“We heard,” Freya said to me when I finally snuck into the enclosure. All three Bison were in the corner farthest from the human-made parts of their world. “And we are ready.”

  “We are so ready,” Meredith added.

  The humans had spent the day measuring and weighing and poking the Bison.

  “It was humiliating,” Samuel said.

  “Degrading,” Meredith said.

  “These were new people, from a university of some kind,” Freya said. I did not know what a university was, so I said nothing. But I saw that Freya was both depleted and very angry. I had never seen her so angry.

  “The usual Parks People treat us kindly,” she said. “We have known them for many years. In most cases, we have been here far longer than them, so there is a respect there. A respect for one’s elders. But these new people—to them we were just things. Rocks to turn over and inspect.”

  “Things to poke and prod,” Samuel said.

  “So we are ready to go,” Freya said again.

  I was thrilled to hear this, so we went over the plan, which both Freya and Meredith found reasonable and plausible. Samuel was not optimistic about its likelihood of success, but I had anticipated his dour outlook. As long as Freya and Meredith were for it, though, it would happen, and Samuel would go along. Freya had told me many times that Samuel would do anything to avoid being alone.

  “Now Johannes,” Freya said, her eyes suddenly intense and upon me. “When we’re gone, I would like you to take over. I would like you to be the Keeper of the Equilibrium. Would you do that?”

  I could not respond. There had been no buildup, no preamble. But Sonja had been right.

  “I know it’s quite a bit of responsibility,” she said. “But you are the clear choice. You have been essential to our work, and you’ve been privy to our deliberations and judgments. You are younger than we are, of course, but we have every faith in you.”

  “We really do,” Meredith added. She smiled at me through watery eyes. “You’ll do well.”

  Samuel said nothing, and finally Meredith turned to him, annoyed. “Now would be the appropriate time for you to offer some encouragement.”

  “Well,” he muttered, “there really wasn’t anyone else.”

  I accepted.

  I would be the Keeper.

  “But when can we talk about all I need to know?” I asked.

  There were so many thousands of things to ask, and there was nowhere near enough time.

  “My son,” Freya said. “You have been the Eyes for a long, long time. There is nothing left for you to know.”

  And though I did not believe this, I accepted her verdict. I had no choice.

  Samuel gave her an imploring look, and Freya looked down, then at me. “There is one more thing,” she said.

  “Yes?” I said.

  “You’re half-coyote,” she said.

  “Okay, sounds good,” I said, because I had not heard her correctly.

  “No,” she said, her voice firm. “Listen to me carefully. Your father was a coyote.”

  I laughed. I laughed because it was such a stupid thing for them to say—to say such a terrible thing at a time like this, when we had so much planning to do.

  “I’m sorry, son,” Freya said. “Maybe we should have told you sooner.”

  “I told you we should have told him sooner,” Samuel said.

  I couldn’t speak. What Freya had said didn’t make sense.

  “Think about it,” she said. “Why do you think you’re so fast? Why do you think the other dogs look at you like you’re different, like you’re similar but radically apart?”

  My throat dried. My eyes swam.

  “Why do you suppose you make the unusual sounds you do? Do you know any other dogs who say ha ha hooooo?”

  As you know, I had always thought all these things were due to me being a free dog. A fast dog. An extraordinary dog.

  “This is what a coyote says,” she said. “This is the sound your father made. We loved that sound.” She looked to Samuel and Meredith, who both smiled. I could tell their minds had journeyed far into the past.

  “Your father was the last coyote on this island,” Samuel finally said. “When he died, all that was left of his kind was you.”

  Oh how my mind spun! For a moment I believed them, then I did not believe them, no. They were old and their minds were not sharp. This could be some sort of dream-thought of theirs, some strange error of fading minds.

  “He was quite majestic,” Meredith said.

  “I had no plans to ever tell you,” Freya said, “because it would not help you to know. It would only endanger you, really. It was better for you to think you were all-dog. But now that the humans are looking for a coyote, you should know.”

  “They’re looking for you,” Samuel said.

  THIRTY

  I ran. By now the sky was black and the Sun’s million siblings were out and shimmering, and I ran from the Bison and to Bertrand. I had to see him, to tell him this news, to see if he thought it could be true. If he knew it to be true. Oh, I thought, I don’t know if I could bear it if he knew, too!

  I ran in the silver light, so angry, but then I remembered I had happy news, too. I would be Keeper of the Equilibrium! I was furious that I had never known about my blood, my father, my origins—it had been so wrong of them not to tell me, so outrageously wrong—but the thought of becoming Keeper shot bolts of happiness through me. And Bertrand would love this news, I knew. I pictured us together, partners, overseers, protectors. We would be unsurpassable!

  And as I ran to him, I realized he didn’t even know that we were freeing the Bison today! So much had already happened this day! I realized I hadn’t seen him since he last flew over Helene and me, yesterday, before these many important revelations—before the ideas of mountains and ships and outrageous schemes of liberation.

  I ran to Bertrand’s nest and found it empty. Which was odd and unusual. I could not remember the last time I’d found his nest empty at night. He was a very regular sleeper, fond of his routine. But if he was not at home, I knew he would be at the waterfall, his favorite place. But when I arrived, he was not there. I went to the row of garbage cans near the plaza. He sometimes got hungry just before bedtime, so I raced there, expecting him to be feasting on fries or buns, but when I got there, I found no Bertrand. I did find Sonja and Angus, eating heartily from a bag of chips.

  “Gotta keep our energy up,” Angus explained.

  “Of course,” I said, and asked if either had seen Bertrand, and they said no, not since the afternoon, and though they were not particularly troubled by his absence, they agreed it would be good to locate him—if only to settle any last details for the liberation of the Bison—so we split up to look for him.

  Angus said he’d look in the cathedral of flowers, where he’d known Bertrand to go occasionally, even at dusk, to take in the languid, lovely smell of night on leaves and petals. Sonja said she’d go toward the shore to see if any of the other gulls had seen or heard from Bertrand—and if not, she could get them to aid in (and make quick work of ) our search.

  “I’m sorry I’m making a big deal out of this,” I said, and they said not to worry, not to worry. Bertrand was needed, of course, and every moment was precious, given how close we were to beginning what I’d been thinking of as the Bison Freedom Gambit. So they rushed off, and I was happy they did not ask me where I would be looking, because I did not want to go, and did not want them to think the same terrible thought that was crawling on spindly spider legs into my consciousness.

  When I arrived at the archery field, at first I saw nothing. Not a soul, not a remnant of human or mammal or bird. The wind was gusting, and the paper targets on the haybales were rippling, and I looked up at the sibling-suns with gratitude for this—this empty archery field.

  But then I saw something white. It was on the ground, on the far end of the field. It was a small lump, a flash of something pale in the moonlight. Clothing, I thought. Some part of the humans’ archery kits or clothes. I walked closer and saw gray, too—a gray half-circle that I decided could simply be the shadow under the human-clothing that was this shape.

  Finally I drew closer and saw the yellow protuberance. A beak. His beak. It was Bertrand.

  I stopped. Why go closer?

  I wondered if I must get closer. Was it not enough to know he was gone? Why should I have to see him, his mangled body, the arrow piercing him—the fate he’d invited?

  And I was angry. I was so angry with him. There was no reason for this, this senseless death. There was no reason to leave this world like this. To leave me like this! Selfish, I thought. Selfish, selfish, selfish.

  How would I live with this? How will all of us who loved you, Bertrand, live with this? Forever we will see you on this field, we will think of your ignominious end. Why do this to us? Leave us with this? All for what?

  All for what?

  THIRTY-ONE

  But then he stirred. Then he thrashed. A whirl of wings spun and flailed. I ran to him.

  “You’re alive!” I said.

  “Oh,” he said, finding me above him. “There you are,” he said. He looked away. “I’m so ashamed.”

  The arrow had pierced his left wing.

  “I’ve been trying to break it off,” he said, “to shorten it, to be able to walk. I’ve been here since the late afternoon.” Now his eyes were wet. Again he hid his face from me. “Oh, I’m so sorry. I’m so embarrassed. Oh, what stupidity!”

  I wanted to agree that he should be embarrassed, and he was stupid, so profoundly stupid, but I am a practical animal and found myself focused on accomplishing the task at hand—breaking this arrow so he could right himself.

  “Hold still,” I said, and he did. He obeyed me from then on, for which I was grateful. If I’d had to argue with him that night on the archery field I would not have made it through.

  He held still, and I was about to jump on one end of the arrow when I heard the familiar sound of Angus sniffling through the grass. I waited, knowing that this would be far easier with his assistance.

  “You see any sign of him?” Angus said as he approached. He could not see Bertrand yet, but when he did, he rushed to us.

  “He’s alive,” he said to me. “You’re alive,” he said to Bertrand. “But what have you done?”

  “I’m sorry,” Bertrand said again, and we began strategizing on how to break or even extract the arrow, and in the middle of our deliberations, Sonja appeared, saying nothing. We could hear the solemn horror in her shallow breaths.

  With the four of us on the task, we were able to first break the longer half of the arrow, the end containing the deadly silver point. Bertrand and I assumed that we would simply break the shorter end, too, leaving a length still lodged in Bertrand’s wing, but it was Sonja who thought we could do more.

  “Why not be rid of it?” she asked, and soon had her small jaws around the wooden arrow-shaft, and was pulling it away from Bertrand’s wing. He grimaced and tears spilled from his eyes, but soon the arrow’s bloody length came free and Sonja did what I wanted to do, too—she ran with it in her mouth till she could hide it in a thicket where we would not have to see it, ever again.

  “I’m so sorry,” Bertrand said again.

  He looked at each one of us, as if he planned to depart the world then and there, from the shame of it all.

  “Stop that,” Angus said. “You’ll live.”

  “You will,” I said, and Bertrand closed his eyes, releasing new tears. We all knew he would never fly the same again.

  THIRTY-TWO

  We had no time to linger, no time to recount how Bertrand had been felled. We needed to begin the liberation. Bertrand would have no place in it, given his recklessness, his silliness, but we would deal with all that another time.

  We installed him in his nest, and we sutured his wound as well as we could. The others left, and I was leaving, too, when Bertrand beckoned me to stay.

  “I’m so sorry, my friend,” he said.

  “Don’t be sorry,” I said.

  “I was jealous,” he said. “All that time you were spending with the goat. I guess I wanted to get your attention. Or impress you. None of it makes sense now. I’m so angry at my mind.”

  I hadn’t known this, still can’t believe this, that the mighty Bertrand would have been jealous of my time with Helene. Because time was short, I only said that it didn’t matter, that he was my greatest friend, that he was a paragon of valor.

  “Valor, huh?” he said. “What I did was selfish and small. Just when every one of us is needed most, I’m out of commission. That’s not valor.”

  “We will manage,” I said.

  “I’m so useless,” he said.

  “You are not useless,” I said.

  “I’m just a burden now,” he said.

  I told him he was not a burden, not at all, and I left him in his nest, knowing he would live and heal, but be forever earthbound. I worried about him, that whatever dark clouds were plaguing his mind would only grow when he missed this most heroic mission of ours.

  Angus returned to the nest. His eyes were warm, sympathetic—but urgent, too.

  “It’s time,” he said. “We have to begin.”

  I nuzzled Bertrand for a moment and then ran.

  THIRTY-THREE

  Angus and his time-machine were key to making all of this work, because the ship left at seven-oh-eight and only he and Helene had any idea what all these number-words meant. I knew just that we had to do it in the shortest amount of time, in order to maximize the chaos and minimize any possibility that any of the humans could figure out just what was happening in time to stop it all from happening.

  This is what we were making happen:

  It started with reconnaissance. Sonja and I had to figure out how many humans were minding the Bison that morning. Sometimes there were four. Sometimes only one. It was up to us to assess just how many humans we had to handle.

  There was a light on at the Bison Enclosure Office, so Sonja jumped up to the windowsill and peeked in. She counted one woman sitting at a desk, half-asleep with her feet up. Then there was the hammock-man, who roamed the perimeter, and this morning we found him—where else?—lying in his hammock strung between two tall pines.

  We were thinking that this morning’s humans were going to be particularly easy to handle when—no, no, no!—we saw a large vehicle pull up, its lights like white blades slicing through the woods, and four humans emerge.

  They were the same humans who had been poking and prodding the Bison the day before. They were in uniform, with khaki pants and black jackets. They left the vehicle and made for the office with great confidence and determination. I looked up at Sonja with a look that said “Oh no.” And she looked down at me with a look that said “I know.”

  But whether it was two humans or six, it was about to come down to Angus and Sharif and Johnson and the rest of the raccoons. The raccoons were hiding in a culvert when I came to them to report the human count. Angus was surprised but not daunted.

  “So are we biting?” Sharif asked.

  I hadn’t heard anything about biting until that moment, and really didn’t want to be part of any biting-of-humans. It never led anywhere good. Humans are deeply opposed to being bitten, and go to great lengths not to get bit, and they punish the biters without mercy. I expressed my hesitance to Angus and his crew, who told me that my concerns were duly noted but that they would do what the situation required.

  “We only bite for justice,” Angus said, and I could not argue with that. Bite for justice. It had a certain ring.

  Now Angus turned to his platoon of black and gray.

  “We begin at six-twenty-one in the morning,” he said. He turned to me. “That’s just a few minutes from now.”

  It seemed that all of the raccoons could tell time now, and by my count, at least three of them had time-machines like Angus, were wearing them on their furry wrists, and could read them with casual confidence. I left them there, in the culvert, knowing that the next time I heard from them they would be inciting—we hoped—a lunatic bit of chaos in the parking lot.

  Now I went to the Bison, who were, as planned, in the corner of the enclosure closest to the feeding station. The feeding station had a gate to the outside world—one the humans used to get into the feeding station. It was common for the Bison to gather there, in anticipation of being fed.

  I skulked in the thicket nearby, and made a quick little yipping sound that we’d agreed would be my signal that all was a go.

  Their return signal was to be a nod of the head, which they all did, almost in unison.

  We were a go. I looked up to Yolanda, who was circling above, and gave her a nod. She let out a loud screech, signaling to everyone else that this thing was beginning.

  And it began immediately.

  It began when an alarm sounded from the black vehicle in which the official people had arrived. I looked over to find three raccoons on the vehicle’s hood, scratching the paint, and Angus on top, urinating. The four uniformed humans, screaming and flailing, left the Bison office and ran to the car, which was making a deafening noise.

  “Oh my god! Oh my god!” the humans from the office yelled as they ran to the car.

  And now one door of the vehicle opened, and the human who got out also yelled “Oh my god! Oh my god!” and then quickly retreated back inside the vehicle.

  Now the humans from the office were yelling “Oh my god! Oh my god!” as they circled the car, not really knowing what to do. The human was safe inside the car, and the office humans were safe at a certain distance, so it was funny for a long moment, watching the humans stand yelling “Oh my god! Oh my god!” while watching the raccoons do their scratching and thumping and urinating while these humans had no plan to stop it.