Riddles and Danger Read online

  “Huh?”

  “Remember about seven years ago when two lemurs were spotted on Zinnia Street in a tree in some lady’s backyard?”

  The scouts nodded. Though they were too young to recall the incident, they’d heard the story.

  “That was us. The lemurs were on watch. The lady called the police, who dispatched Animal Control. They trapped the lemurs and shipped them back to the zoo.”

  “Any others?” Richie asked.

  “A few,” Tameron replied. “People sometimes see our owls, but they don’t think nothing about that. And our prairie dogs—they’re always getting spotted. But people think they’re squirrels. Or gophers.”

  “Unreal,” Megan said, shaking her head.

  “There’s more,” Tameron said.

  “There usually is with you guys,” said Ella.

  “The animals don’t stop at the trees around the zoo wall—they go into the trees throughout your whole neighborhood.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” Megan said.

  “We only use tarsiers for this.”

  “Tarsiers?” Noah said. “What are they?”

  “You’re going to find out in just a little bit.”

  Ella said, “Well, whatever they are—how in the world do they make it down our streets without getting noticed?”

  “Tunnels,” Tameron answered.

  “In our neighborhood?” Richie said.

  “Yep. They branch off the Grottoes and go everywhere. They’re built and maintained by our prairie dogs. They work in them every night—cleaning out debris, widening them, extending them, burrowing new ones, and closing off old ones that are no longer needed.”

  “Way, way, way cool,” said Richie. “This is the kind of cool you only see in the movies.”

  “Why don’t people notice holes in their yards?” Ella asked. “I mean, the tarsiers have to come out somewhere.”

  “You tell me,” Tameron said. “It’s your neighborhood. You ever see weird holes in your grass?”

  The scouts shook their heads.

  “The prairie dogs aren’t dumb. Their tunnels rise up in private spots. Beneath bushes, sheds, decks. Into the open space beneath porches. Inside dark tree hollows. All kinds of places.”

  “How many tunnels?” Richie asked. “If you had to guess.”

  Tameron shrugged. “Don’t know. It’s a big neighborhood, kid. Hundreds, I guess.”

  “Hundreds!” Richie gasped.

  “Like I said . . . I don’t really know. Teach P-Dog to talk and maybe he’ll tell you.”

  Just then a kangaroo hopped into the tent and stopped at the back bench. He looked different from the others because one of his ears was bent sideways, as if broken. The way his short front arms dangled in front of his stomach reminded Noah of a T. rex. He poked his snout toward the scouts and sniffed the scents out of the air, seeming a bit surprised at the gathering, his eyes wide and unblinking.

  Noah said, “For all the time the tarsiers spend outside the zoo—eight, nine hours a night—they never get noticed. That’s amazing.”

  “Your neighborhood’s dark. No streetlights. And the trees are big and full. Even in the winter you can’t see anything in them—all the branches blend together. And the tarsiers, they’re practically . . .” Tameron’s voice trailed off. “Well, you’re about to see.”

  Megan said, “Do animals patrol from inside the zoo at night?”

  “Yeah. Mostly in the trees and places with a good view of the grounds—the taller exhibits. We put them where there’s almost zero risk of being seen.”

  “Any other animals?” Richie asked.

  Tameron nodded. “Owls. And bats—lots of bats. We use them for their echolocation.”

  “What?” Ella said. “Echolocomotion? Isn’t that a song at a wedding reception—the one where everyone stumbles around in a line, pretending to be a train?”

  “Echolocation,” Richie said, anxious as ever to share his trivia knowledge. “It’s a way to tell where something is by the echo it makes. Bats use it to help them see at night—to locate prey.”

  “Yep,” Tameron said. “And guess what the prey is in this case.”

  “DeGraff,” Noah said. “The Shadowist. But how can the bats tell him apart from anyone else?”

  “Remember what we told you about DeGraff? That he’s part human and part shadow, his decaying body kept together by the magic in the shadows?”

  “It’s kind of hard to forget a thing like that,” Ella said. “It’s the kind of thing that hangs out in your brain, giving you nightmares and stuff.”

  “His body gives off a very distinct sound. Our bats . . . they’ve been trained to pick it up.”

  Noah thought about this. It made sense. Objects produced different echoes. Surely DeGraff’s body would give off a sound like no other.

  “Okay,” Richie said. “Besides the tarsiers and the other arboreal animals, we have owls and bats. . . . and prairie dogs digging tunnels. Anything else?”

  “Monkeys,” Tameron said. “Police-monkeys. We usually have around ten circling the zoo. They move in groups of two or three.”

  Richie said, “Always on our rooftops, right?”

  “Yeah,” Tameron answered. “And the trees. They try to keep off the ground.”

  “How is it possible that we don’t hear them?” Ella asked.

  “We use smaller monkeys—night monkeys, spider monkeys, and others that see well at night. They don’t weigh much. And they move so swiftly that they hardly make a sound.”

  The kangaroo that had entered the tent hopped up to the scouts and stopped beside Ella, who was sitting closest to the aisle.

  “What’s up, bub?” Ella asked.

  The kangaroo tipped his head to one side and then the other, studying Ella. The end of his bent ear dangled limply.

  “What’s his name?”

  “Punchy,” Tameron answered. “He likes to punch things.”

  Ella scrunched up her face at the kangaroo and said, “Don’t even think about it—not unless you’re looking for a black eye.”

  Tameron steered the conversation back, saying, “The monkeys stay on the backs of the roofs—the sides that face the zoo. You can’t see them from the street. And the monkeys are smart. If they see someone, they avoid all the nearby houses and move quietly through the trees. They’ve only been spotted once, and that was by some girl in a tree fort.” Tameron raised an eyebrow at Megan, who offered a weak smile in a half-apologetic way. “Can you guys think of anything else that you know about the perimeter patrols?”

  Silence was the scouts’ response.

  “Let me see if I can fill in the blanks. There are three main groups of Secret Cityzens involved: owls, other animals, and Descenders—me, Hannah, Sam, and Solana.” He turned to the whiteboard and drew a large square. “Okay—here’s the Clarksville Zoo.”

  “Looks just like it,” Ella teased as she tipped her head to one side, pretending to contemplate the drawing as one might fine art. “Just like the view from a satellite, only better.”

  Tameron circled the top line of the square and wrote the letter S. He then circled the other sides of the square and marked the circles E, N, and W. “The territories,” he said.

  “Practically like using my mom’s GPS,” Ella quipped.

  Tameron scowled at Ella. “You going to be making jokes the whole time?”

  Ella shifted her eyes nervously. “Ummm . . . I’m thinking that was probably the last one for a while.”

  “Good.” Tameron turned back to the drawing and said, “Four territories. Thirty, maybe forty owls assigned to each one. Each territory has a single type of owl dedicated to it. We use the smallest ones we got—pygmy owls and elf owls, which are the smallest in the world, barely the size of a sparrow. The owls perch in the highest spots in the trees, places that have good views of the neighborhood. We let them out around ten. At the same time we release the bats. The bats aren’t assigned to a specific territory; instead, they continuously
circle the zoo. Got it so far?”

  The scouts nodded.

  “Around ten-thirty, we release the animals. The ones that post in the trees along the wall just jump into them. The tarsiers move into your neighborhood through the prairie dog tunnels. Once they’re out, they climb the trees and quickly settle into their posts.”

  The scouts stopped their questions and absorbed this new information. Noah realized the wonder and mystery of the Secret Zoo never seemed to end—seemed, in fact, to always be evolving into something greater, something more magnificent.

  “Okay,” Ella said. “So we’ve now got owls and a bunch of ar-bo-what-ev-er-eal things in our trees. What about you and your buds?”

  Tameron said, “We post around the zoo. We stick to tall structures, something with a view. The water tower, Metr-APE-olis—places like that.”

  Richie said, “But the animals . . . what do they do if they spot DeGraff?”

  “They’re trained to report the sighting back to the nearest Descender.”

  “How?” asked Ella.

  “The owls. Their purpose is to keep watch on the animals in the trees. If an arboreal animal spots DeGraff, it’ll shake a branch to alert the owls. An owl will swoop in, confirm the sighting, then fly to the nearest Descender, who knows to treat the owl’s arrival as a message that DeGraff’s been seen. The Descender will contact the guards at the Clarksville Zoo using one of these.” Tameron touched his ear, where a tiny earset with no visible wires was mounted. “They’re just sophisticated radios,” he explained. “The guards wear them, too. Once the guards get the message, a few will team up with the Descender and follow the owl to the place DeGraff was spotted.”

  Megan asked, “But that’ll take some time—what if DeGraff goes somewhere else?”

  “The animals are trained to show his location by shaking branches.” Tameron paused, then explained it another way: “They follow him from the treetops.”

  The scouts contemplated everything they’d just heard. Ideas and thoughts roamed in Noah’s head, creating images. His gaze wandered. On the ground was Tameron’s canvas backpack. The size of an army pack, it had bulging pockets with zippers and buckles and snaps. Velvet patches were stitched to it. Though they seemed to be decorative, Noah understood their real purpose. They supplied the magic that enabled the thing inside the canvas bag to join to Tameron, becoming a natural extension of his body—an extremity that he could control. Coiled inside the backpack was Tameron’s tail, his special power as a Descender.

  Noah turned to Ella and saw Punchy poke his snout forward and sniff one of her poofy earmuffs. The kangaroo softly punched it, then curiously looked her over.

  “Kanga dude,” Ella said, “they’re not my real ears, you know.” To demonstrate, she pulled out one earmuff and let it snap back into place. Punchy jumped away a few feet, startled and suspicious of Ella’s large, pink, retractable ear. He hopped behind the scouts to where Richie sat and took an interest in him.

  Richie, looking nervous, scooted down the bench. “What do you want?”

  Punchy plunged his snout into the softball-sized pom-pom on his cap, sniffed, then sneezed all over Richie.

  “Ewww,” Ella said to Richie. “Kanga boogers. That’s really, really gross.”

  The kangaroo reached up his thumbless forelimb and angrily punched the pom-pom, the thing that had made him sneeze.

  Richie grabbed his hat by the cuff and held it down. “Hey! Go pick on Ella’s earmuffs again!”

  Noah, Ella, and Megan broke into a laugh. After a bit, Tameron turned back to his rudimentary drawing of the Clarksville Zoo. He drew a small square in four spots along the inside of the zoo, each one near a different wall. “Lookout points for the Descenders. One Descender per lookout point. We rotate to stay fresh.” He then shaded in areas along the zoo border, saying, “Trees.” Then, on the outside of the wooden area, he drew little triangles. “The houses that back to the trees.”

  “It’s like Google Earth,” Ella said. “Look! I think I see my mailbox!”

  Tameron touched the circles representing the territories, saying, “Remember, one type of owl is assigned to each territory.” He swapped his black marker for a red one, then dropped dots in each of the circles. “Their only purpose is to watch for alerts from the animals and communicate them back to the Descenders.” He traded the red marker for a blue one and drew a cluster of spots. “The bats.” Dragging a dashed line around the zoo, he said, “They fly around the zoo all night.” He grabbed a green marker and bespeckled a triangular shape that represented a house. “The police-monkeys. They move through the trees and across the rooftops.” He picked up a yellow marker and drew a scattered cluster of dots all around the zoo. “The prairie dogs. They’re responsible for the tunnels.” Then, with a purple marker, he spotted the trees. “The rest of the arboreal animals. Tarsiers, when you get away from the wall.” He drew a small square outside the eastern wall and scrawled the letters F and S inside it. “Fort Scout,” he said.

  “Ah yes,” Ella said. “Our home away from home.” She squinted at the picture. “Look, there’s Richie playing with his electro-toys!”

  Tameron stared out at the scouts from the shadow of his brim. With his scraggly beard and his arms crossed over his chest, he looked just about like the toughest guy Noah had ever seen. He looked, in fact, like someone who might punch you in the head just for the fun of it. He turned back to the whiteboard and studied his elementary drawing, tipping his head from side to side. “There’s just one thing we need to change.”

  “What’s that?” Noah asked.

  “We need to change this . . .” With the palm of his hand, Tameron wiped out one of the four squares that represented the Descenders’ lookout points. Then he picked up a black marker and drew a similar square around Fort Scout. “. . . to this.”

  As Noah realized what Tameron was getting at, his whole body clenched.

  “What are you trying to say?” Ella asked.

  It was Noah who answered. “He wants to move one of the lookout points to Fort Scout to keep a better watch on the east wall.”

  The other scouts, wide-eyed with disbelief, stared at Tameron.

  With a smirk, Tameron said, “You guys got it wrong. That’s not what I’m saying at all. It’s Darby doing the talking.” He lifted his backpack, punched his arms through its straps, and headed for the exit of the tent, saying, “C’mon, let’s go see the boss.”

  The scouts hurried out into Kangaroo Kampground and followed the brawny Descender toward a place in the exhibit that would magically deliver them to the Secret Zoo.

  Chapter 2

  The Secret Kangaroo Kampground

  “Here,” Tameron said. “This is it.”

  The Crossers were in the rear of Kangaroo Kampground near a tent that was big enough for at least ten adults to stand in. The two flaps of the tent’s only door were draped closed. Punchy was standing beside Richie, his puny arms dangling in front of his stomach.

  “The gateway,” Tameron continued. “To the Secret Kangaroo Kampground. It’s on the back wall of this tent. Straight access to the Secret Zoo—no Grottoes.”

  The Descender led everyone inside. Punchy jumped forward and squeezed into a spot between Richie and Ella near the middle of the tent.

  “Comfy?” Ella asked.

  Punchy turned and curiously sniffed her earmuffs again.

  The back wall of the tent was made of velvet, the kind that contained the magic necessary to cross into the Secret Zoo. Just beyond it, the scouts knew, was the Secret Kangaroo Kampground.

  “Who’s first?” Tameron asked.

  “Me,” said Megan. She stepped forward and pushed against the wall, which gave way on all sides except the top. The curtain draped across her shoulders and then down her back. A second later, she was gone.

  Ella went next, and Punchy hopped after her. Richie followed. In the near-empty tent, Tameron swept his arm toward the gateway and invited Noah to have at it. Noah did. As the velvet strok
ed his body, he felt the familiar tingle of the magic moving into him. The cloth dropped against his heels, and Noah was sent to the Secret Zoo.

  The Secret Kangaroo Kampground was like a big and extravagant version of the kangaroo exhibit in the Clarksville Zoo. Covering as much as two square miles, the sector resembled a forested campground. Streaks of sunlight fell from a ceiling of tall, full trees. Countless kangaroos were lounging on their sides or hopping about. Between hundreds of tents were picnic tables, wooden signs, and fire pits. All the tents had velvet flaps for doors—magical gateways.

  At least thirty people were scattered about. They wore green lab coats and carried clipboards with thick stacks of paper. A few walked in and out of the velvet doors. Magical scientists—the scouts had seen them before.

  “What are they doing?” Megan asked.

  “The scientists?” Tameron asked. When Megan nodded, he said, “They’re studying the magic—manipulating it to create new portals.”

  “Portals?”

  Tameron steered a confused look at her. “C’mon—you guys know about portaling.”

  The scouts shook their heads.

  Sounding a bit disgusted, Tameron said, “The gateways that you’ve been jumping through—they’re portals. Just seconds ago, when you passed through that velvet wall of the tent in the Clarksville Zoo, you portaled. To another world, in fact. Portaling . . . it’s when something instantly moves across two distant spots. Thanks to Bhanu and his brothers, the magic of portaling is all over the Secret Zoo. Our scientists study it and use this sector to test their findings, portaling from one tent to the next.”

  Megan said, “But in this case they don’t have any real purpose, right?”

  “To Crossers they do. We use them to quickly cross the sector, jumping from one tent to the next. The hard part is remembering how the tents connect. It’s kind of like a maze without walls.”

  Noah scanned the far reaches of the sector and saw a light blinking above a tent, marking the gateway into the City of Species, their destination. The area between looked like a crowded suburb of tiny canvas houses. “You have the route memorized?”

  “More or less,” Tameron said.