Lucinda’s fingers were gripping Tyler’s sleeve. “Uncle Gideon,” she said, “You’re scaring me.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, child.” He didn’t sound like it. “I am just very proud of them. They’re creatures right out of Australian Aboriginal myth-bunyips.”
“ Bunyips?” said Tyler with a snort of laughter. “That sounds like some kind of Japanese kiddie anime.”
“Don’t sass me boy, and don’t take these creatures lightly!” Gideon’s anger was swift as a summer storm: a moment later he had recovered himself again. “Yes, bunyips, I suppose it is a funny name. Legendary swamp demons-but they’re quite real. And even more fascinating, they’re monotremes.”
Something rose in the center of the creek, out of a dark spot where the bottom dropped away. The water bulged and then a broad, flat brown head emerged, a few twigs and limply streaming grasses snagged in the creature’s bristling, thorny pelt, its eyes all black and big as saucers.
“It’s huge!” Tyler said, his heart speeding. It was one thing to see something that big behind bars in a zoo, quite another to find it staring at you from open water a few yards away. “Bunyip. Is it going to come out?”
“Not if we stay out of the water… but I wouldn’t get too close, anyway,” Gideon said. “They’re all male, very territorial. This one came because he felt the splash. They’ll swim half a mile to attack one of their rivals and protect their territory, like bull crocodiles. Make a tremendous noise when they’re fighting-they roar like elephant seals! We hear it, come and save the poor fool, then give him one of Patience’s forget-your-own-name potions… ”
“What’s… what’s a monotreme?” asked Lucinda worriedly. She had backed right against the far side of the wagon seat.
“Same family as the echidna and the platypus,” Gideon said cheerily. “They’re the only poisonous mammals, and the only mammals that lay eggs-very weird critters. But my bunyip was a hundred times bigger than any modern monotremes and has been extinct for thousands and thousands of years.”
For just a moment the thing at the center of the river splashed upward instead of sideways, rising a little way out of the water. It was big as a hippo but shaggy or maybe prickly-Tyler thought its silhouette looked a little like a giant porcupine-and its blunt, huge-eyed head ended in a short trunk with wiggling fingers at the end, like the snout on a star-nosed mole.
Lucinda gave a shriek of dismay and Tyler jumped in alarm too. The bunyip slid back into the water, a large, flat island rippling its way back across the river to disappear into the crackling reeds.
“Wow,” Tyler said.
“You bet!” replied Gideon, smiling broadly. “Don’t you feel safer just looking at that magnificent animal?”
They left the creek behind, following the line of the innermost fence away from the farmhouse. Mr. Walkwell, who as usual had not said twenty words all morning, suddenly narrowed his ageless brown eyes and said sternly to Tyler and Lucinda, “You must behave now, children. Remember, there are beasts on this farm who can repay impatience with blood or even death.”
“I know,” said Tyler. “We just saw one, right?”
Mr. Walkwell ignored him. “Hear me! No games where we go next, Tyler Jenkins.”
“Hey,” said Tyler, “I’m all grown up now.”
Mr. Walkwell made a noise that Tyler couldn’t quite convince himself was a grunt of agreement. Lucinda’s face had gone quite pale. In fact, she hadn’t looked very comfortable since the creek. “Do we have to do this?” she asked.
Gideon had his hat tipped low to keep off the worst of the sun. Eleven o’clock in the morning and it was already very hot. “People would pay thousands just to see what you’re going to see next. We have amazing things on this farm-taking care of them and this place is a sacred trust.” As Tyler watched, one of the old man’s hands reached up to his throat and Tyler guessed he was fondling his wife’s necklace again.
“Uncle Gideon, where’s Zaza?” Tyler asked suddenly. “The flying monkey? I haven’t seen her yet.”
The old man waved his hand vaguely. “She’s around somewhere,” he said, but he was thinking about something else. For someone who basically owned the most astounding zoo in the world, Gideon Goldring sometimes seemed almost indifferent to the individual animals, especially those who weren’t a new project…
Mr. Walkwell punched in the numbers at another gate and it slid open to let them through. Within a few moments they crested a rise and saw a large tan brick building sitting by itself in the middle of an otherwise empty dirt lot. Its shiny metal roof stood out dramatically above the earth-colored walls.
“Is that building new?” asked Lucinda.
“No, but the roof is. We had to fix it up for our new guards!”
“Guards?” Lucinda looked relieved but still confused.
With relish, Gideon said: “Yes, the ‘manties’, as Colin calls them. Our manticores.”
“Manticores!” Tyler was impressed. “But you said last summer they were vicious.”
“They are,” said Mr. Walkwell as the wagon pulled up and stopped beside the building. “Come along, follow me-don’t hang back!”
“It’s so much cooler in here!” said Lucinda as they all entered the barn. She was trying to sound cheerful, but her voice was even more nervous now and Tyler could guess why-the place stank with the sharp, nose-burning urine of predators.
“Cool, yes. It’s the adobe,” said Gideon. “It keeps the temperature down. People have used it around here for years.”
Most of the barn’s interior was taken up by a huge cage, which extended up to the new metal ceiling and ran along most of two walls. The cage floor was covered in sand and sticks. At the center a pile of large concrete blocks formed an artificial jumble of boulders.
“Enough,” said Gideon Goldring. He had lowered his voice. “No more talking now. Simos, go and bring them out.” He turned to the children. “They’re usually sluggish during the daytime. They’re night hunters.”
Tyler watched avidly as Mr. Walkwell made his way around the two walls of the cage on his deceptively delicate hoofed feet, whistling a series of repetitive notes and keeping well away from the bars. Lucinda hung back near the door, her eyes wide and her face making it clear she would rather be somewhere else. Even Tyler, who normally enjoyed anything spectacular or dangerous, was beginning to feel anxious.
“Hurry them up, Simos,” said Gideon after Mr. Walkwell had been walking back and forth whistling for half a minute or more. “We don’t have all day.”
Walkwell gave him a look, but took a long metal pole off the wall and reached it through the bars to rap sharply on one of the concrete blocks. The first manticore emerged a moment later, sloping out into the open as leisurely as a sullen teenager.
“Whoa!” said Tyler. “They were tiny last summer!”
“They did grow up fast, didn’t they?” said Gideon.
Two more followed the first. Once out in the open the manticores sat on their haunches, pale tan faces half-hidden in the ruff of mane, watching the visitors with surprising orange eyes. Each one was the size of a full-grown lion, but it was something else about them that made the children stare.
Lucinda’s voice was very shaky. “Their faces… they look like
… ”
“They look almost human, don’t they?” said Gideon. “Manticores are a sort of simian, I think-like a giant baboon, but their faces are more like those of apes. But tan instead of black-skinned, like gorillas or chimpanzees.” He laughed.
“They’re horrible,” Lucinda said.
“I’m disappointed in you, child,” said Gideon with a frown. “These are amazing creatures. My goodness, these are more wonderful than the dragons! You have no idea how hard it was to raise so many to adulthood! We’ve been struggling with them all year-several of them died when they were small. And just training them to take simple commands-here, I’ll show you.” He stepped to the bars and whistled in much the same way Mr. Walkwell had. The manticores turned to watch him. Six had now come out of their artificial den. He whistled again and they slowly drew closer, then lay down on the sand in front of him with obvious reluctance, twelve orange eyes watching his every move. Only the bars stood between Gideon and the weird, manlike faces.