Riddles and Danger Read online

  Dearest Scouts,

  Due to the recent sasquatch sighting outside the inner borders of the Clarksville Zoo, Tank and I would like to divert the focus of your crosstraining to the Grottoes. Please reply if you can meet Tank in Butterfly Nets tomorrow after school. More will be explained then.

  Best wishes,

  Mr. Darby

  “The Grottoes?” Megan said. “Things sure have changed, huh?”

  The other scouts knew what she was referring to. Up to this point, the four of them had been warned to keep out of the Grottoes—to use only tunnels that opened directly to the Secret Zoo. Noah had once ventured into the Grottoes, got lost in the exhibits, and been nearly spotted by zoo visitors. The Descenders had been furious.

  “Yep,” Ella said. “Looks like they might be rethinking their defense strategy. Guess that happens once sasquatches start shopping in your gift shops.”

  Noah snatched a pen from Richie’s pocket, flattened the letter against the floor, and wrote, “We’ll be there.” He folded the paper back into a tiny square, then held it up to Marlo, who plucked it free with a peck of his beak. The kingfisher dove into the air and flashed out of sight.

  They traded glances, each trying to read the emotions coded in one another’s stares.

  “The Grottoes?” asked Ella.

  “The Grottoes,” answered Noah.

  “Here we go,” said Megan.

  “Oh boy,” Richie said.

  Chapter 7

  Exploring the Grottoes

  After school on Monday, the scouts stood at the entrance to Butterfly Nets beside the “CLOSED FOR CONSTRUCTION!” sign. Noah pulled the magic key from his pocket. He looked left, then right, then jabbed the key at the slot in the door. The lock clicked open, and one by one the scouts slipped inside. They were greeted by Tank. The mountainous man stood with his arms crossed, his bald head gleaming. His chest bulged out like the shells of two turtles.

  “What’s up?” Tank asked. He fist-tapped the scouts, then said to Noah, “Lead the way, bub. You know how to get into the Grottoes from here.”

  Noah blushed with shame. Tank was referring to how Noah had sneaked into the Grottoes from this exhibit not long ago. Though Noah doubted Tank was holding a grudge against him, he couldn’t help but feel a bit guilty.

  Butterfly Nets was a long glass house with a gabled rooftop. An open exhibit, it was full of trees, plants, streams, and noisy waterfalls. Hundreds of butterflies flitted from spot to spot, flashing color onto the surroundings. Meshed rope was draped all around to look like large nets.

  Noah walked down the visitor path, slipped under a railing, then ventured into the restricted part of the exhibit, ducking branches and crossing streams. He led the group around a fabricated rock formation to a hidden spot. A narrow flight of stairs descended into the ground. The Crossers took them.

  The dark staircase landing opened in one direction. When Noah stepped that way, a series of lights triggered on. Richie yelped, and Ella shushed him. A short tunnel headed straight for ten feet and then stopped at two branches, one left and one right. The group moved forward and stared down both passages. As much as fifty feet long, each had five or six new branches—mouths to new tunnels. The entrances were cloaked with velvet curtains.

  “Is this it?” Ella asked.

  “Part of it,” Tank replied. “But the Grottoes . . . they’re big.” He squeezed through the four of them and headed down the branch to the right. “This way.”

  Old bricks shaped the walls and arched ceiling. Flecks of mortar peppered the edges of the dirt floor. Above each curtain was a gold plate with words engraved upon it. The first plate read “A-Lotta-Hippopotami.” The second, “Ostrich Island.”

  Tank said, “Take a seat for a sec. I’m about to school you in the Grottoes.”

  The scouts dropped to their bottoms and leaned back against the cool wall.

  Sliding his palms together, Tank began to slowly pace in front of the scouts, assuming the traditional posture of a lecturer quite naturally.

  “The Grottoes are nothing but a bunch of ordinary tunnels running beneath the Clarksville Zoo. They’re on the fringes of the Secret Zoo, but they’re most certainly not in it. The Grottoes have gateways.” Tank touched the curtain behind him. “Portals. These are magical, as you know. Sometimes they connect to sectors in the Secret Zoo. Sometimes they connect to places in the Clarksville Zoo, exhibits and other spots—spots like this. . . .” Tank tapped his knuckles against the gold plate above the curtain beside him. It read “Grottoes ENE.” “Anyone know how to read a compass?” When Richie stabbed his arm into the air, Tank asked, “Tell me what ENE stands for.”

  “East-northeast,” Richie said.

  Tank winked. “You got it. A compass has four cardinal points—north, south, east, and west. In the middle of any two cardinal points are intercardinal points—northeast, southeast, places like that. And then you have secondary intercardinal points—north-northeast, west-southeast. Makes for a total of sixteen points.”

  “And makes me glad we upgraded compasses to satellites,” Ella added.

  “This tunnel”—Tank again touched the plate that read “Grottoes ENE”—“this connects to the east-northeast end of the Grottoes.”

  “That’s right by my house,” Noah said.

  “Yep. Pretty close. And from there you can gate to other ends of the Grottoes, places in the Clarksville Zoo, and sectors in the Secret Zoo.”

  Ella said, “What’s up with all these crazy tunnels? I mean, why not just have straight drops to the Secret Zoo and get around places in the Clarksville Zoo from aboveground?”

  “Not fast enough,” Tank said. “And too visible to Outsiders.”

  “But—”

  “Hold on, let me explain. In the first years of the Clarksville Zoo, we had nothing but straight drops to the Secret Zoo. The Grottoes . . . they didn’t exist. But once DeGraff breached our borders, we started protecting them. Animals watched over the portals in their exhibits, and security guards patrolled the Clarksville Zoo grounds. Most important, we assembled the first team of human Crossers.

  “For a while, it was enough to put the Secret Cityzens at ease. But then the Sasquatch Rebellion went down. Hundreds were killed. Parts of the City of Species were destroyed. Things fell apart for us. Attitudes changed. Focus was lost, and fear became our government. The Descenders were born, and they quickly emerged as our army. Most were descendants of people killed in the attack. They engineered a way to take the magic into themselves, then to our borders. The first tunnels in the Grottoes were created, and they had but one purpose: to quickly move the Descenders to different points in the two zoos.”

  It pained Noah to hear how violence had helped shape the marvel of the Secret Zoo.

  “Using the Grottoes, the Descenders can respond to an attack in the Secret Zoo, or a sighting of DeGraff in the Clarksville Zoo, within minutes, sometimes seconds. Using the portals, they literally jump from place to place.”

  To the scouts’ left, the bottom of a curtain suddenly flapped open. Dozens of meerkats charged into the Grottoes. They ran over and under the scouts’ legs, then disappeared through another curtain at the far end of the tunnel.

  “Like those guys?” Richie asked.

  “Pretty much,” said Tank.

  Ella pointed to where the meerkats had gone, saying, “You know your life has hit a record for weirdness when something like that seems perfectly normal.”

  Richie swung his stare back to Tank and said, “How did they build the Grottoes?”

  “First they developed a layout that made sense. Then everyone went to work. Old-fashioned muscle created the tunnels; the brothers created the portals.”

  Noah looked around him at the stone walls and velvet curtains. He thought of the brothers Tank had mentioned—Bhanu, Kavi, and Vishal, three identical brothers from India, born to different mothers. When joined together, they could work magic, and it had been their magic that had helped create the Secret Zoo.
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  “Well . . .” Tank added, “the brothers created most of the portals, anyway.”

  “Most?” Noah said. “What do you mean by that?”

  Tank paused and seemed to look inward. Finally, he said, “Before the Grottoes could be completed, one of the brothers died. Kavi. Old age got him. We buried him in one of the sectors. Without Kavi, the magic of the surviving brothers weakened. The farther the two of them were from their brother’s gravesite, the weaker their magic was.

  “Vishal died several years later. Another natural death. The Secret Society buried him close to his brother. Bhanu’s magic became weaker than ever. He could barely do anything unless he was near his brothers’ graves.

  “Finally, a few years later, age got the best of Bhanu. We buried him in the same sector as his brothers . . . and that was that.”

  Ella said, “Why do I have a feeling that something bad happened?”

  “Something did,” Tank said. “The portals stopped working.”

  “All of them?”

  “Not from the City of Species to the sectors—just from the sectors to the outside world, the ones that require more magic.”

  “But obviously you guys fixed it,” Megan said. “How?”

  “An act of desperation. When the brothers were alive, their magic only worked when they were together. Wondering if the same was true in their death, we unburied them and put them in a single casket. When we did, the portals to your world started working again.”

  “The Cemetery Sector . . .” Noah said in a hushed voice. He knew that the Cemetery Sector was one of the Forbidden Five, five sectors that were off-limits to all except a select few. “That’s where they’re buried, right?”

  Tank nodded.

  “Cool!” Ella said. “Can we check it out?”

  “Not a chance,” Tank shot back. “That place . . . it’s filled with too much magic. It wouldn’t be safe. The Cemetery Sector is . . .” Tank clearly couldn’t find the right words. “Let’s just say it’s like nothing you’ve ever seen.”

  The scouts thought about this. After a bit, Noah said, “When we first found the Secret Zoo, Mr. Darby told us the magic was still alive, and that you guys still use it.”

  Tank nodded. “That’s where our magical scientists come in. For years, they’ve been working in the Cemetery Sector, studying the magic and discovering ways to use it. They’ve gotten pretty good at it. They can’t create sectors, but they can modify them.”

  “The Secret Wotter Park!” Megan said. “It’s inside a water tower in the City of Species. I remember Hannah telling us that it was the result of a consolidation project—something to open up space in one of the sectors.”

  “Yep,” Tank said. “Our scientists did that. Nice job, huh?”

  “I want to hang out with these scientist dudes,” Ella said. Then her stare went blank as she wandered off into her own thoughts. “Yeah . . . I bet we could do some really wicked stuff.”

  Tank switched the conversation back, saying, “There’s a science and a structure to the magic. A math. Once the scientists found its logic, they went to work creating portals. They did most of their testing in Kangaroo Kampground. You guys just crosstrained there, so you know what I’m talking about.”

  The scouts nodded enthusiastically.

  “The scientists created a ton of the minor portals in the Grottoes. And even though they’re good with the magic, they’re still not Bhanu and his brothers. Some of the portals in the Grottoes are”—Tank’s voice trailed off as he tried to select the right words—“a bit less than perfect.”

  “Uh-oh . . .” Richie said. “What do you mean by that?”

  “Sometimes they don’t portal to the right spots. And sometimes they don’t portal at all. Other times”—Tank’s voice trailed off again—“other times Crossers don’t make it through.”

  The scouts flinched. Richie clutched his chest.

  “What happens to them?” Ella asked.

  Tank shook his head, looking sad. “We don’t know. They disappear. For good. We call it ‘going amiss.’”

  “Oh nice!” Ella said. “And a few days ago, Noah was running through them like they’re the best part of a funhouse!”

  Tank shrugged his shoulders. “We told you guys to stay out of the Grottoes.”

  “But you guys know which portals are dangerous, right?”

  Tank stayed silent for what seemed a very long time. “We know some that are.”

  “You know some?” Richie barked. “Didn’t you guys pay attention to which ones the scientists created?”

  With some shame in his voice, Tank said, “What can I say—details sometimes get lost in history!”

  “Great,” Ella said. “Nice record-keeping, guys.”

  Noah asked, “How often do people . . . go amiss?”

  “Almost never,” Tank said. “Try not to sweat it. You have a better chance of getting struck by lightning.”

  The scouts slowly shook their heads. As always, the story of the Secret Zoo was almost too much to believe. Noah turned to his friends. Ella’s jaw was open, and Richie’s fingertips were pressed to the sides of his head. Megan’s eyes were almost as big as the lenses in her glasses.

  “Tank?” Noah said. “Something doesn’t make sense.”

  “What’s that, bub?”

  “If Bhanu and his brothers died of old age, why didn’t DeGraff?”

  Tank frowned. “He’s not human anymore—not the way his brothers were. Something happened to him on the day he used his magic to draw the shadows into himself. Some say he’s now nothing but a dark swarm of energy. Others say he’s part shadow and part human. Others admit they have no idea what he is. Most . . . most don’t even believe he exists anymore. They figure he died along with his brothers. They see him as a legend, a myth. They’re always asking, if he’s still alive, why he hasn’t attacked the Clarksville Zoo after so many years.”

  The scouts traded uneasy glances.

  “Okay,” Tank said with some finality. He turned toward the curtain and pulled one side open. “You guys ready to explore?”

  “Yeah,” Ella said. “Just not so ready to go amiss.”

  Tank grinned and said, “Try not to think about it. Like I said—it almost never happens.”

  As the scouts followed the big man through the portal marked “Grottoes ENE,” Noah hoped not to end up in some strange and forgotten place beyond the world of the Secret Zoo.

  Chapter 8

  Below the Knickknack and Snack Shack

  The scouts stepped out into a new tunnel that looked very much like the other. Stone walls rose more than ten feet above them, and the ceiling was arched. Velvet curtains dangled in front of dark passageways. Up ahead, the tunnel swung left and disappeared. A few dim lights were set in the walls. Insects skittered across the floor, and dusty cobwebs clung to corners. The eerie underground passage reminded Noah of something beneath an ancient city.

  “The Grottoes,” Tank said. “East-northeast side of the zoo.”

  An earthy, musty smell hung about, and the stale air was difficult to breathe. Noah stroked his fingertips across the walls; they were damp and cool and gritty.

  “East-northeast’s been here a long time,” Tank said. He’d turned around and was now walking backward in order to face the scouts. “It’s an original section—no going amiss here.”

  As they walked past the curtains, Richie read the engrav-ings on the gold plates out loud: “‘The Secret Koala Kastle’ . . . ‘Metr-APE-olis’ . . . ‘The Secret Chinchillavilla’ . . .”

  Tank said, “All the ones marked ‘secret’ go to sectors in the Secret Zoo. All the others go to places in the Clarksville Zoo—mostly exhibits, but a few ordinary sites, too.”

  Noah remembered his sneaky visit to the Grottoes and how he’d ended up in Flamingo Fountain. He knew a thing or two about the “ordinary sites” Tank was referring to. They were hardly ordinary when you emerged in them on the back of an emperor penguin.

  The walls aro
und a curtain marked “The Secret Elephant Event” began to rumble. The ceiling rained dirt and powdery pieces of mortar. The ground shook, and insects scattered. Richie, who’d been standing in front of the curtain, jumped out of the way, ducking behind Ella. From where Noah stood, it looked like Ella’s head had suddenly sprouted the pom-pom on Richie’s cap.

  Tank laughed. “Don’t sweat it, Richie. The elephants are just goofing around. Happens all the time. They won’t come into the Grottoes unless they need to.”

  The rumble softened and then faded out altogether as the elephant charged off into the reaches of the sector.

  Tank dropped down beside a curtain marked “The Knickknack and Snack Shack.” “Right here,” he said as he pointed to the ground.

  The scouts crouched low around the big man.

  “Here’s one of the sasquatch prints I saw.”

  The impressions in a soft spot in the ground detailed a foot—one that could crush a full-grown watermelon. Richie gasped.

  “You got to be kidding me!” Ella said. “You sure it wasn’t King Kong strolling around down here?”

  “This was a sasquatch,” he said. “Medium sized.”

  “Medium sized!” Richie squeaked. His lips curled into new shapes as he searched for something more to say. In the end, he managed only to squeak, “Medium sized!” a second time.

  Tank rose and pulled back the curtain to the Knickknack and Snack Shack. “Follow me.”

  The scouts did. When the curtain touched Noah, he felt its magic course through him like a weak jolt of electricity. Beyond the gateway, the tunnel continued straight about fifteen feet and ended at a steep flight of blocky steps. Tank headed toward it, a few dim lights in the walls showing the way. Halfway up the stairs, he turned to the scouts, held his finger to the tip of his nose, and emitted a near-silent “Shhhhhh. . . .”

  “How come?” Richie whispered.

  Tank lifted his finger toward the ceiling.

  The scouts craned their necks. They listened. Faint footsteps came from above. And a muffled voice. Noah heard something else as well: a muted ding!, like that of a cash register.