by Ayana Gray
“I’m telling you, we need to leave!” Koffi’s voice rose an octave, but she couldn’t help it. She tore her gaze from Baaz to stare back at Diko. The jokomoto had not yet moved, and there was a subtle red-gold glow just beneath his scales. “Please.” She looked over her shoulder. “Please, everyone needs to—”
Someone grabbed her roughly by the arm, and she found herself face-to-face with Baaz. His face was contorted with rage. He either hadn’t noticed Diko or didn’t care anymore. “I said, shut up,” he hissed through his teeth. “This is my zoo, not yours. I decide who leaves this tent and when, not you, you foul little—”
It happened without warning. There was an earsplitting shriek, so shrill several beastkeepers dropped to their knees at the sound of it. Koffi felt Baaz release her, and she fell to the ground as the entire Hema shook again and a blaze of light filled the space. The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end as she curled into a ball and covered her head. A long scream punctuated the air, then set off a chorus of others. Head still bowed, she listened to the sounds of pounding feet and panicked animals running around her until she dared to look up. When she did, her heart stopped.
Diko.
He was now in the middle of the tent, illuminated as though he were standing over some invisible white light. Fire erupted from his mouth in horrible yellow-gold waves, scorching everything in reach. He would burn the entire tent down.
“Koffi!”
Koffi looked to her right. Jabir was standing on the other side of the tent, looking around, as his dogs surrounded him and whined. His eyes were searching as he grew frantic. Koffi had opened her mouth to call his name when one of the gorillas barreled toward her and forced her to roll out of its path. When she sat up again, she couldn’t see Jabir anymore.
“Move!”
There was a stab in her ribs as someone tripped over her, toppling to the ground with another scream. She doubled over. The Hema’s air was growing thicker and darker by the second, harder to breathe and more difficult to see through. To her right, the guiamala—now abandoned—trotted in nervous circles until it knocked down the tent’s central pole and the whole structure gave an ominous shudder. A metallic tinkling intermingled with new screams as hundreds of the pitching stakes outside uprooted, unable to bear the tent’s new strain. Koffi stared up at it in horror.
“Get down!”
Someone yanked her to the floor as pieces of the crimson tent began folding in on themselves, catching flame with alarming speed. A body covered hers, shielding her from the worst of the falling debris. When Koffi turned her head, her face was inches from another’s. Mama. She’d somehow gotten to her.
“Stay behind me,” Mama said. “Crawl!”
She gestured for Koffi to follow her across the rugs on hands and knees as the animals and beastkeepers trapped inside the burning tent continued screaming. The tent’s exit had already collapsed, and more pieces of it were still caving in. Several feet away, on the other side of the tent, there was a gap where the edge of the Hema had slightly lifted from the dirt. It was a small opening, but if they could slip under it . . .
Beneath her, bits of broken glass cut into Koffi’s palms and knees; plumes of smoke filled her lungs with every ragged breath she took. The fire worsened, hotter still, but she didn’t stop. To her dismay, the gap in the tent seemed to be getting farther, not closer. Fresh embers danced around her face, and she waved a bloodied hand to bat them away.
Gods, she prayed, please don’t let my hair catch.
A terrible ringing filled her ears as she opened her mouth to call out to Mama and took in a mouthful of acrid heat instead. Her mother’s silhouette—still crawling just ahead of her—was growing fainter, harder to discern amid the smoke and bits of tent falling in around them. Koffi tried to take another breath, but it was only a dry wheeze. It burned. She winced again as someone stepped on the back of her feet. Any minute now, she knew her body would reach its limits. She wouldn’t be able to go on.
“Kof!” Mama shouted her name from somewhere in the darkness. “Hold on to me!”
But it was already too late. Koffi couldn’t see or feel anything but smoke and blood. Her head was growing fuzzy now, and the world tilted as she fell forward. She waited for the pain, the inevitable collision with the ground, but it never came. There was a loud crash as a new section of the tent imploded, another long, agonized scream. Strong arms caught her, half pulling, half dragging her out into cooler night air.
“Koffi!”
The world was still dark and blurred, but Koffi felt someone gently slapping her cheek and trying to force her upright. She blinked hard and found Mama staring down at her. “Get up! We can’t stay here!”
Koffi inhaled clean air, and the world righted itself. They were outside now, mere feet from the burning Hema. No sooner had she stood than Mama grabbed her arm and broke into a sprint.
“The animals,” Mama said between strides. “Help me with them!”
Koffi looked behind them. The Hema was now completely ablaze, a great fiery heap spreading fast to other parts of the Night Zoo’s grounds. She heard the bleats, snarls, and shrieks of caged beasts as its searing heat reached them, and her stomach heaved.
“Quickly!” Mama pointed Koffi toward the aviary while she raced toward a pen of panicked kudus. Koffi didn’t stop to think as she yanked the domed cage’s door open and let the birds soar up and into the night in a rainbow of feathers. A pair of beastkeepers watched in confusion before they understood what she was doing and darted away to help other animals. Koffi freed the chimpanzees, a baby warhyppo, and then a zebra. She was so lost in the pandemonium that, at first, she didn’t hear the whooping. When she did, her blood ran cold.
Warriors.
Of course, no doubt they’d seen the smoke and flames from down in the city and come to investigate. She shuddered. Lkossa’s warriors, the Sons of the Six, weren’t known for their compassion. Suddenly, Mama was at her side again.
“We must leave.” Mama’s voice was tight, eyes wide. “Now!”
Koffi jolted. “What about our debts?”
Mama grabbed her by the shoulders, her grip almost painful. “We cannot stay here,” she pressed. “What just happened in the tent, if Baaz realizes what you really did and what you really are, you will never leave this place.”
What you really did and what you really are. The words sounded odd, somehow wrong, but Koffi didn’t have time to dwell on them as Mama tore off across the Night Zoo’s lawns, pulling her in tow. Her legs screamed in protest with every stride, but she pushed to stay on Mama’s heels. Around her, brief images flashed by in vivid color. It seemed the rest of the Night Zoo’s creatures had been freed, stampeding around the lawns, looking for escape too. Several more fires had broken out over the grounds, and the air was punctuated with the sounds of not only animals, but beastkeepers too. Koffi shuddered, her gaze sweeping the grounds’ perimeter. She flinched as her feet began to tingle again, and this time she felt an internal tug just beneath her navel as something shot through her once more. She turned her head in its direction, and a wave of relief flooded through her. A giant brick wall surrounded the Night Zoo, but there was a section of the wall where creeping vines hung down in thick ropes.
“Mama!” Koffi pointed toward the vines. Following her gaze, her mother nodded and changed course. They stopped together at the base of the towering wall.
“Climb!” Mama glanced over her shoulder. They were alone there, but probably for mere seconds.
Koffi didn’t hesitate. The vines formed in a curtain of deep green as she twisted one of the stalks around her bare foot and used it to hoist herself up. She reached as high as she could, but stinging pain lanced through her palms. When she pulled her hands away, the vine was stained dark with blood. Her hands were scratched from crawling over debris in the Hema.
“Hurry!” said Mama.
“
My hands are cut up!”
Mama ripped two strips from the hem of her tunic. “Wrap these around them!”
Koffi obeyed and tried again. This time when she grabbed the vine, the pain was manageable. The pull below her navel was still there, urging her on as she hauled herself up the wall inch by inch. It seemed to take a century, but gradually the top came into view. The stars above twinkled through the rising smoke, and Koffi used them as her guide. Reach, she told herself. Just keep reaching.
“Don’t stop!” Mama called from below. Another surge of profound relief overtook Koffi as her bandaged hands finally found purchase on the ledge, a flat stone surface just wide enough for her to heave onto and perch like a bird. She looked down, expecting to see Mama right behind her, and triumph turned to terror.
Mama was still several feet down, frantically climbing the vines and looking over her shoulder with a panicked expression. Koffi followed her gaze, trying to understand. Her throat tightened as her eyes finally found what Mama’s already had.
Two young men in plain brown kaftans were running across the lawns and toward them with purpose, their silhouettes blurred against the blood-orange glow of the roaring fire at their back.
Sons of the Six, come to stop them.
“Come on!” Koffi leaned over the wall’s ledge as far as she dared, fingers outstretched. “Take my hand!”
But if Mama had seen or heard her, she gave no sign of it. Her eyes were darting back and forth now like a hare caught in a trap, looking from the vines to the approaching warriors to the vines again with visible panic. She made a desperate sort of half leap, and it cost her as she slipped farther down the vines.
“Mama, please!” Koffi reached, aware that if she extended much more, she’d fall forward; as it was, her body was already teetering. Finally, Mama seemed to understand. She looked up and reached for Koffi’s hand, oblivious to the small black stone hurtling her way. With a horrific crack, it connected with the back of her skull. A soft sound escaped her lips as her eyes rolled back to expose their whites, and Koffi knew what was about to happen.
“No!”
Their fingertips grazed, then came apart. It seemed to take a thousand years for Mama to fall to the ground in a crumpled heap. Koffi waited, heart pounding, but her mother didn’t move.
“Got her!”
Someone shouted the words from far away, but Koffi didn’t look up to find the speaker. Too-dark blood was pooling in the grass under Mama’s head like a crown. It seeped into her head wrap, soaking the black twists sticking out from it. In that moment, Koffi understood. It was the terrible sense of comprehension she’d felt when Baba’s eyes had closed on that cot so many years ago, when she’d realized he hadn’t gone to sleep but to someplace much farther away. A slow dread clawed its way up her insides, seizing at her throat with long, vicious fingers.
No. She stared at her mother’s body, trying to process it. No, no, no, no—
A stone collided with her shoulder, sending fresh pain ricocheting through her body and jolting her back to the present. Yet again, something tugged in her core, compelling her to turn away from the Night Zoo and toward the open fields beyond. She felt a distinct kind of tearing within her, two things at war and pulling her in different directions. The foreign feeling in her core was demanding she leave; Mama’s body begged her to stay.
Mind over heart. Heart over mind.
She faced the lemongrass fields before her.
“Hey, wait!”
Koffi started and looked over her shoulder. One of the warriors was closer now, his dark eyes fixed on her with a hunter’s focus. He was hunting, hunting her. She swayed on her perch, willing herself not to fall forward.
Go.
It was a single word in her mind, but it was sure, repeating itself like ripples on a pond’s smooth surface.
Go.
She made the decision then, mind over heart. Her stomach lurched as she leaped from the ledge and into the stars, praying they’d catch her as she fell.
CHAPTER 6
The Color of Midnight
Ekon ran through Lkossa’s empty streets, Sons of the Six flanking him on all sides.
Two hundred eighty-two steps from the Temple of Lkossa, he counted. A good number.
The cheerful din that had filled the city earlier was gone, and the few denizens still outside shop fronts did not wave or cheer as the warriors passed. It wasn’t hard to imagine what their group must have looked like: a pack of uniformed men, spears, and stern faces, charging into unknown danger. He gripped his hanjari’s leather hilt in one hand and tapped his fingers against his side with the other.
Two hundred eighty-four steps. Two hundred eighty-five steps. Two hundred eighty-six . . .
It didn’t take long to reach the Night Zoo, though Ekon still paused as the hill it perched upon loomed into view. Of course, he’d heard about the zoo—every Lkossan child grew up with stories of its wonders and terrors—but he’d never actually visited it or dared to come so close. It bore an uncanny resemblance to a prison: a large, bricked-in compound with walls at least twice his height. Flickers of gold-orange flames were visible, and even several yards away the acrid stench of smoke and burning grass stung his eyes. They kept running until they’d reached the zoo’s ornate blacksteel entrance gates. Kamau, positioned at the head of their group, stopped before the gates and turned. He looked every bit of a true kapteni.
“We need to move quickly,” he said. “The vegetation around this area is very dry, especially the lemongrass fields. If the fire spreads to it, Lkossa proper will be decimated. We have to contain it, then extinguish it, so we’ll work in groups.” He pointed to several seasoned warriors. “You will join me in the search and rescue. We’ll start on the south end of the zoo, and move west.” He looked to another group. “You are going to be runners. You’ll take buckets of water to the areas where the fire is closest to getting out and work to contain it. Don’t let up for any reason—”
“Kamau!”
Ekon almost regretted speaking up as the eyes of every warrior shot to him. He couldn’t discern the look on his older brother’s face, so he braved the rest of his words. “Sorry, um . . . Kapteni, how can I help?”
Kamau was already looking past the Night Zoo’s open gates. “There should be a well somewhere inside the zoo—city ordinance requires it. You, Shomari, and Fahim will be in charge of refilling water buckets to hand off to the runners. Make sure there’s always one ready for them.”
Disappointment flooded Ekon. There was no way being a bucket boy would be enough to prove his worthiness to Father Olufemi and the warriorship. He was all too aware that he hadn’t actually grabbed his name from the basket of mambas in the temple before being called away, which meant that—technically—he hadn’t completed his last rite of passage. If he couldn’t prove himself here . . . He swallowed a lump in his throat.
Kamau gave them all a measured look. “There are indentured servants in this zoo called beastkeepers,” he said. “They’re mostly indentured Gedes, and no doubt, some of them will be trying to escape in this chaos. If you see one and you’re able, secure them. They are under legally binding contracts and not permitted to leave the zoo’s grounds. Move out!” He turned on his heels, and the rest of the Yaba warriors obeyed, following him through the Night Zoo’s entrance and into the compound with whoops and war cries. As soon as he was inside, Ekon winced. It wasn’t just hot here, it was sweltering. He’d never known how loud a fire could be; its roar was thunderous. All around him, people in gray tunics were running, screaming, and they weren’t the only ones. The hair on the back of his neck stood on end as something shimmery and scaled barreled past him with a snarl, sending waves of heat in its wake. A few feet away, another shape, hairier, fled the growing flames. The beasts of the Night Zoo had been freed.
“Get to the well!” Kamau swung his spear in a wide arc as something horne
d charged at him. Ekon watched him disappear into the plumes of smoke.
Please be all right, he silently prayed. Please be okay—
“Okojo!”
Ekon jumped as someone shoved him, surprised and annoyed to find Shomari glaring at him. “Get moving. The well’s over there!”
Ekon bit back a retort. He and Shomari ran across the lawns to the well where Fahim was already standing and started filling buckets. Beastkeepers were also desperately carrying buckets of water and haphazardly throwing the water onto the fire, but it was no use. Ekon snatched one of the buckets none too gently from a bewildered old man. His eyes shot to a large tent entirely engulfed in flames, likely the original source of the fire. Kamau was right; they had to get it contained fast.
He plunged the bucket into the well. The water was lukewarm and foul, but a runner was already racing toward him. No sooner had he passed the bucket off to him and refilled the empty one dropped at his feet than another one was coming, and then another. It was repetitive work; the muscles in his arms and lower back twinged as he stooped over and over to pass off refilled buckets and pick up empty ones. His heart lifted as he looked across the Night Zoo’s scorched lawns. One of the smaller fires had already been doused, and a team of warriors was now battling the main one near the giant tent. His eyes were still searching when he saw it—saw them.
Two gray-clad figures were running across the Night Zoo’s grounds amid the chaos, one glancing over her shoulder every few strides.
Two, a bad number.
The first woman wore a head wrap and looked old enough to be his mother, but the second could have been his age. Even from a distance, Ekon saw the fear reflected in both their faces—the fear of people running for their lives.
They were trying to escape.
Ekon glanced over his shoulder as he threw another bucket into the well, alarmed. “Hey!” he shouted. “We’ve got two potential escapees heading for the wall!”