The fire was smoldering down in the trees, and the Jaguar and I led a party of animals away from the peak of the pyramid.
A foghorn sounded, and through the clearing smoke I could see the Saint of the Animals entering port.
The Jaguar had told me to grab hold of his fur, and he leaped from stone to stone with me on his back. We descended the steps of the Golden Path at breakneck speed. The apes were opening all the cages, and the animals of the zoo stampeded behind us.
We found Kenji up in a tree, and the Jaguar scaled the trunk as though it were nothing. I picked her off a branch, and the three of us went crashing to the ground.
“What’s happening?” she shouted.
“We’re going home, Kenji,” I assured her.
Animals from all over the zoo were with us. We even took care to crack open the Snake House door for Dead Eyes. We led them through the Grand Gate in waves while the guests watched from the safety of the Great Hall.
Past the clearing and the stupefied sailors docking the Saint of the Animals, we ushered them all into the forest and watched as they disappeared by the dozen: elephants, tapirs, snakes, lizards, apes, sloths, armadillos, dogs, boars, all absorbed into the shaking trees.
When there were none left but Kenji and the Jaguar, I pointed across the clearing to the yellow wall of the resort and asked if we could scale it.
“Hold tight,” the Jaguar said. I clung to his back and Kenji clung to mine. He bounded forward and leaped onto the wall, digging his claws into the cracks between the bricks. I hung precariously from his hair. Kenji screamed, but I just laughed.
Once we reached the top of the wall, we watched. The Zoo at the Edge of the World was no longer there. The dying embers in the trees illuminated the pathways and half-burned buildings. But there were no animals in the cages along the path, no workers making their rounds. It was no longer a resort. Everything had burned away. The ancient temple still stood, littered with a few modern buildings that would soon be claimed by the jungle.
The guests had left the Great Hall and were bravely making their way through the Grand Gate toward the Saint of the Animals. They took nothing with them. I peered into the crowd and spotted Olivia with her parents. She was far away and looked small as a cricket. Still, I watched her stop and look in my direction.
Did she see me? I couldn’t tell. She didn’t wave or even stop for long. It made me feel that I hadn’t fulfilled my promise. I’d told her she’d see me again. My heart pulled me toward her for a moment, but I ignored it.
She boarded the boat, and I wondered if we’d ever again be close enough to touch.
Then Father came into view. He limped his way to the dock, refusing the aid of a sailor. Everyone gave him a wide berth.
Ronan Rackham came to the jungle when he was fourteen and built himself an empire. Now, forty-six years later, he was leaving again, keeping only what he’d brought with him.
Nothing.
What would become of this place without him? Georgetown grew every day, and men like the duke had eyes for jungle riches.
Father never thought he had done anything wrong. He’d desecrated a temple to make use of it. He’d captured animals to care for them. He’d ordered Nathtam killed to keep what he had.
Father did love the jungle, and he wanted to be its protector. I couldn’t fault him for that. But I’d learned something he never knew.
You cannot be a conqueror and a protector. You cannot preserve the jungle from men like the duke while being a man like him.
Father trudged up the gangplank and into the ship without glancing over his shoulder.
His life’s work lay behind him in ruins, and he never looked back. Was that the Rackham way?
I decided to try it myself. I gave the Jaguar a pat and smiled at Kenji. Heaving myself onto his back, I gripped the Jaguar’s fur as he gracefully descended the wall, stone by stone. Kenji bounced happily on my shoulder, and when we touched down on the clearing outside the wall, she pointed and cried, “The jungle, Master Marlin, the jungle!”
The line of trees was in front of us. The sounds of birds and monkeys formed a symphony. Beneath me, the Jaguar purred, and I squeezed him with my legs.
Then—as quickly as Ronan Rackham had walked out of the jungle, perhaps never to return—his son Marlin, along with a tamarin monkey named Kenji and a strange old black jaguar called just that, walked happily into it.