A Valiant Quest for the Misfit Menagerie Read online

  Praise for

  The Daring Escape of the Misfit Menagerie:

  “I forgot about the real world when I got caught up in the charming world of the Most Magnificent Circus. With wonderful friends like Smalls the bear, Tilda the bunny, Rigby the dog, and Wombat the wombat, who needs people? As Wombat puts it, ‘Human is quite a confusing thing to be.’”

  —Dan Gutman, New York Times bestselling author of The Genius Files

  * * *

  “A wild and wonderful circus ride. . . . I took to The Daring Escape of the Misfit Menagerie like a bear to honey. Young readers will eat it up!”

  —Tor Seidler, author of The Wainscott Weasel, an ALA Notable Book; Mean Margaret, a finalist for the National Book award; and more

  * * *

  “With a cruel guardian worthy of Rowling, Snicket, or Dahl, and animal friends as endearing as E.B. White’s, Resnick’s debut melted my heart.”

  —Suzanne LaFleur, author of Eight Keys and Love, Aubrey

  * * *

  “A good old-fashioned story.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  A division of Penguin Young Readers Group

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 345 Hudson Street

  New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

  USA / Canada / UK / Ireland / Australia / New Zealand / India / South Africa / China

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  For more information about the Penguin Group visit penguin.com

  Copyright © 2013 Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  Published simultaneously in Canada

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

  ISBN: 978-1-101-60447-2

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Contents

  Praise for The Daring Escape of the Misfit Menagerie

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Also by Jacqueline Resnick

  Dedication

  No More Cupboards

  Jumping Through Hoops

  The Wombatopolis Theorem

  An IQ of Seven Thousand

  A World Record

  A Wild, Overgrown Land

  A Running Jump

  The Forgotten Car

  An Intruder

  Gone

  Sleep Is for Weaklings

  Battle of the Herds

  Dropping In

  Proper Dining

  Mulberry

  A Goodbye

  Pandemonium in the City

  Fire in the Elevator

  A Cacophony of Voices

  Karate King

  742 Days

  A Ghost in the Night

  Toddle’s Toy Emporium

  Sweet Nothings

  Invisible Boy

  A Stuffed Piglet

  Bertie Rots

  A Pockmarked Thought

  Suspicious Behavior

  Plan Rescue Princess

  Clay Master Pro

  A Glass Box

  Brussels Sprouts

  A Pair of Pelicans

  Two Blurry Shapes

  Silly Indeed

  A Flying Wombat

  A Newspaper Ad

  A Promise

  Damsel in Distress

  Super Spies to the Rescue

  A Photograph

  More Questions Than Answers

  A Toddle

  A Sloppy, Gummy, Sticky Mess

  Four-Leaf Clovers

  Freedom

  Brains and Brawn

  Bear in the Yard

  The Truth

  A Menagerie

  Home

  For All the Vegetables

  A Different Bertie

  Misfit Menagerie Ignites Craze!

  Acknowledgments

  Misfit Menagerie novels

  by Jacqueline Resnick:

  The Daring Escape of the Misfit Menagerie

  A Valiant Quest for the Misfit Menagerie

  For my sister, Lauren, who dreamed with me from the beginning.

  No More Cupboards

  “No more burlap-sack beds,” Bertie whispered. “No more early mornings in the Big Top or late nights scrubbing caravans.”

  Susan turned onto her back, pushing a strand of long blond hair off her face. She and Bertie were lying with the animals in a makeshift bed of leaves on the ground. Through a gap in the willow tree above them, she could see the sun starting to slink into the sky, sending fingers of light filtering through the branches. “No more dry oats for breakfast,” she said. “Or lunch or dinner.” It was their new favorite game: What We Won’t Miss about the Circus. They’d been playing it ever since their escape two nights ago.

  “No more fingernails in our faces,” Bertie said triumphantly. He was leaning against Smalls, his head propped up against the bear’s back. Wombat was curled up in his arm, his furry snout tucked under his hand.

  “No more stinky hot cocoa breath,” Susan shot back. She threaded her fingers through Rigby’s long white tufts of fur. The dog’s head was resting on her leg, his cold, wet nose pressed against her ankle. “I used to love hot cocoa,” she added grudgingly. “But after watching your uncle chug it down by the urn-full for six months . . .” She shuddered. “I never want to see or smell it again.”

  Bertie wrinkled his freckled nose, making a sour face. “I never want to see or smell him again. Which reminds me”—his lips turned up in a smile—“no more cupboards to be locked up in.”

  “No more blisters or rope burn,” Susan chimed in happily. She could feel the words fizzing out of her, like cola from a fountain. She held up a hand, raw from hours spent twirling on the aerial ropes. “No more never-ending practices.”

  Several strands of bright red hair slipped into Bertie’s bright blue eyes as he looked over at Susan. “Honestly, I don’t know what that kind of life feels like.” For an instant, his face clouded over, and Susan wondered if he was thinking about the motor-car crash from years ago, the one that stole his memories and made him an orphan in one fell swoop.

  “It feels incredible,” she assured him. “And amazing and fantastic and . . .”

  “Stupendous?” Wombat offered groggily, opening one eye. He yawned as, around him, the other animals began to wake as well.

  “Like being home,” Susan finished. “Well . . . almost.” She reached into the waistband of her shimmery blue skirt and pulled out the letter she’d stuck there. It had started to crumple around the edges, and she smoothed it out now as she read it over once more. It was proof—real and tangible—that her parents wanted her, that they’d always wanted her.

  For six months, Bertie’s uncle Claude, the owner of the Most Magnificent Traveling Circus, had hidden her parents’ letters from her, made her believe she’d been abandoned. But now she knew the truth: in a small farmhouse in the town of Mulberry, her parents were waiting for her. She closed her eyes, picturing her home: the fields of berries that glistened like rubies in the sun; the jewel-blue waves trailing clouds of foam into the sand; the way the house seemed to sparkle in the early morning light, as if shards of diamonds were trapped inside the stone. It was a treasure chest of a
home, a place that made you feel rich, no matter how far from it you were. Something pulsed inside her chest. She wanted so badly to be there, to see her parents with her very own eyes and feel their arms wrapping around her.

  “You must really miss it,” Bertie said softly.

  Susan opened her eyes to find Bertie’s freckled face staring down at her. He’d sat up and was now tugging absently at his suspenders as the animals began to stand and stretch around him. “I do,” she admitted. Above them, orange sunlight swept across the sky, and the woods were suddenly alive with sounds. Trees whispered and twigs cracked. The high whistle of a bird drifted in from a distance. “I miss waking up to my sounds, you know?”

  Bertie stared at her, unblinking, and it hit her that he didn’t—that until now, the only sounds he knew were the angry, muted ones of the circus: the roar of the crowd, and Claude’s nasal whine, and the groaning of the caravans as they trundled through the night.

  “My favorite is how I can hear the ocean from my bed,” she told him. “Sometimes it sounds like it’s talking just to me.” She could feel tears pricking at her eyes, and she blinked hard, looking down.

  “You’re going to get back there,” Bertie told her, his voice low and determined. “We’re going to get you back there.”

  “After we find Tilda,” Susan said firmly. She looked back up, meeting Bertie’s eyes.

  Tilda the Angora rabbit was part of the Misfit Menagerie, as they’d come to be known, along with Smalls the sun bear, Rigby the Komondor dog, and Wombat the hairy-nosed wombat. At least she was until a few days ago—when Claude sold her off to make a quick buck. But last night, after the animals drifted off, Bertie told Susan he had a plan: now that they’d escaped from the circus, he was going to do whatever it took to reunite Tilda with the Menagerie, to make his new family whole again. “When Smalls came to the circus, he saved me,” Bertie had said in a hushed voice as the animals slept soundly around them. “He changed my whole life. It’s my turn to do the same for him.”

  Now, Bertie released his suspenders, breaking into a smile. “After we find Tilda,” he agreed.

  Behind Bertie, Wombat nodded furiously. “That’s correct,” he said as he launched into step one of Tilda’s sixteen-step grooming process. “Our first matter of business is procuring Tilda from wherever she’s being held captive!”

  “Are you really grooming again, Wombat?” Rigby asked with a groan. He walked over to Smalls, several golden-hued leaves clinging stubbornly to his long strands of fur.

  “It makes me feel like I’m communing with Tilda,” Wombat huffed. He picked several specks of dirt out of his fur, step two in Tilda’s grooming process. “This is what you do when you’re separated from the love of your life, the peanut butter to your jelly, the stars to your moon, the web to your spider, the—”

  “It’s a great idea, Wombat,” Smalls jumped in. He shot Rigby a warning look. The last thing they needed was to set Wombat off again. In the one day since they’d escaped from the circus, he’d been particularly temperamental, constantly swapping between bemoaning Tilda’s absence and scolding Smalls and Rigby for not moving fast enough. “We’re on a quest!” he kept shouting. “There’s no time for dillydallying!” It had gotten even worse after the Lifers had taken off the night before to go look for Lord Jest—leaving them without the protection of two lions.

  “Thank you, Smalls,” Wombat said primly. He buffed his stubby tail up against a leaf. “As you’re aware, we’re on a most vital quest, and I know my love, Tilda, would want me to look my best on a quest.” He paused, cocking his head. “Look at that, I’m a poet.”

  “And you didn’t even know it,” Rigby joked.

  As Rigby and Wombat began listing words that rhymed with quest—test, west, zest!—Smalls rubbed absently at the yellow marking of a horseshoe on his chest, watching Bertie talk to Susan. They were both still wearing their outfits from the circus: Susan in her acrobat’s uniform of a leotard and skirt, old ballet slippers on her feet, and Bertie in his threadbare white shirt and too-short brown pants, held up by a pair of red suspenders.

  Smalls watched as Bertie broke into a smile; he listened as Wombat snorted and Rigby barked; he inhaled the sweet scent of autumn leaves swirling around him. All of a sudden, he felt something tingling inside him, a feeling he’d missed since being hauled off to the circus. Excitement.

  It was the best kind: warm and bubbly, the kind that started at his ears and spread all the way down to his claws. The last time he’d felt it, he’d been at his old home at Mumford’s Farm & Orchard, playing Capture the Clover with Wombat, Rigby, and Tilda.

  Tilda. Smalls sat back on his haunches, feeling more determined than ever. Bertie and Susan were right: there was an Angora rabbit–sized hole in their midst, and they had to do whatever it took to fill it. To make their family whole. Then things could finally be right again.

  “If only I was proficient in time travel,” Wombat said wistfully, drawing Smalls out of his thoughts. “Then I could deliver us back to Mumford’s, to before the circus and the escape, when we were all still together . . .”

  “No!” The grunt burst right out of Smalls. “Then we would never have met Bertie.” He looked over at the fiery-haired boy, who had pushed his baseball cap off his head to soak in the morning sun. A month ago, Smalls hadn’t even known Bertie existed; now he couldn’t imagine his life without him.

  “Or Susan,” Rigby added, his tail thumping against the ground.

  “But don’t worry, Wombat,” Smalls said fiercely. “We’re not going to let that whiny little girl who bought Tilda get away with it.”

  Smalls growled under his breath at the memory. That curly-haired girl had stomped into their caravan wearing a ridiculously poufy yellow dress and bought Tilda right out from under their noses. “We’re going to get Tilda back,” Smalls swore. “No matter what kind of testy, zesty quest it takes us on.” He touched a paw to the four-leaf clover tucked behind his ear. Lucky clovers always used to flock to him, but so far he hadn’t found a single new one in the woods. He would, though; he had to. Once he had his luck back, they would be sure to find Tilda. “I promise,” he said, locking eyes with Wombat.

  Bertie looked over at the sound of Smalls’s grunts. “Sometimes I swear Smalls is talking to the other animals,” he told Susan.

  “Who knows?” Susan smiled. Flecks of green shone in her light brown eyes. “Maybe he is.”

  Bertie walked over to Smalls, scratching him absently under his chin. “I bet you’re thinking about your friends, aren’t you?” he murmured. He’d been thinking about them a lot, too. Not just Tilda, but also Lord Jest. Every time he closed his eyes, he could hear it: the thundering crash as Lord Jest leapt in front of Claude’s car. The elephant had stopped the car from hitting Bertie and Smalls, and now Bertie had no idea if he was okay . . . or even alive.

  Bertie swallowed hard. The memory made him want to jump up and race all the way back to the circus grounds. But he couldn’t. Because if Lord Jest was still there, then his uncle Claude would be too. The thought of facing his uncle again made Bertie feel like he’d just swallowed a live toad. The second Claude saw him, he’d probably lock him up in a cupboard for a whole year. And then Bertie would be of no help to anyone.

  Bertie touched a hand to his pocket, trying to think of something—anything—else. He could feel the outline of the small wooden boy he’d found abandoned on the circus grounds. Yesterday, he’d noticed something new: a stamp on the underside of the boy’s foot, two bright green T’s, connected at the top. He was itching to take the boy out now and examine those letters again. TT. What could they stand for? A litany of options ran through his head. Tiny Toy? Terrific Tim? Terrible Terry?

  But Susan was sitting right next to him. What would she think if she saw he’d brought a doll along? Not that it was really a doll. It was a wooden figurine, which, when you thought about it, was a different thing entirely. Still, Bertie kept the wooden boy tucked safely inside his pocket.
r />   He’d dreamed about the figurine again last night. In his dream, he was lying on a bed—a big, plush, downy bed, in his very own bedroom—making the boy gallop stiffly across his pillow. He’d come up with a voice for him too, and he’d been so busy pretending the boy was talking that he hadn’t heard anyone enter the room. But suddenly he’d looked up, and there she was. His mom.

  Her flame-red hair hung loosely over her shoulders and she was laughing as she watched him, a soft, happy laugh. “I didn’t think your little guy should be alone,” she said, holding out her hand. In her palm lay two new wooden figurines: a woman with flame-red hair and a man with bright blue eyes. “He needs his parents.”

  The next thing Bertie knew, he was waking with a jolt to find himself on the hard ground instead of a plush bed. As he lay there under the willow tree, running through that scene in his head again and again, he’d gotten the strangest feeling that it wasn’t so much a dream as a memory.

  “And then I’ll jump off a cliff.”

  Bertie started a little at the sound of Susan’s voice.

  “Finally.” Susan elbowed him playfully in the side. “I only had to threaten cliff-jumping to get your attention.”

  “Sorry,” Bertie said. “I was just . . .” He trailed off. He wanted desperately to tell Susan about the wooden boy and the memories it had been drawing out of him drop by drop, like sap from a tree. But every time he tried, he wimped out. Those memories were all he had of his mom, and the idea of voicing them out loud, letting them loose in the world, terrified him. “I was just . . .”

  “Daydreaming?” Susan offered.

  Bertie blinked in surprise. “Remembering a dream, actually.” He took a deep breath. Here went nothing.

  In one fluid motion, he yanked the wooden boy out of his pocket. It had bright blue eyes painted onto it and a shock of painted red hair sticking out from beneath a tiny wooden baseball cap. He handed it to Susan. “I found him on the circus grounds before we left.” He said it so fast that the words came out in a big jumble, one bumping into another. Susan gave him a strange look as she lifted the wooden boy up to the sunlight, examining it. “It’s not a doll,” Bertie added hastily. “It’s a wooden figurine, which is really very different because—”