Young Heroine

Once upon a time I started a story that I called Blue Menagerie.  I got stuck on it, so it's sort of been languishing in my brain for two years, but it's still there- and I still think about it, and the characters.  One such character is the protagonist, Salome Thoris (aka Sallie), and she makes appearances in my sketch books from time to time.  This drawing of her is actually based on a photograph of my niece Quail, but since Quail is growing up to look an awful lot like Sallie, it works out pretty well:

(I will come back to this story eventually.  Probably just rewrite the whole thing...)

Blue Menagerie Pt XII

(Hey, remember these guys? Even tho it's been, like, two months? Sure you do! Nathan and I hung out with Tim and Meredith today, and Tim made sad noises about Blue Menagerie, so I sat down and forced myself to write until the block gave way. It's a little rough, but at least it's there, damn it. Hopefully it will continue to flow...)



“Okay, Zeb, here’s what’s up; we need to do some reconnaissance,” Zeb cocked his head to one side and let out a questioning chirp. Sallie reached over and rubbed the flat plane between his ears. “Sorry. It means we need to go back to the menagerie and do some spying, try to figure out the best way to steal that amulet from the Horrible Woman. As far as I can tell, she uses it to steal life force from kids with blue eyes- and that’s probably why she doesn’t age. Although why she keeps you in animal form to do it, I have no idea…” She gave her head a violent shake, as though to bring her mind back on track. “But that doesn’t matter! What matters is figuring out how to get the amulet and either use it or destroy it. So that probably means another late night for me.” She hesitated, and then continued. “It… might be best for you to stay here, Zebbie. I don’t want to give her a chance to get you back.”

Zeb let out a string of lemur epithets and flung himself onto his sister, wrapping his arms firmly around her neck. His tail tickled her nose and Sallie couldn’t help but grin into his fur.

“Well I didn’t think you’d take me up on it, but I thought I’d better offer. Now let go so I can breathe!” Zeb released his stranglehold, still grumbling. Rather than return to where he’s previously been sitting, however, he moved to sit on her stretched-out legs and glared at her as though daring her to leave him behind.

“Right. Well, we know that she stays with the menagerie at night- or was the night I rescued you an exception?” Zeb shook his head to the negative. “Good. At least we don’t have to worry about tracking her anywhere else. We just have to figure out whether or not she ever takes that amulet off. Did you ever see her without it?” Again the negative head-shake. “Rats. Well, maybe she takes it off to sleep. Or shower.”

Quick as a flash, Zeb darted forward, poked Sallie in the chest, and was out the windowsill and into the tree before she could react. He opened his mouth in a grin.

“Zebbie, what are you-” but again he darted forward, plucked at the front of her shirt, and darted away again. This time he shook his fist at her meaningfully. Sallie was utterly confused.

“Do you need to go to the bathroom?” She guessed. Zeb made and impatient noise, sprang forward, snatched the pen out of her hand, and sprang away- again, all before she could react.

“Why are you stealing my pen, you weird little- oh!” She suddenly felt very foolish. “You’re saying it doesn’t matter if she takes it off or not, aren’t you? You think you’re fast enough to steal it!” Zeb nodded his head vigorously, climbed down out of the tree and held her pen out to her. Sallie took it and stared at her lemur-brother while biting her lip.

“I don’t know, Zeb. That seems awful dangerous. If it’s so easy to steal from her, why didn’t you just do it before?” Zeb shrugged his shoulders, an awkward gesture in his current form, and began bathing his tail. “And anyway, didn’t she put you to sleep the night I rescued you from the menagerie? What’s to keep her from doing it again if she sees you?”

Zeb paused in his grooming, pointed at her chest and let out a noise that sounded like ee-aow!

“Me? You- what? You expect me to distract her while you grab the amulet or something?” Zeb nodded and gave a little chattering purr.

“Well how am I supposed to do that?” Zeb stared at her hard, then returned to his tail.

“Great,” muttered Sallie, “Just great. You’re the one with a plan, and I’m the one who doesn’t speak lemur.”

***

In all the excitement of finding Zeb again, Sallie forgot that it was a three-day weekend; she didn’t remember until Mommy happened to mention it at dinner that evening.

“Any big plans for your day off, sweetie?”

“Huh?”

“Don’t grunt, dear. I asked if you have anything special planned for tomorrow, since you don’t have to go to school.”

“Oh, um,” Sallie’s mind whirled. She had thought she’d have to wait until Friday to break back into the menagerie, but not having school in the morning meant that she could try again tonight! “Nothing really: thought I might go to the library for a while.”

“You’ve been spending a lot of time there, lately,” Daddy said as he cut into his grilled portabella. “Working on a project? Or just found a new obsession?”

“Er- new obsession,” she said. “I’ve been reading about our town’s history in the newspaper archives. Today I found some articles from back in the 1800s!” She knew this would go over well with her father, an amateur history sleuth himself: plus it had the added benefit of being somewhat true.

“Excellent!” Daddy beamed. “That’s my girl.”

“Well don’t get so caught up in research that you neglect your homework,” Mommy said.

“Yes ma’am.” Sallie shoved a giant fork-full of potatoes into her mouth in an attempt to avoid further discussion. It worked, because Daddy turned to Mommy and asked if she was making any satisfying progress on her latest piece, which led into a long conversation between the two of them about the properties of red glass. Sallie spent the rest of the meal silently planning that night’s adventure.

Blue Menagerie Pt XI

(I went back to work on this one and found that I'd already written enough for a new entry- but I went ahead and wrote more, so as to keep to the spirit of this challenge, as well as the letter, which means you get a longer-than-intended post. Yay you! Once I'm done putting this up I'm going to go start laying down some initial pencils for the fanfic [which is now looking like it will be two pages, unless I get crazy and tweak it into three...] )



The next day was Sunday, and Sallie was in full-on Plotting mode. She had updated her list so it now looked more like this:

What We Know

*Amulet bright blue jewel, gold chain, eye(?) carvings, apx size of cookie

Horrible Woman- who is she? Mrs. Canarina, owner of menagerie

‘Auntie Strega’? Yes? Sort of? Said it was a “joke”?

Weaknesses? Sarcastic?

Motivation?? Pure evil horribleness. Said something about Zeb having potent “veev”. What is veev? Is it something she needs? Something blue-eyed kids have?

Destroy? Hit with hammer?

Use? Try this first- maybe we can transform kids back?

She could not help but notice that her list still contained more questions than answers. Furthermore, she was pretty sure that “sarcastic” did not count as a weakness. She sighed and leaned back against her desk chair. Zeb, who had been making short work of the two bananas she’d brought him for breakfast, bounded over and gave a reassuring chirp.

“I know, I know. At least we have a place to start, right? And if I’m going to be doing any breaking and entering, I guess you’re a pretty good ally for that sort of activity.

Zeb flashed his fangs at her in a lemur-grin, and then demonstrated his usefulness by springing to the top of her desk over to a high shelf, which he managed to navigate without knocking anything off. From there he made a great leap out the open window to land in the swaying tree branches.

“Definitely handy,” she smiled, and turned back to her list.

Time to do a little research, she thought, and turned on her computer monitor.

***

A few minutes later she was glaring at the screen. According to what she’d found, “strega” was either a kind of yellow alcohol, or else a witch. Based on the pass-times of Mrs. Canarina, she was willing to gamble that the Horrible Woman was, in fact, a witch.

That’s why it’s a “joke”, she thought grimly. Her name may not actually be Strega, but it’s what she is. Although somehow I doubt she’s anyone’s aunt.

The other word she’d attempted to look up- “veev” was also the name of an alcohol- a clear one. Sallie did not get why grownups had to have so many alcohols. Anyway she knew there was no way the Horrible Woman valued Zeb for his alcohol. It must have been another foreign word- at first she thought maybe it was Italian, like strega, but two seconds with the translator tool had shot that idea down.

She had to risk asking her parents.

***

“Hey Daddy,”

“Hey what, Sallie-girl?” Daddy was hunched over a map covered in lots of wavy lines. Sallie knew it was called a topographic map, and she also knew that when he was studying them he often wasn’t 100% listening to whoever was talking to her, which worked well for her purposes.

“I heard a word the other day and I can’t find it in the dictionary.” It was important to clarify this, because both her parents had a bizarre knee-jerk reaction to someone asking what a word meant- they inevitably sent the person (ie, Sallie) searching for a dictionary. “I think it might be foreign.”

“Mmm?” Daddy was making little dashes on the map.

“The word is ‘veev’. Uh, I-“ but before she could invent a scenario in which she’d heard it, her dad immediately shot back,

“Viva Zapata!”

“Huh?”

“What?” Daddy put down the grease pencil and looked at her. “Oh, sorry. Viva Zapata!- it’s an old movie. Older than me, actually.”

“But… what does it mean?”

“What, viva?”

“Um, I guess.”

“In this instance it means ‘Long live Zapata!’ or more literally, ‘Live Zapata!’ like they’re telling him to live. Zapata, of course, being the name of the Mexican revolutionary that movie is more or less about. They used it the same way the revolutionaries during the French revolution would say ‘Viva la Revolucion!’. Haven’t you studied that in school yet?”

“Nope. We’ve been talking about Lewis and Clarke.”

“Well I guess that does have something to do with France, in a round-about way. Remind me to lecture you on it later. Anyway kiddo, I really need to work on this, so maybe you could go bug your mom for a while, huh?” He reached out and tousled her hair.

Sallie wandered off, mulling this new information over.

Long live… long life?

***

The internet was good for a lot of things, but for some things Sallie had found you just couldn’t beat the library. Specifically the library’s collection of old newspapers. Specifically the local newspapers.

She’d left Zeb playing happily in the tree branches (after explaining to him what she was up to) then hopped on her bike and headed for the library. The librarians there all knew Sallie and her family, which was good in that they were willing to indulge her in certain things (like checking out more books than junior library members were strictly allowed to), but bad in that anything out of the ordinary she did inevitably got mentioned to her parents. Still, Sallie spent enough time looking up random things that plunging into the newspaper archives wasn’t likely to raise any alarm amongst the grown-ups.

That’s the best thing about being naturally curious, she thought to herself as she settled down in front of one of the computers dedicated to housing the archive scans. People forget to take notice when you go poking into something new.

She typed in a few search words, like menagerie and strega, and missing child- and then waited to see what popped up. The computer thought about it for a while, then spat out a couple dozen articles. She didn’t bother to open up the first few- she had already read them more times than she could count. They were the articles about Zeb. Feeling sick, she clicked on an article dated a week previous to that first cluster. It popped open to reveal a short “Out and About in the Community” article outlining the fact that a menagerie had come to town, and giving info on location and price. She found one of these articles every three or five years, stretching back for decades, each time only a week or two before a cluster of “Missing Child” articles appeared.

Well the Horrible Woman did say it had been in her family for generations, Sallie thought grimly.

Finally, in 1967, she found a grainy color picture attached to the article- it was labeled Mrs Canarina, Proprietress. Sallie wasn’t really surprised to see that the woman looked exactly like the Horrible Woman.

That’s over forty years ago, she thought. Maybe she just looks like her grandma…

But Sallie doubted it.

She clicked on the earliest “menagerie” article she could find- dated 1883. It contained a very weird-looking black and white photograph of the Horrible Woman in a stiff pose, holding a leash that was connected to a jeweled collar worn by a sad looking cheetah. Sallie didn’t bother to read the article- the look in the animal’s eyes was enough for her. On a whim she tried one more search.

Canarina.

This brought up only one new article- from 1811. Sallie was pretty sure they hadn’t had photography back then, but she clicked on it anyway.

The image with the article wasn’t a photo- it was a beautiful line drawing of a very familiar woman (although the shoulders were oddly sloped). And the familiar woman was wearing a very familiar pendant. The label read, Mme. Canarina wearing her Eye of Lost Souls. The article was mostly about the necklace and how fabulous it was. Legend said it was cursed, but the author felt that surely someone as lovely and gracious as Madame Canarina couldn’t possibly be wrapped up in something so tragic as a curse. The article went on to mention, almost as an afterthought, that even though Madame Canarina was new to the community she was already very active with local charities, and could often be found delivering comfort and blessings to the poor unfortunates of Our Lady of Mercy Orphanage. Sallie bared her teeth at the screen in an unconscious imitation of Zeb.

I’ll just bet she “blessed” them, she thought fiercely, and stomped out of the library.

Blue Menagerie Pt X

(been a while, I know... and I'm borderline miserable, so not much in the way of editing. Ah well...)



They had been there for close to an hour when Sarah began to gently suggest that they might start for home.

“Let’s face it, girlfriend, you’re not really looking at the animals, anyway.”

“Er,” said Sallie, realizing that maybe she should have been a tad more subtle. She was fumbling for a good excuse to stay just a little bit longer when she heard a familiar low laugh.

It made her skin crawl.

But she turned towards it, because it was her laugh- the Horrible Woman. And there she was, dark gold hair shining in the sunlight, looking far more beautiful than Sallie would ever have imagined such a terrible person could be. She was standing next to an exhibit of slender white birds (egrets, a nerdy-sounding part of Sallie’s brain supplied) engaged in conversation with a young couple and their little girl. Sallie was willing to bet a million, trillion dollars that little girl had blue eyes. She felt sick.

“Could you just wait here a minute?” Sallie said, and then without waiting to hear an answer she marched over to the little group.

“Hi!” she said in her friendliest voice, fully aware that she was being rude by interrupting their talk. But people expected kids to be rude, didn’t they? The couple looked bemused, the Horrible Woman irritated. The little girl (Sallie was not great with ages, but she figured the kid was probably in kindergarten) dimpled.

“Hi!” she responded, clearly pleased with the attention. “Did you know that birds have hollow bones!”

“I did know that,” said Sallie, momentarily taken aback. She hadn’t planned on engaging the child, but realized it was probably not a bad idea. “But you’re very smart to know it, too!”

“I love birds!” the little girl continued. “My name is Elise! I’m four-and-a-half!”

“Wow, you’re very grown up,” Sallie slid her eyes over to the Horrible Woman, who continued to look annoyed at the interruption. It was probably too much to hope… “What’s your favorite bird?”

“Hummingbirds!” There! The Horrible Woman was wearing a bright blue jewel on a chain: it looked like a piece of cloudless summer sky, and Sallie thought she could see carvings on it and on the gold setting- carvings that looked like eyes! She couldn’t believe her luck! “I like them because they hover! And they hummmmmm!” Elise did a strange, rapid dance with her feet as she stretched her arms out and hummed. Sallie could only assume it was her version of hovering.

“That’s very good,” she said. How was she going to get that stupid amulet?

“They also move! Real! Quick!” Elsie continued, and darted between Sallie, her parents, and the Horrible Woman. Her parents laughed, and Sallie forced a smile.

“So, um,” Sallie wondered, if she grabbed the amulet- would she be fast enough to run? Probably not. “Do you like the menagerie?”

“Oh yes! Mommy said we can come back every day forever!”

“Not every day forever, sweetie,” Elise’s mother had dark, shining hair and almond-shaped eyes the color of coffee. Elise must have gotten her eyes from her Daddy- just like Zeb had. “Just every day until they leave town. If you’re good.”

“Oh?” Sallie felt her heart jump, but she tried to keep her voice casual. “When do they leave town?”

“We’ll be leaving next Sunday,” the Horrible Woman said in a dismissive tone. “A week from tomorrow.”

“Oh, um, do you work here?”

“In a manner of speaking, I do- I’m the owner.”

“Auntie Strega?” The Horrible Woman gave a tight smile.

“No, that’s just… a little joke. I’m Mrs. Canarina; this menagerie has been in my family for… many years. Some might say generations.”

Sallie felt a strange buzzing sensation in her head, but she ignored it and decided to take a gamble.

“Wow that’s- that’s pretty cool. So, um, if you work here, maybe you can answer my question?” The irritation flashed again.

“Perhaps. What’s your question?”

“You used to have a lemur here- he had a stripy tail. But now he’s gone, and… I was just wondering… where did he go?” The woman’s eyes (the exact same shade as the amulet) narrowed fractionally, but Sallie kept hers wide and didn’t break contact. Her mother had always told her that if you’re in a position where you have to lie, look the person in the eye while you do it. And then she’d told her not to bother trying it on her because she had special Mommy senses that alerted her to fabrications. Which was, at least in light of Sallie’s experiences, probably true. Mrs. Canarina glanced to the left before answering, which surprised Sallie exactly not one bit.

“He’s sick, and being treated by our vet. It doesn’t look very good, I’m afraid.”

“Oh no!” It didn’t take much for Sallie’s eyes to fill with tears- her adrenaline was singing almost as strongly as it had been when she’d rescued Zeb. Sick indeed! She gave a little sniffle for effect. “That’s so sad- he just… I don’t know why but he seemed so nice to me.”

“Don’t be sad, don’t be sad!” Elise was patting her arm. “Vets make animals better! He’ll be okay! And then I can see him when I come back because I didn’t see him today because I was looking at all the pretty birds!” Sallie looked down at the little girl, but not before she caught a little sneer from the Horrible Woman.

“Well perhaps he will get better,” Mrs. Canarina allowed, sounding not at all convinced. She gave another of her low laughs. “So many of our visiting children seem to form special bonds with our animals- that’s why I keep doing this, I suppose. To see the love and wonder on their little faces.”

Yeah, it has nothing to do with kidnapping their siblings, Sallie thought, trying not to gag. Instead she gave Mrs. Canarina a trembling smile.

“Gee I hope so!” She tried not to cringe. ‘Gee’? No one said ‘gee’! Well, except for Daddy, but only when he was being sarcastic. Fortunately no one seemed to think it strange, but she thought it might be best to end the conversation before she started saying things like ‘far out’ or ‘groovy’. “Well it was nice to meet all of you, but I guess I’d better get going now. Goodbye, Elise!”

“Goodbye! I’ll see you soon!”

Sallie wandered back over to Sarah, who was watching her with a bemused expression.

“People you know?”

“Not at all."

Blue Menagerie Pt IX

(Author's note- I am so freaking tired right now that I can barely differentiate between the characters IV and IX... I dropped the lane-wrench like three times just trying to carry it from one end of the pool to the other... I almost fell asleep in the shower just now... Needless to say, typing is somewhat of a challenge. I crave your indulgence for any blatant grammatical/spelling errors in the following...)

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.

Blue Menagerie Interlude

(This will probably not go in the "official" version- but I had a hankering to write a bit from Zeb's perspective...)

It had been a long time since he’s thought of himself as a little boy. Truth be told, he didn’t know that he’d ever really thought of himself as “little boy”. He’d just been Zeb. It wasn’t until after the change that it had occurred to him that “little boy” was part of what Zeb was. And for a while he did think of himself as little boy, in spite of the fact that he had fur, and fangs, and a (admittedly cool) tail. He would repeat it to himself, thinking that surely someone would look at him and recognize him for what he was, take him away from this horrible place and back to his family. But time passed, and no one else saw “little boy” when they looked at him- they saw “lemur”, and treated him as such. Even she tended to call him “creature” rather than “boy”… and in time he just… forgot.

Well, maybe not forgot- but didn’t think about it anymore. It was hard to hold the idea of “little boy” in his head, even harder to hold the name “Zeb”. It was exhausting, and made his head ache. It was a relief to just… give in. He stopped trying to make human-sounds and gave in to the twits, purrs, yaps and trills that came so naturally. He surrendered to what he was, and in time what he had been became a sort of a dream-of-a-memory-of-a-dream. Every once in while he would remember, but it always made him so sad, so angry… better to let it go. Better to stay in the unconcerned waking slumber of an animal’s eternal now.

But then he heard that sound, that sound that had tickled him back to awareness that went beyond the moment.

“…zzz…”

That sound had a special meaning. He knew that sound. And he knew the girl who had made it. Knew she was family-troop, even tho’ she was human. He reached out a hand and tried to tell her, “I’m here!”

The girl had gone away. But she had woken “Zeb” up again- and he did not intend to go back to sleep.

Blue Menagerie Pt VIII

(I would like to take a moment and whine that I bit my tongue yesterday- literally- and the resulting wound has been driving me crazy ever since. Feel free to bring on the "There there"s... Also, this hasn't been edited much/at all, so apologies in advance...)

***

As it happened, Mommy took one look at her and declared that she was staying home. Sallie didn’t argue- just rolled over and went back to sleep once Mommy had finished taking her temperature.

She woke again closer to noon, to a strangely quite house. This most likely meant that Mommy was working on her art down in the basement.

Perfect.

Sallie hopped out of bed and padded over to the closet, where she discovered that sometimes wishes really do come true; Zeb was still sleeping, curled up under an old skirt of hers. She wasn’t sure how much longer that would last, but considering how hungry she was, Sallie figured he would be ravenous when he finally awoke. She shut the door on him again and ventured downstairs to try to figure out what a ring tailed lemur might eat.

Normally she’d have just looked I up on the internet, but she knew perfectly well that her parents checked her browsing history, and she didn’t think it would be wise to show a sudden interest in the eating habits of lemurs the day after one went missing from the menagerie (for surely there would be an outcry) especially in light of the “dream” they thought she’d had. So- no internet, and no getting to the school library today, either. Sallie chewed her cereal and thought.

Mommy had said lemurs were primates, like monkeys- and like humans. It stood to reason that Zeb’s diet couldn’t be that different from hers. Then she remembered his sharp fangs- animals with sharp fangs ate meat, she knew. And probably the sharper the fangs, the more meat they ate- after all, Sallie’s fangs were pretty blunt, and her family only had meat once or twice a week. In fact, there were some leftover hamburger patties in the fridge right now… Just then something rubbed up against her leg and let out a piteous mew!

Sallie looked down- it was Miss Underfoot, their calico cat. She let out a gigantic yawn, displaying her rows of needle-teeth, before nuzzling her head against Sallie’s knee. Sallie frowned. Miss Underfoot should be a meat-eater, too- and she did in fact bring home many small animals she’d killed- but for the most part she ate dry cat food. Which, come to think of it, didn’t seem to be all that different from the cereal Sallie was eating now. Hmmm…

In the end she brought two bowls back up to her room- one with dry cereal in it, and one with crumbled up hamburger patty- plus a banana for good measure. She also brought a sports bottle full of water, because she couldn’t imagine that lemurs drank anything else.

Zeb was still asleep, so she left the food inside the closet with him, and headed into the bathroom for a shower. While she was in there she had another thought- where did lemurs go to the bathroom? Zeb had still been in diapers when he disappeared- Mommy and Daddy had only just started potty training him, so who knew if he’d remember about toilets.

Sallie wanted to bang her forehead against the blue-and-white tile wall. No one ever mentioned all the inane details of adventures in the books she read- how was a girl supposed to be prepared for potty-training a lemur?! She gave her head a little bang, just to see if it might help.

It didn’t.

She felt much better after the shower, and the scratches on her arms didn’t look nearly so dreadful. Mommy would probably assume she got them the normal way, climbing trees rather than breaking and entering. Sallie changed into a fresh pair of pajamas (shorts and a tank-top, this time), grabbed a pen and a notebook, and climbed back into bed.

Time to start brainstorming.

A light knock on the door brought any brewing storms to a screeching halt, and Sallie quickly tossed the notebook to the floor and reached for a book on her night table. Mommy’s head poked through the door.

“Oh good, you’re awake!” she said, and came in. Sallie pretended she was putting down the book she hadn’t picked up. “How you feelin’, sweetie?”

“Better,” Sallie said. “Maybe a little weird, still. But I took a shower and that helped a lot.”

“And ate some lunch, I saw. You forgot to put your dishes in the dishwasher.”

“Whoops,”

“Yeah, whoops,” Mommy teased, and kissed her on the forehead. “But I forgive you because you’re just so pitiful. Hmm, you don’t feel as clammy as you did this morning, either. Maybe it was just a twelve-hour bug.”

“Maybe. I don’t suppose…” Sallie hesitated, knowing that it would be utterly unlike her not to ask the next question, but wanting very, very badly for the answer to be no. “I mean, do you think I ought to go to school now, since I’m feeling better?” Sallie held her breath, but relaxed when she saw Mommy making that face she made when she didn’t want Sallie to know she was trying not to laugh. Really it wasn’t very subtle at all.

“Oh, I don’t think you look that much better. I think you’d probably better stay home, just to play it safe. We wouldn’t want to start a plague in your class, now would we?”

“Definitely not!” agreed Sallie, relieved. “But I think that, if I’m staying home from school and all, I’d better stay mostly in my room, and study.”

“You’re such a good girl, sweetie. So responsible,” Mommy kissed her on the head again, and Sallie couldn’t help but feel guilty that the kind of responsible she was being wasn’t necessarily the kind of responsible her mother meant. “I’ll be down in the studio, if you need anything, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Oh, and Sallie?”

“Yes Mommy?”

“Maybe you should study outside a little bit, too. Get some vitamin D to help stave off those plague bugs.”

“Yes Mommy.”

***

A clattering sort of noise drew her attention back to the closet. When she opened the door there was Zeb, sitting in a pile of spilled cereal and ripping the banana to shreds. He gave her what she assumed was a lemur grin, let out a satisfied purr, and devoured the rest of the fruit. Next he picked up a bit of hamburger, smelled it with apparent suspicion, and put a bit in his mouth. His eyes closed in bliss and he grabbed for more.

“Yeah, I thought you might like the hamburger. I’m sure it’s not natural lemur food, but you’re still my little brother, after all.” Sallie crouched down and started picking up the cereal before he could grind it into the carpet. Zeb watched her for a moment, then began to help with his clever little hands, carefully picking up a single piece at a time before depositing it back into the bowl, glancing up at her every so often for approval, which Sallie smiled at him. For some dumb reason the entire process made her want to cry. She scrubbed angrily at her eyes and took a steadying breath.

“Okay Zebbie, we have to figure out how to get you back to human-shaped. Mommy and Daddy are just too grown up to see beyond your fur, you know?”

Zeb made a sad sound and clutched worriedly at his stripy tail, much as he had once clung to his blue blanket for comfort. Sallie couldn’t help but reach out and gather him into her arms; he sighed and snuggled close her.

“It’s okay, Zeb. We’ll turn you back, and then everything will be okay.”

But how?

Blue Menagerie Pt VII

Sallie couldn’t make her vocal cords work- but that was alright, because she didn’t know what she could possible say to explain herself, anyway. The voice belonged to a woman, was lightly but strangely accented, and it was right below Sallie when it spoke again.

“What’s got you so worked up now, you wretched thing?”

Zeb let out a strange twitter that Sallie was pretty sure would have gotten him in trouble with any adult lemur within hearing range. The woman, however, let out a low laugh. It wasn’t a pleasant sound.

“Such language! You’ve been all but impossible ever since we got back to this town. I suppose it’s in the blood- that was your family that made such a fuss on Sunday, wasn’t it? And they did the last time we were here, too, as I recall… how I wish I had met your father at a younger age! It’s just too bad your hysterical sister has hazel eyes… of course, if you’re feeling lonely, I’m sure we could find a way to bend the rules… I have been thinking of taking on someone new to clean the cages.”

Zeb barked, and Sallie had a sudden vision of his sharp little lemur fangs. She didn’t know that she would taunt him in this form, intervening bars or not. The woman laughed again.

“Rage all you want, you ring-tailed brat. The fact remains that as long as I hold the amulet, you and all the others stay in your animal forms, which means you’re in no position to dictate who else I may or may not bring into our little family. Although you’ve been so very troublesome… if you didn’t hold such potent viv, I’d have let you escape long ago. Wouldn’t do you any good, you know. The first person to find you would either shoot you or put you in a real zoo. Or maybe even try to keep you as a pet. How would you like that, boy? To be someone’s exotic pet?”

By this point Sallie was biting her lip so hard she could taste blood. It was all she could do not to hurl herself over the edge of the cage and start pummeling the horrible woman- but a memory of her father stopped her;

You remember this, Sallie-girl, he had said as they watched a movie about a little boy who defeated the bad guy by being clever. You’re like that kid- you’ve got heart but you’ll probably always be too much smaller than anyone else to go in with your fists flying, hoping for the best. You need to know your enemy, know their weak spots- and then develop your weapons to take advantage of that. Find that weak spot- and it won’t always be physical- and then you can hit ‘em with all you’ve got!

At the time Sallie hadn’t thought the advice particularly useful- after all, who would she ever fight with? She was a good girl who stayed out of trouble, and she got along pretty well with almost everyone. But now, as she sat frozen in the darkness, she realized that she really, really wanted to fight the horrible woman- but that she was definitely too little to stand a chance. She’d have to find the weak spot.

Trouble was, she couldn’t even see the woman from her current position, let alone any weak spots- and she didn’t dare move to remedy the situation.

“Anyway I’m bored with your chatter now, and since you’re obviously not going to go to sleep on your own…” the woman trailed off, and Sallie heard a faint clinking noise. Zeb let out a sort of whimper that ended in a sigh, and then was silent. Sallie squeezed her eyes shut and held her breath as she listened to the fading footsteps of the woman. Only when her head was beginning to spin from lack of oxygen did she breathe again, open her eyes, and ever-so-carefully peer over the roof to see if the horrible woman was really gone.

She was.

Sallie’s heart had decided to renew its attack on her rib-cage, but Sallie ignored it as she groped her way to the trap-door. Fortunately it was not locked- just double-bolted. Her hands shook as she eased them open, every moment expecting to hear the woman’s voice again, this time full of angry accusation. One of the bolts let out a little groan, and Sallie cursed herself for not thinking to bring any sort of oil.

Slowly, slowly she lifted the heavy wood panel of the door, easing it over until it lay flat against the roof of the cage. She had expected Zeb to spring immediately out, but he did not. Sallie poked her head into the opening, afraid of what she might see.

There he was, not visibly harmed, but collapsed in a little heap at the base of the tree branch.

“Zeb,” she whispered. His head stirred and she watched with alarm as he tried to sit up, only to fall back over. Tears of fear and fury stung at her eyes as she tried to calculate if the platform beneath the opening would hold her weight.

“Nothing for it,” she muttered, and slipped into the opening. Fortunately the platform did hold her weight, and she was able to use it to (albeit awkwardly) make her way down to where her little brother was still struggling to get upright. Somehow his behavior reminded her of the way their grandfather had acted when Sallie had visited him in the hospital after an operation- kind of wobbly and unfocused. It made her even more afraid for him.

“Shhh, it’s okay, Zebbie. Come here,” she picked him up and transferred him to the backpack, where he curled up with a tiny, pathetic trill. He was big enough that she was just barely able to zip it closed around him, and she knew the tools in the bag had to be digging into his flesh- but she couldn’t risk leaving them behind.

The new weight on her back made the reverse climb near impossible, but by this point Sallie had so much adrenaline pumping through her system that she thought she might be able to lift a train if she had to, and she eventually made it out. Her journey back across the fairgrounds to the opening in the fence was as quick as she could make it, although she did manage to slice open the other arm when she passed back through.

The bicycle ride expanded her concept of torture- she was slower with Zeb on her back, and each pair of headlights that approached brought with them the queasy realization of their vulnerability, the certainty of discovery and capture. What if it was the horrible woman? It was one thing to end up in jail, but Sallie couldn’t stand the idea of what it would do to her parents if she just disappeared the way Zeb had. The whole night became a hideous, unending nightmare, the kind where you can’t go as fast as you know you should be able to, the kind where you know the monster is breathing down your neck, even if you can’t see it. Can’t see her. In her sleep-deprived delirium, Sallie felt certain she would never find daylight again, let alone make it home.

She did make it, however, and even managed to do so before Daddy got up. Trembling with exhaustion and the after-effects of too much adrenaline (she’d had to pull over twice to vomit) Sallie carefully shut her now-sleeping brother into her closet, wished as hard as she could that he would stay asleep, stripped back down to just her night-gown, and collapsed into her own bed. Her digital clock said it was 0427. Mommy would be in to wake her for school in about two hours- but Sallie was pretty sure she could convince her she was too sick to go.

Her sleep was dreamless.

Blue Menagerie Pt VI

(author's note- I'm going to be traveling for a while, so I may not get my posts up The Day Of- rest assured, as soon as I'm home I'll post 'em all...)

It took a little less than an hour to get there- and probably would have taken even less time if every car that approached hadn’t sent Sallie diving for the bushes until their tail lights were gone. Fortunately there weren’t that many cars about.

Sallie knew better than to ride her bike up to the main entrance- that sort of boldness only worked in broad daylight. Instead she hid it in a ditch about a block away and made her way around the back side. There were plenty of lights, which was both good and bad- bad because it made her easier to see, but good because it meant she could see, and moreover they cast some pretty strong shadows for her to crouch in.

This portion of the fence was made of extremely tall chain-link, something Sallie had prepared for. A moment’s digging in her pack produced a heavy pair of wire-cutters, and she went to work in one particularly dark area. It took longer than she’d expected- the people in movies always seemed to clip right through, but Sallie found it was taking all her strength to cut even one piece of metal. She tried to ignore the sensation of time slipping away as she struggled to open enough to let her (fortunately) slender frame slip through. She ended up with a nasty scratch on her arm (torn through her shirt) but counted it well worth it as she caught sight of the lemur cage.

Her heart, apparently having realized that there was no exit through her throat, had instead begun trying to beat its way straight through her chest. It made Sallie feel dizzy, and she told it firmly to calm down- there was no one here, she was not going to get caught, and anyway so what if she did? What would they do to her? A lifetime of being grounded or- or even put in jail- nothing could even begin to compare of a lifetime of knowing she hadn’t even tried to save Zeb.

Thus chastened, her heart settled down to only twice its normal pace, and Sallie continued to creep towards the cage. It didn’t have a light shining on it directly, which was all for the best, because she still hadn’t figured out how she was going to get it open to get her little brother out.

Finally she was there, her face pressed against the bars. The small grey bundle of fur was wheezing quietly in the center, ringed tail once again wrapped around it.

“Pssst,” she whispered. He didn’t respond, so she tried a little louder: “Pssst!” Still nothing- if anything she thought the tail wrapped itself even tighter. It reminded her of the way her brother used to burrow deeper into the covers when he didn’t feel like getting out of bed. “Zebediah Obediah Thoris!” she hissed. “You wake up right now!”

The little lemur lifted its head, looked at her blearily, and let out a confused chirp.

“Zebbie!” she said, reaching her hand through the bars and stretching it as close to him as she could. Her brother (and she knew it was her brother, because there were his blue-gray eyes!) shook himself and stumbled over. He patted her hand, then looked into her face and made the same noise he’d made in her dream:

Pbwit pbwit pbwit!

“I don’t know what that means, but we have to get you out of here!” The lemur nodded, effectively squashing any residual doubt Sallie might have entertained about his identity.

The cage was shaped like a small circus wagon, consisting primarily of dark metal bars and brightly colored, intricately carved wood. One by one Sallie tested the bars, but each was solid- and far too thick for her to file through in any reasonable amount of time (she hadn’t had much hope for that idea, anyway). The curious thing was that there didn’t seem to be any sort of opening anywhere- she’d thought she might unscrew some hinges, or something, but there was no door at all. She wondered briefly if she was strong enough to use the hammer she’d brought to break through the wood, but rejected the idea as being far too loud.

“Well you had to get in there somehow,” she said, exasperated. Zeb, who had been following her circuit with interest (and occasionally shaking a bar himself), let out an excited chirp and leapt onto a large branch that was propped up into a top corner of the cage. He scurried up its length, launched himself to a little platform in the center of the cage, and then stretched up as far as he could while reaching for the ceiling and making tiny noises of lemur frustration. It took Sallie, dazzled by the swift, acrobatic grace of his movements, a moment to realize what he was trying to show her.

“Oh!” she said, and angled her head so she could peer up towards the ceiling. Sure enough, there was a trap door! “Oh brilliant, Zebbie! Now give me a moment to figure out how I’m going to get up there…”

In the end she used a method similar to Zeb’s: she braced her feet against the stout branch and used her arms to inch herself up the bars, inch-worming her way up until she was able to fling her upper torso over the top of the cage. It wasn’t much harder than climbing a tree, but it did leave her a bit winded, and once she was on the roof she took a moment to catch her breath, propping her back against a bit of carved decoration.

Beep!

Her dumb watch again, sounding abnormally as it pointed out that it was now three o’clock. She knew she had to work quickly: Daddy would be getting up at five-thirty to go running, and she couldn’t count on getting home any faster than it had taken her to get here. Sallie started to move towards the trap-door, and then froze as she heard foot-steps approaching the cage. Below her she could here Zebbie dashing in mad circles, probably trying to draw the attention of whoever it was away from the top of his dwelling.

“My my my, aren’t we naughty? Up past our bed-time and up to no good, I’m sure.”

Blue Menagerie Pt V

Sallie knew she had to get back to the menagerie. The question, of course, was how. And also when. The fair grounds were a good five miles from her house- not an undoable distance by bike, but not the sort of thing she could conceal under the guise of a trip to the corner gas station (not that Mommy and Daddy were overly keen on her going even that far without a chaperon). And she had to decide fast, because she was pretty sure that the menagerie wouldn’t be spending more than a month in town- and she wasn’t sure how long it has already been there.

In the end she decided the only thing for it was to go at night, after her parents had gone to bed. She knew they would probably cheerfully murder her if they caught her out of bed after midnight, but also she knew it would all be worth it if she brought Zeb back. She refused to think about the problem of him being in lemur form. Mommy was fond of saying, “How do we eat a bear?” to which Daddy and Sallie would chorus, “One bite at a time!” Sallie knew it meant she was supposed to focus on the task at hand, instead of worrying about what might was going to happen in the long run. Perversely, it always made her wonder why she would be eating a bear in the first place…

It was Thursday night, five days since she’d fainted at the menagerie. Sallie, pleading a headache she didn’t feel, went up to bed a full half-hour early, at seven-thirty. She figured it would be smart to get in a decent nap before her adventure- no good breaking Zeb out if she was too sleepy to think straight. She’d packed a backpack full of potentially useful items earlier in the week (including a heavy flashlight as long as her forearm, half the contents of her father’s tool box, and a few snack bars raided from the pantry), and had conveniently “forgotten” to put her bike in the garage that afternoon. She took a moment to set the alarm on her pink plastic watch to one in the morning- her parents were sure to be asleep by then. She let out a shaking breath; she was ready- now she just needed to go to sleep.

Sleep, of course, refused to cooperate. Sallie lay in her bed, trying every trick she knew to coax the Sandman in. She tried counting sheep, but the darn things kept wandering away from the fence she was trying to get them to jump over. Next she counted all the triangles she could see in her room, to no avail. She even resorted to Daddy’s advice of actively tensing and relaxing each bit of her body.

Useless. All useless.

Sallie sighed noisily and rolled over. Great. She was going to have to go on a rescue mission with zero sleep. This was less than ideal. In fact, this was… was…

Beepity-Beep! Beepity-Beep! Beepity-Beep!

Sallie bolted upright, feeling panicked. Her stupid watch was going off too early! And it was so loud! Her parents were sure to hear it! Sallie fumbled at her wrist until she managed to press the correct combination of buttons that silenced the incessant beeping. She glared at it in the darkness, wondering what had set it off, and then glanced over at the cheerful aqua glow of her bedside clock. Oh. It hadn’t gone off early at all: the numbers read 0101. Maybe Daddy’s secret sleeping technique wasn’t so useless, after all.

She sat very still, ignoring the way her heart was doing its best to claw its way up her throat, and strained to hear any noise that might indicate a wakeful presence in the house.

Nothing.

She eased herself out of bed, crept to the bedroom door, and poked her head out. Still nothing. She decided she would do a quick test run before committing to her backpack: she could always pass it off as needing a drink of water, should anyone still be up.

But no one was. Sallie made it to the bathroom and back with only the reassuring rattle of Daddy’s snore to break the silence. Thus satisfied that her parents were not in fact waiting around the corner to bust her, she pulled on a pair of dark jeans and black socks under her navy blue nightgown, then topped it all off with a long-sleeved black shirt. Perfect. Well, she might wish for some black mud to put on her face, or a black knit stocking to cover her braided hair- but it was too warm for that sort of thing, anyway.

She laced up her tennis shoes (dark blue and green canvas- perfectly respectable for someone with a lot of night time sneaking to do), hefted her backpack, and took a deep breath.

It was time to go.

Blue Menagerie Pt IV

She woke up all at once, limbs flying, jaw clenched tight so that she wouldn’t scream- although she couldn’t remember why she wanted to.

“Easy baby,” her mother’s voice, in the hyper-calm tone she saved for the worst emergencies, like the time Daddy had been carving the pumpkin and ended up carving his thumb. A firm hand kept her from lurching upright. “You’re okay- you fainted and hit your head on the way down. Can you look at me?” Sallie looked at her, trying to bring her memories into focus. She frowned as she mentally bumped up against a fuzzy darkness.

“Follow my finger,” her mother said, moving it back and forth in front of her eyes. “Does anyone have a flash-light?” Sallie realized she was surrounded by a small crowd of people. One of them, an older girl with long braided pigtails and a backpack, produced a thin black flashlight, which Mommy proceeded to shine in Sallie’s eyes while holding open her lids.

Sallie wasn’t entirely certain what the point of that was, but she knew Mommy had been in school to be a nurse before she’d met and married Daddy, so she figured it had some weird medical purpose.

“I’m okay,” she said, which was mostly true. Her head ached a little, and her stomach felt like she’d been riding the upside-down roller coaster, but she didn’t feel like she needed quite so many people staring at her. Maybe if they’d go away she could remember whatever it was that was buzzing about her brain like an irritating fly…

“Probably, kiddo, but let’s get you checked out just in case, okay? I think you may have given yourself a mild concussion when you bonked your head,” Mommy helped her up, dusted her off, and gave her a reassuring smile. “No big deal- and then maybe we’ll get some ice cream on the way home, okay?”

Sallie felt the urge to laugh; an offer of ice cream on the way home was Daddy’s favorite form of bribery, usually to get her not to let Mommy in on too many details of an outing that had not gone according to plan. She’d never thought her mother would resort to something like that.

***

The doctor did indeed pronounce it a mild concussion: nothing to worry about. He told Sallie to take it easy for a day or two, but said she would be just fine. Later that night, when Sallie asked Mommy what had happened, her mother hadn’t been able to tell her.

“I’m not sure, sweetie. We were looking at the lemur, and you made a strange little gasping noise and fell over. I thought maybe your blood sugar was too low- that’s why I had the doctor take a little blood.”

“But it wasn’t?”

“No, baby, it wasn’t. Maybe it was just the stress of being… at that place.”

“I didn’t feel stressed out,” she protested.

“Sometimes a person can be stressed out and not realize it,” Mommy began. Sallie rolled her eyes.

“That makes no sense,”

“Maybe not. But I think maybe we’ve had enough of the menagerie, don’t you?”

Sallie didn’t respond.

***

In her dream she was standing in a dense mist, looking for something. She was certain she was looking for something, but she could not remember what- or maybe it was a who? As she ran searching through the mist a shape began to take form in the distance. She angled herself towards it, and before long it resolved itself into one of the menagerie cages. She drew closer to it (or maybe it drew closer to her) and peered inside at a bundle of grey fur. Someone said a word-

…zenith…

The lemur looked up at her and blinked its blue-grey eyes.

Zeb’s eyes.

It scrambled over its black-ringed tail to get closer to her, put its little hands on the bars between them, and then cocked its head and made an odd cartoon-spitting noise.

Pbwit pbwit pbwit!

Sallie felt herself falling…

***

…she woke up screaming.

“Zeb!”

Her parents both burst into her room, Daddy flinging on the lights and looking ready to rip something apart. Then Mommy had her in her arms, rocking her and making soothing noises. Daddy came to stand beside them, pushed the hair back from her face.

“There now, Sallie-girl, it’s okay. You’re okay. We’re here, we’re both here.”

“It’s alright, baby,” Mommy said. “It’s alright.” Sallie burst into tears and clung more tightly to her mother, because it wasn’t alright. She had finally found Zeb, and it wasn’t alright at all.

“Damn it, Rebekah, I told you it was a bad idea to take her there,” Daddy’s voice was furious, and Sallie could feel him shaking.

“It seemed so important to her,” Mommy said, tightening her hold on Sallie as she lowered herself to sit on the bed.

“We have to go back!” Sallie sobbed, pushing herself up so she could face both of them.

“…what?” her mother said, just as Daddy exploded,

“Absolutely not!”

“Zebbie’s there! We have to go back! We have to!”

Her parents grew very still.

“Salome,” her father’s voice was strained, and he crouched down so his eyes were on level with hers. “Did you see Zeb today?”

Sallie hesitated. She knew very well what her parents’ reaction would be if she told them what she’d seen. But she was a very truthful girl, and besides which, this might be her only chance, slim as it was. She nodded.

Mommy gasped, and Daddy swallowed and placed a hand on her shoulder. She could see the effort it cost him to keep his voice calm.

“Where, exactly, did you see him?”

“In the lemur cage,” she whispered.

“I don’t understand, sweetie,” Mommy said. “You saw Zebbie in the cage with the lemur?” Sallie shook her head, miserable.

“Zebbie was the lemur,” she said, pleading with her eyes for her parents to somehow know it was the truth, and not just her over-active imagination.

Her father closed his eyes, and for a split-second she thought he might believe her. But then he opened them, and they were full of tears.

“Oh Sallie,” he choked, “that- that was just a bad dream you had. It wasn’t real. You saw the lemur today, and you were thinking about Zeb, and your brain put them together while you slept. But it wasn’t real.”

“It was real,” she whimpered, hating herself for sounding like such a baby.

“Sweetie, I know it felt real,” Mommy said, stroking her head. “Sometimes dreams can feel even more real than memories. But people can’t change into animals.” She gave a shaky laugh and added, “Not that I think your brother wouldn’t have loved to be a lemur. It’s a very good match for his personality. But we would have noticed if he had a habit of changing into one, okay?” Mommy was crying now, but trying very hard to look like she wasn’t, giving Sallie a reassuring smile. Sallie felt like the worst scum on the face of the planet. She had made her parents cry- surely there was nothing more horrible than that.

“Okay,” she said, feeling defeated and scummy and worse than she had since Zeb originally disappeared. “You’re right. It was just a dream. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry, Sallie-girl,” said Daddy, and wrapped his arms around both her and Mommy. “Never be sorry that you miss your little brother. We miss him, too.”

Blue Menagerie Pt III

(continued for Tim, because he asked so sweetly)

It was on the way to the grocery store that Sallie was overcome with the oddest sense of déjà vu. Her parents were in the front, and she was in the back, staring out the window, when the feeling just swept over her. She thought she heard a ghost of a whisper-

“Zoo! Zoo!”

Sallie whipped her head to the right, where Zeb’s carseat had once been. The spot was empty, now, but through the far window Sallie saw a strangely familiar banner.

“Auntie Strega’s Traveling Menagerie,” she read. Her skin began to prickle, and she felt short of breath.

“Stop,” she whispered. “Stop. Stop!” Now she was shrieking. Her father slammed on the brakes and Sallie’s body jerked forward, then slammed back against her seat.

“What’s wrong?” He demanded, twisting all the way around in his seat. His face was a mask of concern.

“I-” She didn’t know what to say. Why had she wanted him to stop? “I want-” she tried again. Her father, realizing that no one was bleeding out in the back seat, began to scowl.

“I want to go to the menagerie,” she finished, lamely. She watched her father’s glower deepen, his face flushing a dark red.

“For Christ’s sake, Salome! Don’t you ever-” Sallie winced, bracing herself for the rest of the outburst, but her mother laid a gentle hand on Daddy’s arm.

“Jonathon,” she said. Daddy sucked in a breath and closed his eyes.

“Sallie,” he said through his teeth. “It is very dangerous to yell at the driver to stop the car. We might have been hit by someone. So do not yell at the driver unless it is a matter of life and death, or possibly dismemberment. Or fire. You could yell at me to stop if there was a fire. But not because you want to go to the da- to the menagerie.”

Sallie felt very small and stupid. She knew it was a bad idea to yell at the driver. To yell at her parents, in general, was about as bad an idea as she could come up with. But for some reason, she knew she had to go the menagerie.

“I’m sorry, Daddy,” she whispered. “I don’t know what came over me.”

“It’s alright, sweetie,” Mommy said, reaching back to squeeze her leg. “We all get a little over-excited sometimes. Let’s talk about this more when we get home, alright?”

“Alright.”

***

The conversation was not a comfortable one.

“Sweetie, are you sure you want to go to the menagerie?” Mommy asked, eyes worried.

“Yes,” said Sallie. “Very sure.”

“I just don’t know if it’s a good idea.”

“Why not?”

“Well,” her mother hesitated, and Sallie knew she was having one of those moments where she was trying to decide how much information Sallie could handle. Sallie tried very hard not to roll her eyes, but when the silence drew out for too long she decided she had to say something.

“Mom, I know what you’re afraid of.”

“You do?”

“Yes. The last time we went to the menagerie was with- was with Zeb. And you think it might be too sad to go back.” Mommy blinked at this.

“Well, yes, that thought had occurred to me.”

“But I really feel like- I just need to go, Mommy. It might make me sad, but I need to go, anyway. And it’s okay if you can’t take me, if it would make you too sad. I’m ten years old- I can go by myself.”

“Oh no you can’t,” Mommy’s voice was unusually sharp. “If you think for one second I’m letting you roam around that place by yourself-”

“Okay, okay. It was just a suggestion. But Mommy- please.” Her mother sighed.

“Sallie… I want you to know- we did check the menagerie.” Now it was Sallie’s turn to blink.

“What do you-” she began, but Mommy cut her off with a hand-wave.

“I mean don’t get your hopes up, thinking he might be there. We looked all over that place when he first disappeared. The owner was very cooperative, opened up all the cages and pens, all the wagons and enclosures. Your father searched it top to bottom, and Zebbie wasn’t there.”

“That’s not-” Sallie protested, but she couldn’t finish. Because really, it kind of was. “I still want to go,” she finished. “I need to.”

“Okay, sweetie,” Mommy sighed. “We’ll go this weekend.”

***

Daddy did not come this time. Mommy said he had to go in to the office, but Sallie was not fooled. Her mother might be almost a foot shorter than him, and softly rounded where he was hard muscle, but in a lot of ways she was the tougher one. Blood made him go all greenish-white, but Sallie had never seen her mother flinch away from dressing a wound. Daddy was in the habit of avoiding things that reminded him too much of Zeb- and if he had been the one to investigate the menagerie, then it didn’t surprise Sallie in the least that he would not want to go there again.

She and Mommy pulled up to the parking lot a little before noon, paid the bored-looking teenager (a different one from before), and entered the fair grounds. The sun was darting in and out from behind the clouds, giving the light a weird, shifting quality.

“Start to the left, straight on ‘til morning,” Sallie muttered to herself.

“What was that, sweetie?” her mother asked, turning away from a tank of plate-sized turtles. She was smiling, but her eyes had the same sort of tight look they got when she’d been on the phone with Grandmother for too long. Sallie had come to associate that expression with her mother locking herself in the bathroom for an hour or more, and knew it was not a good sign to see it so soon into their trip.

“Nothing, Mommy. Let’s go this way,” she took her hand and tugged her towards the left.

***

Part of Sallie had wondered whether she had really, truly remembered correctly when she remembered all the animals as having blue eyes, or if it was just an extension of her nightmares about Zeb being gone- after all, he had the same blue-gray eyes as their father, so it would make sense for her to dream them into the animals of their last outing together. It didn’t take long, however, for her to be convinced that she had remembered correctly: the soft shy rabbits all had blue eyes, and so did the single pacing tiger. Even the lizards, trying in vain to sun themselves on small flat rocks, had eyes like tiny chips of sapphire- and when she came to the large, colorful bird that sang a thoroughly inappropriate song to her, it did not surprise her in the least to see it had eyes the shade of the pansies in her neighbor’s garden.

Her own eyes, hazel as her mother’s, began to burn with unshed tears, although she wasn’t sure why.

There were several exhibits that Sallie did not recall from their original visit, and it was one such they approached as her pink plastic watch gave the little beep that meant it was twelve. Right near the front of the cage they could see a long ringed tail wrapped firmly about a curled-up mass of gray fur.

“Mommy, what’s wrong with that raccoon’s tail?” She asked.

“I don’t think that’s a raccoon, sweetie,” Mommy said, squinting at the creature. “I’m not sure, but I think that’s a lemur. They’re primates.”

“Like monkeys?”

“Yes, like monkeys. And also like us. Ah, here’s the card! Yes, it says he’s a young ring-tailed lemur, and that they’re diurnal. Do you know what diurnal means, my little vocab queen?” Sallie shook her head. “Do you know what nocturnal means?”

“Something that stays up at night?”

“Exactly. So then what would you guess that diurnal means?”

“Awake during the day?”

“Smart girl!”

“But Mommy, he’s not awake- listen, I think I can hear him snoring!” They were quiet for a moment, and sure enough- a tiny buzzing noise was rising up from the coil of fluff in fits and spurts. Mommy laughed, the tightness around her eyes easing ever-so-slightly.

“Maybe he’s just having a nap. It does say he’s young.”

“Maybe,” Sallie continued to stare at the lemur, willing it to wake up. She wanted to see what it looked like. “Hey little lemur, don’t you know you’re supposed to be awake right now?” It didn’t respond. “C’mon, little guy. The sun is at its zenith!”

This was apparently was news to the lemur. His head popped up from behind his tail and he whipped it around to face Sallie. She had time to note the funny black mask of his face before his eyes met hers, and the rest of the world fell away.

Blue Menagerie Pt II

The manhunt drummed up for Zeb was nothing short of epic. Sallie’s father was a likeable guy with a lot of connections- and every single one of them showed up (with contacts of their own) to try to track down the wayward boy. Some of them showed up in helicopters, an event which would have been far more interesting to Sallie under other circumstances.

For the most part, Sallie felt sick to her stomach. Not just because Zeb was missing, but because she was pretty sure it was her fault. After all, she was the big sister- her mother had told her, time and again, it was her job to watch out for her little brother. In the past she had always done so, however begrudgingly. She had beat up that punk kid who threw rocks at Zeb (well, she’d threatened to beat him up, anyway, which had in turn sent him crying home to his mother), she had made sure nobody pushed Zeb out of the ice-cream truck line. Sometimes, when she was feeling extra generous, she even let him be the dog when she played house with her friends. She was always quick to point out to Mommy when he wasn’t eating his vegetables (in spite of her constant refrain that she would be the Mommy, Sallie was pretty sure her mother just didn’t notice some things). Sallie looked out for Zeb as much as an older sister could possibly be expected to.

But last night she had failed. Sound asleep in her top bunk, she stayed that way right through whatever had taken Zeb. And she felt certain that something had taken him, no matter what the grown-ups kept saying about sleep-walking or kids wandering off. Because she knew that Zeb would not have just gotten out of bed without her. He would have woken her up (as was his habit) and made her tell him a story, or play with him, or come sleep with him, or whatever- but he never, never would have gone off without waking her up first. Grown-ups just did not understand how little brother brains worked.

So it was her fault. And sooner or later, her parents would figure that out.

She and Mommy were at the house, waiting. Mommy was gripping the phone in one hand and Sallie’s hand in the other. Sallie noticed that her knuckles were white. Too, Mommy’s eyes kept flicking back and forth, as though she were hoping to uncover a hidden message in the fading sunlight coming through their window.

“Mommy,” Sallie asked, because it had been bugging her all day. “Why aren’t we out looking for Zeb?”

“Oh baby,” Mommy choked. Sallie wondered if she might cry- her face was screwed up funny. But Mommy didn’t cry- it wasn’t her way. “Baby, I want more than anything to go look for him, and I know you do, too. But someone has to be here, in case- in case he comes home. And Daddy and I talked about it, and we decided that that someone should be me. And you too, of course.”

“Because I’m the big sister,” Sallie whispered.

“Yes, sweetheart. Because you’re the big sister, and Zebbie might be- he might be frightened when he gets back and you can help make him feel better.”

Sallie was not dumb. She knew it was more than that. It was that Mommy and Daddy wanted to know exactly where she was, so they wouldn’t have to worry about both their children at once. But she didn’t bother to mention that. Instead she just climbed into her mother’s lap and laid her head against her soft chest.

“I hope he comes home soon,” she said, pretending to go along with the idea that Zeb had wandered off on his own.

“Me too, baby. Me too.”

***

Of course he did not come home soon. He did not come home at all. And as the days turned into weeks, and the weeks into months, Sallie’s life slowly drained of all color. It was as though sadness was a thin layer of dust that settled over her family, conforming itself to their shapes, dulling everything and making it difficult to breathe.

Her parents, of course, never gave up their searching. Sallie knew they had flyers and meetings and many more things than she could possibly understand. What they did not know, however, was that Sallie never gave up searching, either. She checked every corner, every hole, every tree, ever bush, every rock. She checked behind things, above things, under things, and in things. She checked the face of everyone she passed, of every person on television or in the movies. Sallie may have failed to protect her brother from whatever had taken him, but she would not fail to get him back. Her task was made difficult by the fact that neither Mommy nor Daddy was particularly eager to let her out of their site anymore, but she worked around it. And as the months turned into years, the habit of looking for her brother’s large-eyed face everywhere became so ingrained she hardly even noticed she was doing it, anymore.

She was ten years old when the menagerie came back to town.