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Otis Césaire tended the royal menagerie.
It paid well, but it was a thankless job. His Majesty, King Gabriel, had no time to spare him more than the occasional approving nod. The keepers and tenders who worked under him did not thank him for their orders. And the beasts were mute, either by nature or by choice. Otis could hardly blame them. He wouldn’t talk, either, if he was in one of those cages. He certainly wouldn’t give thanks.
So, out of either guilt or a sense of kinship, he endeavored to keep the creatures as comfortable as they could be in captivity. He cut and carried ice for the penguins; he stuffed gourds with meat for the wyvern; he heated rocks for the salamanders; he tied impossible knots for the imps to untangle. He brought the bugbear straw dummies that looked something like children, and he brought the culvir—the newest addition—rocks that looked something like eggs. In silence.
Until the culvir spoke.
“You really think I’m going to brood?” it asked after Otis had delivered what must have been the fifteenth egg-shaped stone. “Here? In this cage? With your rock mockery?”
Otis jumped and looked around frantically for another keeper, a witness, but found himself otherwise alone in the courtyard. “I—well,” he started to say, hands rising defensively.
“I wouldn’t brood if you brought me real culvir eggs,” it said. It cocked its head to look at—or loom over— him. “You wouldn’t, though. Would you? You wouldn’t try to seize any culvir eggs. Not for my sake.”
“I wouldn’t.” Otis could make no promises of the king. “I wouldn’t. And I don’t… seize.” The act of conversing with one of the menagerie’s occupants was so foreign and unexpected that he hardly felt in control of what he was saying.
The culvir cocked its head further and trilled in what Otis was sure wasn’t amusement. “No? Then what do you do?”
“I’m a keeper. I—”
“That much was obvious,” the culvir said nastily, ruffling its neck feathers.
“—attend to the creatures’ basic needs.”
The culvir eyed him critically. Otis knew what it was going to say. “Not to include the need for freedom? Exercise? Socialization vis-a-vis one’s own kind? And that’s not even to include those with migration patterns, breeding grounds, pilgrimages…”
“Culvir don’t have any of those,” Otis snapped. “You all live in one place and stay there.”
“Unless we’re captured,” bit the beast, snapping its beak. “And what would you know of the culvir’s habitat? You said it yourself: you don’t seize. In fact, I haven’t seen a day go by without your visit to this blasted courtyard. I’m not the only one with no migration pattern.”
“Oh, sorry I don’t pop off to the neighboring kingdom and leave the under-keepers to try and remember what food you eat or when to bring water.” Otis threw down the egg-shaped rock so hard it took out a chunk of grassy earth. “Perhaps I’ll just take a vacation and see if the king remembers to tell the cooks to order extra grain; extra fruit? Or, never mind traveling; how about I just leave?”
The culvir regarded him shrewdly with its sharp orange eyes. “I hope you don’t expect me to beg one of my jailers to stay.”
His temper exhausted, Otis slumped a little in place. “Of course I don’t,” he said.
“But I am sorry I didn’t realize the extent of your predicament sooner,” the culvir continued. “My senses are dulled by captivity. You’ll want to get your arm back to how your king might say it ought to appear.”
Otis looked down and shook his right arm in a thoughtless, red kind of panic. The fur shrank away. “Damn you.” His voice came out weak. He once again scoured the courtyard for witnesses, this time praying none would appear.
“I wouldn’t have said anything if there were other humans around,” the culvir said. For the first time, it didn’t sound like it wanted to rake its talons across his chest. “Not other, excuse me.”
“Yes, other,” Otis said in a furious, frightened whisper. “You know exactly where I’d be if the king or one of his servants took notice of this conversation.”
The culvir partially unfolded its wings, running its flight feathers almost tenderly across the bars of its cage. “I might have some idea,” it said.
Otis picked up the egg-shaped stone. “I don’t believe in it,” he said. “This job. But it pays enough to support my family, and at least I can do what I can to keep the creatures comfortable. As comfortable as can be expected,” he adds, seeing the flash in the culvir’s eyes. “It is all I can do.”
“You could free us.”
“And doom myself,” Otis said, nodding hopelessly. “I have thought about it before. And if I left… there is nothing good about being a jailer, but as jailers go there is none better.”
“I believe that,” said the culvir. “At least within your king’s tyrannical constraints. I am a king in my own right, you know.” It waved a wing carefully in the small space of the cage. “More or less. You would not understand the hierarchy of the culvir.” It puffed up its neck and chest feathers.
“Am I to assume the culvir are perfect jailers?”
“Yes.”
“It wouldn’t be hard.”
“No,” the culvir agreed. “We don’t tend to capture creatures at all.” It let its feathers settle into its sleek shape. Otis wondered what had prompted King Gabriel to capture the culvir in the first place. They were not particularly sought-after, not like wyverns or unicorns, and—though their iridescence was eye-catching, in the right light—they were not classically beautiful beasts. “I would make an exception for your king,” the culvir went on. “He might be funny to put in a cage. I would dress him in a feathered cape, and bring him crown-shaped eggshells.”
Otis slid the egg-shaped rock into his smock pocket. “I would not be inclined to pass judgment,” he said.
The culvir turned its head to regard him straight-on with one eye. “You could help me escape,” it suggested carefully, beak scarcely moving around the words. “It would look like an accident. You could fake a wound.”
Before Otis could think, the culvir pecked apart the metal clasp which held half of its feed trough to the cage bars. The trough tipped with a clatter, and the culvir was careful to jam its leg underneath as it fell.
“I can’t fake a wound,” it hissed at him, trilling something like a chuckle, and Otis realized that its leg really was pinned, that there was blood staining the trough’s wood. What could he do but unlatch the cage? It was his job to keep the creatures as comfortable as possible.
As he stepped over the culvir’s tail and wings, he realized it was still speaking to him. “Keeper. Keeper,” it was saying. “Come with me; call it a vacation. You may not have a cage, but your king still has you captured.”
Otis, lifting the trough, shook his head. “I can’t,” he said. “My family. Imagine if I disappeared with you—imagine what people might say about them.”
The culvir picked itself up off the floor of the cage. “I expected as much,” it sighed. “Perhaps we can table this discussion for a future meeting—with the whole family, I hope.”
“What future meeting?” Otis hissed. He was trying to make his chest look as if a large bird had slashed him, but he’d never had a good grasp of cosmetic shapeshifting.
“Well, what do humans do when one kingdom kidnaps another’s royalty?”
Otis balked, dropping both the trough and his focus. His chest returned unbidden to its unblemished shape. “They go to war,” he said numbly.
“You and your roost will be perfectly safe,” the culvir said as though it were obvious. “I think your kingdom badly needs, pardon the pun, a coup.” It regarded him once more. “Sorry for this,” it said. “You can’t fake an injury any better than I can.” With its injured leg it slammed him into the cage bars, knocking the wind from his lungs, smearing culvir blood on his smock, and causing an alarming rattle. Then it let out a tremendous trilling cry, clambered up onto the cage roof, and threw itself into the sky.