“I wouldn’t say danger, not exactly,” the agent explained. “But I think it would be best if we could speak to her. Is she in the house now?”

“No.” This was Sister Claire. She was standing defiantly, her arms crossed over her chest. “They left. At least an hour ago.”

“Do you know where they went?”

For a moment, no one said anything. Then, within the house, the telephone rang.

“Please excuse me, gentlemen,” Arnette said.

She retreated to the kitchen. Her heart was pounding. She was grateful for the interruption, as it could give her a chance to think. But when she answered the phone, the voice on the other end was no one she recognized.

“Is this the convent? I know I’ve seen you ladies over there. You’ll have to pardon my calling like this.”

“Who is this?”

“Sorry.” He was speaking in a rush, his voice distracted. “The name’s Joe Murphy. I’m head of security at the Memphis Zoo.”

There was some kind of commotion in the background. For a moment he spoke to someone else: Just open the gate, he said. Just do it, now.

Then he was back on the line. “Do you know anything about a nun who might be over here with a little girl? A black lady, dressed like you all do.”

A buzzing weightlessness, like a swarm of bees, filled Sister Arnette. On a perfectly pleasant morning, something had happened, something terrible. The door to the kitchen swung open; the agents stepped into the room, trailed by Sister Claire and Sister Louise. Everyone was staring at her.

“Yes, yes, I know her.” Arnette was trying to keep her voice low but knew this was pointless. “What is it? What’s going on?”

For a moment the line was muffled; the man at the zoo had placed his hand over the receiver. When he lifted his hand she heard yelling, and crying children, and behind it, something else: the sound of animals. Monkeys and lions and elephants and birds, screeching and roaring. It took Arnette a moment to realize that she wasn’t just hearing these sounds over the phone; they were coming through the open window, too, traveling clear across the park into the kitchen.

“What’s going on?” she pleaded.

“You better get over here, Sister,” the man said. “This is the goddamnedest thing I’ve ever seen.”

Lacey, breathless and running, soaked to the bone: she was carrying Amy now, clutching the little girl to her chest, the girl’s legs clamped tightly around her waist, the two of them lost in the zoo, its maze of pathways. Amy was crying, sobbing into Lacey’s blouse-what I am, what I am-and other people were running, too. It had started with the bears, whose movements had grown more and more frantic until Lacey had pulled Amy away from the glass, and then, behind them, the sea lions, who began to hurl themselves in and out of the water with manic fury; and as they turned and dashed back toward the zoo’s center, the grassland animals, the gazelles and zebras and okapis and giraffes, who broke into wild circles, running and charging the fences. It was Amy who was doing it, Lacey knew-something about Amy. Whatever had happened to the polar bears was happening to everything now, not just the animals but the people too, a ring of chaos widening over the entire zoo. They passed by the elephants and at once she felt their size and force; they stomped the ground with their immense feet and lifted their trunks to trumpet into the Memphis heat. A rhino charged the fence, a huge noise like a car crashing, and began, furiously, to bang it with his massive horn. The air was suddenly swollen with these sounds, great and terrible and full of pain, and people were tearing about and calling out to their children, pushing and shoving and pulling, the crowds parting for Lacey as she raced ahead.

“That’s her!” a voice rang out, and the words struck Lacey from behind-hit her like an arrow. Lacey spun to see the man with the camera, pointing a long finger right at her. He was standing beside a security guard in a pastel yellow jersey. “That’s the kid!”

Still clutching Amy, Lacey turned and ran, past cages of shrieking monkeys, a lagoon where swans were honking and flapping their huge, useless wings, tall cages erupting with the cries of jungle birds. Terrified crowds were pouring out of the reptile house. A group of panicked schoolchildren in matching red T-shirts stepped into Lacey’s path and she twisted around them, nearly falling but somehow staying upright. The ground before her was littered with the debris of flight, brochures and small articles of clothing and blobs of melting ice cream stuck to paper. A group of men tore past, breathing hard; one was carrying a rifle. From somewhere, a voice was saying, with robotic calm, “The zoo is now closed. Please move quickly to the nearest exit. The zoo is now closed… ”

Lacey was going in circles now, looking for a way out, finding none. Lions were roaring, baboons, meerkats, the monkeys she’d listened to from her bedroom window on summer nights. The sounds came from everywhere, filled up her mind like a chorus, ricocheting like the sound of gunfire, like the gunfire in the field, like her mother’s voice crying from the doorway: Run away, run away as fast as you can.

She stopped. And that was when she felt it. Felt him. The shadow. The man who wasn’t there but also was. He was coming for Amy, Lacey knew that now. That’s what the animals were telling her. The dark man would take Amy to the field where the branches were, the ones Lacey had watched for hours and hours as she lay and looked at the sky as it paled from night to morning, hearing the sounds of what was happening to her and the cries coming from her mouth; but she had sent her mind away from her body, up and up through the branches to heaven, where God was, and the girl in the field was someone else, nobody she remembered, and the world was wrapped in a warm light that would keep her safe forever.

The stinging taste of salt was in her mouth, but it wasn’t just the water from the tank. She was weeping now, too, watching the path through the shimmering curtain of her tears, holding Amy fiercely as she ran. Then she saw it: the snack stand. It appeared before her like a beacon, the snack stand with the big umbrella where she had bought the peanuts, and beyond it, standing open like a mouth, the wide gate of the exit. Guards in their yellow jerseys were barking into their walkie-talkies and waving people frantically through. Lacey took a deep breath and moved into the crowd, holding Amy to her chest.

She was just a few feet from the exit when a hand gripped her arm. She turned sharply: one of the guards. With his free hand he gestured over her head to someone else, his grip tightening.

Lacey. Lacey.

“Ma’am, please come with me-”

She didn’t wait. With a shove she pushed forward with all the strength she had left, felt the crowd bending. Behind her she heard the grunts and cries of people falling as she broke free, and the guard calling out for her to stop; but they were through the gate now, Lacey tearing down the pathway into the parking lot and the sound of sirens drawing near. She was sweating and breathing hard and knew that at any moment she could fall. She didn’t know where she was going but it didn’t matter. Away, she thought, away. Run as fast as you can, children. Away with Amy, away.

Then, from behind her, somewhere in the zoo, she heard a rifle shot. The sound cleaved the air, freezing Lacey in her tracks. In the sudden silence of its aftermath a van pulled up, skidding to a stop in front of her. Amy had gone limp against her chest. It was their van, Lacey saw, the one the sisters used, the big blue van they drove to the Pantry and to run errands. Sister Claire was driving, still in her sweats. A second vehicle, a black sedan, pulled in behind them as Sister Arnette burst from the van’s passenger seat. Around them the crowds were streaming past, cars were zooming out of the lot.