Hollow Kingdom

by Kira Jane Buxton

  To gain a better vantage point, I hopped onto a mound of rubble and then up on top of a crooked sign for a housing development with a fake Italian name—Trivalli, Toscanitti, or Umbilica, something. The clouds parted to allow a billowing skirt of spring sunshine through. The light illuminated the destruction that defiled the Lynnwood street, its cracked buildings and severed telephone wires. Dennis broke his trot into a run down 164th Street. He ran west toward the Olympic mountain range that had stood its ground under all this change. I focused on the mountains momentarily, wondering in a split second what was happening to the creatures who lived under those snowy caps—was it better over there?—and then shifted my focus closer to us, on a cluster of sick MoFos up ahead, a herd of sluggish shadows that dragged their bodies around the middle of 164th. Dennis passed two freeway entries—north and south—old graffiti and bullet holes decorating the once-emerald signs. Birds tailed him from the sky as he thundered toward the mass of MoFos. He has seen something, I thought. A rabbit? A garish yellow tennis ball? And then I brought into focus a van and its sliding door.

  Time slowed down and I saw everything as if it had been condensed into one of Nargatha’s shitty little snow globes, as if watching the jostling scene from behind a glass bubble. I took in the MoFo that had trapped itself in the sliding door, its torso and the wisps of greasy hair that clung to the mottled skin of its head, hanging and thrashing its one free arm. A swath of skin from the side of its face hung like the flap of a leather satchel. In slippery seconds, I realized just how many MoFos were all around that truck, how they were huddled together like the ant army I’d encountered, as if one entity. I frantically scanned for rabbit or tennis ball or Cheetos® bag as Dennis careened toward the MoFo crowd. When I found the source of his intrigue, the ground shook and I am sure somewhere far beyond the clouds, beyond where a little crow caught in a sudden nightmare could see, a star burst and shattered across the galaxy.

  The truck was brown and yellow. The MoFo’s shirt was brown and yellow.

  It was a UPS truck.

  I screamed, but no sound came out. He was already too far away, and I watched as the ground split apart beneath my feet and Dennis raced into the crowd of MoFos to get to the UPS truck, the sworn enemy of every domesticated dog.

  And somewhere out there, somewhere very far away, a precious egg tumbled from the heart of its nest, plummeting down, down, down…

  Dennis barreled through the MoFo crowd, baying and barking at the truck ahead of him. The MoFos stirred and groaned, something snarled. And then a strained whimper. Dennis’s friends and allies, birds of all sorts, mobbed the MoFos from above, who were starting to come to life, starting to swipe their palsied limbs and make noxious noises. The birds told Dennis to run, but I heard him yelp—a sharp sound that stopped my world on its axis—and then the MoFos were crowding in on him, deviant limbs reaching for his beautiful brown body.

  I heard Dennis snarl and yowl and I was running, hobbling, and tripping over myself as I scurried along 164th to get to him. And then I didn’t hear Dennis anymore.

  And somewhere out there in the depths of an Arctic landscape of blue ice, a heart beat its last.

  Birds filled the air with shrieks of sorrow and the woeful call that meant an end had come. Ghubari and Kraai dove down, down from a sky that had surely ripped in half, in front of my shaking body, blocking me from moving any closer to my very best friend who I didn’t know how to be without. They spread their wings like great feathered shields, forcing me backward. I cawed and keened and wailed, I thrashed and pecked and scratched, but there was no way past their protection.

  Somewhere out there, a thousand-year-old redwood snapped in two.

  And then there were just the horrible sounds of sick MoFos and their destruction as they took the being I loved most in this world away from me. Everything was broken. Everything was a violent blur until I bowed my head to the ground and brought into focus a gossamer cluster of beautiful blues. It was a lone peacock feather. It lay there at my feet, too beautiful and fragile for this world.

  And somewhere in the boundless Universe, a star’s light went out.

  Chapter 32

  S.T.

  164th Street, Lynnwood, Washington, USA

  I didn’t leave Dennis when the college crows went to roost in safety. Migisi and several crows chose to stay with me in solidarity. Migisi lifted us—herself and me—onto the top of a telephone wire where we were relatively safe from the MoFos and the potential danger that lurked around every corner. She didn’t leave my side, and I took comfort in the rhythmic rise and fall of her chest, which reminded me of the ocean. The next time Aura started its song and the sun started its great climb over the horizon, drenching me in powdery pastels, the rest of the crows returned. Once the sick MoFos were lured and cleared by a flock of Mohawk-ed Steller’s jays, we stood around Dennis. Someone, someone with empathy and a heavy heart, had draped a blanket over him. Now a piebald of red and brown, the blanket had once been cream colored. Its velvety canvas held rows and rows of cartoon cream sheep and just two black ones that I could count who were facing the wrong way. I thought they represented me and my Dennis. I thought Dennis would have loved this blanket. The college crows fluttered to the ground in solidarity with deep sadness pooling in their inky eyes. They had been good to me and had flown on a quest to acquire provisions I’d asked for. Kraai stood near me and I took comfort in his presence. The world was topsy-turvy. My heart was fractured. We stood in reverential silence and I felt the solemn heartbeats of a hundred crows.

  I felt Kraai nodding behind me, and I picked up what my crow brethren had scoured from the skies to find. I rolled the endangered bottles of Pabst Blue Ribbon up to Dennis’s blanket. Two crows helped me place a shoe near him, a classic two-tone leather zoot-suit shoe I thought he would have loved the taste of. I placed the partially eaten hot dog down near him in honor of Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest on Coney Island—I’d always wished Dennis could have been a contestant. He would have been a champion. Then I waddled back to where the bag of Cheetos® lay. I punctured a hole in the Cheetos® bag and laid out the wondrous electric-orange puffs and I made a D for him because I knew how to. D for Dennis. D for dog. D for delightful dingbat I’d chase around the Green Mountain sugar maple, where I’d pull his tail and he’d lope after me with a goofy smile, wrinkles lagging behind him.

  I heard a stirring behind me and turned to see an influx of wings. Feathereds were silently alighting to the ground, goose and swan, thrush and sparrow, hawk and owl. Birds of day and birds of night. Some touched down on the curbside, others landed on the tops of dusty vehicles. Not one of them made a sound. Even the whispering whoosh of their wings was barely audible.

  It felt as if I were in a strange dream. I stared at the white sheep and the two black sheep, feeling nothing and everything all at once. The college crows, one by one, hopped forward toward my Dennis. Each laid an offering around the blanket. There were twigs and blossoms, unopened candy bars and bottle caps, pens and cuff links and paper clips and lighters and jewelry and shoelaces. Treasures abounded. It was hard to look away from the smiling sheep and the next time I did, I saw that it wasn’t just feathereds of every persuasion that had gathered. Skunks had arrived. There were raccoons and Pacific chorus frogs, leopard slugs, a family of goats, caterpillars, mice, rabbits, and butterflies. Although I couldn’t see them, I felt the silvery presence of spiders. I saw an opossum whose grinning face I remembered well. A flock of glaucous-winged gulls circled above, calm and cool. As they looped, they released empty mollusk shells from their beaks. The shells dropped around us, raining down a tinkling tune that sounded like a choir of tiny bells. Their leader—my friend—gave me a nod from the sky. There was a family of moles who looked friendly and familiar. And behind them, lying down with their paws crossed or standing with deft attention, was a beautiful melting pot of dogs. Poodles and puggles, mastiffs and mongrels, terriers and scent hounds, juvenile and senior. The breeds that had the MoFo-ta
ilored instincts for a fighting chance in a new earth—vizslas, pointers, rottweilers—and those who had made it despite the odds stacked against them—Chihuahuas and papillons, French bulldogs and golden retrievers. And standing among them was someone I knew—a small white American pit bull terrier with beige patches and a pink nose and collar, whose belly was swollen with puppies. Vibrant snapshots of our adventures fluttered all around us. There were two German shorthaired pointers that I remembered watching run from a glass fortress to their freedom, fit and healthy now. There was a tiny white poodle with a sparkling collar and a whole lot of self-importance. And there was a mother husky with meat on her ribs and a litter of boisterous pups who had crust-free eyes and the chance to grow their bones. They were all here for my Dennis.

  Ears stood to attention or hung like dish towels, drool drips silently puddled on the ground, panting clouded the air with moisture. Tails, long and sweeping or docked and stubby, were still. And the wriggling, balloon-bellied puppies tugged on ears, chased one another’s tails with the occasional yip, or slept with tummies rising and falling, quietly dreaming of enormous adventures that lay ahead.

  The One Who Opens Doors moved through the crowd like a king, pressing the cement with his magnificent knuckles, his hairy orange Herculean arms trailing like moss-matted vines. He looked at me, his face a great gray moon with eyes that held the world’s secrets. In the seconds that we shared a glance, we felt like one being, no borders or edges dividing us. My breath hitched as I spotted an army of domestic cats of all sizes and pigments flanking the great ape. At the helm, the feline leader striding closest to The One Who Opens Doors was a ferocious-looking tabby. Squinting, I made out “Genghis Cat” on his collar. Genghis Cat sat down on the curb to oversee everything in the way only a cat can, commanding a wide berth and quiet respect. The thing about cats is that they’re always where they want to be. Genghis Cat was here for Dennis. And everyone on earth knows that if you have the respect of a cat, it means your soul is one worth being around.

  The female orangutan, a ravishing red beauty with cognac eyes, ushered her offspring forward with their wispy ginger fur and bright, innocent expressions. They were all limbs, gangly and buoyant in their youth. The morning light caught their fur and surrounded them in golden halos. Dogs and opossums, skunks, beavers, and river otters scuttled aside for The One Who Opens Doors. The great apes, with brown, yellow, blue, and green eyes upon them, ambled up to the sheep blanket. The male groaned as he sat his bulky body down, sweeping some of the offerings aside to make room. His family sat around him, the young orangutans fixated on the sheep blanket and the resting bump below it. Like an ancient wizard, The One Who Opens Doors placed his perfect palm onto Dennis’s broken body and smoothed it gently. And we all sat—an unprecedented unity of fur and feather—breathing in and out like ocean waves, as Dennis was pet for the last time.

  The One Who Opens Doors lifted himself with considerable effort to the whimsical jingle of a couple of bottle caps that freed themselves from his dense, knotty coat and moved away from Dennis with family and felines in tow. And then, every bird in its own time bowed its head long and low toward Dennis. I watched, mesmerized, turning slowly to see a gratitude that rose up out of hearts’ darkness.

  And here, I silently said goodbye to Dennis. And to my brave little friend Cinnamon. And finally to Big Jim.

  I thought about Big Jim and how much I still missed him. I thought about the thing he did. He had met Tiffany S. on Tinder, where she described herself as a “Jolly Rauncher” and he a “Strict Vagetarian”; though I squawked my disapproval at his choice, it was marginally less self-defeating than his original “Sausage Titties.” Tiffany S. from Tinder had never taken a liking to either Dennis or me. Dennis once mauled her purse, and she threw a beer mug at the wall, screaming that the purse was something expensive. I made her nervous, she said, because it was unnatural to share a space with a wild animal (also, I cached some of her hair extensions). Big Jim and Tiffany S. got into a screaming match and Tiffany S. said that Big Jim had to make a choice: her or Dennis and “that horrid black bird.” Big Jim’s face was red, his eyes were watery, and he begged her not to ask him to choose. But she insisted: a relationship ultimatum. And then he told Tiffany S. that he would never get rid of Dennis and me, that we were family. Big Jim was not a crow, but he knew about the loyalty of murder, which makes him as much crow as any I’d met. “Crows before hoes,” said Big Jim, pretending he wasn’t drowning as I sat on his shoulder and collected his tears.

  Soon after Tiffany S. left, The Black Tide rushed in and he fell into a deep depression. Not long after, Tiffany S. was attacked by a man on the street and put in the hospital. Big Jim couldn’t forgive himself for not being there to protect her. And that’s when I think we really lost him. He energized himself with malt liquor and talked with his fists. His shooting-range friends banded together, planning to shoot their way out of the spreading sickness. They came to pick him up to start a revolution but decided he was too weak, too heartsick for a woman who was the wrong color. They ridiculed and abandoned him. No one in his life would accept his love for us. That’s what killed Big Jim, ultimately. Before the virus got him, his life-sustaining organ was broken, because if you aren’t allowed to love freely, a part of your heart breaks. Perhaps my Big Jim was just too tender for this new world.

  This part of our story is sad but I always try to see the silver lining. One of the reasons that it is not such a tragedy that Big Jim is gone is because he would have died of a heart attack at seeing all the new weeds in the neighborhood anyway. The English ivy and Himalayan blackberry takeover alone would have killed him off. Also, there was no more lactose intolerance for him to suffer through. And also, I befriended penguins. He wouldn’t have stood for that shit.

  A murmuration of starlings took flight, creating an intricate kaleidoscope of shapes above our Dennis. And then, when I thought there were no miracles left to keep me on my feet, the dog packs shifted. They were moving out of the way to allow an animal through. Appearing from under one of the freeway signs was the baby elephant I’d seen on our travels. The dog packs watched as the young pachyderm lumbered purposefully toward Dennis with its head low, its trunk swinging to and fro. Crows hopped toward Dennis, forming a black shield until I nodded my head, assuring them it was safe to let the elephant through. The baby elephant stopped by the sheep blanket and hung his head low. His eyes took in the scene around, the quiet respect that was being absorbed by the earth through the trunks of nearby trees. Vibrations in the ground caused several dogs to whimper; some birds squawked. And emerging under the ravaged sign for I-5 North was the rest of the baby’s family—the entire elephant herd.

  The giants moved as one like a great gray cloud, shifting their weight from flat foot to flat foot that kissed the ground methodically. Elephants command attention. But their size is not what makes the heart skip a beat. It’s how they walk with the world’s weight on their shoulders, sensitive, noble, their hearts pulsing and as wide open as the great gray leaves that are their ears. MoFos used to say that an elephant never forgets and until this very moment, I hadn’t understood what that really meant. An elephant’s memories don’t reside in organ or skin or bone. They live closer to tree time than we do, and their memories reside in the soul of their species, which dwarfs them in size, is untouchable, and lives on forever to honor every story. They carry stories from generations back, as far as when their ancestors wore fur coats. That is why, when you are close to an elephant, you feel so deeply. If they so choose, they have the ability to hold your sadness, so you may safely sit in the lonely seat of loss, still hopeful and full of love. Their great secret is that they know everything is a tide—not a black tide but the natural breath of life—in and out, in and out, and to be with them is to know this too. And here they were, suddenly lifting the weight of our sadness for us, carrying it in the curl of their trunks. We all sat together in our loss, not dwelling, but remembering. For an elephant never forgets.
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  The presence of the elephants jogged old words to the front of my mind, the words of an octopus named Onida. “Everyone has a journey, Crow. More than just the one.” I felt a great deal of comfort in remembering her wisdom.

  Addiction to an electronic world caused the downfall of the MoFos. They’d forgotten to connect with each other, to connect with the creatures who missed them and to Nature as She called for them to come home. The crow part of me knew not to dwell on what was, but the MoFo part of me would always carry my best friend in my heart. Because we never give up on anything, especially love, and that’s the very, very best thing about being a MoFo.

  The elephants smelled like churned soil and freedom as they passed me, blocking out the sky and the possibility of darkness. They slowed to a stop as they reached their baby elephant and the tiny lump under the sheep blanket. And there, they took their time, shuffling back and forth, swinging their pendulous trunks with lowered heads to the whispers of the wind. They formed a circle around our Dennis, facing outward. And the sun shone because that is her impassioned duty, to keep us from being swallowed by the dark. And I swear I felt the warmth lifting off nearby stones and an ancient song of sorrow that the evergreens shook from their leaves. The elephants swayed to this music, protecting him, honoring him. And we grieved like this in harmony, calling on the ocean with our breath.

  Chapter 33

  The Arctic Circle, Greenland

  (meditations of a polar bear)