“Animalia’s founding creatures, known as the Horde, mandated physical exercise for every Colony member, with more hours required of carnivorous and omnivorous species. While their initial intent was to drain the hunting instincts of these formerly violent animals, the invention of energy storage cells and trackers approximately 100 years after the Interspecies Truce allowed the Colony to harness the kinetic energy generated during these workouts and use it to contribute power to the grid.” –from The History of Animalia by Buick Dyson
The Pachyderm was helpful, but not as much of a know-it-all as everybody says. It couldn’t tell me why Dad wanted to use the Poindexter. And it definitely couldn’t answer the bigger question lurking under the surface: What did Dad have to know so badly it made him leave us behind? I needed more clues, and the best place to find those would be my father’s study.
Dad didn’t like being bothered when he was working, so, technically, I wasn’t allowed in his study. But it’s where all the human-written books we own—in other words, all the good ones—are shelved. When I was a cub, Dad would read to me every night before bed, but that stopped years ago. Truth was, things had gotten weird between me and Dad awhile before he left. I’d gotten too old to read to or play with, but too young for interesting, grown-up conversations. He didn’t talk to me about his work, even though it was the most important thing in the world to him. It was high time for me to grow up and learn about it.
The next morning, when Mom left to go on a walk with Sherwin, I prowled into the study to conduct my investigation. The sun slanted in through the window, highlighting a fine, fuzzy sheen of dust on the surface of Dad’s desk. Fur rose on the back of my neck, as if Dad would come charging in at any moment and scold me for invading his space. Slipping in and out to borrow or replace a novel was one thing. But I’d never gone rifling through his stuff before.
With a gulp, I sat in his rolling chair and eased the top drawer of his desk open. Squares of paper in different colors and patterns fanned inside like butterfly wings. A few paper creasers rested in the groove meant to hold pencils. Nothing useful, just supplies for his creative activity. Dad tried to teach me origami, but I found it tedious and frustrating. In my opinion, paper is for reading, not folding into random, tiny shapes.
The first side drawer was crammed with different colored file folders, packed in so tightly, it was a struggle to separate them with my claws and read the labels. Far as I could tell, they weren’t in alphabetical, chronological, rainbow, or any other type of order. It was a mishmash of papers—research materials for books written long ago, manuals for household appliances, origami patterns, receipts for his annual Investments in Order filings, which Dad told me used to be called income taxes. I sighed. It would take me hours to comb through all those files, and they still might not yield any important clues.
I cracked the bottom drawer open. It was shallower, empty except for a red spiral notebook. I flipped it open to find it filled with Dad’s tight, efficient handwriting. Inside the front cover, in all caps, he’d written: Destruction Myths Debunked. It was dated a few months before he disappeared. Might be something interesting in there. When I slipped it under my elbow, I noticed a single sheet of crumpled paper underneath. Seemed to be some sort of advertisement. I smoothed it out and read its strange words.
Wake up, humanimals! If you live in a Stable, the Colony has you tricked into living like a human being. But you are not a human. You are a mighty, powerful animal! The Colony imposes all kinds of unnatural rules on you, like limiting your family size to one or two offspring, regardless of species. Your ancestors would be ashamed of the way you live and your failure to pass on their genes to as many young as possible.
The Brotherhood of Nature is committed to a better way of life. If you want to live the way nature intended, the way your ancestors lived, join us at Zenith Castle.
I guessed Zenith Castle must be located in Zenith Crater, where the Poindexter coordinates led. That must be why Dad kept the flyer. But it sparked a series of questions in my brain. What is nature? Who are these brothers who find it so important? Why would they think it’s a good idea for animals to overbreed like they used to back in the days of predation?
I hefted Dad’s dusty Dictionary of Dead Words off the shelf and flipped to the N’s.
Nature: [ˈnā-chər] noun. Anthropocene Era, late 13th c. An obsolete term invented by Homo sapiens, a self-aware species, but one ignorant of its interconnectedness to the world, incapable of understanding its own existence except in opposition to something else. They invented the concept of nature to mean the world as they found it and used the word unnatural to refer to the objects they created. Like much of human behavior, their use of the word was inconsistent, with certain things they created, like plastics and medicines and highways, labeled unnatural, but other things they made, like feces and urine and babies, considered natural. Declared a dead word by the elders of Animalia in the year 11 A.I.T., nature is a term entirely useless to the animal kingdom and the modern era.
Even after reading the definition twice, it was hard to wrap my head around the concept of nature. I was baffled why these brothers had resurrected the dead word and were using it in their flyer. Besides, if they were so against anything “unnatural,” why would they want to live near the Poindexter, storehouse of man-made knowledge? The only real answer I got is how nature was pronounced. It didn’t rhyme with mature, like I first assumed. With a shrug, I eased the dictionary back into its spot.
A whole row of Dad’s best-selling book, The History of Animalia, lined the shelf above it. I traced a claw down the spine of one copy, suddenly wondering why I’d never read it. Dad acted weird about it, like maybe he didn’t want me to, and I guess I’d felt a little intimidated to tackle it. It’s assigned reading for high school kids, and I’m still in middle school, probably not smart enough to understand it. Pulling a copy open, I read the first sentence. After the extinction of man, the Wars of Predation raged amongst the animals for centuries.
The murmur of voices coming down the hallway froze me. I slammed the book shut. Every animal has to get a certain amount of daily physical exercise to drain our hunting instincts, and the quota for adult members of formerly-meat-eating species, like bears and cats, is pretty high. There’s no way Mom and Sherwin got close to enough steps on that measly walk to make quota. But Mom’s not exactly a fitness buff. It’s one of the few things she and I have in common.
I couldn’t make out what they were saying, but they were getting closer. I crawled under Dad’s desk, into the cave-like space where his legs would go. As they approached, I pulled in his chair as close to me as I could, to make it seem like nobody was under there. Surely Mom wouldn’t bring Sherwin here. Not into Dad’s study, I thought, a nanosecond before the door creaked open. I held my breath and gave silent thanks that I’d recently bathed. My scent shouldn’t be strong enough for Mom to take notice of.
“I can’t help it. I’m worried about her,” Mom whispered, as she entered the study and shut the door behind her.
“You worry too much,” Sherwin purred. “You said Cara’s always been a bookworm.”
“That’s true, but she’s gotten more and more withdrawn since…lately. She’d rather have her nose buried in a book than be outside in the fresh air, playing with friends. It’s been an escape for her, but I don’t like her reading all those human stories.” Mom uttered the word human like it tasted bad in her mouth. “It sets her apart from the other kids. Besides, she’s got to face reality sooner or later.”
“What we need to do is get rid of all the human-written novels in here. To protect her. Cara needs to be reading the kinds of books all the other critters her age read. You know. Snickers the Scottish Fold’s adventure series. Applebee the Golden Retriever’s novels in verse.”
I bit my cheeks to keep from scoffing at the thought of reading that doggerel. Slowly, warily, Sherwin said, “While we’re at it, why don’t we box up all this stuff and put it in storage? We could convert the study to a guest room. Give my parents a place to stay when they come up for the wedding.”
My blood boiled. No way would Mom agree to that.
“That’s a good idea, dear. It’s time.”
My heart raced. I wasn’t sure if it was nerves over getting caught or anger about their attitude toward my books, the only things that had gotten me through the last two years. Not to mention Sherwin trying to erase Dad from our house, our lives, our memories. No wonder I couldn’t force my pulse to slow down, no matter how hard I tried.
“Tell you what, Amana. I’m not much for lacrossbun,” From the sound of claws on wood, I could tell the cat had picked up my dad’s lacrossbun stick. “It’s not so much a sport as an excuse to eat pastries. But I can take Cara to the gym with me sometime. Play some hoops with her. Get her snout out of the books.”
Hoops? Hoops is a cute, sugar-coated term for a terrifying thing: basketball. Last time the gym teacher made me dribble, it was a disaster. The ball took a wild bounce and smacked me square in the nose. It was exactly the sort of thing that never happens to you in the library. And playing that awful sport with Sherwin? That’s scarier than anything I ever came across in a human novel.
“Would you, Sherwin? I’d love that. The endorphins would be much better for her than these imaginary tales. Won’t be long till she turns thirteen, and then her kinetic energy quota goes up to six hours a week. It’ll be good for her to start getting acclimated.”
“Speaking of quotas, we didn’t exactly hit ours, Amana, what with all your fretting. You feel better now? Can we finish our walk?”
“I do. You make everything better, Sherwin,” Mom purred. She was so into the cat, it was like she was turning feline before my eyes.
When the coast was clear, I searched the rest of the desk. Nothing there but Dad’s stash of petrified puffed cheese snacks and collection of ancient human tools. I grabbed the compass, which seemed to still work and, on a whim, Dad’s lacrossbun stick. I told myself I could use it as a walking stick if I had to hike any steep terrain, or it could be cover if someone asked where I was going. I’m just out for a pickup game of lacrossbun, officer, not planning to sneak out of the Stable or anything like that. But I also wanted to keep Sherwin from getting rid of it while cleaning out the room. The stick held a lot of memories for me. I tucked the history textbook, the red notebook, and the Brotherhood of Nature flyer in the crook of my arm and snuck to my room before Mom and Sherwin got back again. I tucked them in a box and hid it under the bed. I needed to start hoarding food for the trip and finalizing my escape plan. The sooner I could get Dad home to stop this cat from ruining my life, the better.