Feral Creatures

by Kira Jane Buxton

  Dee placed me gently on a bench. She padded into the center of the clearing. She kept her wingspan halfway splayed, ready to fly. Pressa caught up and touched down on the bench next to me.

  Dee flinched and spun to face a poplar tree. And then, as if born from the darkness, an enormous thing emerged. Head suspended from its torso, its body was covered in spiny bristles. Its eye roved, red as the insides of things. It moved mechanically on too many legs.

  A Weaver.

  Not a spider, not a MoFo, but some horror in between. The owl’s scream scratched the sky behind Dee. She spun to face the night bird in distress on the other side of the clearing. Oozing out from behind blackened bark was the bird. It stood in a puddle of thawed snow. It was not an owl. Here was the creature that Ghubari and I had scuttled underneath in the cover of dark, the thing that had grown grotesque wings. Here, up close, illuminated by silver sky and the shock of snow, I could see that the dark holes of its face held two eyes, a shining black menace. How large its body was—it would have dwarfed Big Jim—its pallid skin stippled with greasy feathers. The creature stared motionless, a bony growth-like beak sprouting from the middle of its elongated face. Each of its leathery legs clenched a talon like an industrial steel hook.

  Two of them. Two creatures that might have slithered out from under H.R. Giger’s bed. One mimicking a bird, the other mimicking a spider.

  The bird creature darted its head from side to side. My stomach started demonstrating its balloon animal repertoire. The creature’s eyes were on the side of its head and I involuntarily thought of the halibut, a flatfish whose eye migrates to join its partner on the other side of the fish’s flat head as it matures. The Bird Being let out the distress “screeeeeeeeedeee,” the piercing cry of a barred owl. The betrayal smacked Dee squarely in the chest, winding her with its blunt strike. Her face collapsed. Color drained from her cheeks, her powerful legs buckled. Dee dropped to the ground.

  The Weaver and the birdlike being closed in on Dee. Four more Weavers appeared, silently stitching tracks into snow. More of the gargantuan Bird Beings came up behind the beaked creature. More and more Weavers filled the blackness behind Dee. I hadn’t seen them creep like this before. Slow, calculated steps. They surrounded her. Every memory of these things was suddenly challenged—their blundering greed, chaotic violent acts, the palsied movement of spiders on fire. Now, they were feral creatures with the quick movements of birds, the hydraulic shimmy of arachnids.

  But this was good; yes, it was good, because there were two types of Changed Ones. This meant that they would fight over her, they’d be possessed with jealousy, and we’d sneak away. The violence that hissed inside them was what I now counted on.

  “Stay away!” I said, in the coarse corvid call known to every creature on the big beautiful blue. The birdlike being closest to Dee—now on her knees—spun toward me, snake neck rippling back and forth like a sidewinder. The eyes—oily shards of coal—burned into me. It would come for me. I had seconds.

  The Bird Being lifted its head to the clouds and spilled out my warning caws precisely—a copycat. It mocked me. Those cruel eyes found me again. A flash licked across its lids.

  Nictitating membranes. I gasped.

  “Crow,” it said, in a deep bass of a bronchial beast. This time it wasn’t in crow. It spoke MoFo. Pressa and I were paralyzed. Dread burrowed in my bones.

  And then the Weaver reached out one of its spidery limbs, pressing the sharp point of a once-MoFo arm against Dee’s skin. Dee flinched.

  “NO! SHE’S MINE!” I yelled.

  The Changed Ones circled like vultures around Dee. Two sounds—one from Weaver, one from Bird Being—two hawk screams, call and response.

  Fight, dammit, fight each other for her. Get up, Dee. Get up. I spoke to Dee in my mind, willing her to lift from her crumpled heap. To straighten the rounded shells of her shoulders. Activate those beautiful fingers. She had a plan; I knew she did. She was playing opossum, coiled like a spring.

  The Bird Beings all screeched in raptor’s shrill summoning. Everything happened so fast. The Weavers let out a quick sibilant hiss.

  I could do nothing as the closest Weaver snatched Dee in two enormous spiky limbs.

  “No! Put her down!” I yelled, racing toward the abominable spider that had captured Dee. A force clamped down on my bad wing. I glanced up at the towering arachnid leg that had pinned me to the ground. Four pairs of eyes loomed above me like hostile planets. The Weaver lifted its leg and I felt the pressure release from my wing. The leg hovered above my head as the Weaver readied to bring it down on my skull. Another force, this one plowed into my body, launching me into tumbles. I was pinned now by Pressa, breathless from her dive. The Weaver’s leg struck the ground where my head had been seconds before. I looked up just in time to see the Weaver carrying Dee. It skittered away into a black labyrinth of trunks. The Weavers all dispersed like spiders erupting from a broken nest. The Bird Being turned to face me.

  And then the rush of reality crashed into me.

  They had worked together.

  “Do it. Go after her,” I read in the sheen across its black corneas. Daring me to my death. Another wiper-wash of nictitating membranes. And those eyes. Behind them a malevolent mind—I knew, without a doubt—was thinking. Then, with a stretch of the bony growth, behind a cage door of saliva strings, it spoke again.

  “NO! SHE’S MINE!” it screamed, and my heart seized. Cruel mimicry, a thief of my MoFo words. A simple parroting. The absurdity of claiming her, Pressa’s chastising, all of it thrown back in my beak. The Bird Being sprung into the air, angular wings catching its weight, and I caught a glimpse of its knifelike wing joints, the flight feathers hefting it into the sullen sky. To fly, this creature’s very bones must have hollowed. The other Bird Beings leapt to the air.

  “They took her! They took her!” I screamed, erupting from my stupor. “They took her! Quickly!” I threw myself across the clearing, stumbling over the craters left by mukluk prints, deformed bird feet, and the skittish scars of spiders. I called out to Aura, screaming for someone to help us—bird, insect, tree, fungi, Onida, help us, help us, please, anyone, help us.

  “They are going to kill her, Pressa, and I will die too.”

  “S.T., try to breathe. If they wanted to kill her, they would have already done it. They want something else with her,” said Pressa.

  I felt my body ball into a fist. I remembered what Ghubari had said—

  “I told you they are trying to reproduce. They have been hunting for her.”

  “We have to get help. We have to get back to Ghubari and all the domestics and the elephant herd—”

  “And we have to do it now,” said Pressa.

  “But with Aura down, all these dead zones, how will we get a message to them in time? How will a crow with a broken heart—”

  “Try to keep the bees in your head calm, S.T.”

  “But how will we get to them in time?” I held up my weak wing. “They won’t know where we are!” I looked around at the bodies of the replacement trees who never made it to adulthood, who suffered the same fate as their predecessors at the hands of humans.

  “Yes, Aura is shut down. And I’m not strong enough to fly you. But I have an idea. And I’m just warning you, you’re not going to like it one bit, but also, I don’t give a hooting hoverfly because you’ve behaved very badly, and frankly, S.T., you’ve given love a bad name.”

  I momentarily regretted all the late nights answering Pressa’s every fawning question about MoFo life. I’d loved it, but damn. “You’re right,” I said, trying to stop my mind from its scribble scrabble into the future on hamster feet.

  “Follow me. And keep up,” she said, hopping across the clearing like an inky angel. Kind and clever and brave. As strong as Tiffany S. from Tinder. I scampered behind Pressa.

  The very last time I saw Tiffany S. standing on two feet, I’d been perched on the back of the La-Z-Boy®. Big Jim was draining the one-eyed lizard (an elus
ive reptile I’d never been able to locate). She approached me slowly. I expected histrionics from her, seeing as I’d just refashioned her pantyhose into a Superman-style cape for myself. It suited me. She wore an Easter-yellow dress and pinched her anxiety between fuchsia lips. Her makeup was adventurous and her hair that of someone who had recently escaped an insane asylum by way of a category five hurricane. This is because I had sabotaged her hair iron.

  “Shit Turd. You and I have to work this out, honey. I’m not here to take him away from you. You’ve got your thing, B.J. and I got ours. I’m trying my best here. Can you cut me some slack?” She extended a peace offering in her long pink talons.

  A Cheeto®.

  “Can we be friends?” she asked, a tremble in her voice.

  I weighed the pros and cons of the delectable orange treasure. The pleading pooling in her eyes. That feather boa–tickled tease, hope.

  Then I launched myself through the window, dropping a stream of shit over her head. Really, the perfect metaphor for my terrible attitude.

  If you’re not careful, history is a perennial plant. Tenacious roots hide themselves so that things can once again burgeon in bright colors.

  I’m sorry, Dee. I’m sorry, Tiffany S.

  Footnotes

  1This was the “safe word” Big Jim used to sometimes shriek from the bedroom; even not knowing exactly what a safe word was, it was worth a whirl.

  Chapter 24

  Mariposa

  Scarlet reef hermit crab

  Bonaire, southern Caribbean

  I have spent my life hiding

  I carry my home and the weight of the world on my back

  And outside, the whooshing world roars

  Waves thrash their mighty arms, conducting current moods

  Perhaps I have missed the aqueous dance of anemone,

  That the sea stars sing of survival in a constellation of color

  That every bubble strives to reach the sky

  And I tuck myself tighter into my shell, pale and shy as sea-foam

  Maybe I’ve missed that the giant clam is a brave mollusk, a silky-lipped secret keeper who will tell you if you ask

  Nothing will awaken the life within you as the silver switch and slice of a shark

  The electric energy of an eel can change the currents of your story

  Leafy sea dragon dresses in seaweed, a private show

  And the jellied globes of fish eggs shine with potential, glistening from the fizzy frenzy for life within

  The sponges open themselves to every passing plankton, for your pleasure, life flows through pinprick pores

  (Minuscule beings can hold the hearts of lionfish)

  Parrotfish parade their paints for your eyes, not their own

  Algae brave a thousand salt-stung mouths

  The anemone feels its friendship with the clown fish, holding back the sting of its tentacles for a greater gift

  And now, the end is near. I must leave my home

  Did I fill my life with color and sense and sound?

  Or did I miss the brilliant blue spectacle?

  I made a shape for myself,

  A shell shape

  Tiny, hidden, satisfactory, and safe

  But now I am sorry that I didn’t stretch to take up the entire ocean

  I spent my life hiding.

  Come out of your shell.

  Chapter 25

  S.T.

  Bothell, Washington, USA

  It was like looking through Big Jim’s mug of beer. I used to do this as Big Jim swiveled on a barstool, slinging back peanuts. He’d engage the nearest pod of MoFos, demonstrating one of his slick bar tricks or bewildering them with a human beatbox freestyle. I’d hop from Big Jim’s shoulder, along the fuzzy slope of his arm, and onto the bar top where I’d shred a few napkins (a subtle comment on the unequal distribution of peanuts) and then peer at the scene through the glass mug. The world was bathed in psychedelic amber. A busty bartender swam around with a ballooned head as if she’d been stung in the nose and misplaced her EpiPen. The bar’s bottles were wonky props from the Mad Hatter’s adult tea party. This is what everything looked like as Pressa and I ran, sun melting snow. Exhaustion and heartache can skew the world into a fairground fun house.

  “How do you know they’re this way?” I frantically asked Pressa, who galloped like a roadrunner, taking great leaps where her wings would catch the air and she’d force herself back to the ground. Because of me.

  “I don’t, I’m following my inner map, feeling where the murder might be; we’ve got to try—”

  “Pressa, we can’t just guess! We have to—”

  Pressa stopped short.

  She stood over enormous mud marks. The hollow prints of hooves.

  Changed Ones had thundered past here, uprooting the burrowers—taffy-pink worms, silver springtails, ants, and rotifers. Beyond the blindness of the eye, I heard shrill screams from the world Dee loved so deeply.

  Dee, I thought, Dee, Dee, Dee.

  The world of Web’s protozoa, water bears, nematodes, and pygmy creatures had scuttled to safety as their mansion of moss was ripped apart. A universe of microorganisms had experienced their big bang.

  Our beaks were drawn upward by the crisp rustle of wings. We ducked. More Changed Ones—the oil-feathered flying things and their vulgar airborne bodies. Once they’d passed, Pressa gestured to the hoofprints, then the sky.

  “They’re all heading east,” she said.

  “Shit, you’re right. But where? How far?” I asked. “Pressa, I’m holding us back. You have to go ahead and get help; we have to get to Dee faster than I can—”

  “No. We don’t separate. We go together. That is the code of murder,” she said. The look in her eye—a look I’d seen Nargatha give a Bieber-haired teenager who called her a “denture diva” right before she plowed over him with her Rascal 615 mobility scooter—told me to drop it. Pressa was risking her life for me, and holy Hostess snacks, I don’t know if there has ever been a more crowmantic gesture.

  Another hailstorm of wingbeats rained down on us. We ducked behind a tree trunk. I glanced up and felt the mug of Pabst Blue Ribbon lift from my vision. Hope sharpened everything into crystal focus.

  “There! Look! Look!” I gestured up to a streaming rainbow ribbon. Pressa called upward—five throaty caws, “We’re here! We’re here!” And then—thank the entire cast of Law & Order—streaks of Carnival color spilled from the sky. A feathered form descended, gray as Gandalf and just as wise.

  “Ghubari!” I shrieked. “Ghubari! Listen, we don’t have time, we have to spread word, summon every esteemed colleague on earth—”

  “That doesn’t mean what you think it does,” he said.

  “Dammit, then summon every creature on earth—The Changed Ones took Dee! They took her! Right in front of me! And Ghubari, they spoke! They know what I am! They called me ‘crow’!”

  “I see,” said Ghubari, calm as a Buddhist cucumber.

  Ghubari and Calliope clutched the branches of black cottonwoods. The parrots surveyed the devastation. Resin that bled thick golden tears from tree trunks. The cottonwoods breathed out a sweet balsamic aroma—olfactory grief. It brought swift scent-summoned memories—Dee gingerly dabbing her cuts with crushed cottonwood buds, Dee with her bees as they emerged from the frigid fist of winter, gathering resin from cottonwood to make a homemade glue for the hive. I shook to escape the needling pain of missing her, a crush that was steadily collapsing my lungs. Dee. Dee. Dee.

  Tom Hanks, the cockatoo, joined us on a nearby cottonwood branch, giving a dramatic high kick with one leg.

  “Hellooooo!” he sang. “It’s me!” His mezzo-soprano was so good I had to double-check that actual Adele hadn’t survived her species’s extinction by squatting in a tree this whole time.

  The three parrots peered down from above.

  “Where’s Kraai?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” said Ghubari.

  “Where are the elephants, th
e dog packs, we need to—”

  “Perhaps, Shit Turd, we do nothing.”

  I stared at the round, inquisitive faces of parrots. “What?”

  “Perhaps, Shit Turd, she is exactly where she needs to be.”

  “No, Ghubari, it’s The Changed Ones that have her; we need to summon all the animals—”

  “They are gone,” said Calliope, the macaw in Hawaiian hues.

  “Gone where?”

  “I sent them away,” said Ghubari. “I told them to leave our territory. All of them. They have started a great migration, to find somewhere safe to call home. The Changed Ones have Dee, and while they have her, Shit Turd, every other living being has a fighting chance to escape.”

  Everything began to bulge and bloat, beer bubbles and glassy distortion. “Ghubari, I don’t understand. Are you hearing how important this is? They have Dee.”

  “Shit Turd, she is with her kind now. They have the very last of their own and now you get what you wanted too. The species will not die out if there is a female to produce young. Think of it.”

  Pressa took over for me. I was too stunned, a legless half-breed made of tumbleweeds. “Ghubari, listen to yourself! You can’t sacrifice a nestling; it’s not the code of murder. These beasts can’t be allowed to continue their reign of horror—”

  “Speciation reversal, Pressa. It is a natural notion—we’ve seen it in ravens, and there is a chance The Changed Ones could breed themselves back, to combat the devastation of the virus on the human anatomy. Imagine reversing Darwin’s tree! Breeding back the traits of humans that are missing in these mutated beings. You said it yourself—one called you ‘crow’! Marvelous! They are still in there somewhere! And then you, anthropocentric S.T., you might finally get your quixotic dream. Don’t you see? They might not be what they once were, but they will be something closer, thanks to Dee. All thanks to the genes of your nestling.”

  “I don’t have time for YOUR GARBAGE PARROT SCIENCE! I have to get to Dee!” I yelled upward, shaking with anger. “This is not her destiny. I am The One Who Keeps!”