Tim and I were at the boat only to greet the guests, but the employees did all the work, carrying luggage and directing everyone to their carriages. Father would usually make a big show of taking one guest’s luggage personally, often that of the most important visitor. Some of the richest and most powerful people in the world come to our resort. I’ve seen Father’s account books, and what these guests pay for a week’s vacation could get you a modest house in Georgetown.
As the guests came off the boat, Tim leaped right into Father’s shoes, complimenting the sweating ladies on their beauty and slapping the overstuffed gentlemen on their backs. A wet sound, that slap. These rich ladies and gentlemen have no sense of proper jungle wear.
A lady in a drooping red hat tapped her husband on the shoulder and whispered, “That’s them, right behind us!”
The couple stepped to the side of the gangplank and made a deep bow, and the other guests around them followed suit. I looked for the people they were talking about, but before I could see, Tim nearly pushed me over, pressing down my head.
When I looked back up, a family of three was slowly making their way toward the dock. The first was a giant white-haired man whose beard radiated from his cheeks into two perfect corners below his ears. He wore a dazzling vest with what looked like actual silver thread woven into the fabric. A gold watch peeked up from his pocket. His manner was stately and regal and was betrayed only by the fact that his linen pants were so soaked with sweat, it looked like he’d just sat in a bathtub.
Next to him strode a tall, elegant woman who I assumed was his wife. Her beauty was so striking, I hardly noticed the rouge and mascara melting down her face in the heat.
And in front of them was a girl. At first glance I took her for a servant, because she was so out of line with the other two in both pace and demeanor. She walked with a broad step and had hitched up her dress and rolled up her sleeves to keep cool. I’d never seen a guest do that right off the boat before when they were still trying to impress the other guests.
She also didn’t have the melting makeup problem, because she wore none.
“Duke, Duchess.” Tim stepped between the family and me, and bowed. Then he turned to the girl, who looked about my age, twelve or thirteen. “Lady Bradshire. I am Timothy Rackham, and I bid all of you welcome to the Zoo at the Edge of the World. Allow me to take your bags.”
Tim reached out his hand and grabbed an ornate bag from the porter.
“What a gentleman!” the duchess cooed.
“You, my boy,” said the duke as he shook Tim’s unencumbered hand, “are the very image of your father.”
I’d heard we had some noble family coming this week. Father said he knew the Duke of Bradshire from his brief time in the navy and that he’d be bringing his wife. He didn’t say anything to me about the daughter.
“And you’re a Rackham, too?” The girl pushed past Tim and curtsied for me. “You’re all famous back in England, you know.”
“Yes, that’s my younger brother, Marlin,” Tim said, smiling through his teeth.
“Oh!” she said, tittering. “You have no idea how boring life is back there. What’s it like to be an adventurer?”
She was speaking directly to me. None of the guests ever spoke directly to me. Her eyes were green and so innocent in their inquiring that I could tell she actually expected an answer. The last thing I wanted to do was stutter in her pretty face.
“That’s the dullard son,” the Duchess of Bradshire whispered behind her hand loudly enough for everyone to hear. She gave me a squinting smile through her melted makeup. The girl looked embarrassed and dropped her eyes.
A weight smacked my chest and I reflexively grabbed it. Tim had shoved the duke’s bag at me and was fighting with the devil to contain his laughter. He just managed to choke out, “Show them to their carriage,” before bolting off in a hysterical fit behind a donkey.
I slowly lifted my chin from the bag but made no eye contact with the duke and his family. I nodded in the direction of their carriage and led the way forward.
The length of boardwalk from the gangplank to the duke’s carriage was short, but the bag was large; even with my arms wrapped around it, my hands barely touched. It was a struggle to open the door without losing my grip on the bag. Once the bag was safely inside, I stepped back, bowed, and gestured for the duke’s family to enter. One by one I watched their feet walk by, until their daughter’s knobby knees stopped in front of my view.
I kept my head bowed until she tapped my shoulder.
“Would you like to ride with us?” she asked.
Tim reappeared from behind the donkey. “That’s not customary,” he said. “We walk up.”
The girl smiled at Tim. “He brought our bag to the carriage; why not see it the rest of the way?”
The dumfounded look on my brother’s face was delicious, and I wish I’d had more time to enjoy it, but as soon as she’d dismissed him, the girl took my arm and pulled me into the carriage with her parents. The door swung shut behind me, and then I was there with the Bradshire family, nobility of a country I’d never seen.
“Let the boy go about his business,” said the duke.
“What better business does he have than getting acquainted with us?” his daughter replied. “We are his guests, after all.”
With that she knocked twice on the wall of the carriage, and the driver set off.
We hit a bump, and the duchess nearly fell out of her seat. “You behave yourself on this trip, young lady,” she tried to scold the girl, but between the streaks of red and black makeup on her face and the way she clung to the walls of the carriage, she was hard to take seriously.
“Don’t be so stiff, Mummy,” her daughter chided. “We’re here to have an adventure!”
The duchess considered her grimly. Adventuring, I wagered, was not her cup of tea.
The girl looked at me happily from the opposite bench and squinted as though she were puzzling me out.
“My name is Olivia,” she said.
“Lady Olivia,” corrected the duke.
“Oh, you don’t need to say that part among friends. What’s your name? I don’t think I got it.”
“Livia! Stop torturing that boy,” said the duke as he tried to steady himself in the bouncing carriage. “He’s a mute.”
My face heated up. Olivia looked away to hide her disappointment.
I closed my eyes and remembered the techniques the speech doctor had taught me in Georgetown. Lips, tongue, teeth, air. I am not a mute.
“Mmm-mm—muh, ma ma,” I stuttered, and stopped.
The duke huffed, and the duchess shot a knowing look toward her husband. But Olivia sat still and considered me calmly. I started again, deliberately working the mechanics of my mouth.
“MM-mm—MUH—MUH—Marlin,” I managed.
Olivia smiled. “Marlin! Good to meet you.” She took my hand in hers and very enthusiastically shook it. Her hands were much softer than mine, and way more clean.
“I can’t believe I’m actually meeting the world-famous Rackhams! This is my very first time in South America,” she said. “Daddy’s here to buy land for a sugar forest. He says we might move here!”
The duchess kicked Olivia in the shin from across the carriage.
“Ow!” she cried.
The duke stiffened up. “I’m not sure where my daughter comes up with these stories.”
Olivia opened her mouth to say something but seemed to think better of it, and sighed.
My father was born to a wealthy family like the Bradshires back in England, but he hated the stodgy life he led there. He longed for adventure in the colonies. So first chance he got, he hopped a ship for Guiana, Britain’s colony on the South American mainland. But in the port city of Georgetown he found men not too different from the ones he was fleeing in England: merchants and landowners obsessed with reaping riches from the mines and sugarcane plantations around the coast. He spent the next thirty years traveling the jungles of the Amazon and writing dispatches for British newspapers.
On a rare visit to Georgetown, he met Marion Coates, the daughter of a ship’s captain. They fell in love and she convinced him to give up his adventuring and settle in the city. They lived there together for three years, very happily. But Marion, my mother, died of illness soon after I was born. Neither Tim nor I have any memory of her.
Father wrote to his brother back in England with instructions to sell his estate there, and he used the money to move us upriver and into the jungle. That’s where he built this resort, the Zoo at the Edge of the World.
The idea was to make a destination for the rich merchants in Georgetown, demonstrating the beauty of the natural world. But I suppose it caught the attention of the wealthy back in England as well, because soon loads of them were boarding steamships bound for South America just to visit us.
I can’t tell you if we’re famous or not, but the resort is always booked.
“Daddy, look!” Olivia squealed as the carriage pulled onto the Golden Path. “The Grand Gate! It’s even better than in the books!”