Sensing movement, I spun toward the town house. A sliver of a dog slunk from the shadows. Surely once a bushy husky, she was now all hollow hip bones and hunger and the first stanza of decay. A tiny, sickly puppy with crusted eyes dangled from her jaw. Hundreds of birds watched in stunned silence as the husky stood on her shuddering hind legs, unable to make the jump to her freedom because she no longer had the strength.
And here it was, my ultimate limitation mocking me cruelly. I couldn’t help her because I couldn’t open the door. None of us, from hummingbird to barn owl, could turn the handles that we needed to help the domestics, and for this shortcoming, this lofty genetic hurdle, they would die. I had accomplished the goal I’d set out to achieve, to pass through glass, and I had delivered the information to a mass of powerful feathereds. And still, here it was, the metallic taste of failure. We were so close. And being this close, we would now all watch her die.
The sky erupted into an explosion of piccolo notes. The calling was urgent, high enough to touch where airplanes once soared, and we looked up to see more bald eagles descend, flapping their wings with an excitement that lit the air. My eagle, the one who’d carried me all this way, was last to touch her talons down onto the branch of a western hemlock. The eagles fixed their buttercup eyes onto five figures that had appeared below them, figures they had guided here. I stared at the largest of them, a beautiful hulk of flesh and bone, whose breaths were deep and healthy. His face was a map of time, moon-shaped and as soft as the finest leather. His hands had their heartbreakingly beautiful digits coiled around a lump of grass. He looked on at us, wearing a supercilious smirk and a wild knowing. Red hair hung like a shower of straw around his hominid body. A piece of burlap was draped across one of his shoulders like part of a shirt. And right then I knew that it had all been true. Aura was real. There was magic still left in the world, quiet magic that wasn’t as showy as the tricks of a cell phone or one of those headsets that you put on your eyes to transport you to another world. The eagles chittered with spine-tingling excitement as the hulking male pressed his beautiful knuckles into the grass, his bulky legs propelling him toward us. He walked with slow stoicism as if he owned the earth. I caught a glimpse of a tabby cat watching him from behind a tree stump, glowing green eyes fixed on him in reverence. Ladybugs and grasshoppers paused their buzzy lives to admire the straw-haired giant. He passed me and my skin broke into bumps as I took in his smell, a smell that was just as the opossum had described. Like old smells, like old grass and leaves and things. Like hay, kind of. His feet—with toes and wrinkles and dexterous digits—flattened against the concrete steps as he approached the door and lifted an anthropoid limb and its draping red hair up to the doorknob. His four red-haired family members watched silently, running fingers through the grass and time. His bewitching digits closed around the doorknob, and as hundreds of birds caged the air in their chests, he twisted.
The door didn’t move. My legs buckled. It was locked.
No, no, no. It can’t be over.
He swept his hand along the ground and effortlessly picked up a pale rock. Drawing back his magnificent arm, he aimed the rock at the closest window and released it, shattering the glass. I watched with open beak as he plunged first his gray fingers and then his whole arm into the window. A sudden pop, then a metallic clack—the sound of freedom. The door was open. He’d unlocked it from the inside. The skeletal husky slunk from inside her prison, the puppy in her jaw sucking in its first fresh air and the herbaceous bouquet of grass. A thousand bird eyes looked on in reverence and utter awe. The husky’s liberator had a triumphant look. He knew what his powers meant.
Here was the answer to freeing the domestics, the secrets to touching through the glass. Here was The One Who Opens Doors, an orangutan, a powerful ally who could turn the knobs to a future.
When the grass fights the concrete, She shall usher in a new era. It was known.
Here was how we would win the War Of Land.
We pondered the implications in utter silence, except for the rhythmic masturbation of a nearby squirrel.
Chapter 25
Winnie the Poodle*
A Residence in Bellevue, Washington, USA
*who continues to talk about herself in the third poodle
Winnie the Poodle drew her last beautiful breaths. In her life, she had been an exceptionally dazzling specimen of poodle, and she took comfort knowing that this would continue even when she was no longer a breathing Winnie. Her tummy was hurting and hollow, her delightful pink tongue was dry like kitty litter and she no longer had the energy to lift her flawless head. She only had energy for a final growl at the cat’s escape that wouldn’t open anymore in a final conspiracy against Winnie. Lunch skittered past her and then ran all over her, because lunch had reproduced prolifically and was now defiling Winnie’s house with horrible little pellet turds. Lunch had developed a very cavalier attitude toward her, she thought.
Winnie just didn’t have any more wait.
She closed her perfectly breed-standard almond eyes and said goodbye to Spark Pug, and Walker, and Veuve Clicquot, and she let the guilt saturate her like a urine-soaked pee-pee pad.
“Poodle doodle doo,” she murmured in a pitch-perfect tone, and that was the end of Winnie the Poodle.
Except that suddenly a violent shattering of glass window alerted Winnie to an intruder! She jumped up with what little strength she had left, chased away nearby lunch, and raced toward the window. A Walker fell in through the window, with red eyes and horrendous seasonal allergies and insides that were leaking onto the marble entryway. Winnie the Poodle was very brave, but also realistic, so she hid under the Restoration Hardware sectional. And suddenly, there was very high-pitched squeaking! And you might not believe Winnie the Poodle, but you should because she is exceedingly truthful and gets all her facts straight. There was a group of little monkeys with faces like lions! (Winnie was later told they were golden lion tamarins, but she liked her description better.) The little smelly wizards had come in through the window after the Walker and they used their little hands to open the great front door for Winnie! Then little magical monkeys with faces like enchanted lions ushered her out and she breathed in the green of the grass and she bounced up and down! And there were the other little neighbor dogs that had been freed, Fitbit and Tofu, Chanel and Macaroni Fleas, and they all danced and danced and sniffed each other’s anuses and then they took off together with tongues in the air because they were free! And the great big potty world was theirs for the sniffing.
Chapter 26
Dubai, United Arab Emirates
دبيً، الإمارات العربية المتحدة
(as dictated by a young camel named Dawud)
Here sand swallows my city. It gathers in my eyelashes; they are long like spiders. Sand scratches on the windows of buildings. It wants to get in. So much wants to get out. If you know the nature of sand, like me, then you know it will not kneel for anyone. There is no fighting it. Sand is a silent lesson on the impermanence of things. They called us Ships Of The Desert. We’re made of sand, bold hump to rubbery lip. If the shape-shifting dunes call us—“!ندعوكم ان تسلكوا هذا الطربق”1—we follow with a blustering haboob inside our humps, feasting on thorny shrubs The Sand Sea offers, sidewinders at our feet.
1 “We invite you to take this path!”
No more days of being ridden or milked. No more robots on our backs and racing on a track where masters chase alongside us above wheels to control the hard little robots stuck to our colorful saddles. Grandfather spoke of times before him when it was young masters, not robots, that rode us, fused to our saddles with Velcro. No more neon glow or echoing golden songs of Mosque.
Look! The Sand Sea is taking over. Look how it covers the streets and signs. It likes to sit on buildings and cars like orangey mist. Some masters will be missed. Others will be nothing but scars.
We are under palm trees. I rub my flank against a palm’s rough bark, its
ridges rise and fall like small sand dunes. I smell sweet dates that cluster and cling high above me. My family has wandered near the villa homes of masters, great shelters that block out the sand. For now. The masters’ little lake is filled with sand, lion statue dusty. Sand covers the master’s car, but I still see its red and gold peeking out. And !انظر2 We watch hoopoes appear above the villa from the sun, fluttering their black-and-white wings, their crown of striking burnt-orange head feathers wobbling in excitement. The hoopoes chatter to one another and drop onto the roof of the villa.
2 “Look!”
They start to call, “Hoo hoo hoo! Hoo hoo hoo!” dipping their needle beaks low and high. A peregrine falcon arrives! !انظر He has something shiny in his talons, a master’s watch that sings a song. Over here! Two masters, their dishdashas spilled with red, reach their arms upward, snarling. They are hunting the falcon. The falcon drops low, nearing the full window of the big villa.
Dogs are barking. Dogs inside! My family moves, leaving to follow the sand’s beckon as they sense the danger, but I hold on to the last moment; I must see. The master pushes through a hedge and smashes through the window. !انظر The falcon drops the watch and screams. He is calling for the dogs, but they won’t come! He swoops in and out of the window, the hoopoes calling, “Hoo hoo hoo! Hoo hoo hoo!” My family calls for me to follow them. They do not joke.
“!أسرع! يجب أن نذهب”3
3 “Hurry up! We have to go!”
I pretend and show that I’m pressing my hooves into the sand, but I keep watch while I can. Cockatoos! Cockatoos flutter over the top of the villa, calling out to the hoopoes and the falcon. They cluster around the villa’s wooden arched doors, squawking and hopping on the ground. They use a small black stick, I see it, and they are poking it into a small hole in the door.
“!أسرع يا إبني”4
4 “Hurry up, my son!”
I don’t listen to my family now; I’m watching, waiting, and their impatience collects in my eyelashes with sand. The cockatoos shriek; now one is sitting on the big door handles and more of them are sitting on the door handles, and !انظر The door is open! The dogs, red and black and a spotted one, are running out past the master’s lake and sprinting ahead of my family!
The master with the red dishdasha comes out of the door too with the singing watch. I think he looks right at me with eyes as red as sunset.
“!أنا قادم”5 I tell my family, and I trot quickly to catch up with them as we head for the dunes.
5 “I’m coming!”
Chapter 27
Bangkok, Thailand
กรุงเทพประเทศไทยกรุงเทพประเทศไทย
(the low rumblings of an urban elephant herd)
walk with us
our numbers grow and we gather
family woven together like nest of a cave swiftlet
both wispy fragile and Life’s One Keeper
we move together through time
and the tuk-tuk streets of once-buzzy Bangkok
through grave site of bus and motorbike and carbon cough
where we once begged
under neon lights
while a noose caressed our necks
we are great gray clouds who remind you how to unfold
now that the air has remembered herself
our trunks sway in honor of Ocean’s pulse
like the shaggy rain tree who shivers under our footprint
and knows that you are as fresh as orchid’s first bloom.
we will push aside car and continent to free you
lighten the burden you must learn to shed
like skin of snake and winter leaf
we use our bodies to splinter glass and street stalls and wood
denting metal and stripping wire of its power
violent acts of devotion
to free those who dream of water’s promise
and the smell of lotus flower
dog and cat and horse and mouse
fly from their cages
and we
we swallow miles, our ears velvet instruments
we carry your chain-link burdens
trampling the noose that caressed your neck
holding your beautiful story in our bones
คนที่เป็นผู้รับ ย่อมมีหน้าที่ต้องเป็นผู้ให้เช่นกัน*
*The One Who Hollows as well must return
Chapter 28
Genghis Cat
Everywhere Like an Omnipotent Ninja, Washington, USA
I am still utterly amazing. I have honed my sock-stealing skills and added to my mosque collection. The collections have now expanded to include all bras and bus stops.
THEY ARE MINE DON’T TOUCH THEM.
Something else has changed. It changed after that bewhiskered, unsanitary Orange with sausage fingers and a face like a large platter of beef jerky waltzed into my mosque. After I showed him my fierce—chased him and swiped at his truck-tire face with my murderous claws—I decided to spy on him. I followed him like the magnificent ninja I am, always out of sight, which is a shame because I am very, very good-looking. I stalked him through leaves, sewer holes, from halfway up a telephone pole and the inside of a Pringles tube.
Then something happened. I began to find him captivating, that galumphing eggplant that smells like microwaved Tender Beef & Chicken Fancy Feast. He became more entertaining to me than handicapping lizards or squatting in boxes or even eating grass so I can barf it back up again. His shitty excuse for fur hangs in long cords and trails like the fake snakes my Mediocre Servants used to dangle for me, and I chase his cords when it suits me. Bottle caps and sticks and pens get stuck in those cords and when I hear them jingle, I know they must be swatted into submission. Orange’s face, round as a great dark toilet bowl, is exceedingly stupid and yet pleasing to me. Clearly, he is a giant animated ball of yarn who was conjured entirely for my pleasure. I have decided that I own him and have made this clear to every being on earth by urinating on him intermittently in my potent signature. Orange has his own smaller Oranges. I allow them. I am just and wondrous. I am Genghis, Owner Of Orange.
Others try to take my Orange from me. A cougar in a sand-colored coat and hungry mood thought she could sneak up on him, but I pounced on her head and chased her into an upturned porta-potty. A brown bear the size of my bus stops stumbled into the Oranges. The Oranges panicked, bared their long teeth, and swung their arms in an embarrassingly feeble manner. The brown bear roared from her bones, her litter of littles close behind her back claws. Naturally, I threw myself at her eyes, sharpened my claws on her pillowy body, and drove her back into the tree line.
Orange needs my protection. He is very, very fat. I summon my feline kin to join me in his protection. Striped ones with laser-pointer moves, jumpers, long-haired assassins, night kings, mousers, shadow stalkers, tree scalers, and one strange naked one that looks like an uncooked chicken. We are killers, warriors, hunters.
Orange likes to hold my kittens in his gentle, leather-couch hands. Not all of them, as my unparalleled fertility has made this impossible. We share sleep space and this suits me because Orange is as warm as silver lap box and sometimes runs his fingers on me when I let him. Other times, I smack him to remind him who is in charge of all The Everything.
WHAT IS THAT IS THAT A LIGHT BEAM RUNNING UP THAT TREE?
Orange—my smelly trinket—can read the rainbow light just as I can, though doubtfully as well. What I know is that he is being called to go somewhere he believes is important in his fat Orange heart. What I know is that death is coming. I see it in the rainbow light that dances across the lips of roses and paints white walls with prismatic pirouettes. I feel it in the wind that tickles my whiskers. Cats know death as well as a storm before it’s born. It will not touch my falafel-shaped toy. I will protect him, even as he continues to mercilessly torture himsel
f by ingesting fruit. There is nothing I can do about that shit.
Orange takes me to interesting places. I am ready.
Prepare to watch me take on anything and everything that gets in my way.
Just don’t touch my fucking Orange.
Chapter 29
S.T.
University of Washington, Bothell Campus, Bothell, Washington, USA
For a period of time, things were pretty copacetic. I don’t want to call it bliss, because it didn’t involve neck scritching and lazy football Sundays with melty queso dip and all-you-can-eat Cheetos®, but there were things about it that were pretty damn special. Each day, we took to the wing—me on the back of Migisi, Kraai’s bald eagle friend, who silently shredded the sky—for a dawn-till-dusk day of touching through glass and freeing any domestic we could. This all proved to be a hell of a lot of cardio for poor old Dennis as he thundered below us past abandoned houses. You see, as fast as the luminous streak of a shooting star, Dennis had wiggled his way into the hearts of the college crows, who brought him small gifts like buttons, dish sponges, and an abandoned NuvaRing. Even a dung beetle would have eschewed some of these things, but Dennis would graciously wag his tail and smile. Everyone fell for the droopy ears of a loving oaf. The college crows lovingly scratched his belly and back with their feet. Everyone’s hearts were lighter around Dennis.
One crow, a gentle character whose name means the particular feeling you get when you find something you’d lost and long forgotten but it had held a place in the back of your thoughts, brought Dennis sprigs of mint, laying them by his paw pads as he slept.
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