Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
Raven focused on the task at hand, on getting through this awful, endless day. The shock and grief of her father’s death numbed her.
She had not coughed. She didn’t burn with fever. It was early still. The virus simply hadn’t made itself known yet. Her father’s last moments kept flaring through her mind—his bloody tears, his rigid features, his feverish limbs contorted in pain.
If that future awaited her, there was nothing she could do to stop it.
She concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other, on the chores she’d completed hundreds of times over the years.
She lugged buckets of water from the well outside the perimeter fence, cleaned each pen and enclosure, disposing of the manure, ensuring the hay was fresh without mold, and methodically checking the bottom layers.
It was past noon by the time she loaded up the wagon attached to the electric cart with hay and five-gallon buckets of grain for the herbivores: the deer, the ostriches, and Sal the zebra. She’d managed to fit in a deer carcass for the wolves and cuts of horse meat for Vlad.
At the tiger house, she whistled to call Vlad inside his chamber so she could open the gate and give him his food. One long note, two short.
Vlad rose from sunning himself on his favorite flat rock, sauntered to the fence, tail twitching, and gazed at her with a distinctly displeased expression on his furred face. With an irritated chuff, he turned his rump to her. She jumped back in time to miss the spray of urine.
Vlad’s spray had a distinct stink. Zachariah used to say it smelled like hot buttered popcorn. While Raven wished she could disagree vehemently, Zachariah hadn’t been wrong. He hadn’t been wrong often. Not much good that did him.
“Very funny,” she said to the tiger, stepping backward.
He chuffed at her again, the tigerish version of a mocking laugh. He was obliging and playful again now that he’d adequately punished her.
Even in her grief, she hadn’t forgotten. After she’d lugged over his dinner, she dug in her pocket, tugged out a few pieces of his favorite venison jerky, and tossed them over the fence. He consumed them in seconds.
He was so incredibly majestic, it made her heart hurt to look at him. How unfair it was to imagine the world without this magnificent creature, without any of these beautiful wild animals in it.
She’d spent her life resenting these animals for stealing the coveted attention of her father. But she had to admit that she’d grown fond of them, too. More than fond.
Her feelings for the wild animals of Haven were a tangled, complicated mess, much like her feelings for the refuge, for her father, and her mother.
This was the dichotomy of her life—she simultaneously loved and hated the same things.
“I don’t want to do it,” she said.
Vlad cocked his great head and twitched an ear at her.
“If I have to do it, I hope you’ll understand. That you can forgive me.”
Shaking her head, she stepped back from the fence. What was she doing, seeking absolution from a tiger?
The tiger ignored her. He sauntered back to his rock, plopped down, and yawned, revealing his teeth. He licked his front fangs as if to remind her who stood atop the food chain.
“Okay, show off. I’ll come back to fill your enrichment ball later, okay?”
Vlad didn’t bother to answer her.
As she drove the cart up the path, she passed one of the peacocks strolling the grounds. He strutted and preened, showing off his sapphire-throated elegance and flamboyant, plumed jewel-green tail feathers.
He squawked at her in annoyance as she drove the cart around him.
“I’ll get to you,” she said. “Be patient.”
He shimmied his feathers at her to show his irritation.
“Yeah, yeah, join the line. Everyone’s pissed at me today.”
She decided to cross the grounds out of order to feed the bonobos next. They’d been screeching their indignation since yesterday.
The four bonobos lounged in the roped netting strung between three trees inside their habitat.
Some slept. Others combed nits from each other’s fur.
Pepper and Newton chased each other over a tightrope, nimble and sprightly.
Their tiny hands and feet clung to the rope as they enthusiastically attempted to shake the other one free.
Cousins of the chimpanzee, bonobos were the smallest and most intelligent of the apes. They were a matriarchal society, with their leader being a female. They were mostly peaceful and far less aggressive than chimps. They’d been extinct in the wild for a decade.
Zephyr was the matriarch, the oldest and wisest. She was a patient and calm leader, looking out for the others, breaking up arguments, and protecting her small son, Gizmo, from the taunts of Pepper and Newton, both four-year-old juveniles.
Pepper was particularly calculated and cunning.
She would distract the other bonobos and steal their food—particularly lettuce, her favorite.
Gizmo bounced on his branch, swinging his arms and offering Raven energetic screeches and hoots. He grinned, his top lip pulled over his teeth, his leathery face relieved and joyful. Finally, he seemed to say, You brought dinner!
He reached toward her, gesturing excitedly with his fingers, his black-licorice eyes gleaming. His tufts of black hair were parted in the middle on top of his head, giving him a distinctly human look.
Despite her grief, she managed a grim smile. His exuberance made her chest constrict with a hollow ache. “Nice to see you, too, Gizmo.”
After the bonobos were fed, she moved on to the red foxes. Zoe, Zelda, and Magnus were as energetic as puppies—and almost as tame. They’d let her or her father enter their pen and rub their bellies or brush the burrs from their lush red tails.
Sal wasn’t nearly as obliging. Beautiful as he was, the zebra was vain about keeping his black and white coat pristine, and ornery to boot.
He’d sneak up and bite her on the shoulder or butt as soon as her back was turned.
He also enjoyed kicking people, so she locked him in his night house when she needed to access his pen.
The bobcat, Electra, was ancient at nine years old.
She appeared cuddly as a stuffed animal with her charming bobbed tail, luxurious spotted coat, and perky, black-fringed ears, but she had fast reflexes and a predator’s instincts.
Cute as she was, Electra could kill a grown man with gruesome efficiency.
Raven’s father went into her pen. He didn’t fear Electra, who was known to flip onto her belly for him and bat playfully at his arms with her razor-sharp claws. She’d leave nasty scratches if he didn’t wear his leather jacket, but he didn’t seem to mind.
Or, he hadn’t. Past tense. He’d never again enter this pen and play with Electra. He’d never again crawl around with the wolves or watch Vlad tear into his bull’s head dinner with serene satisfaction.
Raven sucked in her breath and tossed Electra’s dinner over the fence. A whole plucked chicken she loved to eat fully, bones and all. Electra growled in appreciation as she pounced on it.
By the time Raven reached the rear of the park, it was early evening.
At the north end, the wolves reigned over two forested enclosures.
The first enclosure was the largest and held the six timber wolves.
Behind a tall chain-link fence topped with electrified wire, the wolves prowled among the cluster of beech trees in the center of their enclosure.
She knew these wolves the best. They were her father’s favorites. She remembered sweltering afternoons spent outside the fence, watching her father inside the enclosure with the wolves.
He would sit with them, frolic with them, sleep with them. It had taken months of patience, but little by little, the pack had accepted him. Raven had watched it happen with a complicated mix of envy, awe, resentment, and admiration.
Normally shy and wary, the wolves typically kept to the cover of the trees during the day. They recognized her scent and the smell of food. One by one, they appeared between the trees and drifted into the clearing. Slowly, they approached the double-fence line.
Titus and Loki came the closest. Loki loped up to the first fence, tongue lolling goofily. Loki, the god of mischief, was aptly named. He was the smallest of the wolves but made up for it with abundant energy. Curious and mischievous, he had a spring to his step, always the one ready to play.
Titus stood tense, ears pricked, fur raised along his spine, and his tail stiff behind him, not induced by aggression, but rather in a protective stance.
He was the beta. Four years old and in his prime, he was a bruiser: tall, thick-chested, and bulky.
The beta was the bouncer of the pack, the alphas’ enforcer, and the first to snap at any wolf out of line.
“I brought dinner,” she said.
Suki whined eagerly and took a tentative step forward, her tail lifting. She was the shyest wolf as well as the youngest, a yearling. Suki was sweet and gentle, the peacekeeper, the one who broke up arguments before Titus had to get involved.
Suki’s name was Japanese for “beloved.” Her dad named her when he nursed her from a pup after a she-wolf from the Chattanooga Zoo had rejected her young. It was the only sentimental thing Raven had ever seen him do.
The last three wolves hung back.
Echo was spindly, with a straggly grey coat, a chunk bitten out of his right ear, and a perpetual slinking manner, an air of cowardice. He was the omega, the lowest wolf on the totem pole.
The other two were the alpha pair, Shika and Aspen. A brindled she-wolf, Shika had a savage, restless beauty about her. She was the fastest wolf, easily outpacing her life mate, Aspen.
Aspen boasted a magnificent shaggy ruff and a single dark stripe down the center of his muzzle. He was smart and calculating. He was utterly devoted to Shika and stood close to her. Their yellow eyes were fixed on Raven.