“Pip jungle king,” she teased, pushing a sense of disturbance to the back of her mind.
Hunagu grunted, “Hunagu dream Pip fly over wall. She free.”
Fly? If only …
“Pip and Hunagu fly to jungle,” said Pip.
She could not hope. It hurt too much. But her dreaming did not stop. Maybe she could escape and steal a Dragonship from the big people. She would fly it to the Crescent Islands, her home. She would take Hunagu with her. There, they would learn the jungle’s ways together. He would join the Oraials. They would always be friends, Pygmy and Oraial.
Best friends belonged in the jungle, not in a zoo.
T
he mother Oraial
died on the coldest day of the year.
Storm after storm battered the zoo. The big people did not come to gawp at them in the bad weather, but huddled inside the big huts Pip had seen three summers before. They had to be hiding. Even the zookeepers walked like hunchbacked Apes under their fur coverings, as if afraid the sky was about to attack them.
She could not believe her eyes, that morning. White ground? She tested it with her bare toes. A freezing blanket had descended. Her toes throbbed and ached simultaneously. Rain that stuck to the ground! Bending down through a puff of breath steaming from her nostrils, Pip took some of the white rain between her fingers. Cold burned? She giggled.
“Snow,” said Hunagu. His breath boiled above her, creating clouds of its own. “Many moons ago, Oraials come from land of snows. Pygmy girl cold?”
“Pip turning blue like Hunagu,” she said.
“Fur good?”
The zookeeper had given her a worn old rajal skin out of pity. It was little proof against the bitter cold, the bitterest winter she had known since coming to the zoo, but better than nothing. She sneezed twice. Reaching over, Hunagu cleaned her nose and wiped his fingers on his thigh. Then, he picked her up in one arm as though she were an Oraial baby.
“Snow hurt Pygmy feet,” he explained.
As one, they looked up to the climbing frame. His mother had spent the night up there, careless of the weather. Snow dusted her coat. Icicles trailed down from her stubby tail and the longer fur on the backs of her legs and thighs. She was singing. The mother Oraial had been singing for several weeks now, and eating little. Hunagu tried to offer her the tastiest leaves. She bit his arm. He tried to talk to her, but she did not appear to understand.
Hunagu moved over to their water barrel, next to the locked and barred gate. He could no longer fit through it, Pip realised. He had grown too large.
“Frozen,” said Hunagu. He cracked the skin of ice with his fist. “Drink, friend.”
Swinging down, Pip lowered her face to the water. She gasped at the cold.
The ground shook. Pip whirled to see the great female Oraial thundering down the slope toward one of the crysglass windows. She did not stop. She did not slow. Tons of Ape crashed into the armoured glass with a sickening, wet smack. A triangular section of crysglass shattered. For a second, Pip thought the female Oraial would climb through. But then a shudder seized her body–a wrong movement, the kind of jerky, distressing motion a body should never make. She slumped, and lay still.
“Oh, no,” Pip breathed.
Hunagu moaned, “Mother …”
Her feet slapped over the frozen ground. Pip halted, catching sight of the gap in the glass, easily big enough for a Pygmy girl. Maybe Hunagu could squeeze through? Her eyes leaped to the stricken Ape. Pip sucked on her lip. Courage, Pygmy warrior. She touched the Ape. Nothing. No heartbeat, no life. She checked again. Hope drained from her, until her heart felt colder than the day.
She turned to her friend. “Pip sorry, Hunagu. She-spirit gone.”
The big Ape’s face crumpled. He moaned, covered his eyes, peeking out between his fingers like one of the big person children playing their games with a Pygmy girl on the other side of the zoo’s windows. He began to make a low, keening sound, as if an ill wind moaned through the Pygmy cave of warriors. He rocked back and forth, making that pitiable sound, unceasing.
Pip dashed back to Hunagu. Grabbing his fingers, she pulled as hard as she could. “Come. Escape. Come, Hunagu.”
But he sat as though rooted to the ground.
She gazed longingly at the shattered glass. A Pygmy could slip away if she was quick. Here came the first of the zookeepers, curious as to the source of the commotion. She had to go now.
“Escape, Hunagu. Must come with Pip. Please.”
His keening rose to the grey, uncaring skies.
“Come,” Pip cried. In her distress, she switched to her native tongue. “Hunagu, please, you must come with me. We can escape. Listen, Hunagu …”
The worst was, Pip understood. She knew why he needed to grieve. With one final look at the hole, so inviting, such an invitation to a new life for one of them at least, she deliberately turned her back on the crysglass window. Pip sat beside her friend. Tears brimmed over. She wailed the Pygmy cry of mourning, and began to rend her face with her fingernails, split and torn from hard work and grubbing in the soil for food.
Hunagu’s hand stopped her. “Pip no hurt self. Pip sad?”
“She Hunagu-mother. Pip sad-sad-sad.”
“Hunagu sad-sad-sad. But she better now. No pain. Still sad.”
Since their capture, Hunagu’s mother had never been fully well. Pip and he both knew that, but still, the loss clawed wounds in her heart. She could barely remember a time without her. She had nursed both Hunagu and Pip at times, fed her, picked lice out of her hair, and kept them both warm in the cold season nights. Now, she lay so still. Pip wondered if she had broken her neck.
As if to underscore her grief, fresh snow began to sift down from the lead-grey skies.
* * * *
The zookeepers gave them food containing strange herbs. Pip and Hunagu slept. They awoke in a new, larger cage, which they shared with fourteen flying vervet monkeys. The walls were even higher than before. A huge net hung over the wide enclosure, held up by six tall poles. Pip immediately began to consider if she could climb those poles and scamper across the net to freedom. But each had a circular platform near the top to discourage such an idea. The top of the wall sloped inward, making a climb from beneath difficult, if not impossible.
Pip gazed about her. The metal door was present. But this area had five windows, and a wide ditch ran around the inside of the wall, even beneath the metal gate. She saw that a bridge could be swung into place over the ditch. Now, Hunagu would be unable to reach the walls.
The flying vervet monkeys had pink, heart-shaped faces and beautiful long fur, more silver than grey, which rippled in the wind as they leaped and glided from pole to pole and handhold to handhold. Large flaps of skin extended between their arms and legs, giving them surprising agility in the air. They were vocally unimpressed by the new arrivals, but they stopped baring their fangs at Pip the moment Hunagu stirred.
Glazed of eye, he gazed about as she had. “New walls?” he grunted, at last.
“New,” said Pip.
Hunagu seemed unconcerned about the vervet monkeys. Instead, he lumbered down to the ditch to look into it. “Huh. Trap.”
Pip peered in. The bottom of the deep ditch bristled with sharp stakes–like a Dragon’s fangs, waiting to pierce unwary prey.
“Cage home now.”
How could he accept it so easily? Did Hunagu not yearn for the freedom to run and play beneath the jungle boughs? Could he yearn for a home he had never really known?
Pip sucked on her lower lip. The practical Oraial was making an examination of their new quarters, checking the berry bushes, shooing away the vervet monkeys with deep, booming grunts. He was right. The cold was upon them. Survival first. Survival, always.
As the freeze unclenched its grip on the land, big people began to return to the zoo. Pip grew weary of the endless parade of faces past their window. She formed an uneasy truce with the vervet monkeys, and learned something of their speech.
One bright, frosty morning in the spring season following the mother Oraial’s death, as four moons wrestled for space in the sky, Pip noticed a man outside, observing them with what seemed to her an unusual degree of interest. He had brought a chair. His exaggerated limp first caught her eye, then his wooden leg, which he eased out before him as though it somehow caused him pain as he sat. He wore a great fur coat and a furry covering on his head which flapped down over his ears.
As she watched, the man opened a worn leather satchel and unpacked a multitude of unfamiliar implements–pots and sticks, feathers and scrolls. The man had a bushy beard and hairy caterpillar eyebrows like many of the big people, but his eyes were green rather than brown, and seemed to take in every detail as though he lived and breathed to understand the essence of everything he saw.
His gaze never wavered from Pip and Hunagu.
The next day, he returned. Pip stuck out her tongue at him and groomed Hunagu’s ruff. The big person made many marks on his scrolls.
Pip dreamed about his intense green eyes watching her from the darkness of a jungle cavern. So she was disappointed when he did not return for several days thereafter. Just when she had forgotten the dream, however, there he was–sitting at his ease, chewing one of his sticks and smiling at her when she noticed him. Pip bared her teeth in return. He scratched busily with his feather. Pip made a few experimental cuts with her bamboo sword in the air. The man’s eyebrows crawled up his broad forehead. She made a motion toward her mouth, ‘I’m hungry.’ She was always hungry. Hunagu said she was growing. The way he said it, gently scoffing, she wanted to smack him sideways. The man only wrote on his scroll.
Monkey poo to him. Pip rooted in the soil for grubs. The man looked on with alert interest.
Two mornings later, Pip was taking a little water from the barrel beside the metal gate when she suddenly became aware of the strange man standing there, together with the zookeeper, within touching distance. She leaped back several paces before catching herself with a hiss of annoyance. Through the bars, he offered her a bread roll.
Pip eyed it suspiciously. Her stomach clenched like an angry fist. Fruit had been scarce, lately, and rats even scarcer. Right. She was no coward.
She took the bread roll with a bow of her head she had observed the big people using. “Pip thunk big pigson,” she said, solemnly, in her best Island Standard.
He showed his teeth, but a snort of laughter made her realise he was pleased. “Eat,” he said.
She repeated, “Eat.”
Then he said, in her language, “Big person gets …
greets
, uh–Pygmy thing.”
She was so surprised that she choked on the bread. Finally, she managed to splutter, “You’re a big person, but you speak Pygmy? Where did you learn? Why are you here?”
He laughed again, switching to Island Standard. “Slowly. Teach me. I’m Balthion.” He tapped his chest. “Balthion. What’s your name?”
Pip chuckled in return as he started the naming game. She knew what to do. She had played it with Hunagu, and learned to speak Ape. “Pip,” she said. “Big pigson … Balthi-Balthiorn …”
“Bal-thee-on. Person,” he agreed. “Pip? You’re Pip? Well, we’re going to learn a great deal together. I’m studying the ancient Island cultures, you see, and–you don’t see. Well, I’d like it very much if we talked together every day. You’ll teach me Pygmy, ay?”
Pip chirped her agreement at him. He had a nice smile. She knew they were going to be friends, just as she and Hunagu had become friends. Maybe he would teach her how to speak like a big person. Wouldn’t it help her to escape from the zoo? At least, she might learn how to properly insult the big people who came and wiped the snot-trails of their noses against her windows.
The following day, Balthion returned with another chunk of bread. He gave her half through the bars and saved the rest for after their lesson. They played the naming game. He wrote a great deal in his scroll. Balthion came daily, after that. He had questions, and pictures to name, and wanted to know every click and trill that Pygmies used in their words. Pip tried to help him understand that she wanted to learn to speak, too. Balthion, however, seemed to have only one jungle trail in his mind. Pip kept speaking to him because he brought bread, but she found herself growing angrier and angrier with each day that passed. She pounded through her warrior exercises and wrestled Hunagu furiously until he grunted:
“Pipsqueak cross. Bad thing in heart. Hunagu bad thing?”
“No, not Hunagu,” Pip realised. “Balthion.”
“Pipsqueak make Balthion understand. He not bad big person, but he not know Pygmy girl.”
Pip hugged her friend, trying to put her arms right around his neck, even though she knew she couldn’t. Would Hunagu ever stop growing in height and in wisdom? Balthion might be clever, but Hunagu could read the secret trails of a person’s heart.
When Balthion offered his next piece of bread, Pip shook her head. “Pip doesn’t want bread.”
Balthion tugged on his beard. “Right. Let’s talk Pygmy. What’s this, Pip?”
Snatching the bread from his hand, Pip flung it across the cage. Five vervet monkeys pounced on the morsel at once, screeching and fighting each other.
He said, in his careful Pygmy, “What wrong in Pip?”
“Nothing’s wrong with me,” she shouted, turning her back on him. “It’s you.”
“What wrong with me?”
Pip ground her teeth in frustration. How could she make him understand? In his tongue, she said, “Big person speak. Pip learn big person speak.”
“Balthion learn Pygmy,” he said, in her language. “Give Pip bread. Good-good?”
“I want to learn what you know,” she replied, taut with despair. “I want to learn how to speak like a big person, Balthion, and how to make markings on scrolls. There’s so much I don’t know.”