on his shift—and as the cadets filed out of the room, Mico was careful to avoid eye contact with Tyrell.
Had he glanced over, he would have seen Tyrell draw Gu-Nah to one side and quietly ask, “What sort of a cadet is Mico? Troublesome?”
And if he had heard the dark tone in Tyrell’s voice, Mico would have known for sure that he had been marked out as a monkey to be watched.
—
Later that night Mico lay on the roof of his home, silently running through the events of the day. He was struggling to come to terms with history according to Tyrell. Certainly it was logical and heroic; it made you feel proud.
But was it true?
How could soldiers sworn to preserve peace take such delight in killing?
He sat up, checked that no one was around, then leaped down from the roof and hurried away down the dark paths.
A few moments later he was crouching in the shrubs by the perimeter wall, taking out the small bundle that had been hidden there, unwrapping the carving of the three monkeys in their distinctive poses.
Mico ran his finger gently over the carved figures; they had been looked after with such loving care. Surely this was not how savages and cannibals behaved.
T emple Gardens proved to be a welcoming home for Papina and the remnants of her troop. The rough encampment they had made at the foot of the Hanuman statue when they first arrived had now grown into an established part of the gardens. Various new monkeys had joined their group, and while Rowna had become involved with a handsome male monkey called Titan, Fig was being courted by at least a dozen monkeys who she played off against one another with an easy charm and plenty of flirtatious laughter.
Twitcher ran a class every morning to teach the young monkeys about the layout of the city, and this had been a great way for Papina to make new friends, but the main reason she was starting to feel settled was that they were no longer the newest monkeys in the gardens. In the early days her troop was always the one asking questions and looking lost, whereas now they were regarded as established residents. Newcomers would turn to them for advice about the routines of the temple, which helped Papina feel as if she belonged somewhere again.
But the influx of new monkeys also meant that she had to face up to the grim realization that a darker story was unfolding across the city.
Twitcher and other volunteers did an amazing job scouring the streets for rhesus monkeys in need of sanctuary, and guiding them to Temple Gardens, but each new batch of arrivals had harrowing accounts of violent abuse at the hands of langur troops. They spoke of dawn raids, of males butchered as they slept, of females running for their lives with infants clinging to their backs, of being driven from streets they had inhabited for generations.
What puzzled and frustrated Papina, though, was that no one asked the question, Why? Why was all this happening? Neither did anyone ask what would happen when space at Temple Gardens ran out. It was as if everyone feared the answers, so no one asked the questions.
Although Papina’s own grief had dulled into a background ache, every time they sat huddled in a group listening to the latest accounts of langur attacks, her mind floated back to the last time she saw her father, and the longing to find out what had become of him grew stronger.
She tried to talk to her mother about it, but Willow seemed to have closed that part of her life down. Willow was pragmatic; she knew they had narrowly dodged death on that fateful night; she knew they had been given another chance and she was determined to build a better life here in Temple Gardens. Thinking about the past would only be a torment.
But Papina’s young mind didn’t understand this. She wanted answers, and if her mother wouldn’t help, then she’d find someone who would.
—
It was halfway through one of the lessons that the idea first occurred to Papina. Twitcher had been teaching the monkeys to
Had he glanced over, he would have seen Tyrell draw Gu-Nah to one side and quietly ask, “What sort of a cadet is Mico? Troublesome?”
And if he had heard the dark tone in Tyrell’s voice, Mico would have known for sure that he had been marked out as a monkey to be watched.
—
Later that night Mico lay on the roof of his home, silently running through the events of the day. He was struggling to come to terms with history according to Tyrell. Certainly it was logical and heroic; it made you feel proud.
But was it true?
How could soldiers sworn to preserve peace take such delight in killing?
He sat up, checked that no one was around, then leaped down from the roof and hurried away down the dark paths.
A few moments later he was crouching in the shrubs by the perimeter wall, taking out the small bundle that had been hidden there, unwrapping the carving of the three monkeys in their distinctive poses.
Mico ran his finger gently over the carved figures; they had been looked after with such loving care. Surely this was not how savages and cannibals behaved.
T emple Gardens proved to be a welcoming home for Papina and the remnants of her troop. The rough encampment they had made at the foot of the Hanuman statue when they first arrived had now grown into an established part of the gardens. Various new monkeys had joined their group, and while Rowna had become involved with a handsome male monkey called Titan, Fig was being courted by at least a dozen monkeys who she played off against one another with an easy charm and plenty of flirtatious laughter.
Twitcher ran a class every morning to teach the young monkeys about the layout of the city, and this had been a great way for Papina to make new friends, but the main reason she was starting to feel settled was that they were no longer the newest monkeys in the gardens. In the early days her troop was always the one asking questions and looking lost, whereas now they were regarded as established residents. Newcomers would turn to them for advice about the routines of the temple, which helped Papina feel as if she belonged somewhere again.
But the influx of new monkeys also meant that she had to face up to the grim realization that a darker story was unfolding across the city.
Twitcher and other volunteers did an amazing job scouring the streets for rhesus monkeys in need of sanctuary, and guiding them to Temple Gardens, but each new batch of arrivals had harrowing accounts of violent abuse at the hands of langur troops. They spoke of dawn raids, of males butchered as they slept, of females running for their lives with infants clinging to their backs, of being driven from streets they had inhabited for generations.
What puzzled and frustrated Papina, though, was that no one asked the question, Why? Why was all this happening? Neither did anyone ask what would happen when space at Temple Gardens ran out. It was as if everyone feared the answers, so no one asked the questions.
Although Papina’s own grief had dulled into a background ache, every time they sat huddled in a group listening to the latest accounts of langur attacks, her mind floated back to the last time she saw her father, and the longing to find out what had become of him grew stronger.
She tried to talk to her mother about it, but Willow seemed to have closed that part of her life down. Willow was pragmatic; she knew they had narrowly dodged death on that fateful night; she knew they had been given another chance and she was determined to build a better life here in Temple Gardens. Thinking about the past would only be a torment.
But Papina’s young mind didn’t understand this. She wanted answers, and if her mother wouldn’t help, then she’d find someone who would.
—
It was halfway through one of the lessons that the idea first occurred to Papina. Twitcher had been teaching the monkeys to
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