Free The Midnight Zoo by Sonya Hartnett Page A

inside that pen? Or has it gone to fill an empty place in the forest?”
    “Who knows?” said the chamois. “Who knows anything about that boar?”
    “That boar is mysterious, as men are,” said the bear.
    “Find out!” said the monkey. “Put a hand in the cage — find out!”
    The wolf lifted its nose. “I can smell that little pig. His tusks are close —”
    “Find out!” the monkey goaded deliriously.
    “— but he has been silent for a long time, since before the bombs began to fall — almost as if he knew the bombs were coming, and didn’t want to spoil the surprise. That would be typical of him.”
    “Typical of him to find a way out of his cage,” added the chamois, “but to keep it a secret like a trove of buried acorns. An unpleasant and petty little hog, that one.”
    “He was
charming
as a piglet,” said the llama. “Remember how darling? But he grew into a bore. Furious and furious and furiouser, always sniffling and snuffling and tearing at the bars.”
    “One wouldn’t be surprised if he’d chewed his way through them,” concluded the chamois. “He’s always in such a frenzy.”
    The brothers gazed dubiously into the blackness that crouched inside the boar’s cage. Andrej remembered what Marin had told him about wild pigs, how cunning they could be, how treacherous their tusks. The tusks could cut a hunting dog to pieces, or open a man’s thigh to the bone. Andrej closed his eyes and concentrated. Marin had said pigs were clever and vicious, but would he have agreed they were smart enough to escape a locked cage, fierce enough to cut through iron?
Marin,
he thought:
Marin
. Opening his eyes, Andrej said sternly, “You’re teasing us.”
    The animals did not reply. The chamois flicked its bob of tail, the llama smacked its lips. The wolf craned forward to sniff the stone where the liverwurst had been. “Where — where — where would it be?” asked Tomas with a splutter. “If the boar has escaped, where will he be?”
    “
Out
of his cage,” said the llama.
    “That boar likes bombs,” said the kangaroo.
    “And
hates
everything else,” said the chamois.
    “Especially boys,” said the wolf.
    “It
hasn’t
escaped.” Andrej raised his chin. “It couldn’t have escaped. If it was in its cage when the zoo’s owner left, and no one has opened the cage since then, then it
must
be in its cage. They’re teasing us, Tom.”
    “Yes, teasing.” Tomas smiled tepidly.
    “Give the boar the rest of the biscuits.”
    “Yes, he’ll like biscuits,” Tomas agreed. But he tugged at his brother’s sleeve and mumbled, “Come with me?”
    The lioness lifted her head to watch them cross the grass. They walked beneath the branches of the maple, past the bench and the mermaid and the packs with their strewn innards. Approaching the boar’s cage they saw the bars harden out of the shadows, saw the sign that said KANEC. Andrej knew that the animals were teasing, that logically the boar could not be loose: but his certainty suddenly revealed itself to have a dank side, like a branch that has lain many months in a puddle, and he paused while moonlight still touched his face, abruptly less sure. “The sign wouldn’t say there was a boar in the cage if the boar wasn’t in the cage,” whispered Tomas, but Andrej knew this was a child’s reasoning, impossible to rely upon. He knew, also, what his father and uncle would expect him to do — what all the animals were watching in expectation of him doing. He must tell Tomas to stop here, he must go forward into the darkness bravely and alone because the strong are duty-bound to protect the weak, it is a law of nature and thus of
rightness:
and in that instant Andrej understood that the soldiers and their leader were not obeying this law, and that any victory they achieved wouldn’t last because nature’s law would not be overthrown. He wished Alice were here so he could tell her this inevitable truth he’d unexpectedly grasped: that the