Animals We Are

by Valerie Brandy

  She asks me what I think is waiting for me, and I tell her I don’t know, but my leg hurts, and I’m sad, and I wish she would stop looking at me that way— like she’s keeping a secret under her witch’s hat, and I won’t know what it is until it jumps out and bites me.

  “What are you hiding under there?” I ask her, pointing at her hat. But she just smiles and says, “You’ll never know, if you don’t ask.”

  “I did ask—” I start to say, but then Cassandra-Witch waves a hand and suddenly my tongue ties itself in a knot.

  “Go ahead, ask!” she says, laughing because she knows I can’t.

  I’m about to run away, and I’ve already turned— my legs preparing to take me anywhere else— but then I stop, because I realize I’ve forgotten what I am. I’m a wolf, and wolves don’t let others bind their tongues.

  My four legs pound the Earth, and instead of running away, I charge at Cassandra-Witch. My haunches contract as I launch myself into the air— jaws open wide— and in one smooth motion, I rip the hat off her head.

  She screams, and for a moment her face turns into Mike’s face, but then I look closer and realize the face was mine, all along. I’m looking into myself, seeing my own image reversed, not as it looks in a mirror, but the way other people see it. My nose is misshapen, my eyes uneven. I want to ask myself why I did this to us, but I can’t because wolves don’t speak.

  I grab the witch’s hat— my hat— with my teeth and flip it over to see what’s inside, but all I find is a dark crevice, deep like the fissures, sucking me inward to a bottomless darkness with no end.

  16

  Wednesday

  The sun wakes me up, placing her warm hand on my cheek, causing me to turn over and sigh. It’s stopped raining, and the forest drips with potential for new life, soon-to-be-flowers shivering under the soil, waiting for their chance to emerge into being.

  The leaves I used to insulate myself fall off my body as I rise, making me into a tree, shaking herself clean from fall into winter. The taste of a new day clings to the air. I bend down and examine the wound on my shin. It’s turned a strange color— a cranberry charcoal shade— but it hurts less, and I can walk on it without support, so I have to assume nothing’s broken.

  Last night, I’d considered turning back and heading for the resort at Tenaya Lake, where I’d be met with a hot meal and a radio. Everything I’m fighting for has been inverted and tarnished: Cassandra isn’t the villain, Mike ruined her life, and he’s definitely, without a doubt, been lying to me.

  But now, in the warm glow of the morning sun, it’s clear: I’m not doing this just for Mike. I’m doing it for me.

  I’ve spent so much time looking for the monster in others, that I’ve lost touch with pieces of myself. I want to dig them up, to unearth them, and try again. There are bits of me— shredded, ripped bits— that operate independently from the parts I can control. They sneak through the shadows and whisper thoughts in my ear. They make me love broken door-knobs, and put leases in my name. They’re the worst pieces of who I am, and when I try to track them down— scanning my veins, unspooling my insides— I can’t find them anywhere.

  I don’t know how to dig them up, except to continue heading deeper into the wild, in the hope that the Great Everything might turn me into the original version of myself, untarnished by darkness.

  Already, the wild has seeped into my skin, leaving new shades of being behind, creating an unbridled immediacy to all of my needs.

  It’s made me a person who takes what she needs, and right now, that’s answers. I think of all the times in my life I’ve been called selfish, and I smile and nod. Yes, selfish. That’s me.

  The witch’s hat must be turned over.

  I’m a wild thing now, and I need to find the person who did this to us. It doesn’t matter who it is.

  My hands move so quickly that my bag practically repacks itself. Water soaks the ground as I wring out my wet jacket, its fibers stretching when I tie it to my pack to dry throughout the day.

  Ahead of me, light peaks through the trees, along with a chance to find warmth. I leave the shade of the forest behind and push toward rockier landscape. A cluster of boulders is perched further up the mountain, their edges already absorbing the morning light. I pick the biggest rock, and stretch out across it like a lizard in the sun.

  After soaking up the stillness, I unlock Mike’s phone again— but this time I go straight to “Notes.”

  The next clue is the only note saved on Mike’s phone.

  It’s there, waiting for me, so I reach out and take it, my nose in the air, teeth-barred, every piece of me hungry for the way forward.

  ***

  Congratulations, dirty thing

  You’ve made it to

  The second ring!

  Grab ahold

  And hang on tight;

  The way gets harder

  When you fight.

  Set the cycle,

  Break the plate—

  Clean away

  The mess you ate.

  This place lies

  Between two cliffs;

  Detergent is

  its hieroglyph.

  So wash those dishes,

  Wash them well,

  and look out for

  A hefty swell.

  Hold your breath

  and search for red!

  Find it quick,

  Or else he’s dead.

  ***

  It takes me a second to connect to the poem’s theme. It’s referencing something distant; an activity from my previous life.

  Break the plate… set the cycle…

  Washing dishes. Out here in the wilderness, there’s no such thing as a dish. The kidnapper— whoever it is— must have written this in advance, if only because being immersed in nature to this extent changes a person’s mindset. When presented with infinite natural beauty as inspiration, even the worst poet in the world wouldn’t resort to talking about dishes.

  Detergent is its hieroglyph.

  The word “Hieroglyph”is out of place in the context of the rest of the poem, which adds importance to its presence. It wouldn’t be there if it didn’t have to be there. The word evokes images of Egyptians and pyramids. Maybe I’m supposed to look for a pictograph somewhere, carved into a tree or painted on a rock. But then I remember what a Hieroglyph actually is: it’s a symbol conferring meaning, with one thing standing in the place of another.

  My legs criss-cross. I sit up and dig through my pack, pulling out my map of the valley and searching through the various landmarks, looking for anything related to the word “detergent.” Hundreds of points of interest are marked by minute font and tiny icons. I’m afraid to miss something important, so I break my search into tiny sections, starting at the upper left hand corner. With every landmark eliminated, my pulse quickens.

  What if I can’t solve this clue, and I never get to stand face-to-face across from the person who did this to us?

  For some reason, leaving the backcountry without answers seems like the worst possible outcome now— worse, even, then falling to my death in the ravine, or starving, or catching hypothermia in the night and allowing sweet oblivion to take over as my organs shut down . The opportunity to face my attacker— to show him that I’m more than what he bargained for— is an essential survival ingredient, on par with water, or air. This wild, new person I’ve become, this most animal me, won’t endure beyond the borders of the valley unless I seal my transformation with a poisonous kiss. If I don’t find resolution, the new me will melt away, leaving behind the familiar husk of who I used to be. I want to take my enemy by the throat and make him understand that he’s pissed off a lion dressed as a lamb, not because I need to convince him of the permanence of my transformation, but because I need to prove it to myself.

  My finger stops at a landmark represented by three wavy lines— but it’s not the icon that has my attention. It’s the words underneath it, the name of the spot: “Bunnel Cascade.”

/>   I don’t know what ‘Bunnel’ means. It could be the name of a person— like the first man to mark the place on a map. I imagine him as a self-righteous explorer in colonial wig, claiming his discovery without regard to the people who knew of its existence generations before his arrival. Or, maybe, ‘Bunnel’ is the name of some famous person way back in history, and the falls were christened in his honor without his knowledge, the way streets are named after Lincoln and Washington. Whatever the case, the word ‘Bunnel’ isn’t what intrigues me. It’s the second word, ‘Cascade,’ that makes me pause.

  Detergent is its hieroglyph.

  An object enters my mind, so sharp and clear I can almost reach out and touch it. It’s a green bucket, filled with squishy gel-packs, each one smelling generically clean. The label on the front reads, “Cascade Complete.”

  Dishwashing detergent.

  Matching the number on the landmark to a box in the information panel gives me a description of the place, written in tiny font: “Bunnel Cascade is at its peak volume in mid-winter. Situated on the Northwest side of Bunnel Point with a forty-five degree incline, the cascade serves as a cross between a river and a waterfall. Visitors should not attempt to enter the cascade, due to rocky terrain and strong currents.”

  A search of the map for other cascades results in two more possibilities, but neither one meets the other requirement established by the poem:

  This place lies between two cliffs.

  Bunnel is the only cascade bordered by two mountain ranges, predictably labeled “The Cliffs of Bunnel.”

  Whoever Bunnel was, he must be thrilled to be remembered so well.

  I outline the fastest path to the cascade, then fold up my map and slip it into my pack. As I walk, the forest beckons me onwards, and I obey, trusting the way she takes me by the hand, promising a chance to put my fangs to the test.

  ***

  It starts with a single snowflake.

  She settles on my eyelash, and in the seconds between her crash landing and my labeling her as “snow,” I’ve already blinked her away. Her twin drops onto my cheek, followed by another, and another. My legs work harder against the slippery forest floor, pushing me on to my destination, determined to get there before everything disappears under a blanket of white. I will myself into the distance, but the snow carries on with her plan, indifferent.

  Blue mountains soar over the horizon, their caps dyed white against the sky. The pine trees drip with ice, their branches coated in cream-colored dust. Piles of slush adorn the forest floor. Before, my steps were crunchy, marked by the snapping of twigs, the bristling of leaves. Now, my feet sink into the earth like anchors in the ocean. I enter into a negotiation with the forest, asking her not to take away all the green, but to settle for a smattering of powder rather than a blizzard.

  Keep the snow on the mountain caps. Not here. Don’t send it here.

  Still, more snowflakes fall, looking like dots of ice rather than the complex, individual miracles they really are. Focusing on the patches of land that aren’t yet covered doesn’t help; they grow fewer and far between until suddenly the forest is still, and the silence is so wide it makes me stop in my tracks just to take in the infinite blank-slate that is the world. In just a few hours, the forest has been completely coated in snow.

  My negotiations have failed, and I don’t like it.

  The landscape’s stubbornness reminds me that everything, absolutely everything, is out of my control. The only thing I exercise dominion over is myself, and the choices I make— to stay, to go, to start, to stop, to love, to leave. These are the things I am in charge of. The snow, the wind, the rain, Mike’s honesty (or lack thereof), are all out of my hands, and nothing I do will make them bend to my will.

  So, I keep walking.

  The process is heavy and slow, but I can’t be sure if it’s due to the snow, or some weight inside me, a kind of gravity sucking me under: I can’t control the world, so why bother moving?

  The landscape changes. Mountains flatten and what used to be a dense wall of trees is replaced by a thin smattering of branches, all of it covered in powder. It’s a beautiful monotony, and the longer I’m in the middle of it all, the less I feel the cold. I tell myself it’s because I’m moving, getting my heart rate up, but my skin is numb, and the insides of my boots are wet, and the temperature has dropped so low that my systems are shutting down. I haven’t eaten in hours, but I’m not hungry— just tired. Resting isn’t an option, because resting is death.

  You have to keep walking.

  My focus shifts to steps— only steps— even though I’m not even sure where I’m going anymore. My entire world is walking, and if I stop, I’ll cease to exist. Step by step, my legs move forward, feeling stranger with every move. I’ve lost awareness of my body, even though it’s clear I have one— I know, because I looked down a few paces ago, just to make sure my arms were still there. Still, the visual proof isn’t enough. My limbs are gone, because I can’t feel them. I’m a specter, a ghost, a bodiless soul wandering through the forest, haunting the woods with steps that leave no footprints.

  Hours pass, or maybe minutes, I can’t tell anymore—

  And then I see the wolf.

  She’s hiding behind a tree, and I might have missed her, if it weren’t for the snow. Her gray coat stands out against the clean, white backdrop, looking almost metallic by comparison.

  I stop. The wolf stares.

  Her eyes are almonds, their blue irises cutting through me like a knife turned on its side. She doesn’t mask her distrust. She makes no apologies for the way she scans my figure, a hostile smirk itching at the corners of mouth. Her incisors peek out from her lips, and she doesn’t bother to hide them. Her muscles ripple underneath her skin as she turns her nose upward, sniffing the air for truth, asking me every question and taking the answers from my mouth before I have a chance to speak. She’s a woman fully engrossed in her own power, so sure of herself, exactly the way the forest made her.

  And yet… for all her power, she can’t control the weather either. Maybe she was as disappointed as I was, to see the snow. We have the same limitations, except that she’s maintained full dominion over the most primal gift of her own divine being. You can see it in the way she moves. Every cell in her body belongs to her, and her alone. No being except the Great Everything tells her what to be, or how to be it.

  The wolf steps forward, her paws sinking into the snow. I can’t explain how I know she’s a woman, except that I can see it in her eyes. Her ears tilt toward me, pointed and soft, offset by the length of her narrow nose. She walks toward me, and I sit down, kneeling, holding my arms out. I don’t know why I do it, except that maybe I’m asking her a question, and I’m willing to die for the answer.

  She snarls, her mouth pulling back, tail bristling. I’m surprised by how white her teeth are.

  “It’s okay,” I say, my voice sounding like it belongs to a drunken stranger. “We’re made from the same stars… it’s— you and I are the same. Everything is inside of us, and we’re everything— not all of it, just a piece. You and I…”

  I’m not making sense, but I can’t stop rattling on. I try to put my words into sentences, but they tumble out in pieces, scattering across the snow. The cold is getting to me. I’ve lost the ability to speak, which means I won’t be able to tell this wolf how I feel, and I’ve never, ever wanted anything more than that.

  The anguish of it all rips me apart, and suddenly I’m crying, which is impossible because I don’t have a body anymore, just a spectral self, which this wolf is going to tear into shreds. I want so badly to be like the wolf that dying by her hand seems less terrible than it should. I’m alright with dying this way. It’s not the prospect of death that makes me cry. It’s that it’s happening before I’ve had the chance to tell the wolf how right she is. She doesn’t need to hear it, of course, but I still want to say it, for myself, to make it real.

  She’s beside me now, her nose sniffing my face, her incisors
twice as big up close. My eyes try to close, but I hold them open, because if I’m going to die, I want this wolf— this free, untamed, perfect, wild being— to be the last thing I see.

  She circles me three full times before she makes up her mind. The conclusion lodges itself in her brain like a law, final and immutable.

  You’re one of us, she says to me, not with words, but with her eyes— bottomless, haunting.

  I want to be, I answer. The wolf nods her head, assuring me that although there’s much to learn, the hardest part is over, because that was the part where I had to find myself buried deep in the Earth and dig her up, piece by piece.

  The wolf steps away and howls. The sound makes my bones shatter, echoing through every empty space inside me. A soft padding sound echoes over my shoulder, and three more wolves appear: two pups, and their father.

  She has a family.

  The pack surrounds me, sniffing me, pulling gently at my jacket with their teeth, like they’re wondering why I’ve shaved off all my fur and covered myself in fabric. The two wolf pups go through my bag, pulling out my last granola bar. They struggle with the wrapper, and I open it for them, splitting it in two exactly equal halves.

  The female wolf waits, watching, her mate behind her, looking so similar to her except for his darker coat. They’d be almost impossible to tell apart, if it weren’t for the coats.

  It strikes me that there is no leader in this pack. I’d always heard of alpha males being King in wolfpacks, but now, as I watch the pups’ father nudge them away from my bag, it’s clear to me that this is a marriage of equals.

  The male wolf looks at his partner with a question in his eyes, like he’s waiting for her to choose the next steps, and wherever she goes, he’ll follow. He buries his nose in her fur, and she leans against him. This moment— insignificant as it may look— is what my entire journey has been leading up to.

  The Great Everything wanted me to see this.