I couldn’t think of anything else to say, so I said, “Now go forth and eat some weeds.”

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  The next day, after we woke up and after Helene had spent a hundred or so hours eating, her eyes brightened.

  “I almost forgot to tell you!” she said. “In the middle of the night, I had an idea for you.”

  The Sun had recently risen with her billion golden arms, and I will admit that I worried Helene would tell me unsettling ideas about the Sun not being God. I worried Helene would tell me that ants were God, or mushrooms, or some other upside-down notion. But instead, she had a question that was very good, and an idea that was even better.

  “You were saying yesterday that you were planning to free the Bison,” she said. “But where will you bring them once they’re free of their fencing?”

  This I didn’t know. It was one of the things I hadn’t worked out. The farthest I’d taken the plan was to the sea. I kept picturing them on the sand, running free, but that’s where the dream ended, and I told her so.

  “Hm,” she said, and looked out to the roiling ocean. “Well, I’m so grateful to you for sticking up for me with the other goats—I can’t tell you how grateful—so I was up half the night thinking of how to repay you.”

  I told her it was wholly unnecessary that she repay me. She grinned.

  “I knew you would say that,” she said, “but anyway. In the middle of the night I had a thought! Why not bring the Bison on the ship? Back to the main-land! Where we’ll go, there’s more than enough room for all the Bison in the world. There’s a billion miles where they can run and graze and sleep—and even hide, if they need to. The land never ends. I’ve lived there all my life and haven’t seen even a tiny part of it.”

  Immediately this idea seemed a perfect one to me. An idea so flawless and inevitable I knew we had to make it real. But would the ship really be big enough? How would the Bison not be seen and expelled?

  “Good questions,” she said. “It’ll be tricky, because they’re so large. I assume your Bison pals are large?”

  I confirmed to Helene that they were very large.

  “Well,” she said, “the thought I had was that maybe they could mix in with all of us, especially if we were jumping around and on each other’s backs, which we do sometimes. And when we all tramp up the gangway onto the ship, your Bison friends could sneak in there among us and maybe they wouldn’t get noticed.” Helene closed her eyes, as if picturing it. She nodded at the sight in her mind. “It’s an idea, anyway.”

  Now she looked out at the innumerable goats, of all colors, and I did, too. I wondered if the Bison could possibly blend in among them. There were some larger goats, but even the largest among them was less than half the size of Meredith, the smallest of the Bison. But we could work on it, I thought.

  “Well, it’ll take a lot of planning—a hundred years of planning—but I know it will work.” I told her she was quite brilliant, and told her I was very grateful, and told her that tomorrow I would tell the Assistant Eyes about the plan, and if they liked it, a few days later I would tell the Bison, and then we would begin drawing up schemes. I was going on and on and that’s when Helene stopped me.

  “We don’t have a hundred years to plan this,” she said. “We don’t even have a hundred days or a hundred hours. The boat leaves tomorrow morning. At seven-oh-eight.”

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  And then I was running. I was running because there was little time to plan all of this, make all of this happen, and I was running because at that moment I couldn’t look at Helene. She was my new and very good friend, a friend who opened my mind and filled it with new treasures, and now she was leaving. The thought hit me like a thousand-foot-tall wave with all its chaos and cruelty.

  But more important than my sadness about losing this friend was the possibility—the inevitability!—of freeing the Bison. Helene’s plan was the most sparkling and logical and inspiring plan we could ever conjure. And so I ran to spread the word. In my history of running fast, this was far and away the fastest I have been. I pierced the air like a knife thrown, I bent the trees, I created a vacuum that threatened to suck the clouds from the sky.

  I ran to gather the Assistants for an emergency meeting and succeeded in seconds. I told everyone to meet me at the top of the rock and they hustled to do just this, everyone but Bertrand. I could not find Bertrand. But we could not wait. I assumed he would hear or would fly over and find us soon enough. In the meantime we needed to move ahead.

  “Seven-oh-eight,” I said to Angus. “Is this something related to time? Helene said that’s when the ship leaves.”

  “Yes,” Angus said with great seriousness and pride in his time-telling. “That means the morning. Not long from now.”

  I told the Assistant Eyes that all the vague plans we’d made to free the Bison would have to move up, would have to come into sharp focus immediately. We’d have to plan and practice all day and night, and be ready to free them at dawn, to get them on the boat well before this seven-oh-eight. It was the only way. This was our first and last chance to set them free—not just free to run on the beach for a moment, but free forever.

  “That is a lot to take in,” Angus said.

  “My brain is vibrating,” Yolanda said.

  “I like it,” Sonja said. “I think it can work.”

  I was surprised by Sonja’s confident tone, and everyone else was, too. I don’t think anyone was doubting that we should free them, or that this was a good opportunity to do that, but Sonja was the first to give this new and precious chance momentum.

  “We need to start now,” she said. I loved her for that. Sometimes in this life so much depends on one friend simply saying, Yes, we must do this.

  Or Yes, I see it that way, too.

  Or It is high time we do something great and grand.

  Now, with that simple statement, the fact of us doing this, of freeing the Bison the next morning, became real. Now it was just a matter of directing every fiber of our being and every moment from now till then to the task.

  So it was easy!

  But also not so easy.

  It was one of those instances where it’s so complicated that it’s simple, because we knew how complicated it would be, and that idea was simple enough.

  I said all this to the Assistants, and they looked at me with blank stares. I realized that when I’d shared this notion with Bertrand, it had made perfect sense.

  “Anyway,” Angus said. “We have less than twenty-four hours.” Everyone’s stares were still blank, but this blankness was now directed at Angus, not me, for which I was grateful. “Less than a day,” he clarified, and we went to work.

  * * *

  —

  I had wanted to make sure the Assistants agreed with the plan before I brought it to the Bison, and now I felt ready. I came to their enclosure and found them surrounded by humans. More than I had ever seen in their midst before. Some I recognized, some I didn’t. There were ten or more. They had equipment. Tools. Poles, ropes, little silver discs and little black boxes. What were they doing?

  I couldn’t get close.

  Something about the Bison being surrounded by humans with their tools made me all the more determined to set them loose. And so the rest of the daylight hours were busy with the Assistants and me meeting and planning and convincing.

  With Angus, we convinced the raccoons to help, which wasn’t very difficult, for they liked nothing better than mischief at the expense of humans. And honestly, I think they were happy to shift the focus from the museum break-in plan, which they never loved.

  With Yolanda’s help we met with the pelicans, twenty or more of them, to work out their role—mostly one of observation and possible misdirection. She also gathered the gulls, who were skeptical about the feasibility of the plan, but who agreed to go along. There is something about an urgent task that unites and inspires. No one said no to us, except of course the ducks.

  It was Sonja’s idea to ask the ducks. I had insisted there was no point, and Angus and Yolanda agreed. There was nothing ducks could do that gulls could not do, so why ask the ducks in the first place? Why risk them mucking up the plan as only ducks can do? Yolanda and Angus would not take part in the asking of the ducks; exasperated, they went off to clear their heads.

  And there we were, Sonja and me with the ducks, standing on the edge of their smelly pond as they swam about, barely paying attention to us. When finally they noticed us standing at the water’s edge, waiting to be noticed, one of them swam over.

  “What’s all this about?” said this one, their leader. His name was Jerome.

  I told him that we planned to free the Bison.

  “Who are the Bison?” said another duck. This one’s name was Jerry. All the ducks’ names start with J. It’s one of the many, many upsetting things about the ducks. Not that there is anything wrong with this J-sound—it is a fine sound!—but all animals of a species should not have to adhere to one starting letter. It is bad form, against all the laws of nature and good taste.

  Anyway, we explained who the Bison were. I don’t know how the ducks did not know who the Bison were, but nothing about the ducks surprised me.

  “So what did you say you’re doing with them?” Jerome asked.

  “We’re freeing them,” I said.

  “From what? They’re not free?” Jerome said.

  “They’re stuck inside a fence,” we told him.

  Jerome’s head was suddenly underwater, so I didn’t know if he heard me or not. He popped up again, but then Jerry’s head went under.

  “Tell me again, when is this happening?” Jerome asked.

  “Early tomorrow morning,” I said.

  “Oh, the morning is a busy time for us,” he said, and ducked his head underwater again. Jerry reappeared.

  “Very busy,” he said. “We have to swim in the morning, and periodically put our heads underwater. This is key.” And he popped his head underwater. But Jerome was back.

  “Such a busy time,” Jerome said.

  Another duck’s head popped out of the smelly green water.

  “What are we talking about?” she asked. This one’s name was Jackie.

  “These guys want to free the squirrels,” Jerome told her.

  “Not the squirrels,” I said. “The Bison.”

  “Why would they want to free the squirrels?” Jackie asked. “The squirrels seem pretty free to me.”

  “Bison,” I said. “We’re trying to free the Bison.”

  “Bison!” Jerome said. “Are those the big guys inside the fence? Who says they want to be free?”

  “We did. And they did,” I said. I tried to explain that their wanting to be free was not part of the debate, that we were actually hoping to get the ducks’ help in freeing them, but they continued to jabber among themselves.

  “Why wouldn’t they just fly over the fence?” Jackie asked.

  “I don’t think they can fly,” Jerome said.

  “Sure they can!” Jackie insisted. “I see them flying all the time! They are white and fluffy and fly sort of slowly.”

  “Oh, right!” Jerome said.

  “I think you’re talking about clouds,” Jerry said.

  “No, we were talking about squirrels,” Jackie said.

  “Bison,” Jerome corrected.

  “What are we talking about again?” said a fourth duck, this one named Jeremiah. “My beak is itchy.”

  And at that, we felt it was time to leave. We turned away, and I heard one of the ducks say, “Who was that?”

  The answer was “No idea.”

  When we were out of earshot, I told Sonja we should not have asked the ducks. No serious plan ever involves ducks. Finally she agreed, though she seemed bewildered and disappointed that the ducks could not be inspired.

  But we did need the rats, the crows, and the horses. So we made arrangements with all of them, and to the last creature they were excited about the plan, and about freeing the Bison, and were quite happy to do it as soon as possible.

  * * *

  —

  After all our gatherings and plannings, I was so tired I needed some time at the top of the rock, for air and contemplation.

  “Don’t worry,” Sonja said. She had come up next to me. This time she’d approached with confidence, with directness, without any of the shyness I’d known her for. I have to say the transformation was remarkable and I was very proud of her. Even her busted eye looked better; it seemed to have turned itself into a handsome scar, a dignified thing.

  “We’re making good progress,” she said. “I even think the ducks will surprise you in the end. I think everyone has a role to play.”

  I sighed the loudest sigh of my life. Again with the ducks.

  “And also,” she said, “you know there’s been talk about who will oversee things in the park when the Bison are gone.”

  I hadn’t had time to think about this. Yes, when the Bison were gone, they would leave a void—a rather large one. Some group or some one would have to step in and become the leader, the overseer, the Keeper of the Equilibrium.

  “It could be you,” Sonja said. “Think of it. You’re already the closest to the Bison. You know all that they know. In fact, you’ve delivered all the information they have. So it just seems natural that you’d take over when they’re gone.”

  This I hadn’t thought of.

  In fact, never in ten thousand years would I have thought of such a thing. Me as the Keeper of the Equilibrium?

  Sonja must have seen the astonishment on my face.

  “But who else could it be?” she asked.

  And though I was flattered to be thought of this way, and could see the logic, given my proximity to the Bison, all I could think of was Bertrand. He was the one I went to for wisdom. Could I be the Keeper of the Equilibrium when I looked to someone else for guidance?

  I thought about this as we crisscrossed the park, making our final arrangements for the Bison’s escape. There were routes to clear. There were animals to warn. There were humans to count. There were distractions to design. And there were goats to engage.

  TWENTY-NINE

  I had made a plan with Helene to talk to the goats once their day was done. It was just before sunset when I went to the windmill and found them all still eating, their heads down and jaws churning. Helene led me to a hill overlooking the field of flowers and weeds, though the weeds were nearly gone. Not one of the goats looked up.

  “Just bark,” Helene said.

  “Bark?” I asked.

  “Do you know how to bark?” she asked. “Usually the dogs will bark.”

  I had only barked a few times in my life. Being the Eyes required speed and stealth, and barking eliminated both, really. Barking brought attention to oneself, and slowed one down considerably. You can’t run so fast while barking. Not everyone knows that.

  But I understood her meaning. I needed to make some sound so the goats would take notice. And only a few of them had seen me, ever, so I figured a very loud first impression might be in order.

  “Yip,” I said.

  Or I thought I said “Yip,” but even Helene, who was standing next to me, didn’t seem to hear it. The wind from the ocean was strong, so I thought my “Yip” had gotten lost in the offshore breeze. I tried another yip, this one louder. This time, Helene took notice, but also smiled a pained sort of smile, as if to tell me my yip was more like a yip. I had to do much, much better. I decided to just go big and bark.

  So I sucked the wind from the ocean.

  And I ate the clouds from the sky.

  And I looked to the Sun and gathered from her all the strength she had to give.

  And I roared a kind of bark that was also a howl and also a bellow and even a bit of a squall. I had my eyes closed as I unleashed it, and when it ended I opened my eyes to find a thousand goat heads and two thousand goat eyes looking up at me, terrified. I had no idea what to say to them.

  But Helene did. “In the morning…” she whispered to me.

  “In the morning!” I roared.

  “We will engage in a heroic act…” Helene whispered.

  “We will engage in a heroic act!” I roared.

  Already I saw that these were the right words. The goats, who I took to be only interested in eating prickly leaves, seemed very interested in the words heroic act.

  “We will cloak and free three animal captives…” Helene whispered.

  “We will cloak and free three animal captives!” I roared.

  I repeated her words for a bit, and soon enough I had gained confidence and momentum enough to lay out the plan. The work of the goats was not so complicated, I should say. They merely had to surround the Bison, leaping and baying and generally making chaos all around, so the humans minding them would have trouble seeing the Bison in their midst.

  By the end of our gathering, I was convinced that the goats would perform their duties with passion and determination. The rest would be up to the gulls, the pelicans, the rats and raccoons, the squirrels and the horses—with absolutely nothing being done, please and thank you, by the ducks.

  * * *

  —

  The only problem with any of this was that we had not yet found an opening to tell the Bison about the soon-ness of their escape. All day, the Bison had been surrounded by those new humans in official-seeming clothes with all their new tools. Every so often Yolanda would fly overhead to see if anything had changed, if the humans had left, and it wasn’t until deep in the evening that she reported that the Bison were again alone.