Chapter Six- Meetings and Discoveries

What was what turned out to be a lot of buildings in a mishmash of architectural styles that he didn’t dare try the doors to, for fear of getting shouted at by someone threatening with one of the weapons that seemed to be everywhere. Eventually, he managed to find his way back to the zoo; seizing upon something that was mildly familiar, he ducked inside with a feeling of immense relief.
The unicorn was still in its paddock, grazing quietly. It raised its head with suspicion when it heard Theo enter and subjected him to a long, assessing look; eventually its nostrils flared, it shook its mane and went back to grazing. Rather gratified that he was no longer viewed as a threat, Theo leaned on the fence and spent some time gazing at the beautiful creature. It was such a delicate, elegant, gorgeous thing it seemed almost impossible that it could exist without having world-wide fan clubs. But then, he mused, it essentially did have world-wide fan clubs; anyone who read fantasy stories was bound to meet unicorns eventually and develop a fondness. It was just a pity they believed the animals didn’t exist in reality.
After a while, aware that he’d just wasted a considerable amount of time, he reluctantly pushed himself away from the fence and wandered off again. He thought he might go and see Socrates; but when he got round to the Jackalope hutches there was already someone there, sitting inside the pen. Reluctant to intrude, Theo lurked uncomfortably a little way away and observed the figure, which was female and possessed black hair and an enviable slimness of figure. Theo, who was aware of having gained weight since he stopped regularly playing rugby, wrinkled his nose, shoved his hands in his pockets, decided to stop being so stupid, and sauntered with slightly exaggerated casualness over towards the pen.
The girl heard his approach and looked up, and for an instant in her eyes there was the same deep suspicion the unicorn had viewed him with. It was quickly eclipsed by empty politeness, and she looked away, back down to the Jackalope lying in her lap. Theo stood outside the fence and looked in, and there was a lengthy period of uncomfortable silence.
Eventually he said “Hello.”
“Hello,” the girl responded, looking back up. She had a nice face, in which European and Middle Eastern mixed; her skin was lightly tawny and her eyes dark brown with long soft lashes. But it was also a face that was closed and locked and did not want to open, and Theo found it rather intimidating.
The silence came back. Theo shifted, cleared his throat and scratched his nose, and then with some relief saw Socrates lope lazily towards him from inside the main hutch. He knelt and pushed his fingers through the mesh; the Jackalope sniffed at them, apparently approved, and rubbed his cheek against them. The girl watched them both silently; Theo offered a slightly embarrassed grin.
“I like rabbits,” he said, inadequately. “This one is called Socrates, right?”
“Yes.” There was a little surprise in her tone, as if not many people knew of the nickname. “Who told you that?”
“Uh, Mr Adfair.”
For a second there was a smile on the girl’s face. “He’d know. Mr Adfair is good about things like that.”
“Uh, yeah…Decent boss, huh?” Theo joked lamely. The girl looked at him.
“The best,” she answered, without a flicker of irony, and went back to stroking the Jackalope in her lap. There was a pause, and then she looked up again.
“I haven’t seen you around. Are you new?”
“Yeah,” Theo admitted ruefully. “Only joined a coupla days ago. My name’s Theodore Hunt…but most people call me Theo.”
“Welcome to the Society, then,” the girl said politely. “My name is Sashi Kasa.”
Blinking a little, Theo suddenly grinned.
“Uh, nice to meet you. I think we’re sharing a flat.”
Sashi looked at him with the tiniest flicker of alarm, then raised one shoulder in a half-shrug.
“They didn’t tell me I’d be sharing my room…”
“Oh no, they didn’t? I’m, uh, sorry…I don’t want to intrude.”
The other shoulder came up as well this time.
“It’s fine. Everyone else shares, I don’t know why I should be the exception.”
She looked down at Socrates, who had his eyes half-closed in ecstasy as Theo absently scratched him under the chin. This evidently counted for something, because she rubbed her cheek and said “You can come in the pen if you like. There’s a little door in the fence.”
Surprised, Theo stood up and located the door, stepping through. Immediately several Jackalope swarmed towards him and sniffed his shoes curiously; moving carefully to avoid treading on anyone, he picked his way across and cautiously sat beside Sashi. Socrates immediately came over and claimed his lap, demanding more attention. Theo obliged, and there was quiet again; this time, however, it was a slightly more companionable silence, thawing around the edges. Theo decided to see if he could thaw it a little more with conversation.
“So, uh, you look after these guys?”
“Mmhm.”
“That must be, uh, nice.”
“I enjoy it.”
“Do they all have names, or is it just Socrates?”
Glancing at him out of the corner of her eye as though surprised he would care, Sashi began pointing out notable Jackalope. There was a big old female called Mrs. Lenin, apparently because she had a moustache; a young female called Jezebel because she had all the morals of a radish; a male known as Bluebeard because he kept stealing things from the others, two males from the same litter called Bill and Ben because they were essentially identical, and many others. She seemed almost to view them as her children, and they evidently adored her; she petted and scratched them all while he was there, and became far more relaxed, almost to the point of laughter.
“So,” Theo asked a little later, making friends with a Jackalope dubbed Calypso for her habit of hiding her litters away in awkward places. “Do you look after anything else in the zoo here or is it just the Jackalope?”
She gave a twitch of a smile. “I’m basically sole keeper of almost everything here. Jackalope, the Basan, the Hellhounds…The people who use them for hunting are supposed to look after theirs, but most of them leave a lot of it to me. Mr Ahern-the horsemaster-he looks after the unicorn and the pegasi, but I do that too if he’s not around.”
“That must be an awful lot of work.”
“Oh, I enjoy it; better than some jobs I guess. I like the animals and I, uh, don’t much like the people…so it suits me fine.”
As though she had suddenly decided she was talking far too much, Sashi let her head drop so her hair covered her face, and did some serious fussing of Bluebeard’s ears. Theo, however, was not about to let her clam up. He liked her, and more to the point she was the only person in the Society aside from Rowena and Mr Adfair he actually knew the name of.
“So, will you show me around more of the zoo? I’d like to know more about all the…mythical creatures and stuff.”
She glanced across at him again and nearly smiled.
“All right then.”
Theo spent most of the rest of the morning getting an in-depth tour of the zoo. He learned that practically every single creature that resided in it had been given a name, and what those names were (although he knew he’d never be able to remember them as well as Sashi did; she seemed to have encyclopaedic memory when it came to her animal charges); the correct care of fire-breathing chickens and what was necessary wear for handling them (and also that they weren’t nearly as dignified as they pretended) and that many of the hellhounds could only be approached safely if you were wearing a full suit of plate armour.
It was while they were playing with the safe ones that she offered, rather shyly, to make him lunch.
“I mean, since we have to share a flat and everything,” she said with deep discomfort, looking anywhere but at him. “You can, um, cook for me tomorrow.”
“Uh, sure, cool,” Theo accepted, also rather uncomfortable. In an effort to lighten the mood, he added “But the last time I cooked I set the salad on fire!”
Sashi gave a little laugh, fondling all three sets of a hellhound’s ears at once, then cleared her throat and got to her feet.
“Come on then…”
The state of the kitchen proved to be a source of some embarrassment once they got back to the flat, prompting some awkward apologies from Sashi and some equally awkward offers to help clean up from Theo which were of course refused, she was acting as host for the moment, it was her mess, she’d clean up after she’d cooked…
Eventually they compromised, with Sashi beginning the cooking while Theo wiped up the surfaces and filled the saucepan with water in an attempt to soak off the tomato pasta sauce that had stuck to the inside like glue.
His new room-mate turned out to cook very fast and rather haphazardly. She was making, apparently, vegetable curry; Theo could only watch in wonder as she sliced peppers with such speed that her fingertips seemed in constant danger and, despite occasionally referring to a very battered recipe book, tossed in spices and curry powder with gay abandon, including adding Tabasco sauce to the rice.
The result, of course, was delicious.
“Where’d you learn to cook like this?” Theo asked, helping himself to thirds. Sashi blushed a bit.
“My mother hates cooking so we only used to get quick stuff like pizza and chips…but once she’d forgotten to get a birthday cake for my little brother so I decided to make one. Uh…turned out I had a talent.”
“It’s a great talent,” said Theo, with his mouth full. Smiling rather embarrassedly, Sashi shrugged.
“Maybe,” she said, and stood up abruptly with her plate, crossing to the sink and beginning to wash up with fierce concentration.
After lunch, she declined his hopeful request for her to show him around the museums, saying instead that she needed to muck out the pegasi. She did point out the buildings they were housed in, though, and told him that no-one would care if he accidentally trespassed somewhere because he was new.
Then she left him to his own devices, hurrying away in the direction of the zoo without looking back. It made Theo feel a little abandoned.
The main theme of the Society’s museums seemed to be myths, legends, stuffed mythical creatures and weapons. Theo learnt rather a lot about the beasts the Society was protecting humanity from in that afternoon, and also rather a lot about the Society’s history. It had been founded in the sixteenth century, as the explorers of that era discovered more and more new lands and new creatures. Not much, apparently, was known of the early days, save that the Society once formed did its best to convince the general populace that mythical creatures were fabrications and merely old stories and apparently succeeded. The Society spread over the world along with the explorers and by the end of the seventeenth century there were groups all over the planet, most of which had been maintained and still existed. But there were many gaps and vague inconsistencies in the accounts which left Theo more confused than enlightened; no-one seemed to know who exactly had created the Society in the first place, or who had led it before Mr Adfair took control.
The museum curator, when enquired of, was less than helpful.
“Everyone asks that stuff when they join,” he said, leaning on his desk. “But no-one knows. There’s a massive library-it’s just through that door and round the corner if you want to look-but there’s only a few fragments remaining of the Society’s historical records. It’s like someone went through and systematically destroyed them.”
“Did someone?”
The curator laughed. “How would we know? They destroyed the records!”
The museums proved to be far more absorbing than Theo had expected them to be, and a subsequent glance at his watch proved shocking. It was already half-past seven, and he’d promised to cook dinner for Sashi. It was even later by the time he’d actually got back to the flat, because in his hurry he’d taken quite a few inadvertent wrong turnings and had had to be pointed on his way eventually by a young woman carrying a bundle of Samurai swords.
Sashi was watching television, curled in a corner of the sofa. Her initial reaction to his entry was brief confusion, as though she’d forgotten he was now sharing her accommodation, and then something that got close to reproach when she recalled his identity and promise.
“I’m sorry I’m late,” he apologised. “I really am, I lost track of time and then I got lost…”
She sighed and shrugged, and the smiled a little.
“Doesn’t matter. Are you still cooking?”
“If I can,” he said cheerfully. “Any preferences?”
Propping her chin on her knees, she looked thoughtful, and then her smile widened, getting as close to a teasing grin as he’d ever seen on her normally sober face.
“I’ll get some ingredients out and we’ll see what you can make of them…mister burnt salad.”
Theo tossed off a quick salute.
“Whatever you say, mistress of the kitchen.”