Chapter Six
Chapter Six
Aila prepared herself for war. Her weapons: a scrub brush and a bucket of animal-safe cleaning solution.
Within the World of Birds aviary, Archie’s contraband tower had dulled beneath mud and forest algae. Not to mention the coat of bird droppings. This oddity of archibird engineering was a photo magnet on Aila’s route, which meant she had to scrub the conglomerate surface of bolts and buttons and stolen cell phones once a month to keep it shining. Today, she imagined Luciana’s smug face on every tarnished surface as she attacked with her bristles.
“What if that witch is right?” Aila asked, teeth gritted, stance wide as she tackled a stubborn crust of chewing gum.
Archie listened from atop his tower, blue crest raised, a diva artist ensuring the janitor didn’t harm his masterpiece.
“She’s usually right.” Aila hated to admit it. “About dumb PR things, at least.”
Archie squawked, pecking Aila’s finger when she tugged a bit of metal wire. She let it be. Not like she could remove anything if she wanted to. Engineers had been trying to replicate archibird spit for decades, producing a bevy of industrial and household metal adhesives, but never as strong as the real thing.
“She can’t be right.”
Aila closed her eyes and rested her head against the tower. She wasn’t a perfect zoo employee (farther from it in some aspects than others), but she gave her heart to her animals. If IMWS transferred Rubra to Jewelport like Luciana suggested… Aila didn’t know what she’d do. The prospect rattled in her chest like an unbalanced washing machine, tumbling over and over and—
A clink sounded from Aila’s belt.
She opened her eyes to see Archie staring up at her. Frozen.
He’d pulled her keyring halfway off the belt clip.
Before she could react, the archibird yanked a key and smacked it against his tower. He flew off, cackling, leaving Aila to heave and twist, but the saliva-slathered metal was welded in place. With a groan of defeat, she fumbled waterlogged fingers on the keyring, twisting off the lost key and stashing the remaining ones safe in her pocket. Just a kitchen key. She’d have to visit maintenance to request a replacement. Or two.
Aila finished cleaning and stalked out of the aviary, thoughts buzzing. IMWS could take Rubra away. What could she do to stop them?
She couldn’t even keep a key away from an archibird.
It must have been one of those days the animals all conspired against their keepers. Not far along the path, Aila found Tanya. Scowling. A shovel in one hand. Covered in mud.
“How’s Khonsu?” Aila asked.
Tanya threw up her hands, narrowly missing Aila with the shovel. “All that work we did yesterday to fill that hole in the Bix phoenix exhibit! All that hauling dirt across the zoo and up that hill. Do you know what he did?”
Aila appraised her friend’s muddy uniform. “Did he dig it—”
“ He dug it out, Aila! Less than twenty-four hours!”
The keepers made a gloomy pair walking past patrons in summer hats and sunglasses, heads buried in maps, a mother shouting at her son not to toss kettle corn into the stone fox exhibit. Aila kept her eyes on the concrete, trying to narrow the world to something manageable. Beside her, Tanya muttered about phoenix deterrent strategies.
“Metal next time. That’s all we’ve got left to try.”
“Sure,” Aila said, unconvinced. “But we’re dealing with an animal who can command water. Won’t he just erode away whatever we— Oh, hello! Good afternoon! ”
Aila froze mid-stride, voice shooting to a squeak. Fuck. Again?
The dragon keeper, Connor, paused in the path, that adorable curl caressing his temple, brow furrowed in either alarm or confusion. Tanya shot a side-eye, one even Aila could interpret. The fuck are you doing, Ailes? rang in her head as clear as if Tanya had spoken aloud.
Aila begged herself to relax. To smile. Not that wide. Griffin shit.
“Hello,” Connor said. What a gorgeous grin, flashing teeth like pearls. Never mind him looking at Aila and her nervous bouncing as if she were a wild animal.
A wild animal would flirt better.
“Good to… uh… see you again,” Aila said. Why were words so hard ?
“Small zoo, sometimes,” Connor returned.
“Sure is.”
“Did you need something, Aila?”
“Need something? No, no, I just…” Aila cringed at Connor’s bafflement, at the mental screams from Tanya’s direction. “I just wanted to say hello. See what you’re up to.”
“I’m pretty behind on morning rounds, actually.”
Connor shifted a bucket in his hands, the handle creaking with the weight. A pungent smell wrinkled Aila’s nose. It was all she had to work with. She scrambled for a joke, something to salvage this train wreck.
“Is that fish I smell?” Aila chuckled, nervous. “Or just you?”
Horns and fucking fangs, that wasn’t supposed to come out like that.
Beside her, Tanya’s stenciled eyebrows threatened to jump off her face. Maybe Aila could crawl into Khonsu’s hole with him.
“Um…” Connor drew out the sound, frowning at his bucket. “It’s fish. For Daiyu.”
He nodded down the path beyond Aila, past a bamboo plaza and replica dragon egg. The maned dragon paced the glass of her aviary, serpentine body coated in jade scales, antlers sprouting from a mane of onyx and gold. She ignored the patrons fawning for photos, hungry eyes focused on her keeper.
The patrons yelped and ducked for cover as a mini rainstorm brewed beside the exhibit. Dragon-sewn storms were the backbone of the Fenese agricultural industry, a hurdle when designing zoo enclosures.
“Right. Of course!” Aila could have slapped herself.
“Sorry,” Connor said. “But I should get going.”
“Sure thing. We’ll let you get to that. She looks hungry.”
“Thanks. Good to see you, Aila. Tanya.”
Looking more perplexed than when the conversation started, Connor hurried toward the dragon exhibit. Aila thanked the endless skies and seas for the escape.
Tanya swatted her arm. Fair.
“What was that ?” Tanya demanded.
Aila slumped. “Better or worse than last time?”
“ Is that fish I smell? ”
Worse than last time. Without question. Forget a muddy hole, Aila would be better off fleeing to the remote tundra of the Niplik south pole. Or maybe to the other side of the world in Ziclexia, the largest rainforest of either continent, hidden away where she’d never have to attempt small talk again. She bore Tanya’s chastisement in silence as they left Connor behind, winding up the path to the Silimalo phoenix complex.
When phoenixes courted, the male and female performed an elaborate dance: the male hanging from a tree branch, exchanging gifts of leaves in their beaks, bobbing heads and stoking fire from their tails. If the moves came out right, the pair bonded. Simple. Straightforward. Researchers had documented every step in the performance.
Why couldn’t human romance be like that? Aila might stand a chance.
“… and we’ll get you some practice talking to a poster or something,” Tanya said, wrapping up the lecture Aila had zoned out for most of. “Wasting opportunities with cute boys like that. Tragic.”
“Yeah. Tragic’s what I am.”
When they reached the breeding complex, the zoo commissary had dropped off tomorrow’s food order on their doorstep. Tanya set her shovel aside, then grabbed a box of kale and grapes from the pile, shuttling it to their rattling refrigerator in the kitchen. Aila hefted her cleaning tools onto the counter. Beyond the observation window, Rubra perched in her exhibit, a queen of fire within her tidy little world. Still alone. One thing they had in common.
“I know people are nerve-racking, Ailes.” Tanya said from the kitchen doorway.
Aila huffed. “Understatement.”
She pulled out her phone to find a blinking email notification. The last thing she needed. Aila contemplated ignoring it until she built back more mental bandwidth, but better take a look, in case it was important. After swiping a few mud flecks off the screen, she opened the message.
“And I’m not trying to convince you otherwise,” Tanya said. “But if you want to get better at something, the only way to go about it is to practice… Ailes? What’s wrong?”
Aila had stopped breathing. Her fingers trembled. Suddenly, a lost key seemed a stupid thing to mope over. Her conversation with Connor, she could have repeated a dozen times.
This was a nightmare.
“ Aila ,” Tanya pressed when no reply came.
“It’s an email from IMWS. They’re requesting immediate status reports on all Silimalo phoenixes in the conservation network…” She skimmed the words, moving too fast to make sense of them. She tried again. “‘An internal review… seeking the best possible distribution of birds to ensure the longevity of the species… Movasi program status to be evaluated…’”
The email’s language was curated to the letter, bureaucratic, masking any broader purpose. Aila read between the lines. IMWS was performing an emergency program evaluation. They’d move phoenixes wherever the birds would do the most good.
“Tanya?” Her voice squeaked. “What does this mean for us? For Rubra?”
“You know exactly what it means,” came a velvet reply.
That taunt. That intruder . Aila spun around too fast, betraying a blur of tears in her eyes as she faced the doorway. Luciana stood on the threshold, flawless posture and flawless hair draping her shoulders, an insult of perfection as Aila shriveled like a punctured water balloon.
Tanya donned a dragon-mom scowl. “What do you want, Luc?”
Luciana flinched at the college nickname. A brief slip. The queen had her public fa?ade back up in a heartbeat. She held up a new box of arthritis ointment, cobalt nails clacking against the cardboard.
“Replacing your medicine. Wouldn’t want you to think we’re freeloaders at the griffin show.” She hesitated, her expression unraveling to the verge of soft. That must be a mask, too. “Best of luck with the review. Director Hawthorn mentioned it when we chatted this morning.”
“Appreciated,” Tanya said. “But if you don’t mind, we could use a moment to—”
“What have you heard?” Aila smeared tears and snot across the back of her hand in one ill-advised swipe. “Any other statements from IMWS? News from the director?”
“Calm down,” Luciana said. “I don’t know any more than you do. My guess for what happens next?” She shrugged. “Extrapolation.”
Aila’s heart clawed into her throat. “What do you mean?”
“Like I told you the other day.” Luciana’s gaze slid to the observation window. Out in the exhibit, Rubra preened in a charred olive tree, fluffed and content, no idea how her world had gone up in flames this week. “Jewelport has a working breeding program, and you don’t. Now, they’re short one female phoenix.”
“They can’t take Rubra.” Aila would say it over and over in the hope it might be true. “San Tamculo is her home. She belongs here.”
“Are you saying that because you want what’s best for her? What’s best for conserving the species?” Luciana hardened. “Or because you don’t want to let her go?”
The accusation silenced Aila. Another verbal backhand, delivered with sucrose insincerity. She might have stood there for eternity, a statue to abandoned dreams, ensnared in Luciana’s thorned glare until one of them dared to blink.
Tanya interceded before the barbs could tangle any tighter.
“Thanks for the ointment, Luc. I think you ought to be on your way.” Tanya nodded to the boxes of produce piled on their doorstep. “We’re busy here.”
“Of course.” Luciana’s tone lightened to customer-service sweet. “Glad I could pop by. Always happy to help our sister department.”
She left. But the damage was done. Luciana’s words dug into Aila like manicured nails, threatening to strangle her.
For the rest of the day, Aila moved like a phantom. Tanya offered to take over her keeper talks, leaving Aila to drift in bleach-scented back hallways, slump over fluorescent-lit cutting boards, waver at the railing of the patio as if the salty breeze might carry her away like a discarded meal wrapper.
Inside the phoenix complex, the old linoleum had never looked so jaundiced. The dust amassing in every corner made her want to choke.
“Nothing’s decided yet!” Tanya assured her. “Rubra’s been at San Tamculo all her life. Female phoenixes are way more territorial than males. You’re the one who told me that, Ailes! IMWS would be crazy to transfer her.”
Though Aila craved reassurance, hope seemed dangerous. Though she fought against Luciana’s words, they cut like fangs masked in coral lipstick. That witch had always been better at politics, at the infuriating dance of PR. If she thought Rubra would be better off elsewhere…
No. Aila refused.
But what could she do about it? Not like the world cared for what was fair. Nothing more than the broken heart of a reclusive keeper with more HR write-ups than accolades, pitted against the future of an entire species. Luciana was wrong about one thing, though. If IMWS did decide Rubra would serve better at another zoo? Aila would let her go. She’d shatter in the process, but she wouldn’t be selfish, would never stand in the way of saving the birds she loved.
All Aila wanted was a chance to prove herself. She couldn’t inspire crowds or flirt with cute dragon keepers, but let her show how well she could take care of phoenixes. Let her prove she could be worth something.
As the zoo closed for the night, Aila locked her animals in their back enclosures—the kelpie swirling in her water tank, Archie and his neighbors dozing in their aviary. When she put Rubra away, she checked the locks on the aviary five times, made sure the closed-circuit TV monitors were running, swiped her ID card at the door and heaved on the handle to make sure it wouldn’t budge. Derelict building or not, the security measures for the Silimalo phoenix exhibit outclassed any others at San Tamculo. Jewelport must have had something similar?
Aila stalked out of the zoo, across the street to the crosstown train.
The city of San Tamculo wrapped a crescent around the bay, lights blurry through the fogged train window. The coast was hot and dry, but sheltered from the harsher interior desert by a low mountain range. The first inhabitants sent ships out into the Middle Sea to hunt red-ringed krakens, though today the harbor was all restaurants and tourist shops. Walnuts and citrus trees once coated the valley floor, now replaced by sprawling suburbia. Aila leaned her head against the glass, a screech of rails rattling beneath her, watching the world speed past.
She’d worked all her life to get here.
From the train station, Aila kept her head down and followed the sidewalk, boxed in on one side by electric cars humming down the pavement, on the other by LED signs and smells of frying oil. Restaurant patios glowed beneath string lights floating with pixie wren dust. Lines trailed out of bars. All around, people laughing and talking as they swirled past her like sea foam.
A few blocks over, the world quieted. Streetlamps stood over yards of sage and sun-baked gravel, stucco houses in tan and terracotta. Aila nodded to a passer-by walking a levitating poodle, another with a non-levitating schnauzer (not everyone had the stamina for magical pets). She keyed herself into the lobby of her apartment building and climbed the stairs to her hole on the third floor. When she flipped on the light, her caretaker routine began all over again.
“Hey, everyone. How was your day?”
From amid the jungle of plants and thrift shop furniture, the patchwork quilt on the sofa, stacks of animal care books teetering on every surface, a bolt of silver appeared. Aila’s pet carbuncle, Tourmaline, greeted her with fox teeth bared into a smile, two gray tails wagging. A gem on his forehead changed color with emotion, an overjoyed pink and gold whenever she returned home—brighter, when she scratched his fluffy ears.
“Sorry for another late evening, sweetie. Summer’s so busy. And today, there was…”
The thought of lost phoenixes carved out her heart, left prickles in her eyes. If she cried any more, she’d have a migraine tomorrow. Aila’s to-do list was too long for migraines.
“Today was hard.” She forced a grin. “But we’re still on for the dog park this weekend. Maybe I can convince Auntie Tanya to come?”
Tourmaline yipped and spun a circle, dull claws padding carpet.
He trailed her around the apartment as she tended her other roommates. Crickets and a spray of water went into the fern lizard terrarium, his scales shifting to mimic leaves. Edible rock pellets for the volcanic salamanders. Check the temperature in the hot spring axolotl pool to make sure it was boiling. Mango for the mouse griffin in her aviary, and a handful of shredded paper for the purserat to add to her nest.
The carbuncle was the only one Aila had adopted herself, a wide-eyed pup with bad mange from the San Tamculo Humane Society. The purserat, Tanya caught in their work kitchen and insisted Aila dispose of. The rest came to her. Get into an animal husbandry career, and one became the go-to for any friends or distant acquaintances looking to get an unwanted pet off their hands. Aila couldn’t turn any of them away.
Once her animals were cared for, she microwaved a bowl of condensed soup, curled up on the couch, and stared through what was visible of the window through the screen of plant fronds. Tourmaline lay in her lap, a bundle of warmth and musty fur.
Aila wasn’t much for curios. Her apartment decoration scheme consisted of plants, books, and assorted animal care products. She wasn’t much for photos, either. Most of her life, she hadn’t had friends to take photos with, few exotic excursions to document.
With one notable exception.
On the wall above her desk, propped on a shelf between five potted plants, sat a framed photo of Aila and her parents on vacation in Silimalo. Her mom had bushier, redder hair than Aila did. Her dad was a tree of a man with a kind smile. They’d never traveled much when she was a kid. Could never afford it. But when she got her college acceptance, they’d surprised her with a trip for her high school graduation. She’d sobbed. It hadn’t been pretty.
One week had been life-changing. They’d snorkeled coral reefs off the rocky coast, spotted pegasi on the grassy plains, toured the dormant volcano. And, of course, the highlight of the trip: a visit to the Silimalo National Zoo, Aila running around the paths like a little kid while her parents tried to keep up. The photo showed the three of them in front of the Silimalo phoenix exhibit, smiling and showing off their matching phoenix T-shirts.
Now, as Aila studied the photo in the dark of her apartment, the memory felt bittersweet. No matter how much her parents had worried about their quiet daughter, no matter how much her obsession with phoenixes perplexed them, they’d supported her every step of the way. She was the first in her family to attend college. This meant, of course, that both her parents were super duper proud.
But that also meant she had to figure out a lot on her own. Studying for placement exams. Finding internships. Learning how the fuck a college application worked. Nothing ever came easy. Aila had to work and scrape at every step.
So what should she do now? Wait and see what happened in Jewelport—if they’d come for her phoenix to replace the one they’d lost? She’d go mad twiddling her thumbs.
And nothing ever came out of doing nothing.
Careful not to disturb the snoozing carbuncle, Aila opened her laptop and browsed for updates. The Movas National News posted an article that afternoon, a statement from IMWS extending sympathy to the Jewelport Zoo and assuring the public that the Silimalo phoenix breeding program would continue after thorough evaluation.
With the article was a photo of a middle-aged woman speaking at a podium, black hair bound into a starched bun, brown Movasi skin contrasting lilac-rimmed spectacles and a matching business suit. Maria Rivera, director of the IMWS Movas Division, coordinator of the regional phoenix breeding program. A year ago, Aila spent a solid hour working up the courage to say hello to the esteemed conservationist at a zoo gala. The woman was as intimidating as a lion-headed manticore, but passionate for her work. She’d even encouraged Aila to keep applying for phoenix transfer, had shared her email in case Aila ever needed…
Aila froze on the webpage. Thinking. Scheming.
As the idea came together, her heart pounded in her ears. She could mope on her couch all night, waiting to see what happened in Jewelport and whether they’d steal Rubra away.
Or she could fucking do something.
With jittery fingers, Aila pulled up Director Rivera’s email, then stared at the blank message box until her eyes ached. As the scramble of words came together in her head, she started writing.
Dear Ms. Rivera.
Too formal? Not formal enough? Horns and fangs, Aila hadn’t had to write such an important letter since college applications.
As the head Silimalo phoenix keeper at the San Tamculo Zoo, please accept condolences on behalf of myself and my colleagues. We were all devastated to hear the news from Jewelport earlier this week.
Aila hated small talk. That had to be enough of a lean-in. She took a deep breath.
I understand you face many tough decisions over the coming weeks, and we’re all working together for the good of our phoenixes. To that end…
Aila laid it all bare: Rubra’s lifetime of acclimation to the San Tamculo Zoo, the territoriality of female phoenixes, a somewhat embellished account of the breeding center and its security systems. Her heart poured into the words, raw and aching with each syllable.
Then she made her request. Rubra shouldn’t be transferred to Jewelport. Their male phoenix should be brought to San Tamculo.
Beyond Aila’s window, the city stilled. Slumbered. Her carbuncle snored at her side, the rest of her animals quiet in cages and terrariums. Aila sat awake for too long, reading and rereading the email a hundred times, making sure it had everything she could put into it. Her life’s dream distilled into a few paragraphs of black and white pixels.
She hit send —and her future flew out of her hands.