Chapter Two
The Lion’s Den… at the Zoo
Another plate of cookies went around.
“So can I sing now?” Theia didn’t even wait for permission. “Bee ourrr guest, be our guest—”
“If you’re going to sing it should at least be Christmas songs.” Thorn covered her ears. “Seriously, Theia.”
“I want to hear the story of how Lion got here,” Tay said quickly.
Theia stopped. “You’ve heard that story like ten times this week.”
“But it’s funny.”
Theia stretched out on the sofa, pushing her sister to one end with her feet.
“Later,” Theia mumbled “I’m singing.”
“Storm, you tell us. We really really want to hear it again.”
There were nods of agreement. Storm glanced at Kayla, who was laughing at Sheva’s disgusted expression as she tried to move Theia’s feet out of her face.
The high domed ceiling above them made everyone feel very small, despite there being at least thirty people in the room. (They hadn’t necessarily wanted to be in the room together, but it was an unspoken agreement that family togetherness meant actual togetherness instead of just being on the same planet, and those that were not there would not be missed as it was effectively breaking ties with the rest of all that was good in the world.)
“Okay,” Storm said, over the bellowing of Good King Wenceslas coming from the sofa next to her. “So it was maybe a few months after Des showed up and we were taking her to the zoo because she wanted to see the lions.”
“She could talk at a few months old?” Rachel added something under her breath about this being such a weird family and how they might possibly rival her nine others.
“Of course she could. She could talk starting maybe two weeks after she showed up in our firepit. It was quite creepy, really. Anyway, where was I? Oh, right. The zoo.
So I wanted to take pictures of the peacocks, Mia wanted to see the Lions, and Theia wanted to see the phoenixes. She still hasn’t understood that Phoenixes don’t exist.”
Sixty eyes turned towards where Theia was now pretending to be asleep. But she couldn’t ignore it when people were talking about her, so she pretended to wake up.
“I’m sitting in a bloody castle with six children and the world’s most awesome spouse, one of my children used to be an elf, I have talking cats and a dragon for a cousin-in-law-in-law,” she said. “What’s to say Phoenixes don’t exist?”
“But they’re not at the zoo, Mummy.” Kal looked a little worried, as though she was just starting to realize that her younger mother’s sanity was in question.
“Anyway. So after we walked up to where the the information person was and Theia asked where the Phoenixes were they sort of stared at us as though we belonged in straightjackets and told us there weren’t any. Convinced it was all a sham, Theia went to every freaking info booth demanding that they tell us the truth.
By that point, Mia was screaming that she wanted to go see the lions now. So I convinced—”
“Forced—”
“Theia to give up the search.
We were down at the lion area and Mia was staring at them, eyes about as big as those gumballs that Peter is trying to put in his mouth, when a little girl showed up next to us.
We didn’t really notice her at first until she informed Theia that ‘Your baby is talking.’
Theia looked down at her.
‘Are you an elf, too?’
The girl didn’t seem to find the question odd at all.
‘No,’ she said, ‘I’m Lioness.’
I hadn’t really been paying attention until that point so I said something like yes, there were lionesses in the habitat.
‘No,’ she said in her little girl voice, ‘I’m Lioness.’
‘Your name is Lioness?’ Theia asked, pulling Mia away from the glass.
Lioness nodded solemnly.
So I asked her where her parents were, wondering if I should go back to the zoo people. They’d probably have thought we were crazy… first we come by asking for Phoenixes and now we want to find the parents of a kid named Lioness.
But she just stared at me like I was a crazy lunatic. (Don’t say it. I know you’re thinking it, Batty-la. Don’t.)
‘I dunno,’ she said.
So I looked around, hoping that someone would be showing signs of frantically looking for a wayward toddler.
No one was.
Shouting that I’d found a child might be a bad plan because you never know what kind of creepos are out there, so Theia asked for her parents’ names.
‘I dunno.’
‘Who did you come with?’
‘I dunno.’
‘Why are you here?’
‘I dunno.’
‘Have you always been here at the lion exhibit?’
‘I dunno!” She started to cry. “I’m Lioness.”
‘Yeah, we got that part.” Theia raised her eyes at me, like, can you believe this? I don’t know if Mia even realized what was going on because one of the cubs was wandering near the glass and she just thought it was the cutest thing ever.
‘Do you think we should take her to the zoo people?’ I asked her.
Theia shrugged. ‘I dunno.’”
“Witty, T,” Jed said, and Storm jumped, having just been watching Kayla and imagining her again as the clueless toddler she had been.
“I know. I’m really great at that stuff.” Theia nodded, rolling over and pretending to go back to sleep, wiggling her feet again in Sheva’s face.
“Veritate Sto!” Peter stabbed a finger in the air.
Storm continued.
“And so then we’re like, okay, we have to figure something out. So we go and leave the exhibit. And she just randomly follows us. So we take her towards the zoo people. They sort of roll their eyes as we got there and I just remember really hoping that they didn’t remember the phoenix incident.
‘This kid lost her parents,’ said Theia, stepping forward. I nodded along.
The woman leaned forward, looking around. ‘What kid?’
‘That—oh, shit.’ We looked around for a few minutes and finally saw her crouching behind the garbage can.
I pointed, and said something like ‘That one. She says her name is Lioness and she doesn’t know who she came here with, who her parents are, or what she does when she’s not at the zoo.’
The woman looked amused. Lioness looked at her, then at us, and then took off.
‘Oh, shit.’
Theia ran after her, leaving me to put Mia back in her backpack and put the straps on so that I could follow.”
“The people at the Veritapolis zoo really love us,” Theia said wistfully. ‘I got in trouble once for throwing pebbles at the Mary Sues in the Mary Sue exhibit.”
“I like the fire-breathing bull one best,” said Peter randomly.
“Strange things happen at that zoo all the time. Maybe they were used to random little kids popping up out of nowhere. They didn’t lock us in the nut house, but maybe that was just because they couldn’t catch us. You wouldn’t think a toddler would be able to go that fast, but she was basically running on all fours and me and Theia were having a hard time keeping up I think we lost her around the Sue house.
So we’re like, okay, that was really really weird, but the kid isn’t our responsibility. So we kept on going and seeing all the animals and stuff. And at some point we realized that she was following us. But I thought she was just playing games. I’d see the top of her head behind a bush or something. And we finally got out to the car, and I’m starting to start it up again when suddenly she climbs in the back seat.”
Theia nodded, not pretending to sleep anymore. “And Storm was like, O_O.”
“Laura.”
“I mean, Storm was totally shocked and staring bug eyed, in an O-underscore-O fashion.”
“Well, yeah. I mean, I thought we were going to be arrested for kidnapping and child transport and stuff. So we kept saying things like ‘We’re not your parents,’ and that type of stuff, but she looked confused. So after awhile she said something along the lines of ‘But you have a talking baby.’
‘Hey,’ said Mia from her car seat. ‘You can talk too.’
‘But you’re too little to talk.’
‘You’re too little to run.’
‘Am not!’
‘Am too!’
Theia called the zoo on her cell and asked if anyone had reported a missing kid but they said no one had. And so she said that we’d found one and they should call us, but before she was able to ask someone to come out and collect said missing kid, the car drove out of the parking lot and onto the highway.”
Storm stopped at their dubious expressions.
“No, but seriously. It just started driving us home. So Lion came home with us and a few weeks later adoption papers randomly appeared in the mailbox, just like with—but we’ll get to that part later.”
“Did you ever find anything out?” Neon asked, looking shocked.
“I dunno.”
“We think it might have been some sort of godly intervention.” Sheva grabbed Theia’s feet and began tickling them until, Theia unable to defend herself, she could drag her sister off the sofa. Theia oomphed as she landed on the floor, the stone only held at bay by half an inch of carpet.
“Ow.”
“Do you remember anything, Kayla?” A pause, then Jess added, “how’d you get the name Kayla?”
Lion shrugged. “I dunno.”
“What about me?” Ave asked hopefully, pulling an afghan tighter around her shoulders.
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