by Dave Eggers
“How big of a monkey was it?”
“You know, like a normal carrying monkey,” she said, holding her arm up at the exact height of Max. “And it was really sudden.”
Registering Max’s shock, Katherine brightened. “Wow, I sound like a downer, don’t I! Don’t worry. That’s not what I wanted at all. Let’s head back.”
CHAPTER XL
That night, as the fort neared completion, the beasts ate together again, this time feasting on the huge flat feet of some animal Max hadn’t even seen intact and now wanted no part of devouring. Afterward they all collapsed in exhaustion and gluttony, arranged in an interlocking chain of limbs and torsos, circling the dimming fire.
They all fell quickly to sleep, but Max was awake, thinking of monkeys being eaten in one quick bite. Since his morning with Katherine he had thought of little else. Though the afternoon had been full of triumph — the walls were all assembled, the staircases had been built, the basement finished and covered, the tunnels dug in every direction for escape from any and all calamity — Max was stricken with the idea that he could be just as easily eaten as a carrying monkey, and at any time.
Would Carol do such a thing? He had seen flashes of his anger, had been surprised when he was willing to actually kill his enemies on the field of fake-battle. It was one thing to fear the devouring of the rest of the beasts, for Max always had Carol to protect him. But if Carol himself decided to eat him, his head and arms and legs, what would stop him?
Max had been among creatures so much bigger than him for so long that he had to fear, in some small way, for his life more or less at all times. It was just a matter of proportion, really. It wasn’t that they were always meaning to harm him — though they had threatened to eat him many times — but they had also, mistakenly or carelessly, almost maimed or murdered him a half-dozen other times. He had nearly been knocked off a cliff, had been pelted with hairless buffalo, and had almost been crushed by rolling beast-boulders.
He could spend a lot of time, now or in the future, trying to figure out what motivated them all — why they did certain things he wished they didn’t do, and didn’t do other things he wished they would. The creatures were often doing confusing things when he stumbled upon them: he would be running through the forest, looking for something to do, when he would see Judith’s back, and perhaps the side of Ira. And then he would see Ira’s hand inside Judith’s ear, and Judith’s left foot tapping quickly, and the both of them humming intensely. “Oh, hi King,” they would say, and Ira would immediately remove his hand from Judith’s ear and the humming and tapping would cease. He found Douglas more than once sitting alone near the chalky cliffs, moaning and rocking and once even punching himself in the head.
And as Max was contemplating all this, a scraping sound came from Carol’s direction. Max looked over to find him in the middle of his own restless dream. He clawed the ground with his talons, creating deep grooves in the dirt. Max watched as Carol whimpered, growled, and bared his teeth menacingly, all while asleep. Suddenly, Carol, in the middle of some nightmare, lunged toward Max, his claws coming within inches of Max’s face. Max gasped and recoiled. He backed up, crab-style, until he was nestled into Katherine, who murmured something welcoming. As Max burrowed deeper into Katherine, Carol continued to grab and groan and Max continued to watch, wide-eyed, from the shadows.
CHAPTER XLI
The morning sky was paper-white and low. Max was inside the fort, pacing out dimensions, drawing an outline on the floor. Carol approached and immediately took notice of Max’s markings. “What’s that?”
Max hadn’t expected to have to tell Carol about this idea so soon. He knew it might upset Carol, but there was no going back, and he didn’t want to lie.
“Well …” Max said, “I was thinking that we need to put a … a place inside where the king is secret. Like a secret chamber for the king.”
Carol looked at the fort, tilting his head.
“A secret what? I don’t understand.”
“Well,” Max said, adopting the air of an experienced architect of castles and kingdoms, “all kingdoms have a special place for the king, where there’s a door and a key … Like a small place.” Max indicated a space just big enough for himself.
“So just big enough for you?” Carol said, as if the notion was beyond preposterous.
“Exactly,” Max said, “the king needs some time to be alone, in a little place … All kings have something like that. It’s … It’s where they come up with their best plans to make everything good for everyone.”
Carol thought about this for a second. “A small place … Okay, okay. Interesting. But how would we get in?”
“Well, I’d let you in.”
“But the door you drew is too small.”
“Yeah, that’s the best part. The door will be secret. And very small. Just big enough for me.”
As Carol began to understand the implications of the secret door, his expression clouded over. “I don’t know,” he said, studying the fort, “I didn’t picture it with secret doors. Secret doors don’t belong in this fort.”
“But it’s my fort, isn’t it?” Max said. “I mean, I’m the king, right?”
“Yeah, of course,” Carol said, deflated. “I just need a second to wrap my head around the idea.” He turned from the doors, then turned back again. “And you’ll let us in …” He thought more about it, staring at the wall as if his eyes might bore straight through. “But what if it’s a big place with a secret door?”
“No, no. That’s not how it would be done,” Max insisted. “It should be—”
Carol punched a hole in the wall, leaving a fist-sized gap.
“About that big?” Carol seethed.
“Yeah.”
“Fine.”
His shoulders tense with rage, Carol walked outside and found Douglas.
“Hey Douglas, we’re gonna need a new room in the middle here, a small one with a secret door. The main doors are the same but the doors here are gonna be secret.”
Douglas studied the structure for a moment. He was not pleased with having to redo his work, and he knew that Max’s directive was not pleasing to Carol.
With a sigh, Douglas made his announcement to everyone. “Okay everyone — there’s a little room in the middle and the door’s gonna be secret!”
There were murmurs of confusion throughout the site. Douglas repeated the directive, now louder: “The door’s gonna be secret! The door’s gonna be secret!”
CHAPTER XLII
“Psst. Come here,” came a voice. Max turned around to see Judith.
Max stepped over to Judith, who had just emerged from a hole in the ground — the fake tree tunnel. Ira was next to her, chewing quietly on her arm.
“Secret doors, huh?” she said, her head tilted, her eyes squinted. “You know, I’ve been watching you. And just yesterday I thought you had really saved us, but now I see what’s happening. And it’s really interesting to see you work.”
Judith stared at Max, not paying the least bit of attention to Ira, who was gnawing with increasing intensity on her arm. Max didn’t know what she was talking about.
“You’re really manipulative, you know that?” she said. “Do you know what that word means?”
“Yeah,” Max said, though he didn’t.
“No you don’t,” she said. “It means the ability to find the exact opportune moment, and the exact way, to get someone to do what you want them to do.”
“I didn’t do that,” Max snapped.
“But look how you made Carol feel. Just because you’re scared he might eat you, you need some kind of secret chamber? That’s nuts. You know, if you care about him and he wants to eat you, he should be able to eat you. Get your priorities straight, King.” There was a sound of teeth on ligament, like the snapping of chewing gum. She turned to Ira. “Ow. Stop.”
She turned back to Max.
“Did that offend you, Max? I’m sorry if you were offended by that. You kn
ow, people don’t always like me because I say what’s on my mind. I tell the truth, but I do it for the good of everyone. And the truth is, if this little secret door maneuver of yours does what I think it’ll do, someone else might see fit to eat you. I might have to eat you myself.”
“No, no, no!” a voice was yelling from the fort.
It was Carol. He was on his knees, his ear to the ground. “Wait wait wait. What’s that? That’s not right.”
Douglas was close by. “What is it?”
“It’s bad,” Carol whispered.
“Is it chatter?” Douglas asked.
“So much chatter,” Carol said.
Judith and Ira rushed over.
“And what about the whispering?” Judith asked.
“Yup. There’s a lot of whispering,” Carol said, lifting his head and looking to all of them gravely. “I’m afraid it’s reached us here, even inside these high walls.”
Alexander was hyperventilating. “What does that mean? We won’t be safe here?”
“I’m not sure,” Carol said. “But I do know that something’s wrong with the design of this fort.” He turned to look at Max. “Something’s very wrong. I knew there shouldn’t be secret doors. Arrrgh!”
Carol stormed around the walls. He glared at the secret doors with unchecked contempt.
Now Max was on his knees, listening for whatever it was that Carol heard. Max couldn’t hear anything.
“There can’t be chatter here,” Max said. “Not inside the fort. It’s too big and powerful to worry about things like that.”
Carol gave him a look registering disappointment in a dozen varieties. He began to mark walls and beams with his claws. “We’ll have to start over,” he said.
“But the fort’s not done yet,” Max said. “Shouldn’t we wait—”
Carol cut him off. “Max. Your voice is one I don’t want to hear right now. We need to remake it. We need to tear down all these parts and start over. We’ll need a moat. And higher walls. And an outer wall. I don’t know what I was thinking. It could never have made us safe, the way it was designed.”
A black mood passed over everyone.
Night came and Max was afraid. The beasts were acting strangely. Alexander was crying so hard he was hiccuping. Judith was off in a corner, eating tiny cats by the handful, while Ira gnawed on her leg.
“Max, come to me,” Katherine said.
She was in a quiet and dark corner of the fort. Max went to her, letting her close her arms around him. But just as Max was beginning to feel safe and was drifting off to sleep, he looked out and saw that Carol was staring intently at the two of them together. Carol’s eyes narrowed and he returned to clawing at the walls of the fort, marking it for destruction.
CHAPTER XLIII
Carol’s voice boomed through the darkness.
“Wake up! Wake up! Get out here! Everybody come out here! Now!”
Everyone woke up, disoriented, and walked outside. It was the middle of the night. Carol was staring into the sky.
“Look!” he roared. “What are we going to do?”
“What’s wrong?” Douglas asked.
“Where is it? It’s supposed to be right there!” Carol roared.
“What?” Douglas asked.
“The sun! The sun hasn’t come up!” Carol said.
Everyone else was hanging back, thinking it better that Douglas handle the problem.
“What do you mean, Carol?” he asked measuredly. “I … Well, I think it’s still night.”
“No it’s not,” Carol said gravely. “I didn’t sleep. I’ve been up all night, counting the hours. It’s morning, Douglas.”
Ira gasped.
“But it’s dark,” Ira noted.
“Exactly,” Carol said, pointing to Ira as if he were the only sane one among them.
Now Douglas looked to the sky as if beginning to see Carol’s point. “Maybe it’s just late to come up,” he said.
“Don’t be an idiot,” Carol fumed. “It’s never late!” And now he looked at Max. “It’s dead!”
Max tried to protest. “No! That’s not gonna happen for a long time.”
Judith turned to Max. “What do you mean? How do you know?”
“I told him—”
“You told him the sun was gonna die?” Judith said, enraged. “What did I tell you about saying things to upset Carol? And why didn’t you tell us?”
Alexander ran to Judith and hid between her legs. “The sun can’t die, can it?”
“Of course it can,” Carol said. “And it just did!”
Ira’s hands were over his mouth. “Oh my god. The void. It’s really here.”
All of the beasts stared at the place in the sky where the sun was supposed to be. There was nothing but black.
Now Max was worried. Though he knew in his heart that the sun would not, could not, die for millions of years, he was starting to believe that Carol might be right, that the sun had indeed died just hours ago. Maybe things were different on this island.
“We have to think of a new way to live,” Carol said. “And the first thing we do is get rid of this fort.”
“What?” Max said.
Carol ignored him. “Douglas, start tearing it down.”
“What’s wrong with it?” Douglas asked.
“Everything!” Carol said, and kicked down one of the interior walls. “This fort was designed so that things like this wouldn’t happen. And now they’ve happened. It’s a failure, and I want it taken down completely.”
“Please,” Douglas said. “Not again. Just wait—”
Carol kicked down another wall. “Wait for what? Another sun to grow in the sky? This fort is just a reminder of our failures.”
“Carol, calm down,” Douglas said, putting his hand on Carol’s shoulder.
Carol shook himself free. “Don’t try to calm me. This is the end of the world, and you’re trying to be calm? I knew I couldn’t trust you.”
Carol ran himself into one of the log-pillars holding up the roof. It cracked and sent half of the ceiling crashing to the ground. It barely missed Alexander, who began to cry and shudder.
“There you go again,” Douglas said.
Carol ignored him and turned to the other beasts.
“We need to take this fort down. Let’s go. Right now. No one will be safe in there.”
“Yeah, not with you around,” Douglas said, blocking his path.
Carol followed him, exploding. “What does that mean? I’m dangerous? I’m scary? Ira, tear it down!”
Douglas wheeled on him. “Fine, you’re going to tear it down eventually anyway. Burn everything!”
“Shut up!” Carol yelled.
“Eat everyone!” Douglas hissed.
“Maybe I will!” Carol yelled, and grabbed Douglas’s arm, as if to pull him away. But Carol intended something else, and succeeded: he pulled Douglas’s arm off. He ripped it from the socket and held it aloft, as if he’d grabbed something rotten and rank.
Douglas stood with wet sand pouring from his shoulder. He put pressure on the hole with his other hand, but the sand leaked between his feathered fingers.
“Your arm’s not so great now, is it, Douglas?” Carol said, and tossed it away like it was nothing.
Douglas stalked off, and Katherine followed him, trying to stanch the sand from flowing. Max was left standing in the doorway to the fort, and there he locked eyes with Carol. Carol looked afraid, knowing he could never take back what he’d just done and what Max had just seen. He turned away and walked into the woods.
Just then, the first light of day split the darkness like a knife prying the sky from the earth. The white gumdrop sun broke the horizon and the birds began to gossip from the trees.
CHAPTER XLIV
Max entered the remains of the fort, with Judith, Ira, the Bull, and Alexander close behind.
“So wait,” Alexander said, “The sun’s not dead? That’s the same one?”
“Yes it’s the same sun,” J
udith snapped, looking intensely at Max. “It was just nighttime!” She stormed up to Max. “Things sure have gotten messed up since you got here. We just got scared out of our minds because you made Carol think the sun was going to die!”
Alexander, hiding behind Judith, added his own invective: “Douglas lost his arm because you needed a fort,” he said. “It was a bad idea.”
“I know that!” Max said.
“Well, you have a lot of bad ideas!” Judith said.
“I KNOW!” he said.
Judith loomed over him. “I’m hungry. Aren’t you, Ira?”
Ira, even Ira, had narrow eyes for Max. “Kind of. Yeah.”
“No you’re not,” Max said, standing his ground. “No one’s hungry.”
Judith looked at him as if he were a grape who had learned to speak. “Who says?”
“I do. I’m the king.”
Alexander scoffed. “King? You’re just a boy pretending to be a wolf pretending to be a king.”
Max glared at Alexander. He’d never hated a face more than he hated Alexander’s. “I’m not pretending to be the king!”
Alexander rolled his eyes. “Then you’re just not a very good one.”
“Yes I am!” Max yelled.
“You don’t even know who you are!”
Max lunged. He tackled Alexander against the fort wall. Alexander hit his head hard and fell to the floor. Max leaped on top of him and began beating him with his fists. He’d never hit anyone so hard and so many times. It felt so good, his knuckles against Alexander’s scratchy face, Alexander’s arms flailing to block the blows. Max punched and punched until his arms were tired and his knuckles were sore. He punched until Alexander had stopped shrieking and crying and was curled tight, waiting for it to end.
When Max finished and rose to his feet, the beasts were staring at him with what seemed to be a new respect.
“I kinda liked that,” Judith said, then burst into a quick trill of a laugh.
“Me too,” Ira said.
Max was dazed. He couldn’t look at the beasts. He didn’t want to be near them or anyone. He needed to be away from them and everyone for a while. If he could leave his own skin, he would have.
