The Last Zoo Read online

‘Before we start,’ the Seamstress says, ‘would you please pass the cherry bowl? Thank you, Pia.’

  Pia looks around. What bowl of cherries? Yet suddenly she is passing one over: a clear glass bowl filled with dark red fruit. Where has it come from?

  ‘You wove it,’ answers the Seamstress, reading her thoughts again. ‘I helped too, of course, by asking. The question is the needle, the thought is the thread, and the cherry...’ The Seamstress plucks up a cherry by its stalk and takes a bite. ‘The cherry is the cloth.’

  She chews, and her face sours.

  ‘I always ask with newcomers.’ She spits out the stone. ‘But it seems nobody truly remembers how cherries taste. Or maybe nobody really loved them as much as Celeste did. Or perhaps it was another member of the research team... I forget whose memories are whose. It’s hard to remember, in the Seam. You’ll see.’

  Pia just sips her hot chocolate, half sunk in the couch. Yes. She does feel forgetful. Why is she even here?

  ‘So,’ the Seamstress says in a business-like manner. ‘Another unicorn imageration, yes? How’s Moonbeam doing? Was it Moonbeam? Something like that, right? Any tweaks to the pattern?’

  Pia sits up with a start. Now she remembers. ‘I’m here for my angel. Not a unicorn.’

  ‘Your angel?’ The Seamstress raises her eyebrows. ‘It’s beside you. Do you not see? It’s very small.’

  And Pia spots Hum beside her. Has he always been there? He shifts through his colours kaleidoscopically. ‘Not that angel. The second one. The elder.’

  ‘Oh,’ said the Seamstress. She looks troubled. ‘I thought you were here for the unicorn.’

  ‘That’s Gowpen.’

  ‘Of course it is. Of course. I forgot about Gowpen. It’s so easy to forget here. Have I said that already? That’s why I need you children. To hold the pattern.’ The Seamstress frowns. ‘But you don’t have the unicorn pattern.’

  ‘No,’ Pia says. ‘At least, I don’t think I do.’

  The Seamstress peers forwards. Her frown deepens. ‘No. Then why are you here?’

  ‘Angels.’

  ‘Oh yes, you said that, didn’t you. Didn’t you?’

  ‘They both went missing. I’m looking for them. I found Hum, and he led me here.’ Pia looks around. ‘I was hoping to find the second angel. Have you seen it?’

  The Seamstress looks around the glasshouse. Then she snaps her fingers, and Hum appears above her head, lit up like a light bulb.

  ‘Angels! Now I remember. They showed up not so long ago. To help me with something...’ Her smile fades. ‘Help me to do what, though? Let me see, let me see...’

  The Seamstress trails off, one hand twiddling absent-mindedly at the frayed edge of her sleeve.

  ‘It’s no good,’ she says. ‘Whatever it was has unravelled. Unless I kept it for safekeeping. Let me check my memory box.’

  In the Seamstress’s hands is an old hinged box. She puts it on her lap, rattle and clunk. The lid comes up with a creak, and she rummages within. Pia leans forward to see what the box holds.

  Reels and reels of pearlescent thread. A tray of them, each in its own neatly labelled compartment.

  Gowpen, says one label. Wilma, Zugzwang, Lian, Chen... Each Seamer has their own reel of iridescent string.

  ‘I unravel their memories of this place,’ the Seamstress explains. ‘Each time they leave. It makes them forget what they saw in here, which is unfortunate, but necessary. And I put all the unravelled memory to good use. My own thoughts are always wearing away. I’m always needing to patch myself up.’ She picks at the grey arm of her T-shirt. ‘Look.’ She picks up a reel. With a silver flash, she frees the needle from the thread, and her long knuckled hands begin to darn the frayed hem. The hand that holds the needle moves back and forth across her arm like a concert violinist drawing their bow across the strings. The thread loops, draws taut then slack, as the Seamstress sews.

  There is a beauty in her stitching. The beauty of a dance. As the needle pirouettes. As it spins its spiralled pattern.

  And the threads themselves are shining, filling Pia’s head with their light, and in that dazzling space in between the weaving fibres, she sees the Seamstress spinning, sees her true shape dancing, sees her ten legs clack, sees her body glitter-black. She is the maker, she is the loom.

  ‘Pia?’ says a voice. ‘Come back.’

  And Pia is in the glasshouse again, next to Hum, with the cup of hot chocolate in her hands, blinking at the woman who is and is not Doctor Lalande.

  ‘I’m sorry you had to see that,’ says the Seamstress gently. ‘I try to keep things here in the Seam as real as possible when I have guests. But it’s a fragile thing.’ She gestures to the glasshouse around them.

  ‘You don’t have to say sorry,’ Pia says. ‘Was that your true shape?’

  ‘There’s no truth in the Seam, Cornucopia. Just some things that are more real than other things.’

  ‘It was...’ Pia tries to find the words to describe that brief glimpse of the Seamstress. ‘It was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.’

  ‘Then I am even more sorry to have to take it away from you. But it’s best to forget. And speaking of forgetting, why is my memory box on my lap?’

  ‘You’re trying to remember why the angels were here.’

  ‘Of course!’ The Seamstress jumps up in her chair and claps her hands together. She pinches the edge of the tray with both hands and lifts it away. There is another layer beneath, more reels with less thread on. Vivi, Tej, Britta, Minnie. Zookeepers who had once been Seamers, years past.

  And then Pia’s throat goes tight, and she squeezes her eyes shut to keep in the tears. Side by side in the Seamstress’s long, loopy writing, are her parents’ names. Yisel. Estival.

  ‘Hmmm...’ Before Pia can say anything, the Seamstress lifts away the second tray. The third layer has memory threads from the original research team. There was Arlo, and Urette, and Celeste. Many of these reels are empty.

  ‘I remember making a thread...’ The Seamstress slowly taps her temple with one finger. ‘A memory thread about the angels. About why I needed their help. But... I don’t remember where I put it.’ She rechecks all the layers. ‘Hmm.’

  ‘Maybe Hum knows.’ Pia looks at the angel. He stays stubbornly pinned in place above them though, glowing red.

  ‘Et voilà,’ says the Seamstress, lifting away the last layer. Beneath all the trays is a single shining loop of string.

  ‘Who put it there?’ The Seamstress reaches forward and plucks it up. ‘I must have, of course. But why hide it from myself? How curious.’

  She uses the memory string to tie the loose end of her plait. As she tightens the knot, her smile falters. The sunlight streaming through the glasshouse goes dim.

  ‘Oh. Of course. I remember now.’

  ‘Why?’ Pia feels suddenly cold. ‘Seamstress? Why did the angels come?’

  Her face is ashen. ‘The same reason as always. Mortal peril.’

  Pia edges to the end of the couch. ‘Whose mortal peril?’

  ‘Everyone’s.’ The Seamstress cries out in sudden agony. ‘And – my own.’

  ‘Seamstress?’ Pia leaps to help her as the memory box clatters to the floor. The Seamstress is doubled over on the armchair, hands clutching at a dark ragged hole in her side, the same as Hum’s wound.

  She just remembered that she’s injured, Pia thinks. That’s why she hid the memory. To make herself forget that she was dying.

  ‘A terrible pattern,’ whispers the Seamstress. ‘Most terrible of patterns. And I wove it. I, the maker and I, the loom. But he gave me the threads.’

  It is getting dark. Not just shadowy dark, but a nothingness, a void. The sky outside the glasshouse has vanished. Soon Hum is the only light.

  ‘Seamstress!’ Pia calls to her, trying to keep her anchored the same way she
had with Hum. ‘What pattern? Whose pattern? A voilà? What voilà? The unicorn?’

  ‘A bad move.’ The Seamstress’s plait is loosening, her sleeve unravelling, the hole in her side widening.

  ‘What bad move?’ That was the name of the reel of thread in Hum’s dream. ‘Urette? Is this something to do with Urette?’

  ‘The worm,’ says the Seamstress, her voice faint. ‘The worm.’

  Pia holds her tight, but she is slipping, and their two imaginations are coming apart. Around them, the glasshouse begins to fray. The couch unknits, the cushions unwind. The mug jumps up from her hand, uncoiling like a tightly packed spring. It is all coming undone, gently and neatly, the way the sturdiest of a sailor’s knots will collapse back into rope when given the right tug.

  Emptiness rushes in on them, like a wave.

  • • •

  Pia finds herself in absolute emptiness. Nothing exists. Total null. No air to breathe; there is no gravity, no light: only her.

  The Seamstress’s words echo back from the void. You don’t want to be in the Seam without some reality around you. That’s like being in the sea without a boat.

  Imagine; she has to imagine. But it’s too much for her mind to hold. She is barely able to keep herself together.

  She is going to die here. Just unravel and drift away into oblivion.

  And that thought brings Hum.

  She feels him.

  There in the emptiness, singing.

  Ishan has asked Pia to describe angel song many times, and the closest she’d come was this: It’s like what a cathedral must feel when a choir sings hymns inside it. Angels sing songs that bypass your ears, that echo through the hollows of your bones. Songs you feel instead of hear. And in this awful darkness, Hum sings goodbye.

  Pia feels it in the back of her throat and the pit of her stomach. Her heart aches with it. Goodbye, Hum sings.

  Then he dies, the way stars die each morning when the sun comes up. He just fades away until he is gone. Behind him in his afterglow, one last miracle remains. It takes Pia in its palm and carries her home.

  [DIRECTIVE 3:3:2192]

  **URGENT**URGENT**URGENT**URGENT**URGENT**URGENT**URGENT**URGENT**

  **FROM THE DESK OF DIRECTOR SISKIN**

  TO: ALL ZOO STAFF

  DIRECTIVE: 3:3:2192

  DEAR COLLEAGUES.

  BY WAY OF UPDATE, PLEASE BE ADVISED OF THE FOLLOWING DIRECTIVES:

  *ALL ZEPHYR TRAVEL REMAINS SUSPENDED.

  *EXTENDED CURFEW REMAINS IN PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 1800 and 0600.

  *AS OF THIS MORNING, A SECURITY DETAIL HAS BEEN ASSIGNED TO EACH ARK AS AN EXTRA PRECAUTION.

  *IN LIGHT OF RECENT EVENTS WITHIN THE SEAM, ALL SEAMERS AND NON-ESSENTIAL PERSONNEL WILL SOON BE TRANSFERRED TEMPORARILY TO MAINLAND FACILITIES.

  THESE DIRECTIVES ARE TO ENSURE SAFETY, SECURITY AND COMPLIANCE THROUGHOUT THE ZOO.

  **ADDENDUM**

  WITH REGARDS TO THE VARIOUS RUMOURS CIRCULATING THE SHIP.

  THESE ARE TO CEASE.

  AS IN, IMMEDIATELY.

  INVESTIGATIONS INTO THE DISAPPEARANCE OF CORNUCOPIA KRAVITZ ARE STILL ONGOING.

  THE ONLY – REPEAT : ONLY – FACTS ESTABLISHED BY THIS INVESTIGATION ARE HEREBY SHARED WITH COLLEAGUES BELOW, FOR THE PURPOSES OF STOPPING ALL FURTHER RUMOURS, GOSSIP AND DOOMSAY.

  FACT #1 – CORNUCOPIA KRAVITZ ENTERED THE SEAM LAST NIGHT FOR A PERIOD OF APPROX. SEVEN HOURS.

  FACT #2 – CORNUCOPIA KRAVITZ IS NOW ON ARK ONE FOR THE PURPOSES OF OBSERVATION AND QUESTIONING.

  FACT #3 – THE METHOD BY WHICH SHE REAPPEARED REMAINS UNDER INVESTIGATION.

  FACT #4 – THE ALLEGED ‘PORTAL’ BY WHICH SHE GAINED ACCESS TO THE SEAM NO LONGER EXISTS.

  FACT #5 – THE CELESTIAL VOILÀ CAELESTIBUS AURORA, KNOWN AS ‘ANGELS’, HAVE BEEN MISSING FOR APPROX. THIRTY-SIX HOURS AND REMAIN SO.

  FACT #6 – THREE SEPARATE OBSERVATIONS OF THE SEAM HAVE FAILED TO RECORD ANY SIGHTING OF THE ENTITY/MIRAGE KNOWN AS ‘THE SEAMSTRESS’.

  IT IS HOPED THESE FACTS WILL HELP DISPEL SOME OF THE WILDER RUMOURS NOW CIRCULATING AROUND THE ZOO. ANY INDIVIDUALS FEELING EXCESSIVE ANXIETY, NEGATIVITY, DESPAIR OR PARANOIA SHOULD ARRANGE FOR TRANSPORT TO THE ARRIVALS ARK AND REPORT FOR MONITORING.

  22

  YOU ARE THE DANGER

  At some point during all of the questioning, the monitoring and the endless observations, the grief hits.

  At first, Pia feels numb. But the shock wears off, like anaesthetic. Grief holds back until it does. Then it sucker-punches her, right in her heart.

  Hum.

  He is gone.

  She still has no idea how his miracle saved her. Probably won’t ever know. Isn’t that sort of what makes a miracle a miracle? She keeps waiting for her memories to become clearer, but a white haze hangs over them like fog.

  All she knows, and all she has been able to tell Siskin, over and over and over again, is that she was inside the Seam. Trapped. No way out.

  Then, the light. White and warm, beyond dazzling. Pia remembers shutting her eyes, but that hadn’t shut it out. It shone everywhere. Light behind her eyelids. Light inside her head.

  When it went away again, she wasn’t in the Seam any more. She was in Siskin’s office.

  Holding his mended lamp.

  Voilà.

  And then the questioning started. Although maybe that is the wrong word. It feels more like an interrogation.

  What happened inside the Seam?

  How did you get there?

  Where are the angels?

  Are you sure?

  Are you lying?

  Do you have proof?

  Can you repeat that?

  Can you repeat that?

  Can you?

  Siskin sits at his desk as Pia repeats her story – a dozen times, a hundred – and each time it gets a little harder to tell, until she can’t do it any more.

  Oh Seamstress, oh Hum, oh please don’t make me say it again, Siskin. They’re gone, they’re gone, they’re gone, they’re gone, they’re gone...

  ‘OK,’ says Siskin finally. ‘That’s enough.’

  Two bluebottles come to fetch her from Siskin’s office. They hover there silently, or as silently as bluebottles can. Rotors buzzing, screens blank. Probably under orders.

  ‘OK.’ Siskin stands. ‘Let’s go, Cornucopia.’

  Ark One’s corridors have all been cleared as Siskin and the bluebottles march her down them in silence. Pia isn’t wearing handcuffs, or being forced in any way, but she can’t help but feel like a prisoner.

  They come out on to the deck. It is early morning. The wind is up. It tastes of salt and burning plastic. The sun burns like a reactor fire over the irradiated sea and the mountain rises starkly in front of it. It isn’t shimmering, it has no aurora. It is dark. Pia has never seen it look so... lifeless.

  ‘How long has it been like that?’

  Siskin regards her. ‘Ever since you appeared in my office. Almost six hours.’

  A small shuttle boat swings above the waves on a lowering crane, the same sort of boat Mum and Dad took her on when they gave her a peek inside the Seam.

  ‘You’re not taking me back there, are you?’ Pia shudders. ‘I won’t go.’

  ‘We’re not going to the Seam, Cornucopia.’

  ‘Where are we going, then?’

  No reply.

  They clamber in the boat. The pulleys whirr. Pia lurches as they descend down. It is choppy this morning. Cold spray spatters over the side and white foam caps the waves. A man and woman from security are on the boat. The woman hands Pia a life jacket and a breather. She puts them on.

  ‘Turn over your wish-scripts,’ says the security man.

  ‘Why?’ Pia looks from him to Siskin, who just raises his eyebrows. As in: You heard the m
an, do it.

  She reaches into her dungarees front pocket and hands them over. Half a dozen creased-up rolls of paper. Now she can’t zephyr, or even thrint herself a sandwich.

  She puts the breather and life jacket on the chilly bench in the passenger area and looks out at the sun burning in the ash-coloured sky, and the waves like snow-capped mountains that peak and fall. It is an ugly and empty sea to look out on, but it is better than looking inwards at herself. At what she has done.

  Hum dead, the other angel still missing.

  The Seamstress wounded and dying in the Seam. Maybe even dead.

  It’s not your fault, Pia tells herself for the hundredth time. She tried to tell Siskin too, but he refused to listen. It is true, though. Something else is going on here: some vast and shadowy conspiracy. Pia has caught glimpses of it: the injuries to Hum and the Seamstress. Her references to a terrible pattern, to mortal peril for all. And the words muttered without explanation:

  The worm.

  Pia shivers. Someone wants to destroy the zoo and the voilà. She knows it.

  And they’re succeeding.

  On the other bench, Siskin watches her and fiddles with his cufflinks. For someone who hasn’t slept all night, he looks remarkably fresh. Pia is exhausted. The only thing keeping her awake is knowing she’ll have nightmares about what happened in the Seam. Siskin, in contrast, doesn’t even have stubble around his goatee.

  ‘When did you even find the time in the last five hours to shave?’ she asks, hoping to lighten the mood.

  Behind his breather, Siskin doesn’t smile. Pia decides to go for broke.

  ‘You moustache your secretary to trim it for you, I suppose.’

  Not even a flicker of amusement.

  ‘Moustache,’ Pia explains weakly. ‘You know, like must ask... You moustache your secretary to...’

  Maybe jokes are reflections of their owner, just like voilà. Maybe that explains why Pia’s always crash and burn.

  Siskin waits for Pia to turn a shade of red dark enough to atone for her terrible attempt at comedy. Then he clears his throat and says: ‘You are not, just so we’re clear, being accused of anything yet.’

  Pia sits in her seat, staring straight ahead.