One of the very best things about Sallie’s bedroom was that one of her windows opened up into the branches of a tree. She loved being able to watch the turning of the seasons as manifested by its leaves and blossoms, loved how the birds would wake her in the mornings with their songs- and the added shade in the summer wasn’t to be scoffed at, either. The limbs were much too slender for her to dream of using to enter or exit her bedroom, but they were perfect for Zeb to play on. Thus it was that she took her books (including her brainstorming notebook) outside to “study” in the sunshine like a dutiful daughter- and didn’t have to worry one bit about how to sneak Zeb out.
She settled down into the roots and opened the notebook to a fresh page.
“What… we… know…” she muttered as she wrote it out across the top.
“Amulet,” she put a big star next to this. Judging from what she’d overheard the horrible woman saying to Zebbie, the so-called amulet was the key to everything. Underneath it she wrote,
Horrible Woman- who is she?
‘Auntie Strega’?
Weaknesses?
Motivation??
Sallie stared at her list. So far it was less of a “What We Know” list and more of a “What We Need to Know More About” list. She sighed. Really it didn’t matter who the Horrible Woman was, or what her motivation was- but it was essential that Sallie figure out her weaknesses, so she could somehow get a hold of the mysterious amulet. And then what? She made a few more notations,
Destroy?
Use?
Sallie was tempted to repeat her head-banging experiment- this was going nowhere. Before she could get too irritated, however, a cheerful sort of hmmm noise floated down to her. Sallie glanced up and waved at Zeb, who was doing a mad little dash up, around, and through the upper-most branches. She still couldn’t believe how swift and graceful his movements were as he moved from limb to limb, occasionally using his tail for anchorage. It just didn’t fit with her memories of him as a two-year-old, rocketing into any and every available corner. Not a day had gone by that he hadn’t added to his collection of cuts, bruises, and fore-head goose eggs. Sallie smiled at the memory and turned her attention back to the notebook.
“I got him home,” she said to the list, “and I’ll get him transformed, too. One bite at a time. It doesn’t matter what I need to do with the amulet until I have the amulet, so I’d better focus on that.”
***
Most of the time Sallie resented being left with baby-sitters. It wasn’t that she had anything against them, personally- in fact she quite liked Sarah, the dark-haired girl who was watching her this afternoon while Mommy and Daddy attended some sort of seminar thing- it was that she resented the idea of them. She was ten years old! She was very responsible! Everyone said so! Surely she could be left on her own once in a while.
Mommy and Daddy did not agree.
Still, it suited her plans far better to be left with Sarah than to be dragged along to some boring grown-up thing. First of all, didn’t have to suffer through said boring grown-up thing while she could be working on her Plans. Second of all, she didn’t have to leave Zeb unsupervised for hours on end- who knew what mischief his new body would let him get into if he got bored? But best of all for Sallie’s plans, her parents hadn’t mentioned the menagerie to Sarah- which meant Sarah didn’t know that they didn’t want Sallie going there again. Which meant Sarah, who was a big fan of doing things that didn’t involve watching television, was quite easy to talk into a little field-trip.
They rode their bikes (Sarah was also distressingly fond of cycling rather than driving whenever she could) and Sallie discovered that she had been correct- it took far less time to get there during daylight, when you didn’t feel compelled to hide in the bushes all the time.
When they got there she was almost surprised to see that there was no sort of fuss going on- she had expected the proprieters to be more up in arms about their ring-tailed lemur being gone for (now) over twenty-four hours. But the menagerie seemed to be exactly the same as it had been during her other (non-nocturnal) visits.
Hmph, she thought. Maybe the Horrible Woman was being serious when she told Zeb he was more trouble than he was worth.
She let Sarah take the lead for their wanderings- Sallie was too busy looking for women who might be the Horrible Woman to pay attention to the exhibits. She wished she had at least seen the woman’s back, so she would at least know what color hair to search for…
Also, to tell the truth, now that she knew that each of the animals had started as a little boy or girl, it made it impossible to meet their blue eyes without wanting to cry. She remembered her parents’ grief over Zeb, remembered her own terrible feelings of guilt and loneliness- she couldn’t bear to imagine all the many parents and brothers and sisters who had no idea their loved ones were here, locked behind bars, locked in fur or feathers or scales. And there were so many of them…
I will free them all, she vowed.
For being tired, I still think this is a pretty good addition. I like how she used the baby-sitter to get back to the Menagerie.
ReplyDeleteLittle kids are pretty sneaky. Or so I've heard...
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