Questions flew from my heart. “How do you know any of that? How can you possibly know anything living in this—this place? Living in this tube tank?” I asked, tapping my leg on the top of the glass. “You must know Aura? Are you Onida?”
The octopus held time in its sucker-smothered arms, speaking in an orotund voice. “I am Onida. And I’ve known about you for a long, long time. Your world is small, Crow—”
“Shit Turd—”
“Excuse you?”
“My name is Shit Turd. S.T. for short.”
A frown furrowed the wrinkled skin above the hooded black smiles. “It’s time to expand what you know, Crow. I do know Aura. But there is not just Aura in the world. Your crow kind absorbs through Aura. My kind—those beneath the breathing line, those of scale and shell—we listen to Echo—the ocean’s breath, the song of whales, the hum of a mollusk, the swish and sway of kelp. It is connected to Aura as all things are connected. I listen closely to the messages of water, air and The Other World, and beyond that which we can see.” Onida slithered closer, still on the rock, a colossal, peristaltic mass of muscle.
“What sickness do the MoFos have?”
“I don’t understand your question.”
“The—humankind—what has happened to humankind in Seattle?”
Onida suddenly flashed a luminous pale gold, the ridges of his skin smoothing and rippling pink at the edges. “Humankind is changed. They have denied the Law Of Life by taking too much and are facing their consequences. The One Who Hollows as well must return.”
“What can we do to help them?”
Onida searched the beamed ceiling with those horizontal pupils. “I must tell you that it is not just Seattle, Crow. It is across The Whole. Mankind missed the essential calling to evolve. You are watching their extinction.”
“NO!” I squawked, scaring myself. Then I gagged and vomited up a river of coffee sludge. My gular fluttered in panic. How could this be? No. No, no, no, no, no. “You are wrong, Octopus! No, I know you are wrong! I heard them fighting, I heard bombs in the distance! They are out there!”
“What you heard were the fires and explosions, the final words of the things they made. Here and there, all over The Whole, there have been and will be the last explosions and fires. Destructive things that make destructive ends.”
The room swam. I stumbled, toppling down to the murky depths below, catching myself last minute with frantic flaps and returning to the top of the tank.
And here’s what I thought of: hot dog–eating competitions. One of Big Jim’s favorite things in the whole wide world. Every Fourth of July before beer, fireworks, and Jägermeister, we’d tune in to ESPN to watch the Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest at Coney Island emceed by the irrepressible George Shea. And I tell you, it was impressive. These magical MoFos of all sizes and backgrounds—like eleven-time champion Joey Chestnut or Megatoad or “The Leader of the Four Horsemen of the Esophagus” Sonya Thomas—would get announced by George in inventive ways. He’d introduce a contestant as “The David Blaine of the bowel, the Evel Knievel of the alimentary canal, the Houdini of Cuisini…Crazy Legs Conti!” We watched him present “the Salvador Dalí of the deli,” “the David Bowie of the bagel,” “the Liberace of the lunch line.” Some of these master eaters were a quarter of the size of Big Jim and we’d watch them lube up slimy Nathan’s natural casing wieners in water and when the buzzer went off and the crowd was in a frenzy, they’d slip those suckers down their gullets at lightning speed. These incredible athletes would put a pelican to shame. It was a thing of great fucking beauty.
You are watching their extinction.
There would be no more hot dog–eating contests or NASCAR or picnics in the park or Cheetos® or America’s Funniest Home Videos or revving truck engines or books or children laughing or fetch with a stick or iPhone updates or shopping or electrical jobs or songs or genius inventions or drunken dancing or Fireball whiskey or snow globes or wedding vows or ugly ties or Christmas hugs or…families. Family. And there would be no more Big Jim. I felt the aquarium tighten, the water level rise. I was collapsing… The octopus erupted into electric-blue spots and I focused on those, not on the terrible, terrible thing I had heard.
One thing was certain. I wasn’t going to tell Dennis about this. It would kill him and I’d made it my mission to keep him alive.
“I’m sorry,” I told Onida. “I don’t usually have this little control over my bodily functions. I feel . . .” I thought of Dennis and his dark depression.
“Where I come from we call what you’re feeling The Black Tide. It will pass. Tides, by their nature, come and go.” As the octopus spoke, I felt my blood flow slowing. He gingerly ran his suckers across the rock as if to taste it.
I said, “What if there is something that can change them back?”
“It is not known.”
“Or, or what happens if they just stay in that state of sickness? Just wander around really gross but still alive?” I bargained with The One Searched For.
“The part that made them human has flown away, Crow. What is left is a broken shell. Uninhabitable. A crab must always find a new home. Mankind will now destroy itself until there is nothing left. They exterminated the most real part of themselves first and now their complete physical disappearance is prolonged and inevitable.” I flashed on the fleshy, pulsing lump Dennis and I had seen. My god. It was a sick MoFo, in its last stage on earth. Facing the last stand before extinction. “It is balance. It is how life gets back what was taken. The humans are dying, Crow, which means a part of you must die too.”
“STOP CALLING ME CROW!”
Onida erupted into a light show, electric blues and neon flares swam across his skin, his arms rippling with emotion, a gorgeous and deeply disturbing dance. Something about this display slowed my pulse.
“You must reconcile with yourself, Crow. Your life depends on it.”
“What the hell does that even mean?” I scraped at the tank with my foot. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be rude, it’s just…a lot. You don’t know how hard it’s been since Big Jim got sick…inside,” I told the giant Pacific octopus, a creature I never imagined to see in three dimensions (unless Big Jim won the lottery and bought an IMAX theater like he’d always planned).
Onida lifted an arm, balancing on his two suctioned legs and five other arms. His movement was mesmerizingly fluid, otherworldly. The raised arm was severed three-quarters of the way down, tinged with blue blood. “Never presume to know the journey of another, friend,” he said. I bowed to him, a sign of respect in crow I’d never, ever performed before. I have no idea where that shit came from.
“But how did this happen? How did the sickness start? There must be—”
“It doesn’t matter, does it? This is what is. This is a New World, self-regulation in play. It is not my answer to give to you. What matters is that you have a choice, Crow. Your kind need your help.”
“You said I can’t help them—”
“The domestics. They are the others who straddle both worlds, other birds, dogs, turtles, cows, goats, sheep, snakes, rabbits—and yes, even cats. The domestics are the last of your kind, and they will be the very last of mankind’s legacy. Buildings are crumbling, paper is disintegrating, mold and bacteria are quiet conquerors, and the soil is claiming back what is hers. The forces of The Whole have been contained and controlled for too long, and when those who break free from their cages do so they will not do it quietly. Humankind’s stories in paint and ink and machine and structures that reach for the sun, they will all go. What is left is you. Millions of domestics have died, but there are still many, many more, stuck and abandoned and looking for a savior. Growth and evolution depend on our changing relationship to the beings around us. If you want to help mankind, this is what you must do. It is your choice, Crow.”
“Domestics?” I puzzled over the idea while simultaneously noticing how enjoyable it was to converse with someone who didn’t have the brain of a chicken nug
get. I was finally—perhaps for the first time in my life—being heard. I let myself ponder the concept before saying, “You know so much, Onida.”
“I have nine brains—which never stop growing—three hearts, and I can regenerate my arms; but mostly, it’s because I’m female.” Female. Well, shit. Admittedly, I had limited knowledge of them, but they had always seemed omniscient and formidable to me.
An erect blade cut through the water below, fast and determined. It was the color of a sky pregnant with a deadly storm. A fin. Onida’s arms and legs twisted and coiled on themselves, one squeezing tightly as if to crush a quarter in its clutch. A tight shiver rippled through her muscular mass.
“What are you going to do now?” I asked Onida, beak pointed at the water.
“I’m going to eat and then I’m going to leave. You should get going, Crow. You have choices to make.”
I kept a beady eye on the fin as it circled around the tank on which I was perched, Shark Week flashbacks blinding me. “And after that? What’s next for you, Onida?” I asked in a flat tone, weary and stunned from all I’d heard. I had other questions but they wouldn’t form, stuck and gluey in my head.
“I’m going to return to the ocean, mate, and die,” she said, pride swimming through her words. I stared at the wonder of her, this fluid miracle, free from the burden of bones. Her arms undulated with excitement, dipping into the molasses-dark water. A mystic about to prey on the most feared aquatic predator, ocean’s sharp-toothed bullet.
“That sounds fucking terrible!” I squawked, imagining a many-limbed snuff film.
“Everyone has a journey, Crow. More than just the one.” And I think she winked at me with a black smile.
Chapter 10
S.T.
Outside Seattle Aquarium, Seattle, Washington, USA
Since it was relatively quiet around this section of Alaskan Way and darkness was spreading its velvety wings, unimpeded by a single streetlamp or headlight, I rode Dennis under the Alaskan Way Viaduct and found a spot that looked like it had been a camp for a homeless MoFo. Big Jim and I knew a lot of homeless MoFos from our various adventures together and we gave them dirty dollar bills and Fireball whiskey. Big Jim said they served their fucking country and in return got told they were trash, and they must have believed it because they were always ferreting through the dumpsters. It wasn’t a perfect shelter, but with the vines and English ivy hanging down in limp sheets from the enormous concrete structure, it would do us for a night. Dennis even used his unparalleled snuffer to track down a bag of Fritos ingeniously stashed in a removable concrete block, which he pawed loose. We shared them in the blackness, though I confiscated the accompanying small bag of heroin—Dennis still wasn’t tremendously stable. Minutes later, Dennis was doing his ritualistic series of pirouettes and coiling himself into a tidy ball on a pile of wool blankets. I watched him closely from my perch as he snored gently, his fawn body rising up and down, wondering how he could get to sleep so well without the rumble of a TV. His wound looked a hell of a lot better—scabbing had started—but he certainly wouldn’t be winning Best in Show anytime soon.
I suddenly thought of the only other non-MoFo I was able to stomach being around. Ghubari was an African gray, a bird who could count and do perfect impressions and articulate a dictionary of MoFo words. A creature whose crackling genius so closely aligned with his MoFo owner’s, he filled me with envy. I ruffled my feathers, shaking off the thought of Rohan, Ghubari’s kind MoFo who had taught Big Jim how to take care of me when I was a leaf-skinned nestling with cornflower-blue eyes and a sugar-pink mouth. Back when I believed tiny MoFos lived in traffic lights and clouds were flying cotton. I didn’t dare imagine what had happened to the African gray and his owner after Ghubari had sent me the Aura message to stay inside my house. I just couldn’t swallow any more sad thoughts.
Dennis started to dream through snorts and thin whistles and a kick that whipped off his starchy blanket. I dropped down and gingerly covered him. I studied Dennis’s breath and its vibrant clouds in hopes that he dreamt of better days. Perhaps of when we’d play chase around the Green Mountain sugar maple in the yard, a rambunctious game of tag where I’d pull his tail and he’d lope after me with a goofy smile, wrinkles lagging behind him. Big Jim watched over our frolicking, calling us a couple of “goobers” and even the Green Mountain sugar maple and the Crocosmias would shake with laughter. I missed the Green Mountain and its sweet voice, and how it erupted into the colors of a Caribbean cocktail come fall. I missed our tree in our home, how it would bleed sap when it recalled memories too painful to share because it knew that holding things in is toxic. I hoped Dennis was dreaming of those days. I lulled myself by reliving those moments, feeling the kiss of dandelion cotton on my wings as I tagged Dennis—you’re it!—and falling asleep to the sugary tones of the Green Mountain saying, “Renaissance…renaissance.”
I woke before Dennis, breathlessly watching the sun rise and baptize the skyline in buttery tones. What an act of beauty, of unwavering faith, something to look forward to each and every day. Big Jim always said that nothing worth a shit pile happens before nine a.m., but still, I wish I could have shown him this. As beautiful as the sunrise was, my heart was a boulder in my chest that would make it hard to fly. All the winged, even fungus gnats, know that you cannot fly if you’re carrying too much weight with you. It’s a well-known adage, actually: “The light of heart is free to fly.” Woodpeckers inscribe it into a lot of trees, those vandalizing assholes.
I missed the sounds of Seattle, the percussive rhythm of people. The clicking of heels, the throttle of an engine, the throb of a subwoofer, the siren song of an ice cream truck, the babble of caffeinated conversation, how I had to cock my head to digest a different accent, and boy did I miss the invigorating chuck-a-chuck-a-chuck-a of a chopper tracking down a sneaky MoFo. Lawnmower and motorbike and Beyoncé, oh my. I missed tidy, fresh-cut grass. All this long, tangled turf and greedy green devouring buildings made me nervous and also made an excellent case for the Homeowners Association’s strident rules. Moss, especially the Spanish kind, is a deadly conquistador, dampening the sounds and edges of the city right before my eyes. MoFos kept a tight order to things, the world cupped in their hand, squeezing when necessary. I thought of the Green Mountain again, about how Big Jim had to trim it yearly to stop it from taking over the yard and so one day it didn’t “fucking fall over and crush our house like a can of Coors Light.” Our house belonged to Green Mountain now. Maybe that wasn’t so bad. Maybe Green Mountain deserved it the most.
Though Seattle had lost its beat, it had gained song. A charm of finches called out on Aura, speaking of a pending meeting at a swimming pool in Bellevue for communal bathing and where “The One Who Spits” was, with a warning to avoid him. A white-crowned sparrow squatted on the viaduct ledge brazenly close to me, a bossy little so-and-so, you know the type. He belted out a lively ditty about believing in one’s self—which he obviously had zero issues with—the air cool enough to see the notes dancing from his songbird throat. That monumental showoff. Psssh, singers, am I right? Satisfied he’d shown me up, he darted off, and then a creature I couldn’t identify bellowed and it sounded like how how how how and Aura fell silent. I used the time to do some anting (a sort of manscaping I perform by rubbing pulverized ants all over my feathers to make them shiny and, ironically, keep insects off me).
As I waited for Rip Van Wrinkles to awake, I thought about the other Dennises out there. How many more of him were there, creatures who’d been loyal and good to the MoFos? Creatures who depended on them for water and love and Milk-Bones? Creatures who, like me, hadn’t been born in the wild and didn’t know the Law Of Life? Creatures with scales or bristles or down, slobbering tongues, good hearts, gentle souls, and soft mouths. Creatures who knew the magic of MoFos, what they give us in protection and affection, what it means to love them with all of your heart and nose and beak. The feeling of those funny bald fingers that can open books and cans of refried
beans gently sliding down your back. MoFo is family. Onida was brilliant, the oracle of the ocean, but I couldn’t believe everything she said. I couldn’t believe in my heart that there were no MoFos out there, that some hadn’t hunkered down somewhere and kept their necks straight. I had hope, and feathereds know that hope is the very thing that allows one to fly. I thought of the dirty minivan on I-5 South with the superhero family decal on it; that’s what it was all about, being together and saving the world. When MoFos and the furred and feathered worked together it was beautiful and unstoppable. It is what nature intended.
I was thrilled when Dennis woke up; turns out it’s very dangerous to be left alone with your mind. And without Seattle’s beatbox, I was really hearing mine. Dennis was less thrilled. He leapt to his feet, hairs bristling up the ridge of his back. He sniffed at the sun and back down to the ground, pivoting and shifting his weight. A rumble released from his throat.
Something was wrong.
I didn’t have time to ask him what. Before I could shake off the remaining ant carcasses, I saw the cause of his anguish. They emerged from a multi-layered parking structure, trotting toward the viaduct—toward us. I launched high to get a better look. I counted eight of them, which is lucky, since I can only count to nine. I didn’t like how all their weight was forward, tails and ears standing to attention, as they cautiously neared us. To them, Dennis was guilty until proven innocent.
The pack encroached, blatantly disrespecting the boundaries of territory and personal space. Bringing up the rear: some sort of mutt, rangy as a setter with oil-slick fur and a long-legged white mongrel, mud caked and mischievous. A black and white dog with border collie and battery acid in him slunk in front of them, his nose intermittently tightening into a snarl. A terrier and a brown-white pointer padded in front of them, tailing identical brindle dogs and one very large, sinister fleabag that resembled an African social weaver’s nest. In front, a German shepherd mix skulked forward; a gray scar swam angrily down his muzzle, and next to him, the muscle: a rust-colored chow, blue tongue hanging like a dead lizard. Oh shit, I think that might be ten or thirteen; I told you my counting sucks.
Hollow Kingdom Page 7
