was Smalls again. He paused, and in that brief second, Loyd broke loose from his gr
ip. He thrust the syringe into Smalls’s shoulder, making Smalls cry out in surprise.
Smalls staggered backward. Immediately, he could feel the liquid from the syringe winding its way through him, making him feel warm and sluggish. The oak trees blurred before his eyes. “Much better,” he heard Loyd say.
Smalls tried to pull away, but his paws felt heavy and numb, like they weren’t his own anymore. Somewhere in the distance, he could swear he smelled honey, but when he tried to look for it, he found he couldn’t move his head.
As Loyd dragged him toward the caravan, it was all Smalls could do to stay on his feet. The world spun and dipped around him, blackness slowly creeping in, draping everything in shadows. “Get in,” Loyd snarled. “Boss is waiting for you. Though who knows why he wanted to win a lot of misfits like you.”
As Smalls tumbled into the rickety, old caravan, he finally understood. The card game they’d been playing . . . they had been betting for everything. And at Mumford’s Farm & Orchard, the animals were everything.
Mumford had lost them.
It was the last thought Smalls had before the blackness swallowed him up.
Chapter Eleven
No Clouds Here
When Smalls opened his eyes, his first thought was that the world was melting. Silver dripped into blue that spiraled into red, colors spinning around him like a tornado. He blinked several times. Slowly, shapes began to emerge from the colors. A rough blue floor, chipped red walls . . . and silver bars. Only inches from his nose.
Smalls’s heart tightened in his chest. Bars? Why were there bars?
Frantically, he reared up. The world tilted around him, but he managed to push himself to his paws—ow! The wall came out of nowhere, cracking into his head. He lost his balance, staggering backward into another wall.
Smalls’s heart squeezed tighter. He grabbed the silver bars, pulling at them with all his might. But they wouldn’t budge. And as the last of the fuzziness cleared from his eyes, he saw why. Clamped onto them was a huge black padlock. Smalls swayed on his feet.
He was locked inside a cage.
Breathing fast, he stuck his nose through the bars, peering out. Across from him sat a line of empty cages. They were all different sizes, from tiny to large. Streaked across the back of the largest cage was a red stain, a terrible odor wafting off it.
“This floor is sullying my fur!” Tilda’s familiar whine was like music to Smalls’s ears.
“Nice word choice, my love,” Wombat said, sounding pleased.
Rigby let out a frustrated bark. “Who cares about word choice? I want to know where this thing is taking us!”
“I do as well,” Wombat said softly. His voice broke, and he coughed quickly to cover it up.
“Are you worried now, Wombat?” Tilda asked. “Because you said you weren’t worried, so I wasn’t worried, but now if you’re worried, then I should probably be worri—”
“I’m not worried, Tilda,” Wombat cut in soothingly. “I’m . . . undaunted. I’m cavalier. I’m très calme!”
Smalls cleared his throat. “Wombat?” he asked shakily. “Tilda? Rigby?”
“Smalls!” Relief flooded Tilda’s voice. “You’re awake!”
“Where are you?” he asked. He rocked back on his heels, feeling dizzy. He wasn’t used to having his vision blocked by walls. At Mumford’s everything was wide and open, grass below him and orchards beside him and sky above him.
“I’m in the cage adjacent to yours,” Wombat said.
“That means next to,” Tilda piped up. “And I’m in the cage above his.”
“And then there’s me, beneath both of them,” Rigby finished.
“What . . . happened?” Smalls asked. He felt like his memories had been spun into a web, all tangled together and stretched thin as thread.
“After examining the evidence,” Wombat said, “I would venture to guess that we’ve been taken.”
“We’ve been in this caravan forever.” Rigby sighed. Smalls could hear him swishing his tail across the floor of his cage. “And I can’t see a single cloud through this roof!”
“At least they took those ugly muzzles off you and Smalls,” Tilda said helpfully. “They really weren’t your best look.”
Muzzles.
Suddenly, the cobweb in Smalls’s mind splintered, a thousand different threads breaking loose. The muzzles. The men. The syringe. And the discovery.
Mumford lost us, Smalls remembered. He felt like someone had kicked him in the gut. How could Mumford do that to them? To him? Mumford had brought him home when he was just a cub. He’d called him his lucky charm because of the four-leaf clovers he was always finding, and he brought him into the house on rainy nights. When Mumford caught pneumonia, Smalls spent five straight days curled up at the bottom of his bed, making sure his toes never got cold. Other than a few faint memories of a jungle in Asia, Mumford was all Smalls had ever known.
Smalls reached up nervously to touch the four-leaf clovers behind his ear. But he felt only fur. His clovers were gone. He swallowed hard. For the first time in many years, he felt anything but lucky.
Suddenly, the caravan took a sharp turn, sending the animals tumbling through their cages. Smalls rammed into a wall, pain erupting in his shoulder where the syringe had stabbed him. “Not my fur!” Tilda yelped as her paw caught on a loose nail, wrenching out several strands of fur. Gingerly, Smalls righted himself, gritting his teeth to keep from yelling out in pain.
“I do have one question,” Wombat said. “Where, precisely, was Mumford during all of this?”
Smalls looked down at the rough, cracked floor of his cage. There was a brown strand of fur wedged into one of the crevices. It made him wonder who had been there before him.
“I guess he was sleeping,” Tilda said, but she didn’t sound very convinced.
Smalls sagged against the wall. He had the strangest feeling in the back of his throat, like one of Tilda’s hair balls had gotten wedged back there. He couldn’t bear the thought of telling the others what he knew. Why should they have to suffer too?
“Yes,” he said, his deep voice resounding through the caravan. He couldn’t believe how calm he sounded when inside it felt like every single one of his bones was rattling. “Mumford was just asleep, that’s all. He must not have heard a thing.” It wasn’t a lie exactly, but it wasn’t the truth either, and the words felt strangely rough on his tongue, like a piece of dry tree bark.
Rigby stuck his nose through the bars of his cage, his long tufts of fur obscuring his eyes. “But he’ll come for us, right?” he asked softly.
I really hope so, Smalls thought. But out loud he said, “I’m sure everything will be fine, Rigby.”
The words had just left his lips when the brakes let out a shriek. Slowly, the caravan skidded to a stop. Wherever they were going, they had arrived.
Chapter Twelve
A Lord in Chains
Smalls heard the Lloyds before he saw them. “My footsteps are definitely louder than yours,” Loyd said.
“You must have wax in your ears,” Lloyd replied. “Because my footsteps are definitely louder than yours.”
They clomped into the caravan, each trying to out-stomp the other. “No damage over here!” Loyd announced.
“What?” Lloyd yelled back. “I can’t hear you over all this stomping!” Glaring at each other, they both gave a final stomp before falling still.
“I said no damage over here.” Loyd was peering into Tilda’s cage. “The rabbit didn’t even try to gnaw through the wood.”
“Wood?” Tilda tossed her fur indignantly. “I’m a long-haired, snow-white Angora rabbit, not a woodchuck!”
Loyd grimaced. “That rabbit’s squeak is giving me a headache.” He moved on to Smalls’s cage, wrapping his thick hands around the bars. Smalls growled softly, rememb
ering how they’d plunged the syringe deep into his shoulder. “No damage in here either,” he announced.
“Except to the bear,” Lloyd added, coming up behind him.
Both twins burst out laughing. “Good one, Lloyd,” Loyd said.
“And Mom said we were too dumb to be funny.” Lloyd shook his fist at the ceiling. “Who’s the dumb one now, Mom?” Still chuckling, they both headed out of the caravan.
“Where are they going?” Tilda asked anxiously. “They can’t just leave us here!”
“Of course not,” Wombat consoled her. He looked up at the wall that separated him from Tilda. On the other side, Tilda did the same. “They’ll come back for us, mon lapin,” he promised.
With her head leaning against the wall, Tilda closed her eyes. “If you say so, Fred.”
But as the seconds melted into minutes and the minutes turned into an hour, Smalls began to wonder. There was a small, barred window on the side of the caravan, but it was too small and too high to be of any use to them. Smalls had never felt so helpless in his life. Tapping his paw against the bars of the cage, he began to make a list.
Exciting Places We Could Be
1. A bee colony where honey is made.
2. A honey factory where honey is jarred.
3. A honey store that sells all kinds of honey.
He was hard at work on number four when a familiar smell wafted into the caravan. Smalls scrambled to the front of his cage. Peanuts. It smelled like peanuts. His stomach yawned inside of him, emptier than his honey bowl after he’d licked it clean. “Do you smell that?” he asked the others.
Smalls could hear Rigby sniffing wildly at the air. “It’s coming closer,” he said. “Closer. Clos—”
The door to the caravan swung open. “Don’t you dare try any shenanigans on us, you monster,” Loyd said. He and Lloyd stomped back inside. They each held one end of a thick rope in their hands.
Lloyd gave the rope an angry yank. “Get in here,” he said.
The Daring Escape of the Misfit Menagerie Page 4