The Midnight Zoo Read Online Free

but exactly what kind of monkey it was, Andrej could not decipher. The creature was the size of a scrawny cat and, but for an area of nakedness around its glittering eyes, equally as furry as a cat, its ginger coat sheenless but groomed. It gripped a rope with clever feet, craned its walnut-creased face to the children, and reached out a sinewy arm. Its hand was as perfect as a doll’s, its fingernails tinier than Wilma’s, yet there was something intimidating about that limb: Tomas kept carefully beyond its reach. “Does it want to shake hands with me?” he wondered.
    “I think it wants food.”
    “Can we give it something?”
    “Maybe later. Keep going.”
    The monkey raced along the ropes as they walked by, its fearful baby face fixed on them. Halted by the bars that separated its cell from the next, it crouched with black eyes blazing, whining and grinding its fangs.
    Stopping at the next cage, Tomas said, “Oohh.” Although the sign read LEV as well as LVICE, there was only a lioness in the pen, lying with her thick legs folded over each other, motionless but for the tail that swished serpentinely in response to the monkey’s grizzling. In the lacy moonlight she was the color of a princess’s gown, a fine white-gold. She betrayed nothing of what she felt when she opened her lime eyes and saw the children staring: “How beautiful she is,” Tomas marveled. Her tail continued to jump as the boys moved away, as if, once started, it was difficult to stop; but her eyes closed, and she made no further move. Her cage was dirty, and smelled wickedly. There was a brown roach running in circles at the bottom of her empty water pail. Both Andrej and Tomas noticed, but neither mentioned it.
    Set into the floor of the next enclosure was a swimming pool. The water had a moldery smell, and even in night’s dimness looked green. Cruising in the murky depths was a long dark shape that seemed more liquid than flesh: reaching one end of the pool, it flipped with impossible grace and glided back the way it had come, only to flip again, and return. Back and forth the water-being swam, streamlined as an arrow, running as if on tracks, causing hardly a ripple on the surface of the water. The sign on the bars said TULE, but the beast seemed something more fantastical than a seal. “Put your head up!” Tomas called. “Let us see you!” But the seal only glided steadfastly back and forth.
    The next cage belonged to the wolf. It had retreated to the rear of its enclosure and stood lowering, its nose almost touching the stone. Like the lioness’s and the bear’s, the wolf’s pen had a partial pressed-metal roof for keeping out the weather, but no concealing corner in which the animal could hide. Its uncleaned cage smelled strongly, but not as badly as the bear’s. It watched the children pass by, and raised its eyes when Andrej, seeking the sign, raised his own. VLK.
    The monkey was still pleading in a piercing, agitated voice. It was an unnerving sound to hear against the gray sky, the icy plate of moon, the ghostly village beyond the fence. “Can’t we give it something?” Tomas asked. “Just a biscuit?”
    “If we feed the monkey,” Andrej answered, “we’ll have to feed them all.” And Tomas knew that feeding all the animals would leave nothing for themselves, and that what little they had could never fill such gigantic stomachs anyway.
    The sign on the next pen announced KANEC. The cage was draped by the shadow of the maple, and though they could detect a familiar woodland odor, they couldn’t see through the darkness to the boar. Andrej was struck by a feeling of unease: Uncle Marin had told him that the wild boar was almost as clever as the wolf, but much, much easier to insult — and a caged boar, famished and disgruntled, might regard boys and babies as insulting indeed. He held Wilma more securely to him, cautioned his brother, “Don’t go too close.” Tomas stepped back from the bars and the boys