The Last Zoo Read online

  Two blurry figures stand beneath the soft white light of the numinous lamp. No matter how hard Pia squints, they never quite come into focus. In so many ways, the ghosts are like recordings. A few brief moments, captured like flies in amber. They will never know anything or think anything or feel anything they hadn’t known or thought or felt four years ago, on that Wednesday afternoon when the prism failed, at eight minutes past three.

  ‘Ugh.’ Estival, the ghost of Pia’s mum, looks at the sole of her boot. ‘My shoelace keeps untying.’

  ‘I’ve been thinking,’ says Yisel, her dad’s ghost, crouched on the floor.

  Pia has heard him say this a hundred times, a thousand. She knows these last moments off by heart.

  ‘That’s rare for you,’ she murmurs.

  ‘That’s rare for you,’ says Estival’s ghost.

  ‘Ha! Stop avoiding the subject.’

  Estival’s ghost turns. ‘Yisel.’ It is too hard now to tell whether she says it with disapproval or with worry. Time has taken emotion from the ghosts, the way it fades colour from photographs. One day they might wear away to a few whispered words, then finally nothing at all.

  ‘I’m serious,’ Yisel says.

  ‘You’re never serious.’

  Yisel’s ghost shrugs.

  Estival throws her hands up. ‘And what happens after?’

  That final question of her mother’s haunts Pia’s life. She has spent nights awake and wondering, with no answer.

  ‘Excuse me,’ she interrupts.

  The ghosts look up at her. As always there is that moment when Pia feels they recognise her. Then it passes. She isn’t their Pia. Their Pia isn’t tall and lanky, with hair hacked short and a wonky fringe. Their Pia is much younger. Still a little girl. A podge with plaits.

  ‘Who are you?’ Estival asks.

  Pia has answered her mum a hundred different ways, a thousand. She hasn’t found an answer yet that the ghosts don’t find confusing.

  ‘I’m friends with Pia,’ she says. It’s one of the few replies that doesn’t cause the ghosts to loop.

  ‘Pia?’ Estival steps forward. ‘Our daughter Pia? Is she OK?’

  ‘She’s on Ark One playing with Gowpen in the crèche, she’s fine.’ Pia heads for the numinous lamp. It is docked in the wall, but take it out and the charge will make it shine on for a while.

  Estival steps closer, some unseeable expression on her blurry face, and she stumbles. She steadies herself and sighs and lifts up her shoe with a huffing sound.

  ‘My shoelace keeps untying.’

  This happens all the time. When the ghosts move too far from the moment before death, they loop back to where they knew. To when they knew. Wednesday afternoon, four years ago. At eight minutes past three.

  ‘I’m going now.’ Pia unclicks the lamp from the wall. Her parents blur even more as the light shifts away from them. ‘Bye.’

  Yisel jumps. ‘Where did you come from?’

  Estival’s ghost throws up her hands. ‘And what happens after?’

  Pia switches off the lamp to save battery. Her parents bleach away into the air. Their voices fade. The cabin looks empty. But they are here. They are always here. Pia has lost count of the times she has wished (yes, actually wished) they might finally blur away completely and be at peace. But some things can only be erased by time. Like grief. Like ghosts.

  She heaves the door shut. About now, Yisel is looking down, saying, ‘Does that light—’

  That was the moment the infernal prism beside them breached. Gotrob had been weakening the crystal structure for a while, rebounding himself off each edge at the speed of light until the whole thing heated up and cracked. A jagged rain of glass blew outwards across the deck, releasing the devil like a fireball.

  It was the worst enclosure escape in the history of the zoo. It took almost three weeks to zephyr Gotrob back into the remaining prism (where he was eaten by Bagrin just a few months later – something Pia will always be grateful to the remaining devil for). By then another three zookeepers were dead. Pia doesn’t pray any more for the miracle that would bring them all back to life. Every night for two years, she clasped her hands and pleaded. But sometimes not even angels can mend what gets broken, or who.

  16

  SPIDER PARLOUR

  Dusk is already falling as Pia gathers her things. Numinous lamp, check. Breather, check. No nanabug, check. There’s only one last thing she needs.

  Genies aren’t officially supposed to zephyr anyone around after dark, to reduce the chances of poachers sneaking about, and the gargantula ark is currently floating on the other side of the island, way out of reach of most genie’s beards. It might take several wishes to get there.

  She needs an excuse, and one that might need to work more than once.

  ‘Bagrin?’ she murmurs.

  Like a bat out of the gathering night, his presence swoops down upon her shoulder.

  ‘Look,’ she says. ‘I need a favour.’

  Bagrin doesn’t do favours.

  ‘OK, fine. Go away then.’

  Don’t be like that. What do you want?

  ‘An excuse. To get me to the gargantula ark.’

  But it is almost past curfew.

  ‘That’s why I’m asking you. Because I need a very good excuse.’

  Bagrin chuckles. You are much more interesting than your parents. They did not have half as many evil thoughts as you.

  ‘Shut up. Can you do it?’

  It is very far away. You will need to make several zephyrs.

  ‘Yeah.’

  And what does Bagrin get from this? Make us an offer.

  ‘You... can come along for the ride.’

  We can come along anyway. We made a deal.

  ‘Our deal was until sunset.’ Pia points at the horizon. It’s dark. ‘I’m willing to extend it to dawn. Deal?’

  The devil pauses to consider. Then he sends her a chimera of a red Dibsy with horns, giving two thumbs ups.

  Deal. But only if you also let Bagrin eat your soul.

  ‘No.’

  Very well, not your soul. How about a kitten?

  ‘I’m not going to feed you a kitten, Bagrin.’

  He whines all the way across the deck to Pazuzu: Why not a kitten? Kittens are only small, you know. You are a very unreasonable child.

  ‘Hey,’ Pia murmurs. ‘Pazuzu.’

  A little firefly-sized flame rises out of her lamp. ‘And who should be calling at this late hour, Pazuzu wondered?’

  ‘It’s me. Think you can zephyr me towards the gargantula ark? I won’t be long.’

  Pazuzu doesn’t look happy. ‘The genie wondered what the girl’s nanabug would say to such sneaking off.’

  It is a good job genies narrate their thoughts. They are obsessed with stories. Which is why Pia’s excuse (ahem – BAGRIN’s excuse) is basically irresistible.

  ‘Can’t you help a pair of star-crossed lovers meet beneath the moonlight, Pazuzu?’ Pia says in really bad Tellish.

  The genie is suddenly much more awake. She drifts from the lamp, coloured love-heart red, and asks: ‘The persistent prince?’

  Pia bats her eyelids. ‘The very same.’

  Ugh, this is so embarrassing. But it is working. Pazuzu’s sigh is full of sparks. Genies are total suckers for romance. Pia just hopes this never gets back to Ishan.

  • • •

  Using her story (fine, OK, Bagrin’s story), Pia zephyrs across the zoo. She tells it to Orel, the genie at the moonfairy ark, and to Zosimus by the hummingdragon hives, and finally to Sim Sala Bim over at the timefrogs. They lap it up, all three of them. It’s in their nature. Genies are hooked on anything against the odds, high stakes, and a little hopeless. Which pretty much sums up the zoo itself, and explains why no genie has ever left to go and grant wishes anywhe
re else. They are all in love with the tale of this place: a ragtag fleet, a mysterious mountain, a last-ditch attempt to save a dying world. Sounds pretty clichéd to Pia, but hey. Maybe it’s more exciting in Tellish.

  With a bow and a ‘so it was granted’, Sim Sala Bim wishes her on to the gargantula ark. Pia has never zephyred so many times so quickly before. After Pazuzu, she felt the regular disorientation: the popped ears, the dizzy tiredness. With each subsequent zephyring, the feelings have magnified. By the time she reached Zosimus, Pia was swaying like a drunkard and gasping for breath. Fortunately, Zosimus just mistook her queasiness for lovesickness, which made Bagrin’s story even more convincing.

  This fourth and final zephyring is the worst yet. Pia has to keep her eyes closed until her nausea and exhaustion goes. No way is she barfing twice today. Especially not in a breather mask.

  Still unable to look at anything, she tries to focus on the sounds around her to distract from the travel sickness. The gargantula ark is very quiet and still, so much so that Pia decides that the ship’s zephyr zone has to be inside. Nothing strange about that. Plenty of arks keep their genies below deck. But as well as all the other side effects, this fourth zephyring has given her a curious new sensation on her face, neck and hands.

  It feels like something is falling upon her skin – something soft and very fine, somewhere between dust and snow. It tickles her chin. A small pile is already gathering on the bridge of her nose where her breather rests.

  What is it? She opens her eyes to see.

  If Threedeep was there, she would have emitted loud bleeps to drown out Pia’s swearing.

  She isn’t just inside the ship. The ark’s zephyr zone is in the gargantula enclosure itself! Pia is in the freaking spider parlour!

  What? Is this actually happening? She’s on the wrong side of the two-centimetre-thick glass that holds giant carnivorous spiders.

  Pia flicks on the numinous lamp, and it casts milky light into the mass of floating cobwebs around her. Gargantulas secrete it like a mist around themselves as camouflage. Oh facepalm, this is bad. What does she do? Her thoughts are all fogged up, her heart is thudding. Every moment she expects either one of the spiders to scutter out of the cobmist towards her, or for Urette’s bony hands to fall on her shoulders.

  But no gargantulas appear. No Urette either. A wisp of web settles on her dungarees. She brushes it off with a shudder. Most of it ends up on her palm. When she tries to flick it off, it gums up her fingertips. Yucky stuff.

  She shakes her hand furiously, wondering what to do. Does she explore? That would be crazy. Call out for Urette? That feels just as stupid. There might be a gargantula just a few metres away.

  She needs to get out of here. Where is the ark’s genie? She turns and looks for a lamp, but it’s hard to see through the mist, especially when it glues to her eyelashes.

  She blinks, rubs her face with her sleeve, and sees a dim light to her left, where the cobmist is thick. That has to be the genie. She needs to zephyr herself to safety.

  Taking a deep breath, she plunges in. A grey-white cloud avalanches over her.

  Instantly, this turns out to be a terrible idea. A trillion silk particles glue themselves to her. Ugh, it’s all over. Everywhere. In her hair, forming webs between her fingers, making long sticky strands between her eyelids. She can barely see the genie ahead of her. She struggles towards it.

  It suddenly occurs to her that this was the gargantula equivalent of a web, and the one thing you don’t do in a web is wriggle about. She takes her first breath, but the mist has gummed up her breather filter. She takes off the mask and the cobmist coats the inside of her throat and she doubles up, choking. She jams her nose in the crook of her elbow, wheezing for air.

  Some instinct tells her that cobmist doesn’t just hide the gargantulas, it catches their prey too.

  The light is by her feet, which have gathered up such big cobmist tufts they look like cotton candyfloss on the sticks of her legs. She kneels down and prods the light.

  It’s not a genie’s lamp. Just a standard, zoo-issue headlamp.

  Oh Seamstress.

  She really, really, really needs to get out. But now her knees won’t straighten. Pia falls on her back. Which direction did she come from? Behind? She tries opening her eyes, but they are gummed shut. She wipes them clear using the inside of her dungarees. It doesn’t really work. Her vision stays blurry. A waste of precious movements. Should she use her hands to free her knees, or just guess a direction and crawl? Stop lagging, Pia, just decide. Every moment you stay here, more cobmist sticks to you.

  The dome is eerily quiet. Maybe the cobmist has gummed up her ears too. One voice sounds loud and clear, though.

  May we be of assistance?

  Pia wheezes another breath. Bagrin! She can only think, not speak. What do I do?

  Ah, Bagrin says. Now that would be telling.

  Help me! Pia’s terror is making her giddy-headed. She can’t breathe. She needs to breathe.

  Of course we will help, Bagrin soothes. We’ll be happy to... make a deal.

  Before Pia can answer, she hears a slow scrunch, scrunch, scrunch. Something is coming through the cobmist towards her.

  There is no time to bargain. She’ll be spider food in seconds. Panic takes over. She crawls blindly, hands jammed beneath her armpits, saving them for when her legs get totally glued together.

  A hard set of pincers catch her by the shoulder.

  She swings a fist that connects with nothing, twirls round and falls. A vague glimpse of an enormous brown-haired thing. Maybe a leg, or a couple of legs. It pins her flat to the floor. Pia’s mouth is so gummed up she can’t even scream.

  Then, through the cobwebs covering her ears, Pia hears Urette say: ‘You’re lucky I dropped my headlamp.’

  The bony fingers gripping her like mandibles relax. Something slick and acrid sprays in her face. Pia claws with her hands, mouth and eyes and nostrils burning. The cobmist slides off her skin and slops to the floor, the colour and consistency of porridge.

  ‘Here.’ The blurry shape of Urette hands her an aerosol. ‘Spray that down your throat. It burns, but it’s better than suffocating.’

  Pia nods, wheezing, and takes the can. It tastes like chemicals, but it works. She doubles over coughing, gross white gunky globs sliding up and out of her throat. Urette clicks her false teeth together beneath a wet-looking plastic breather.

  ‘Thanks,’ Pia manages to rasp, looking up. She wasn’t hallucinating before: the old witch really is wearing some kind of horrible suit made of shaggy brown spines. The cobmist seems to slide straight off it.

  ‘Do your eyes next, girl. It’ll sting.’

  Pia supposes she should be angry. What the hell is Urette doing, putting her zephyr zone inside a deadly creature’s enclosure? But right now, her relief at still being alive is overriding her fury.

  ‘Now the rest of your joints,’ Urette says. ‘And don’t scream, Nancy hates it.’

  Pia coughs up more wet silk. ‘Who’s Nancy?’

  A second later, the spider dances into view.

  It tiptoes delicate as a ballerina, each leg leaping up and vanishing through the mist for a weightless moment before alighting again with the softest rustle on the floor. Pia isn’t prepared for the grace of the thing. For the shyness of it. Her skin crawls when she looks at the twitching mandibles. The shaggy thorax has large pom-pom sized silk balls tufted on top. The drooping and swollen abdomen farts out a constant cloud of cobmist. Gazing at the nightmare of eyes, set in glittering black rows, Pia realises Urette had been right: stare in any of a gargantula’s sixteen eyes, and you can see what it is thinking.

  And Nancy is scared.

  Of Pia? Seriously? As she sits up, the spider freezes. It makes a sort of clacking sound.

  Urette clicks her false teeth together in reply. ‘Back to your nest,
girl.’

  Nancy turns. One by one, the spindly legs waltz away in the haze.

  Pia listens to the spider’s timid footsteps fade to silence. The breath she was holding whooshes out of her lips like air from a puncture.

  ‘Big scaredy-cat really.’ Urette sprays Pia with another canister of cobmist dissolver. ‘Her size makes her fragile, you see. She’ll only eat something if her cobmist has trapped and suffocated it first. You’re lucky her clutch hasn’t hatched, though.’

  ‘What do you mean, a clutch?’

  ‘Didn’t you see the egg sacs she’s carrying?’ Urette cackles. ‘Babbagantulas will eat anything, alive or dead. They’ll start with Nancy, in fact.’

  Pia shudders. ‘Could not be more glad I work with celestials.’ She coughs up another gob of cobmist and sprays her throat again.

  Urette turns and trudges away in her spider-hair suit. ‘Come on, then.’

  Pia grimaces and gets to her feet. ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Back to my bubble.’ The old witch trudges off into the mist.

  Pia looks around. Where else is she going to go? It’s not as if there are any other options. She waddles through the cobmist to catch up with the spider lady.

  17

  THE CABIN IN THE COBMIST

  Urette’s cabin is a small plastic habitation bubble, plopped straight in the midst of the cobmist. It’s igloo-shaped, with clear walls. Little more than a sturdy tent, really. It has the primitive look of something that’s been thrinted into being by a genie.

  Outside, the waltzing shadows of the gargantulas flitter past. Makes it kind of hard to concentrate on conversation.

  ‘Sorry, Urette... could you say that again?’

  ‘I said, don’t mind Nutella,’ Urette repeats, over by the kitchen area. ‘He’s just curious.’

  Pia’s attention is all on the enormous brown leg, like a long articulated pool cue, that pokes out from the mist an arm’s reach from where she sits. Now it prods at her, crinkling the bubble’s plastic wall. She shuffles as far away as she can.

  ‘We don’t get many visitors, you see,’ Urette explains.