Hollow Kingdom

by Kira Jane Buxton

  And then it was all over. Kraai lifted to the sky and a black cape of crows trailed behind him toward the roosting roof. Dennis lifted to his paws and waited for me to catch my breath and hop onto his back. Then we trailed the perimeter, found the Dennis-sized hole, and snuck through it, meandering our way through the campus to the area around the roosting roof. The murder had mostly settled on the grass and benches—lower ground, which I knew was to include me and Dennis. Dennis lay down for a snooze and I listened intently as Kraai gave us our marching orders. As the sun slept and night swallowed the last of the light, Aura gave us the name we were looking for, a name on which to lay our sizzling blame. The Blackwings were going to take on a new enemy, our greatest threat yet. This war was no longer just about territory and resources; the killing of crows had made it personal. We were fueled by revenge, seeking one eye for another, oblivious to the unimaginable adversity that lay ahead. But we held each other’s hopes alive. We would sleep, dreaming of shrieks and bones and when we woke, we would exact revenge on the crow killer. We would hunt down The One Who Conquers.

  Chapter 30

  S.T.

  Plotting at UW Bothell Campus, Bothell, Washington, USA

  The plans were drawn up fast. Most of the college campus murder would fly to the last known lair of The One Who Conquers. When they revealed where that was, I felt the residual Amy’s Organic Spicy Chili in my belly shoot off a bazooka and then set itself on fire. With their mind-mapping, they described somewhere Dennis and I had already been, somewhere we didn’t want to revisit ever, ever again. King Street Station. The One Who Conquers must have killed the gorilla. I remembered the feel of her rubbery hand, the very last light in her limpid amber eyes. The slick smear of her red across the polished marble. My philosophy about not being a hero but maintaining a pulse had gotten us this far, so Dennis and I volunteered ourselves for the ground mission, far away from King Street Station and anyone’s known lair. The Golden Nose would take us on another journey, this time following a sharp distress scent that haunted the air. The breeze told a story and Dennis was reading it cover to cover like Big Jim and his Big Butts™ issues. While the crows went to hunt down The One Who Conquers in its lair, Dennis and I would track down the creature whose panic pheromones filled the airwaves; we were the search and rescue team. I was dazzled by this genius discovery of Dennis’s because it meant we’d be doing something blatantly heroic but also not cavorting with predators who eat gorillas. We started near the scene of the crime, where the crows had perished, Dennis inhaling in big sniffs. I could tell by the glazed look in his eye, flinches that ticked and rippled under his loose folds, that he was reliving what had happened, ingesting the plight of an animal in peril. Once he had the scent of the victim who needed help (I was hoping for something very tiny to rescue, like an infant muskrat or an underdeveloped dust mite), I hopped onto his back and we began a long journey.

  We headed north, following a chemical cocktail—the smell of suffering. It took us through long-abandoned neighborhoods where neglected Halloween decorations sat in eerie tatters, hardly as grotesque as the hobbling MoFos who slithered past them. We, self-admitted nonheroes, hurtled past raccoons and rabbits being shaken to death by the rabies that swam in their blood, choking on their own froth. We passed a Brown Bear Car Wash that had collapsed on itself and had become a roost for pigeons who wished us well on our hunt. We passed makeshift graves and machine guns strewn across the sidewalk like the leaves of fall. It was all silent school buses and the charred scent of ruin. All around us another battle was taking place, making itself known through our nasal passages. The pungent assault of urine defiled fresh air as felines, raccoons, and creatures of the night fought for territory by graffitiing with their waste, a vicious pissing contest. We came upon turkey vultures pulling thin strings of meat off a Labrador. Dennis charged them, causing them to scatter, but I told him that it was in their nature to eat the dead. I apologized to the Carrion Kings. This was a time of feast for the vultures, cloak-winged birds who are at home with the grosser side of things and who whiz on their own legs when feeling too sweaty. But it was also a time when Aura and no doubt Web and Echo were alive with stories and hopes for a new future. I listened to the audacious melodies while maintaining a careful watch, serving as Dennis’s eyes.

  Wherever we went, our reputation preceded us. Songbirds would intermittently dart from the sky to praise us unctuously or attempt to buoy us with a small song or limerick. Initially, it was delightful, but after the eighth time I’d heard Dennis referred to as “Mother Nature’s Gift, a mythical stallion of the canine world,” and me as a “flightless half-breed,” I was over it. Many of them couldn’t believe their beady little eyes when they first saw me, because apparently word had incorrectly spread that I had no legs and was made of tumbleweeds. Birds and their imaginations, honestly. Dennis seemed to enjoy the bolstering, so I let them go on.

  Herds of freed horses galloped ahead of us, their hooves clattering down on broken pavement. Deer, pigs, and goats grazed openly on the abundance of green, and speckled across the land were sick MoFos, stuck in a loop of swiping, bobbing, and searching, twisted and pulseless. But throughout the journey, I couldn’t shake a familiar feeling, one that tingled up and down my spine. I was sure we were being watched. But as much as I scanned the skies and the ground all around us, I couldn’t find the culprit.

  We had walked for some time when Dennis needed to take a break. He squatted in the cover of some black nightshade and I hopped around, stabbing at the earth with my beak because that shit is always awkward. At least I didn’t have to hover over him and collect his specimen with a plastic bag and then carry it around with me while swearing under my breath until I found a trash can, like Big Jim would sometimes do. Sometimes. Mostly, he just whistled at the sky and left the unclaimed turd wherever it lay. When I’d stare at him, he’d roll his eyes and say, “It’s fertilizing, giving back to the earth.”

  I found myself, once again, lamenting my lack of flight. I could tell we were near a body of water and it was a pile of absolute hippo shit that I couldn’t check it out for myself. All I knew was that following the scent of The One Who Conquers had led us to what appeared to be a town center. Mill Creek had an elaborate sign for an apartment complex with a cutesy functioning water mill. Its town center had a Starbucks, the Central Market, which appeared to once have been some sort of upscale grocery store, a Cold Stone Creamery, sushi joints, tapas, and more. All of the glass was long smashed. Trash and debris fluttered like ghostly wings. And suddenly, as we plodded through the town center with the Starbucks clock tower and pretty double-story buildings, we realized that we were all alone. There were no sick MoFos here. Nothing in the grips of rabies. Not even the cloying smell of urine dared make itself known here. A quick breeze rustled up some empty Starbucks cups and levitated plastic bags like airborne jellyfish. But nothing here had blood running through it. And I still had that uneasy feeling that I was being watched. In strict accordance with my philosophy, I suggested to Dennis that we get the shit out of there. He didn’t seem to take issue with this and began a hasty trot that took us past a tanning salon and a Thai restaurant. Nearby, the remains of a tent lay shredded and tattered, barely covering stacked mountains of canned goods and bottles of water. All that remained of the MoFo that once stood in front of those cans of beans and soup was a bloody puddle.

  Dennis’s sniffing suddenly intensified, his ears swinging back and forth in anticipation. The Golden Nose trailed along tarmac that missed the touch of a wheel, nosing aside plastic bags and cigarette butts. As he lifted his wrinkly jowls, he cocked his head at the silvery lump before him. Smoky fur lifted from the body, tickled by the breeze. Dennis and I marveled at the size of a carcass the approximate length of a pool noodle, wondering what had been able to stop its heart and remove all of its entrails, except for one sliver of intestine that lay pink and muculent like an unearthed worm.

  “Is this who we came to rescue, Dennis?” I asked hi
m, feeling a chill creep up my spine.

  Dennis whined—no. He sniffed the air, breathing in more details. We then both saw—on the sidewalk ahead of us—a leg, large and lupine, pulled clean from its socket. Nearby lay a ravaged mass of fur and red and tissue, too grisly to investigate further. I assumed it was a torso that had been robbed of limbs and appendages. Farther out, a rogue ear, a swath of ashen-furred skin, a severed muzzle that had sniffed its last. These were parts of more than one wolf. Each paw we found was slick and crimson, several claws scattered like spent bullets. Blood scrawled its violent signature across the ground around the pieces of predators. The wolves had put up the fight of their lives. Dennis whimpered.

  “I don’t know,” I told him.

  Wolves. What was above them, these creatures so firmly at the top of the food chain? I thought back to the mama bear and her cubs. Could one bear have committed this much carnage?

  What on earth had shredded a pack of wolves into pieces?

  A sharp shriek caused Dennis and me to jump out of our respective skins. We looked up. Dennis’s tail swung pendulously. He crouched, moving his rubbery lips as if to speak. There, on the awning of a restaurant, below large letters that spelled “Thai Rhapsody,” were two inquisitive eyes peering down at us. We’d located the source of the smell—the distressed creature.

  “Are you friendly?” asked a bird with head and chest a hypnotic blue as dizzying and mesmeric as the evening sky.

  “Are you?” I snapped back. A little saucy, I know, but I was pretty on edge at this point.

  “I’m friendly,” he said, though his voice was strained, scratched thin by fear. “I’ve been hiding up on the roofs because it’s safer up here.” The peacock’s mesmerizing tail, a tango of teal and turquoise, hung low behind him, draped like a vintage couture skirt. I saw it twitch. I imagined that in a different time, this bird would have been strutting, his incredible display fully fanned out and shaking with pride. Now, it was closed and trembling with terror.

  “Why don’t you come up here with me?” asked the peacock.

  “No, I’m fine here,” I told him. I might have learned that trust was a thing as beautiful as his tail feathers, but it could be just as easily ripped apart. “What has done this to the wolves?”

  The peacock didn’t respond for a moment, but I didn’t miss that his legs suddenly shook with a pronounced violence. “Have you got somewhere to be?” he asked. It was a strange thing to say and I wondered what he meant exactly.

  “My friend can smell stories, the past, everything. He knew you were in trouble. We came looking for you.” I looked back at the carnage. “You have been hiding from a terrible predator…”

  The peacock shuddered. “It seems the world is full of them now.” And then, as if the peacock summoned them, a gaggle of Canada geese streamed across the sky and honked from above.

  “RUN!” they blared. “RUN! RUN! RUUUUN!”

  The alarm honks were deafening. I looked up at the peacock, whose body erupted into quivers. Dennis growled way down low. My eyes darted, scanning the center of Mill Creek, but there was nothing but gray street and sky. I saw nothing. Then up ahead, beyond the shattered storefronts and the silent street, clouding the air, came a dark mass. The mass was growing. Nearing. It blocked out the clouds. A swarm was headed our way. And then I could hear the airborne panic, and as their bodies drew nearer, I could make out the shapes of feathereds like fiery arrows splitting open the sky. What was happening?

  “Is it The One Who Conquers?” I screeched upward. Nobody had time to answer. The swarm shot past. Suddenly, crows I recognized, college crows, were surrounding me, agitation expressed by rapid wing flaps.

  “S.T.! RUN! NOW! Get to safety!” came the voice of a crow I’d shared a few meals with.

  “Tell Dennis! Now!” shrieked Pressa, the svelte crow who rubbed herbs on my wing nightly. A brilliant flash, a ruptured Skittles bag of color filled the air above us. Greens, blues, yellows, turquoises, and teals. The parrots. The parrots were escaping from something too. What had come for us now?

  Vibrations shook the ground. I felt them through Dennis, who lowered himself, sending his own growling vibrations toward the stretch of empty road in front of us, past Thai Rhapsody, past the real estate office and kitchen-trinket storefronts. The crows cawed at us from above.

  “GO! NOW! THEY’RE HERE!”

  But Dennis and I were frozen. Fear, curiosity, shock, whatever it was, it had us in its icy claws and we were fused to tarmac. The source of chaos appeared on the horizon, cresting over the edge of cement. And we saw them. Dennis whimpered, and the air was punched from my lungs. A strange sound bolted from my throat.

  A herd of long legs thundered down the road toward us, mottled and wrinkled gray, ending in two enormous talons. The legs carried torsos the likes of which I’d never seen—fleshy chests barreled and puffed out, the skin of them puckered into goose bumps. They ran with their heads thrust forward, arms tucked by their sides, but it was their faces that made me reel where I clung. They had egg-shaped domes for heads, singed black cavities where, deep inside, their eyes hid, and in place of a mouth was a half-formed dark, boney bill—a beak. I didn’t have time to make sense of what I’d seen. The herd was barreling toward us, something distinctly MoFo about the shape of their heads and the color of their chests, but they were too large to be MoFos, Jurassic in leg and mouth. One of the hideous creatures lifted its boned beak to the sky and let out a tooth-scraping shriek. And then I believe I shit myself, because the call was in a language I knew. It was the predatory call of a raptor. These creatures knew the language of a bird.

  A wall of crows formed above us, driving toward the oncoming herd of monsters, and I snapped to attention. I looked up at the peacock who was cowering behind the Thai Rhapsody sign. I couldn’t join him without flight and I couldn’t leave Dennis anyway. Think, S.T., think. What would a crow do? I looked up at the wall of crows, realizing I couldn’t do what they were doing, my self-confidence suddenly in tatters. What would a crow do? I racked my brain—crow thoughts, crow thoughts, come on, S.T., be who you’re meant to be!—the herd coming closer, closer to meeting the wall of crows, and closer to crushing those ostrich legs down on Dennis and me.

  “Help us, S.T.!” I heard the faint call from an unmistakably beautiful voice, a voice that was almost swallowed in the fray. Kraai. He was at the front of the wall of crows, readying to mob creatures fifty times his size. He was counting on me. My head swam, my thoughts too slippery to hold on to. All I could think about was what a failure I was because I couldn’t fly, about how on earth I could call myself a crow if I couldn’t act like one. And then I had run out of time. The clamor was deafening, sounds of angry crows and the twisted prey calls of creatures that jumped up at them from below, so close to where Dennis and I had frozen. And then Dennis thawed out.

  Dennis leapt into a run, away from the battle, tearing down the center road of downtown Mill Creek. I clung to his back feeling faint, weak, and inept. I felt a great pull, gravity’s punch, and suddenly we were airborne. Dennis leapt over a toppled trash can and I couldn’t hold on. I tumbled from his back, rolling onto the road and smacking against the curbside under the Cold Stone Creamery storefront. Before I knew which way was up, what was ass and what was wing, Dennis had me in his soft, slimy jaw and just as quickly, he dropped me into a sequestered Cold Stone to-go tub. And ran away.

  The Cold Stone to-go tub was hidden behind a planter pot. He’d hidden me and taken heed of my non–hero training. I poked my head out the top of the ice cream tub, covered in shame and rotten rocky-road sludge. I watched Dennis run away, ears, limbs, and skin folds flailing, as he tore down Mill Creek town center like a weapons-grade coward. His friends were fighting against a force we couldn’t name and here he was, saving his own saggy skin. But instead of being glad, I was ashamed of what I’d done. Wasn’t this my fault? Hadn’t I taught him to self-preserve and look out for numero uno? I had shaped him into a perfect defector and gon
e against the code of murder. How would I ever look Kraai in the eye again? That is, if he didn’t die because of my negligence. The One Who Keeps. What a joke. I was just a weird half-breed made up entirely of tumbleweeds.

  A fluttering stirred the air around me. Gray and white and custard-lemon eyes engulfed my view. Ghubari.

  “Shit Turd!” he said, pushing at the Cold Stone tub with his feet. “Come now! We must hurry!”

  “I’ve failed everyone,” I said, my voice trailing into the tub. He pushed harder, toppling the container. I rolled out back onto the road. “I am not worthy to be a crow.”

  “There’s no time for that,” he said. “We have to get out of here!” Both of us flinched at a scream that tore through our feathers. It was that same raptor’s call of death. Ghubari helped me to my feet and I looked back at the horrible scene. Crows dove from the sky, mobbing at the great beasts below with their hideous skin and jet black holes where there must have been eyes. The creatures jumped up, colossal legs propelling them to great heights, and they snapped and shrieked with beaks the color of death. And then one of them launched itself after a crow. It unfurled and flapped its sides—veiny, pink appendages stubbled with the beginnings of feathers—and jumped up the side of a Greek cafe. And for a moment, it flew. The crow shot back, cawing and screaming for help, but the birdlike creature snatched it in its hideous malformed beak, snapped its neck and swallowed it whole. Cries of horror sounded out. The mobbing crows raised up into the sky, collectively taken aback by the slaying and new discovery. These monsters were almost airborne.