by Dave Eggers
Carol shivered theatrically. “Ugh. Who wants to be in a house like that? We need a place where people don’t have three mouths, where the sun can’t die on you and a mountain can’t just fall on you. I want to make a place where only the things you want to happen happen.”
After a few hours in the studio, Max and Carol felt they should make their way back to the others.
“Your royal subjects await,” Carol said.
Max nodded solemnly. “It is so,” he said.
But on the way down the rocky hillside, Max had an idea, and it seemed an idea that needed to be enacted for the good of the island.
He wanted Carol to lift one of the enormous rocks on the hillside — one of the steps that led to the studio — and throw it off the cliff and into the ocean below.
Carol smiled. “No, really?” he asked.
“Yes,” Max said seriously. “That’s an order.”
“Good enough for me,” Carol said, and squatted before the boulder. With a loud grunt he lifted the rock, his face a mess of contortion and veins. He shuffled a quick few steps over to the edge of the cliff, and then heaved it down. They both watched as it tumbled and ricocheted violently, bouncing off the face of the cliff and disappearing into the sea below. Along the way, it brought about a hundred other rocks with it.
Max turned to Carol, grinning. “Wow, that was a good idea! Let’s do more!”
Max pointed to another boulder, and Carol duly lifted it and tossed it down the side of the cliff. Again it brought a good chunk of the cliffside with it.
“All right, who wants it next?” Max asked, looking at the remaining boulders. He looked at three of them, pointing to each one, eyeing each with great suspicion.
He pointed at one: “You?” The boulder said nothing.
“You?” This next boulder, too, chose to remain silent.
The third boulder, Max thought, was giving him a smartalecky look. “Carol, get ’im,” he commanded.
So Carol lifted this boulder and threw it down the cliff. As it bounced toward the sea, a mini-avalanche roared into the ocean and landed with a long loud hiss.
With all the boulders that had previously led to Carol’s studio now in the sea below, it would make getting there difficult in the future, but Max and Carol weren’t thinking of that right now. Max wasn’t, at least. He was thinking of just how much fear they’d struck in the hearts of the rocks on the hillside, and probably all the rocks on the island.
Max laughed till he snorted. “Man oh man, these rocks are really scared of us!”
Carol smiled. “That they are, King. And they should be. Well done.”
CHAPTER XXV
When Max and Carol returned to the site of the beasts’ former homes, Max could now see the result of the previous night’s merrymaking. There was wreckage everywhere. Charred trees and branches. Huge holes in the ground. And every one of their nest-homes was splintered beyond recognition, stamped into the ground.
The other beasts were gathered amid the devastation, some pacing, others with their arms crossed, all of them looking impatient. There was no sign of Katherine.
Ira was chewing on Judith’s arm nervously, and when they all caught sight of Max and Carol descending the hillside to join them, Ira removed his teeth from her limb to speak.
“Where were you? We’ve just been here. Alone.”
The others murmured in a snarling sort of way. Max reached under the remains of the fire and retrieved his crown. He put it on, wincing. It was still hot.
“Without our king,” Judith added, and slapped Ira’s mouth away from her arm. He’d left a row of deep teeth marks.
Now all of the creatures — Judith, Ira, Douglas, the Bull, and Alexander — encircled Max, looking greatly displeased. As they closed in on him, the smell was tremendous. During their rumpusing, the beasts had perspired a large amount, and now they smelled like vinegar and hummus. Max wondered if he should be worried, given that the beasts were closing in on him much the same way they had the previous night. He would have been more worried were Carol not standing behind him. Even so, he knew he needed to explain his absence.
“I had to see my kingdom,” Max said, trying to sound as royal as possible. “To survey it. Carol gave me a tour.”
The wave of their anger seemed to retreat for a moment, then roared back.
“How come we weren’t invited?” Judith asked. “I could have shown you all that. I wouldn’t have enjoyed it, but I would have done it. Probably. If I felt inspired.”
“Judith, stop,” Carol said, putting his hand on her shoulder. “It was my job to give the tour and I gave it.”
“I didn’t want to go on the tour anyway,” Ira said.
“See?” Carol said, “no one missed out on anything. Everything is as it should be.”
There was a grudging chorus of acceptance of this explanation. Judith sat down, put her head on her chin, and looked up to Max.
“So Max,” started Judith. “Or King. What is it, anyway? King Max or what?”
“It’s King, Judith,” Carol answered.
She grinned. “Hmm. King Judith, yeah. I like the sound of that.” This got a chuckle out of Alexander. “So King Max,” Judith continued. “What kind of king are you going to be?”
Carol’s face tightened. “Judith, don’t—”
“I’m just asking him. You got to walk around the island all day, no doubt talking about all of us, who of us was good and who was not as good, and meanwhile we’ve been here suffering.”
Carol rolled his eyes. “Suffering? Really?”
Judith sniffled. “Yeah,” she said, quietly. “Suffering with all the questions. And the doubt.”
“And the void,” Ira added.
“And the void,” Judith repeated. “Almost forgot about the void. Ira’s feeling the void. You know how Ira feels about the void.” Seeing Max’s blank look, she explained: “He doesn’t like the void. Makes him feel hollow. And when he feels hollow, he chews on me, and that annoys me. And when I’m annoyed, I chew on small things made of bones and blood.”
Ira, now chewing on Judith’s arm again, whispered loudly in Judith’s ear: “And the hammers …”
“Right,” Judith said, “remember the hammers, Max? You had this whole story about the hammers, and how there was this king who could make them happy. Well, the hammers are unhappy, Max. What about the hammers? It’s been a whole day and so far nothing’s changed. The hammers are displeased.”
Carol laughed, dismissing her question. “Judith, please. Tell me you’re not happy right now. We’re all happy.” He turned around, finding a single tree still standing against the stark landscape. “Tree, tell me you’re unhappy.” The tree did not answer. Now he turned to a group of rocks, one of which Douglas had been wrestling the previous night. “Rocks, tell me if you feel misunderstood.” The rocks did not respond. Now with arms outstretched, Carol looked to the sky. “Sky, speak up if you feel unloved.” There was no answer. Now he turned back to Judith. “See, everything else in the world is perfectly content.”
Max smiled at Carol’s theatrics, and Carol smiled back. Carol then took Judith’s head into his mouth. Max froze, thinking something violent was about to happen, but instead Carol shook her head affectionately, like a dog playing with a chew toy.
Judith laughed. “Yeah, yeah, okay, I understand, you’ve got yours, Carol,” she said, freeing herself and wiping Carol’s saliva from her ears, “but he’s everyone’s king. What’s he going to do for us?”
“Right. Sure,” Carol said. “I get it. I know. But just give him a chance. Max has a lot of great ideas. His brain is the best I’ve ever seen.” Now he turned to Max. “Go ahead, Max, tell them your plan to make everything better for everyone always for all time.”
CHAPTER XXVI
Again Max reached into the dark velvet of his brain and found something. Was it a gem? He wasn’t sure.
“How about a parade?” he said.
He got only blank stares. No one knew wh
at a parade was. But Max loved parades, had been in parades every year since he was born, every year but last year, when he had to be at his dad’s apartment, doing nothing all day except missing the parade that he was supposed to be in.
He had been invited to ride on the hood of one of the mini cars, the size of a kayak, driven by the Rotarians. He’d practiced with Mr. Leland, an oval-faced older man who wore a fez not just during parades but at all times. Some people called him Fez, and every time someone called him Fez he pretended to be baffled by the source of the nickname. Then, after a moment of deep thought, he would say, “Oh, because of the hat!” That put the nicknamers in their place every time. Nicknamers are usually the least creative people in the world, he said.
Anyway, the parade landed on one of the days Max was supposed to be with his dad in the city. Since he’d left, his dad had tried to avoid all situations where he would run into one or two or a few hundred of Max’s mom’s friends, so the parade was out.
“A par … What is one of those?” Ira asked.
“A parade?” Max explained that a parade was, first of all, one of the great inventions of mankind. Second, he said, it was the best way to demonstrate to the citizens of any civilization that there was a new king. It would entail Max leading all of his new subjects through the island, stomping very loudly and while singing many songs, and ideally doing so for the benefit of the thousand lesser-animal inhabitants of the island.
“Wow, that sounds pretty good,” Douglas said.
And so they lined up, with Max in the lead, scepter in hand. It was decided that they would parade through the forest, around the gully, across the many-colored meadow — this is where the mini-tornadoes dwelled, Max was told, and he’d see them when he saw them — and then finally finishing at the lagoon, where, Max figured, they would take a swim to wash off the exertion of the parade. His parades at home typically ended at the town pool, and he had come to associate the parade’s end with a massive free-for-all in the main pool, diving off the high dive and playing Marco Polo deep into the evening.
“Everyone ready?” he asked.
Carol was directly behind him, followed by Douglas. Judith was next, and then Ira, Alexander, and the Bull.
“Where’s Katherine?” Max asked.
“We can’t wait for her,” Carol said quickly.
“She wouldn’t want to do this kind of thing anyway,” Douglas noted. “She’s not much of a joiner, King.”
Everyone nodded in agreement.
“That would diminish her aura,” Judith said, dressing the word aura in garish sarcasm.
Max didn’t like parading without the full retinue, but a parade like this, all ready to go, couldn’t wait. Max raised his scepter high, straightened his crown and took a deep breath.
“Forward march!” he yelled.
Max marched in the most parade-like and martial way he could manage, pumping his knees and thrusting the scepter over his head with every step.
The rest of the paraders followed suit, and, at Max’s urging, improvised however they saw fit. Carol began marching with both of his arms over his head like a ghoul. Douglas marched with his feet shuffling side-to-side, which seemed much more difficult and tiring than necessary, but Max thought it gave the parade a certain panache. Judith and Ira were marching in a more or less traditional way, forward and high-stepping, though Ira, with his poor balance, was having trouble maintaining a straight line. Max couldn’t see the Bull or Alexander very well, but he trusted that they knew what they were doing and were making the parade proud.
After parading for about an hour, through sparse forest, much of it charred and crushed by the rumpus the previous night, Max was beginning to lament the one conspicuously missing part of the parade: spectators.
Just when he was wondering what could be done about the problem, he caught sight of what appeared to be hundreds of the sort of tiny cat he’d seen on his way through the woods the previous night. Now they were emerging everywhere along the path, sitting and standing atop the fallen trees. All were watching the parade, as if it were the first such demonstration they had ever seen. And, Max thought, it probably was.
When the other paraders noticed the cats watching, they paraded with extra effort, stomping higher and shuffling more intensely. And the extra effort seemed to attract more watchers. There were suddenly thousands of eyes along the route, most of them attached to the cats but also to thin tendrils of what looked like ferns. Max looked closer, guessing them to be some kind of land-dwelling anemones, with hundreds of eyes, each sitting atop a long twisting stalk. Max couldn’t tell if they were able to think, let alone understand the greatness of the parade, but it hardly mattered. As Max paraded forward, all he could see were the eyeballs, all unblinking, all rapt.
They were about halfway to the lagoon, according to Douglas’s estimate, and Max was beginning to tire. He had an idea which seemed to solve his tiredness problem while also remaining true to the parameters of parades.
He climbed up Douglas’s leg and shoulders and rode for a time there, his scepter pointing the way. But after a few minutes there, Max was getting bored, so he decided to jump, like a spider monkey, from one set of shoulders to the next. It was far trickier than spider monkeys made it look, but every time Max would slip, an enormous paw would be there to restore him to his perch. Max was confident he would get better at the jumping in the future, but in any case it would be how he would travel from now on. It was quicker than walking, and he liked the view from up above far more.
As he sat on the Bull’s head, and while the rest of the paraders paraded, his mind spun through the possibilities — all the things he could and should do with seven giant playmates — and the first and most obvious one seemed to be that he and they needed to make a ship of some kind. He jumped over to Ira and began, mid-thought:
“Yeah, it’s gonna be a vampire ship,” Max said, “the biggest and fastest vampire ghost ship ever created. And we’re gonna need lots of trees. We’re gonna need um … twenty … No, more! We’re gonna need a hundred of the biggest tree trunks on the island. Ira, you get the trees.”
“Okay,” Ira said.
“And lots of rope. And some sails.” He jumped onto Douglas. “Douglas, you have to get the sails. The finest sails known to man!”
“Yes, King Max,” Douglas replied, and with his claw made some kind of notation on his arm.
“I’ll be the captain, and Judith, you’ll be in charge of speed. You have to make sure we have good wind.” Judith seemed very pleased to have been asked. “And Ira, you can steer the boat. What’s the person called who steers the boat?”
“The captain?” Ira offered uncertainly.
“Okay, well, I’ll steer the ship. I’m the captain.”
“And I’m in charge of wind?” Judith said. Her eyes seemed to be envisioning this new and vital role.
Max nodded. “Wind and weather, yeah. And speed.”
“What about me?” Alexander asked.
“You can be the lookout,” Max said.
“No, I don’t want to look out,” Alexander said. “Or maybe I would if the ship was different and I was the captain instead of you.”
Max didn’t know how to answer Alexander. He made a note to try to avoid him altogether in the future.
“Psst. Hey King!”
Max turned to see Katherine hiding in the hollow of an enormous tree. She beckoned him over. Relieved to be away from the goat, Max jumped off Douglas’s shoulders and over to her.
“I need to talk to you,” she said.
“Really?” Max said. “About what?” He didn’t want to leave the parade, so he tried to lure her into talking while walking with the group.
But she didn’t want that.
“We need a little privacy,” she said, pulling him from the path.
Max really didn’t think he should be leaving his own parade, but there was something so intriguing about Katherine. They wouldn’t miss him for a little bit.
“Gra
b here,” Katherine said, indicating the fur on the back of her neck. “Hold tight.”
CHAPTER XXVII
Max did, and immediately his feet left the earth. With Max on her back, and with incredible speed, Katherine climbed the tree she’d been hiding in. She climbed so fast, chipmunk-style, that he could barely hold on. In seconds they were at the top of a fifty-foot tree, its leaves a pale purple, and Katherine was resting on a platform she had arranged between the tree’s two highest boughs. She placed Max on his feet, and he found himself standing atop a ten-foot square wooden perch.
“You like it up here?” she asked.
He nodded, awed. From the platform he could see the whole island — the cauliflower forests, the burnt-red desert, the black and blue ravines, the ever-grinning ocean. He looked down, where Katherine was laying on her stomach on the narrow platform.
“Oh man, that climb got me sore. Can you walk on my back?” she asked.
Max didn’t know what she was talking about.
She looked up to him and rolled her eyes. “It’s sore. You think you could walk on it?”
Max had never been asked to walk on someone’s back before.
“What, like actually step on you?” he said.
“Yup, step on me, and then walk around.”
Max couldn’t wrap his head around this.
“C’mon, just step on,” she said.
He aimed his foot toward her torso.
“King, do it!” she said, grabbing his foot.
He gingerly began to walk on top of her. She was soft in some places and in others he could feel the ropes of muscle underneath the heavy fur.
“Oh, that feels good,” she said.
Max was trying not to hurt her, while also trying hard to keep his balance. Any slip and he would fall off Katherine, off the platform, and down fifty feet. Katherine didn’t seem to be concerned at all about the danger.
“Now jump up and down really quick, like you’re walking on fire,” she said.
