Watched you feed it animals to stalk and devour. Its agility and beauty attracts you. But its power frightens you.
“I guess.”
I have also watched you allow other animals to starve.
Zack began to protest. “There are too many to take care of—”
I have watched you pit them against one another. It is natural enough, your curiosity. Watching how lesser species react under stress. Fascinating, isn’t it? Watching them fight for survival …
Zack did not know if he should admit to this.
The animals are yours to do with what you wish. That includes the leopard. You control its habitat and its feeding schedule. You should not fear it.
“Well … I don’t. Not really.”
Then … why don’t you kill it?
“What?”
Have you never thought about what it would be like, to kill such an animal?
“Kill it? Kill the leopard?”
You’ve grown bored with zoo-keeping because it is artificial, unnatural. Your instincts are correct, but your method is wrong. You want to own these primitive creatures. But they are not meant to be kept. Too much power. Too much pride. There is only one way to truly possess a wild animal. To make it your own.
“To kill it.”
Prove yourself equal to this task, and I will reward you by seeing to it that your zoo remains open and the animals fed and cared for, while relieving you of your duties there.
“I … I can’t.”
Because it is beautiful or because you fear it?
“Just … because.”
What is the one thing I have refused you? The one thing you asked for that I declined to allow?
“A loaded gun.”
I will see to it that a rifle is maintained for your use within the confines of the zoo. The decision is yours … I want you to take a side …
So Zack went to the zoo the next day, just to hold the loaded weapon. He found it on an umbrella table inside the entrance, brand-new, small sized, with a satin walnut stock and a recoil pad, and a scope on top. It only weighed about seven pounds. He carefully carried the weapon around his zoo, sighting various targets. He wanted to shoot but wasn’t sure how many rounds it held. It was a bolt-action rifle, but he wasn’t 100 percent certain he could reload it, even if he could get more ammunition. He aimed for a sign that said RESTROOMS and fingered the trigger, not really squeezing, and the weapon jumped in his hands. The rifle butt slammed into his shoulder, the recoil shoving him backward. The report was a loud crack. He gasped and saw a wisp of smoke coming out of the muzzle. He looked at the sign and saw a hole punched through one of the O’s.
Zack practiced his aim for the next several days, utilizing the exquisite, whimsical bronze animals in the Delacorte clock. The clock still played music every half hour. As the figures moved along their circular track, Zack aimed at a hippopotamus playing the violin. He missed his first two shots entirely, and the third one grazed the goat playing the pipes. Frustrated, Zack reloaded and waited for the next go-around, sitting on a nearby bench as the distant sirens lulled him into a nap. The bells woke him thirty minutes later. This time he aimed ahead of his target rather than trying to track with it as it moved. Three shots at the hippo, and he distinctly heard one sharp ricochet off the bronze figure. Two days later, the goat had lost the tip of one of its two pipes, and the penguin had lost part of a drumstick. Zack was able to hit the figures now with speed and accuracy. He felt ready.
The leopard habitat consisted of a waterfall and a birch and bamboo forest, all contained within a high tent of stainless steel woven mesh. The terrain inside was steep, with tunnel-like tubes carved into the slope, leading to the windowed viewing area.
The snow leopard stood on a rock and looked at Zack, associating the boy’s appearance with feeding time. The black rain had soiled her coat, but the animal still possessed a regal air. At four feet in length, she could leap forty or fifty feet if motivated, as when going after prey.
She stepped off the rock, prowling in a circle. The rifle report had antagonized her. Why did the Master want Zack to kill it? What purpose would it serve? It seemed like a sacrifice, as though Zack were being asked to execute the bravest animal in order that the others might survive.
He was shocked when the leopard came bounding toward the steel mesh separating them, baring her teeth. She was hungry and disappointed that she did not smell any food, as well as alarmed by the rifle shot—though that was not at all what it seemed like to Zack. He jumped back before reasserting himself, pointing the rifle at the snow leopard, answering her low, intimidating growl. She walked in a tight circle, never taking her eyes off him. She was voracious, and Zack realized that she would go through meal after meal and that, if the food ever ran out, she would feast on the hand that fed her without a moment’s justification. She would take if she needed to take. She would attack.
The Master was right. He was afraid of the leopard, and rightly so. But which one was the keeper and which one the kept? Didn’t she have Zack working for her, feeding her regularly over these many months? He was her pet as much as she was his. And suddenly, with the rifle in his hand, that arrangement didn’t feel right.
He hated her arrogance, her will. He walked around the enclosure, the snow leopard following him on the other side of the mesh. Zack entered the ZOO EMPLOYEES ONLY feeding area, looking out through the small window over the door through which he dropped the leopard’s meat or released livestock. Zack’s deep breathing seemed to fill the entire room. He ducked through the top-hinged door, which slammed shut behind him.
He had never been inside the leopard’s pen before. He looked up at the high tent overhead. A number of different-sized bones were scattered over the ground before him, remnants of past meals.