There was a metallic clatter in the pen to my left, and then a powerful snort.
Leedo Flute flipped himself over the railing of the Boar Den and rolled onto the Golden Path. He looked at me, spit, and then walked away.
Leedo is one of our native workers, and he must have had a tangle with Tuskus, our male forest boar. Tuskus had never liked Leedo, who held his dung shovel in the air like a meat cleaver, scaring the boars. Leedo wouldn’t pay attention when I tried to show him the proper way.
Father might be back that afternoon, and if the Boar Den wasn’t clean, there’d be a price to pay. So I unlocked the door to the den and found the shovel lying in the muddy pit. When I picked it up, I was sure to hold the blade downward like I was stirring a kettle of awful-smelling soup.
Tuskus lifted his head and snorted at me. He quickly trotted between me and the two female boars, Gray Beard and Belly Wart. Tuskus is very protective of those two.
“It’s your poop I’m after,” I said. “Not your girlfriends.”
I went about my business clearing his business, and Tuskus began circling me. I let him sniff at my pants legs and shirt while Kenji hung tight to my neck, keeping a cautious eye on the boar. Finally, Tuskus whined and pressed his cheek against my thigh. I scratched his forehead and he grunted happily.
He’s a piglet at heart. It’s just that most people can’t see past the eight-inch tusks we’ve named him for. I can’t say I blame them for that.
“You stinky thing!” I said, as a great bubble of spit slimed its way onto my pants leg. “I come in here to get you cleaned up, and look what you duh-dd-d—”
The words caught in my throat. I saw Leedo leaning over the fence, leering at me.
“Make friends with a pig, smell like a pig.” He laughed.
I kept shoveling.
“How come you talk to animals but you won’t talk to me, little Marlin?”
I didn’t look up.
“Why’s your brother making us clean everything when the boss isn’t even back yet?” Leedo leaned over the fence and picked up a clump of wet dirt. He crumpled it between his reedy fingers. “Maybe the boss isn’t coming back.”
I stuck the shovel in the ground and faced him. Leedo was, without question, my least favorite employee. He was rude to the guests and always late with his duties. But no matter how often Tim complained, Father would never fire him. Father would say that everyone was good at something.
“He’s c-cc-cuh-cuh—” He’s coming back, I tried to say, but immediately regretted it.
“What’s that, little Marlin?” Leedo laughed. “I don’t speak your language.”
I felt blood rush to my face. I wanted to take the shovel out of the ground and slap him on the side of the head with it.
“Hunting jaguar is not like hunting a little boar,” Leedo continued, throwing a clump of dirt at Tuskus’s head. It spooked him and he jumped up snorting. “When you hunt a jaguar, he hunts you right back.”
I thought about opening the gate and letting Tuskus have his way with Leedo. But that wouldn’t be the right thing to do. Father was counting on Tim and me to act responsibly in his stead.
So I picked up the shovel and got back to work. Behind me Leedo cursed and walked off. My father is Ronan Rackham, I thought; he is smarter and stronger than anything on earth. No one can kill him.
Or so I hoped.
It was our employees’ fault that Father had to risk his life in the first place. Our zoo is built on an ancient pyramid, and we’d turned every part of it into an attraction except for one: the Sky Shrine. The biggest and highest point on the pyramid is set up like a stadium, with a large pit surrounded by stone benches. Father thought it would be an excellent place to make a circus ring and put on animal shows.
Construction was going fine until one of our cage keepers, Nathtam Leent, told everyone a seer from the Tribes had claimed the Sky Shrine was holy and it was sacrilege to make a circus there. “The Tribes” is what we call the various communities of Arawaks and Caribs that still live in their villages and do things the old way. Most of our employees are former Tribesmen as well, so Father gives the native communities respect. He even bought the fabric for the circus tent from the Tribes. That’s how they learned what he was up to.
We raised the tent last week, and Nathtam led a third of our employees on strike and into the jungle. They planned to rejoin the Tribesmen there.
Father was as angry about this as I had ever seen him. He was missing all through dinner and then appeared at my bedroom door at midnight, his eyes like stone.
The circus was going to be the most impressive part of the resort, Father told me, the centerpiece of the new zoo experience. It was the reason he would be able to raise the fees he was charging the guests for the coming season. He said he’d made some very expensive land deals recently, and if we had to close the resort for even one week, it could be disastrous.
I didn’t sleep well that night, fearing our zoo would close. All the animals would be released into the jungle, and I would have to return to Georgetown. I’d lose my friends and have only Kenji to talk to.
But the next morning our striking workers were waiting at the gate. They were all there, except for one.
They had made camp in the jungle that first night, but after sunset Nathtam had gone missing. It was a moonless night, and they couldn’t search for him until morning.
The found him just after sunrise. He was hanging from a tree. Or part of him was.
A jaguar had got to him.
When a jaguar turns man-eater, he learns a bad lesson: people taste good and are easy to catch. Whole tribal villages had been terrorized when a jaguar learned to hunt humans. That’s why the workers came back. They needed the protection of our walls—the protection only my father could provide.
Father opened our gates to the men, and let them have their jobs and quarters back with no punishments. When they feared for the safety of their families still living in the villages, Father told them he’d go out and kill the man-eater himself.
“We are Rackham men,” he told Tim and me. “And Rackhams always do what’s right.”