No one ever moved in the cages. We kept to ourselves a pervasive terror that seemed to replace any thought of regret or wonder we had. Or so I did. Those thoughts were worthless, anyway, sentimental and meaningless. They belonged to an older time, to an extinct civilization. In the cages it was difficult to think except in a state of continuous shock. We all agreed, it seemed, that the cages were an unspeakable evil, that they were deadly and malicious. We kept perfectly still, as though a step forward would provoke a mechanical reaction from the cages, a sharp, grey claw sweeping forth to behead us in an instant, perhaps, or an explosion so violent and so sudden that it would take the boat with us to our murky grave. We shared our hesitant glances as if to warn each other of this inevitable execution, or at least as a plea for help or a return of helplessness. Even the stupidest among us knew no such blades hid themselves in the intricate design of the cages and no trap of gunpowder lay in the complex machinery. If the people had wanted to harm us they would have done so long ago, on our own soil, in their own imaginative ways. The cages were safe—fake and safe. There were no traps and we were not trapped. The lock was a simple switch that could be undone from the inside with a tug of the paw. But our fear was real, our fear was dangerous, our fear was lethal, and so our fear was the trap, and we were trapped inside it. When we renounced our fear, the trap was sprung.

We shall save you, the people said. So they saved us. They saved us in their own ways with their own traditions and their own ideas and when they had fully saved us there was nothing left of us but grim memories. There was a yearning in our bones, a hollowness in our fingers, a clumsiness in the way we walked and sat and moved ourselves with misery predominant in our minds from the aching of our hearts and unbearably, constantly, we knew it was wrong. These things were the stray thoughts and feelings that could not be erased no matter how much we wanted to be saved. They were permanent and indivisible from us. They were what the people strove to eradicate. When the people finished saving us, we were already dead.

But what a people they were! What a civilization! They terrified and amazed me. I resented and admired them. They calmed us with sweet tones and gentle words and showed us the splendor of the Old World. They presented it with such pride that I could not help but feel proud in turn. It was sickeningly beautiful, like a fantasy. I learned their language and their culture as quickly as they could feed it to me. I learned to forget everything I knew to be right. I obsessed myself over becoming civilized. I wanted to be like them. I wanted to be saved. I wanted to die.