The Last Zoo Read online

  ‘Ignore it? Even though it’s farting out all these bad smells whenever we’re around each other?’

  ‘This metaphor is sort of gross, Ish.’

  Ishan blinks as he processes this. ‘Yeah,’ he admits. ‘I guess what I’m trying to say is... Never mind.’

  Another awkward silence. The conversation has juddered to a halt, like some complex machine they have just busted. Pia has no idea how to fix it. She has no idea how to fix anything. The world is dying and the angels are gone and, maybe worst of all, her friendship with Ishan Gabril feels broken.

  Then two scrips zephyr into the air in front of them and flutter on to their laps.

  A message from Wilma, of just one word:

  UNICORN.

  10

  SPARKLEHORN

  The message changes everything, or at least makes it less important. Suddenly they’re both standing, talking over each other.

  ‘Did you get—’

  ‘Yes! Do you think—’

  ‘I don’t know! Shall we—’

  ‘Go? Yeah!’

  Ishan shouts up to his nanabug that they’re going to see the unicorn. Sixtip flashes back a green light, and the two of them rush across the tilted deck. Pia slips on the remains of the old plastic turf that the sea’s turned a slimy green and Ishan reaches out to catch her, but taking hold of his hand would be too weird right now, so Pia prefers to fall flat on her face and scramble back to her feet.

  ‘You OK?’ Ishan looks at her.

  Of course she’s not OK. She’s now wet, and smelling of seaweed. She’s a mess, it’s all a mess, but clutched in her hand is a little slip of paper with something amazing on it.

  A unicorn. Gowpen’s made an actual unicorn. She clings to that thought. Right now it’s just about the only happy one in her entire head.

  • • •

  Karratakirattaki lives on the Rek’s old command deck, in the barrel of a rusty flare gun. Ishan pulls the trigger and out he comes in a khaki-coloured boom.

  ‘Your wish is my command, commander!’ the genie says, snapping to attention.

  Pia and Ishan both return his salute. Genies often use the places and objects around them to ‘accent’ their Tellish, and living on this old navy ship has given Karratakirattaki a real military bearing.

  ‘At ease, commando,’ Ishan says in Tellish. ‘Got a vital mission for you. We’re going in behind enemy lines.’

  Karratakirattaki lights up like a night-time battlefield. It has to be the ten thousandth time the genie’s heard this, but he doesn’t care one bit.

  ‘Mission accepted,’ he says. ‘Awaiting orders.’

  ‘Where are we zephyring?’ Pia asks Ishan as they fumble for their scripts.

  ‘Arrivals ark?’

  Oh yeah, of course. Wilma’s note didn’t say because it was obvious. All new voilà go to the arrivals ark when they first come out of the Seam and off the island. That’s where the unicorn will be.

  Ishan goes through his wish-script first.

  ‘Yes, SUH!’ belts Karratakirattaki. ‘Evac, evac, we need evac now!’ He grants the wish, and Ishan vanishes in a clap that the genie decorates with a miniature fireball and the sound effect of an i-era helicopter.

  Pia goes next, closing her eyes and jamming her fingers in her ears. The world whirls around her and she lurches forwards and falls over again. It’s always like this when zephrying from the Rek. The deck never moves, so when you appear on something that’s travelling at speed, you tend to go flying.

  Her eyes are still closed, trying to quell the dizziness, when a hand takes hold of her and hauls her up. She’s about to snatch it back and yell at Ishan, but it isn’t him; it’s Wilma. She must have been waiting at the zephyr zone for them to come in.

  Wilma Adeoye is super short and super sarcastic and super awesome. Pia always thinks of her as being way too cool for the Rekkers. She’s not a gogglehead like Ishan, not a slacker like Zugzwang, not a mummy’s boy like Gowpen or a klutz like Pia. And yet she’s a Rekker, and you can only be a Rekker if you’re a misfit. You have to have something that sets you apart. Like a superpower, only one that compels you into mega-awkward situations.

  For Wilma, it’s her sense of humour, which is so cutting she’d need to declare it if she ever boarded a plane. In the year she’s been at the zoo, Wilma has managed to fall out with every other group of kids: the admins, the ’genieers, the other Seamers.

  It’s only really Gowpen who can handle her. The two of them are best friends, which is why she’s here before Pia and Ishan.

  ‘Is he OK?’ Ishan’s eyes are so wide he looks like he might sneeze, which is a sign that he’s nervous. ‘Is it OK?’

  Wilma’s face is a picture of doom and despair, and for a moment Pia’s heart stutters. Being a Seamer is a risky job. Every year, kids go off to the island mountain and don’t come back. Even those that do make it can return mind-frayed, heads so messed up they can’t tell what’s real any more.

  ‘Oh Seamstress, what happened?’ Pia’s hand flies to her mouth.

  ‘His mum wants him to name it Sparklehorn.’ Wilma rolls her eyes. ‘Come quick, we have to save him.’

  Ishan groans. ‘Wilma! Don’t do that!’ But he’s grinning as he says it. They all are. Gowpen’s done it – brought a voilà out of the Seam. Taken a figment of his imagination and made it real, made it true.

  And not just any random creature, but a unicorn.

  Pia gets to her feet and looks around. The arrivals ark is stacked with old shipping containers, like a cube made of enormous multi-coloured toy bricks. The holding bays, where new voilà are tested and treated, are all inside.

  A couple of security guards are posted at the main entrance, but they haven’t even clocked Ishan and Pia’s zephyring because they’ve both turned round to peer through the doorway, trying to catch a glimpse of the unicorn.

  ‘What’s it like?’ Pia says, and for some reason she is whispering.

  And Wilma just grins and says, ‘Come see for yourself.’

  • • •

  The unicorn is purest white: a white that shines. Not in the way angels shine, Pia decides. Angels are all hazy and gold: the unicorn is shimmering silver. It glows the colour of cool moonlight.

  Moonlight. It triggers a thought in Pia. Was this the meaning of the angels’ dream? To herald the unicorn’s arrival?

  ‘Wow,’ she sighs. Her breath mists up the glass between the viewing container and the holding bay. She wipes it with her sleeve and carries on staring.

  No one speaks for what seems like ages. The unicorn is mesmerising. Though hours old, it walks like a queen. Like the world has been made for it, instead of the other way around. How did Gowpen imagine such a thing?

  ‘Look at your eyelashes, all glittery-wittery!’ Pia coos at it. She sounds like a five-year-old; but who cares?

  The unicorn comes closer, dark blue eyes filled with sparkling glints, like shards of diamond. Its hooves clip across the floor, the horn ripples silver. Its mane makes a sound like little bells tinkling. All around it, scientists in lab coats are waving monitoring wands in the air and noting down the results and mumbling to themselves.

  Pia giggles. ‘They look like wizards in pyjamas,’ she says to Ishan and Wilma.

  The scientists look up. Their leader, a bald man with a frizzy grey beard, scowls. His tinny voice comes through the room’s speaker. ‘The intercom is on, you know.’

  Pia spots the microphone above her, and her cheeks go hot. She leans forward and thuds her forehead on the barrier glass.

  ‘Oh, Catastro-P,’ Wilma says sympathetically. It’s her nickname for Pia whenever stuff goes wrong.

  ‘You have no idea,’ Pia groans.

  Reaching forwards, Wilma flicks the intercom switch with her thumb. ‘Maybe let’s leave the pyjama-wizards and go see Gowpen?’


  ‘Yeah,’ says Ishan, wincing at the hostile looks coming from the scientists on the other side of the glass. ‘Let’s do that. Awkwardness levels are approaching lethal limits.’

  How’s it all going? Bagrin asks brightly as they leave the unicorn. His voice is fainter than it was, and there’s a crackle of static too, but he’s still audible. He sounds smug.

  Pia grits her teeth and doesn’t answer. Bagrin knows exactly how it’s going: disastrously. She hasn’t even been able to bring up the subject of angels yet.

  Just let us know if you need any help, says the devil. We can provide a range of suggestions, all competitively priced. Go on, make a deal...

  Pia shakes him off. But it’s not as easy as before. And even when Bagrin’s presence fades, his voice lingers like an echo.

  Go on, make a deal, make a deal, make a deal...

  But it isn’t the devil’s voice at all, she realises with a shudder. It’s her own thoughts, it’s temptation. And it’s getting harder to resist.

  • • •

  They find Gowpen in another container with a different bunch of pyjama-wizards, all waving different monitor wands. Any kid coming back from the Seam has this check-up, to make sure they’re not mind-frayed.

  Gowpen’s fine, though. Pia doesn’t need a monitor wand to see that. He grins at them as soon as they come in, and they grin back and send high fives through the barrier glass.

  Pia likes Gowpen a lot. He’s always smiling, even though he has crooked teeth and one of the worst jobs in the zoo: when he isn’t at the Seam, he shovels Rhinosaurus rex manure over on the megafauna ark. According to Gow, it comes out like boulders that he has to roll off the edge of the ship and into the sea. His face is always baby pink, from having to have a dozen showers a day to wash off the stink. Today it’s even pinker than usual, because he is super proud, and because his parents have turned up, and they’re super embarrassing.

  ‘Unicorns!’ Gowpen’s mum Fay bursts through the door behind the Rekkers. She claps Gowpen hysterically. Fay cares for the Fabergé chickens. She wears perfume and puts rose powder on her face. Pia often cites her as proof for her theory that, given enough time, zookeepers begin to resemble the creatures they care for.

  Fay smiles at Ishan and Wilma. Not Pia, though. Gowpen’s mum has not been her biggest fan, ever since three weeks ago, when Pia stupidly asked one of her genies to colour Fay’s nails purple as a surprise for her fiftieth birthday.

  Solomon hadn’t heard the word nails. Fay had not been happy when she woke up totally violet. They’d needed a ’genieer to script her back to normal. Pia was close enough to Fay now to see that some of the dye still hadn’t been wished out from her wrinkles.

  Fay sighs. ‘Oh, Gowpy, it’s like a fairy tale come true...’

  Gowpen blushes. He’s a Rekker mainly because of his mum.

  ‘Unicorns!’ Fay squeals.

  ‘Just a unicorn at the moment, Fay,’ says Gowpen’s dad. Tej is zookeeper to the singing hippos, so Pia keeps expecting (as per her theory) to see him turn fat-bellied and bald-headed and peg-toothed. But Tej is skinny and cheerful and totally devoted to Fay, just like his son.

  ‘Poor thing,’ says Fay. ‘It must be so lonely!’

  Gowpen speaks from behind the barrier glass. ‘I’m heading back tomorrow for another one, Mum. This one is a lady unicorn so I’m going to try for a male next.’

  Fay lets out an excited squeal and does a dozen little claps extremely fast just below her chin.

  ‘Finally, some good news,’ says Vivi, one of the scientists, as she passes her wand across Gowpen’s forehead. ‘I wonder what they’ll be used for?’

  Every voilà in the zoo is meant to help the world in some way. The hummingdragons are being trained to scavenge and hoard precious metals for recycling. The pigasi are involved in some sort of experiment to see if the zoo could selectively breed luck.

  Gowpen blushes at the question. ‘I don’t know. I doubt they’ll be as useful as angels and genies.’

  ‘Ahem, nanites,’ Ishan adds with a cough.

  ‘Who cares about useful?’ Tej beams at his son. Singing hippos are not useful in the slightest, but sing some pretty beautiful lullabies to their babybotamus young. Siskin decided to keep them in the zoo on account of the exquisite ‘Hippopoperas’ they perform to each other as a kind of courtship ritual. Pia was always glad when Tej’s ark drifted near to hers around sunset.

  ‘Yeah, Gow!’ Wilma slaps the glass like she’s giving him a smack. ‘You brought out a freaking unicorn! On behalf of the six-year-old me, thank you for literally making my childhood dreams come true.’

  Gowpen grins. ‘No more Rhinosaurus rex manure for me! Soon me and the unicorns will have our own enclosure.’

  Tej nods. ‘Maybe even your own ark like Pia and Ishan each have!’

  ‘Oh, don’t say that,’ Fay scolds. ‘I’ll tell Siskin to put Gowpy and his unicorns on our ark, right next to us.’

  Wilma makes some chicken-based pun about it being time to leave the roost, which everyone but Fay laughs at. Pia laughs mainly to cover her jealousy. She wishes that— No. Stop that thought right there. The zookeeper in Pia is trained not even to think stuff that begins with that phrase.

  Talk drifts back to the unicorn. ‘Is it true that her blood is rainbow-coloured?’ asks Wilma. ‘Is it true she poops glitter?’

  ‘Unicorns!’ Fay dabs her eyes and starts to cry.

  ‘Unicorn, darling,’ repeats Tej.

  Fay is full-on bawling now. ‘He’s calling her Sparklehorn, you know.’

  The Rekkers all share a look, Gowpen included. Wilma goes up to the intercom and asks one of the scientists to check over Fay for signs of mind-fray. Like all Wilma’s jokes, it cuts a little close. Fay is acting a little weird. There’s a wounded silence. Even Gowpen looks embarrassed.

  ‘OK,’ says Ishan. ‘How about we go get lunch? I’m pretty sure there are some people in the canteen we haven’t made enemies with yet.’

  11

  THE GARGANTULA-KEEPER

  They zephyr to the dining ship, an old i-era luxury cruiser. There are cheers for Gowpen as they appear in the canteen. Everyone’s clapping, and a few ’genieers get their genies to zephyr glitter above Gowpen’s head. He’s blushing so hard Wilma pretends to give him that Heimlich manoeuvre you do when someone’s choking.

  Pia slaps a fake smile over her face all through the cheers, but it keeps peeling off like an old plaster. All this good feeling for Gowpen is just reminding her of the fury she’ll face if anyone finds out about the angels. The death stares. The muttering. You stupid, stupid girl. And it won’t be glitter zephyring above her head, oh no. It’ll be boulders of Rhinosaurus rex poop, and that’s if she’s lucky.

  Want to avoid all that? Bagrin asks. Then you just have to—

  Pia shakes him away, just. The temptation is growing in her, though. It’s like a hunger. Maybe she can fill it with food.

  A genie called Tadaaa and her ’genieer Fran are on thrinting duty in the kitchens. They take food orders by big vats of farm-factory-grown nutrient slop, then make that slop appear upon the plate in whatever form you ask for.

  Pia and Ishan and Wilma and Gowpen wait in the queue. Ishan wishes a bowl of stir-fry noodles and a stim juice. A puff of smoke, and it appears. Wilma wishes cereal, like always. Gowpen is too busy being congratulated by all the other zookeepers to order.

  Pia wonders what to get. Tadaaa thrints a pretty decent ice-cream sandwich, but in the end she just asks for salad.

  ‘Wow.’ Ishan looks at her plate. ‘Where’s the real Pia gone?’

  ‘Me and junk food are officially on a break.’ He has no idea the trouble a cake and a hot dog have caused her today.

  The room is full of long tables. Who you are decides where you sit. There’s the security staff table (loud and sweary), the admin staff table (l
ots of soup in mugs for some reason), old spider lady’s table (no one sits there but Urette). It’s almost like the zoo staff are different species of voilà, all in separate enclosures with their own environments.

  The Rekkers sit on their table, which is in the corner by the bins. Eventually, everyone planning to say congratulations to Gowpen has said it, and they’re alone.

  ‘Moonbim is a right terror,’ Gowpen tells the table. ‘I nearly got skewered this morning when we both came out of the Seam.’

  ‘Great name, Gowpen!’ Pia says.

  ‘You think?’ Gowpen says. ‘You don’t prefer Sparklehorn?’

  Wilma mimes throwing up over her bowl of cereal. Pia has never seen her eat anything else but Malty Pops and milk.

  ‘No offence, Gow,’ she says, after another mouthful of cereal, ‘but your mum wouldn’t know a good name if it came up and introduced itself to her. Remember when I won her name-a-chicken competition and wanted to call it The Mother Clucker? She blubbed for two days until I agreed to change its name to Mauvie.’ Wilma shakes her head darkly, making her braided hair swish. ‘Sometimes I think I’m too hilarious for this place.’

  ‘Where’s Siskin gonna put your enclosure?’ Ishan asks.

  Gowpen shrugs. ‘Trying not to get ahead of myself. Arrivals are still doing all their tests and stuff.’

  ‘We call them pyjama-wizards now,’ Wilma informs him.

  Gowpen brings out a fistful of paper scrips: grey, for the colour of lab technicians. ‘They say she’s doing well so far. But it’s early days.’

  The rest of the table nods solemnly. Plenty of the voilà brought from the Seam are far too fragile to survive in reality for long. It took hundreds of imagerations for Pia’s mum to bring out the angels, for example.

  Sometimes, it was just that the creature wasn’t quite imagined right. Other times, the voilà might be so complicated or strange that no one could work out how to care for it in time.

  That was what had happened to Vivi, the woman who monitored Gowpen for mind-fray. After years of visiting the Seam, she only ever created one type of voilà: a species of origami mantis that seemed to feed off words, which it stripped out of books and tattooed on its paper body.