by Nick Lake
I hold my breath, terrified, and I see that Mark has blanched, his face drained of all blood. I can see the other shore, only ten feet away now …
Five …
My elk, the leader, stumbles, and I’m thrown forward toward the water—
but then his head comes up again and I cling on, as he pushes on.
Three …
And then we’re through, and on the bank, and the elk walks me up and away from the river, before dropping his forelegs so I can scoot down and off. Mark alights too, and many of the elks shake water from their tails and flanks beside us. At least five, though, are gone.
I’m sorry, I say.
The leader looks up at me. We are many, he says. We are Elk. The herd survives.
But his voice is sad.
One of the other elks snorts, in alarm, and I turn. Mark is tense, poised, looking at the river. I see it. A pair of eyes above the water, a snout. Sharp teeth. A wolf.
And another.
And another.
Chapter 27
There is a pack of wolves, swimming across the river toward us. They see that we have spotted them and begin to swim faster, their eyes shining. The snakes are leaving them alone: in fact I can’t see the snakes at all.
Wolves serve the Crone, I think. And snakes serve the Crone.
The elks turn, panicked breath misting the air, looking for somewhere to run, but there is nowhere, only a narrow path, all curves and switchbacks, that runs up the other side of the canyon, and will only fit them single file.
Mark looks to the river, at the onrushing forms of the wolf heads. They are getting close now; I can see the sharpness of their teeth. The mineral hardness of their eyes, glinting in the starlight. I can hear them snarling madly as they swim, their mouths foaming, mingling with the foam of the river.
Very well, says Mark, as if to himself.
Then he closes his arms around his chest and—
and collapses into himself, his body folding like paper, his skin shifting, blurring into fur, bristling, his jeans and T-shirt melting away, his jaw extending, his fingernails pushing out into claws until …
… until there is a coyote standing there, beside the river, a huge coyote the size of a man—a coyote that a second ago was a man.
Behind me, the lead elk lets out a kind of bellow, but I can’t tell if it’s one of rage or surprise or triumph, because at that moment the wolves hesitate, I see them slow in the water, and they sniff at the air in confusion.
But then the biggest of them snarls and their eyes flash again, and they come forward, reaching the shallows now, scrabbling for purchase with their paws on the riverbed. They rush up onto the sand then, bursting out of the river, spraying droplets of water as they charge at us, mouth open wide and slathering, eyes full of murder.
The coyote twists and, in Mark’s voice, says, Stay back. Stay behind me.
Then it catches the first wolf with a blow of its red paw, just as the wolf leaps, smashing it down in a cloud of sand. Immediately the coyote—Mark—whirs around and jumps into the air, closes its jaw on the throat of the biggest wolf, and in less time than it takes to tell it, tears out a great hunk of flesh in an explosion of red, and the wolf falls twitching to the ground, missing half of its neck.
There are three more wolves, and they hang back now, whimpering, their snouts downturned. They glance at one another, seem to draw some strength from each other, some resolve, and then all three of them hurl themselves at the giant coyote together.
But the coyote is ready.
It dives under one wolf, twisting its body as it does so, and its claws rake up, eviscerate the wolf as it moves through the air, its guts falling steaming to the sand. Another wolf jumps over it, and it snaps at the air and misses, the wolf hitting the ground hard and careering toward me, toward the elk, jaws wide open—
But the coyote has spun around, too fast to be possible, and sunk its teeth into the wolf’s back leg—the wolf stops as if anchored by a steel cable, its head crashing into a rock that is lying in the sand, and it is instantly still.
The last wolf doesn’t even make for me, it turns its tail and flees—or it would, if the coyote didn’t chase it to the water’s edge, and end it in a swirl of water and blood.
The elks behind me are whickering and wheezing, distressed by the smell of blood, which is ringingly metallic in the air around us, the whole atmosphere turned to iron. I half turn to them and their eyes are rolling and staring. Some of them have tried to escape up the narrow path but have got stuck, feet drumming at the ground, antlers locked with hooves.
The coyote leaves the water’s edge and begins to walk toward me.
But no.
That wasn’t the last wolf. The last wolf surges out of the water upstream of me, a gray wave, and it is huge. It bounds, snarling, past the coyote and toward the elks that are jumbled together at the foot of the path up the canyon wall. It is fast, this wolf, and it is snarling, eyes gleaming, getting closer and closer.
The coyote reacts, but maybe not fast enough, turning from me and throwing itself in the wolf’s direction—
Shelby Cooper, come back in here, says the elk closest to me, its eyes bulging.
What? I say.
Another elk takes my shoulder with its hand; I feel the fingers digging into my flesh.
What the—?
Then the rocky ravine drops away like a curtain falling, and there is forest behind it, dark forest, and my mom swings me around to face her. I stumble, but she catches me.
It’s two a.m., she says. Come inside.
I stare at her. I’m thinking about the trapped elks, the wolf closing in on them, wanting to lock its teeth on their flesh, and I want to go back and see if they’re all right, I want to know why Mark is SUDDENLY A COYOTE. But I can’t very well try to step back over there into the Dreaming, not with Mom right here beside me.
Okay, Mom, I say.
2…
Chapter 28
The next morning, the smell of bacon wakes me. I get up and CAM Walk into the kitchen, a kind of rolling walk that I’m sure looks really cool, where Mom is bent over the pan. A thought goes through my head: this woman is a murderer. But I grab it and push it down, burying it. I raise my eyebrows into a question.
Vacuum packed, says Mom. There are croissants too. Frozen. She indicates the oven where they are cooking. Outside the window there is a pale moon in the blue morning sky, and it makes me feel like I don’t know what is real anymore and what is a dream.
I sit down and soon she brings me over a plate, a mug of coffee.
Thanks, I say. I stare at her. What do I call you? Anya? Shaylene?
She frowns. Call me Mom, she says.
My fork stops on the way to my mouth. I nod slowly. So, what’s the plan? I ask.
We’ll hold tight here a while, says Mom. There’s a ton of food. And the judge won’t be here for a long time.
And then what? I say. It’s not sustainable long term.
Mom hits the table with her knife; it makes me jump. I know, Shelby, she says. I know. I’m working on it, okay?
Okay, I say. Fine.
Have I ever let you down? she asks. Have I ever not looked after you?
No, Mom, I say.
Well, then.
We sit in silence for a while, finishing our bacon and croissants.
I’m going to get some firewood, says Mom. Read a book or something.
Okay.
She clears away the plates and mugs. She washes them in the sink and I pick up a towel, and when she has finished washing she silently hands me each item and I dry it—we make a good team.
After that she leaves the room and I go to the bathroom to brush my teeth—Mom bought toothbrushes and deodorant and stuff from the gas station. When I hit the living room, Mom isn’t there, and I guess she’s outside, chopping firewood. The image is so incongruous, so Little House on the Prairie, that it makes me laugh.
It’s weird—I don’t know what my laugh so
unds like.
I look at the bookshelves but it’s all Stories of the Hopi and Navajo Firelight and The Mythology of the Major Native American Tribes. Nothing that appeals to me. I look around for a moment, sweeping the room, and that’s when I see an Apple computer on an old nineteenth-century desk in the corner, inlaid with green leather tooled with gold.
I go over to the computer and, without even really thinking about it, turn it on. I’m kind of surprised when the Apple logo on the button glows blue, and then the screen flickers on. Soon the home screen appears—no password, which seems foolish for a judge.
I look to see if there’s a modem, but if anything the computer is probably just plugged right into the phone line, for broadband. I click on Safari and after a moment a window pops up. Google. Wow.
First I search for “Anya Maxwell.” There are a ton of pages. Wikipedia, obviously, but also news articles, blogs, discussions.
Images.
I click on the Images tab and the screen is filled with tessellated little photos—a dark-haired woman, shown in old family photographs, thin and nervous looking. She looks like a beaten wife, that’s for sure.
But does she look like Mom?
Yeah, kind of. Same limp hair, same snub nose. The eyes look different—bigger, wider, but that could just be because she’s younger here. Yes, there’s a definite resemblance.
Wow.
I navigate away from the images. I search for “vivid dreams” and “dream symbolism,” but I just get a load of new age crap.
And anyway, am I sure it’s a dream? I touch the knife in my pocket, the very real-feeling knife that Mark gave me. No, not sure at all. Only, Mark just turned into a coyote. What was that all about? The whole thing was already weird and now it was twelve thousand times weirder.
I key in “coyote” and hit Enter.
The coyote is a member of the genus—
Coyote: the trickster archetype in Navajo blah blah blah.
Prince of mischief, the coyote is seen as a clever …
If you cross a coyote it is bad luck, you should turn around or—
I shiver and close the tab; open a new one. But an afterimage floats in my inner vision, like the silhouette of something outlined by the sun—the image is the word “trickster.” Trickster. Liar. Someone who plays tricks.
Mark.
I shake my head to rid myself of the idea.
Then I type in the address of one of the forums I like to hang out on—a subforum of one of the big discussion sites for homeschooled teenagers. There are a few messages from other users wondering where I have gone—usually I post a few times every night.
Deafgirl97 where you at girl?
Hey Deafgirl97 you on vacation or something?
I smile. Someone has missed me. But as I scroll down the page I realize there’s nothing here I can identify with. It’s all about Jared Leto and Pretty Little Liars and there’s nothing at all on the topic of what to do if you find out that your mother is a notorious murderer on the run from the police.
I’m about to type a reply to one of the messages, to say that I’m fine but may be offline for a while, when Mom walks in. She sees me sitting at the computer and shouts—at least I assume she shouts; she opens her mouth and I hear a faint sound.
She rushes over and holds down the power button till the computer switches off. Then she goes straight into the kitchen, and comes back with a pair of scissors—she leans behind the desk and cuts something, then folds her arms and looks at me.
What did you do? I say. What the hell, Mom?
Cut the Ethernet cable, she says. What are you thinking?
I was just—
You were on the Internet. You were posting something. They can trace that.
What? How?
Are you serious? Have you heard of IP addresses?
Huh.
Sorry, Mom, I say.
And what was that, anyway? A forum?
Yes, I say.
We need to talk about this, she says.
Me being on a forum? You’re a murderer! The words are formed by my hands before I can take them back.
She stares at me, like she’s been slapped. You cannot believe the things your father did, the things he—
But even as she is speaking something is clicking into place in my mind, slotting into the right grooves. The coffee cups of wine, the bottle of codeine missing from my makeup bag.
I hold up my hand to cut her off. You were going to drug Luke, I say.
What?
The wine. It is oh so clear in my mind now, crystal fricking clear. You put my codeine in his wine and that was why you looked all pissed when he said he didn’t drink.
I didn’t—
Mom, don’t lie!
Okay, fine, she says. I put a little bit of codeine in his drink. Just to make him sleep, so we could get out of there, I mean, he was becoming a problem. He knew us, he knew what we looked like, and he was useful for a while but—
2,700 milligrams, I say. I don’t know the sign for milligrams so I say it with my mouth.
What?
The amount. Of codeine.
She looks at me blankly.
He would have died, I say. From that much.
How do you know I put all of them in the—
Oh, so you didn’t? Where are they then? Because they’re not in my makeup bag. I’m going to run out in like five days because I only have my first bottle.
I didn’t think, she says.
Yeah. You just thought about killing Luke so he couldn’t rat on us.
As I say this, I’m sure I’m right. I mean why bother knocking him out and then leaving? It would be the same as just saying see-you-later and getting on a bus or getting a taxi to take us back to our car. No, the only way to be sure he wouldn’t tell anyone about us would be to …
… to kill him.
Shut up, says Mom.
Why? You don’t like hearing what you did? What you are? Once a murderer, always a murderer, Mom.
Even as I say it, I’m aware that it’s something I can’t take back, and so I’m not surprised when Mom slaps me. I don’t hear it, it’s almost totally silent, but I feel the shock of it, the sudden blossoming of red-hot pain.
Go to your room, she says. I’ll come for you when it’s time for lunch.
I want to ask her, did you lie to me again? This story about you being Anya Maxwell, is it another lie, like when you said that Dad was alive and wanted to kill us? But I don’t know how to ask that question. I know how to argue with her about codeine but not how to challenge the whole story we’re living in.
And anyway my blood is boiling too much to allow me to speak to her.
Instead:
Fine, I say.
I go into the room that has been assigned to me and stand by the bed. I don’t mind being alone, because (a) Mom is freaking me the hell out, and (b) I want to get back into the Dreaming, to find out what is going on. First a coyote appears on the street when I get hit by a car, then I see one from the window of our car, then Mark turns into one?
There is something seriously messed up happening and I want to know what it is.
And Mark has some explaining to do. I mean, I trusted him. I liked talking to him. I liked having someone other than my mother to talk to, and he was that someone. Now I don’t know what to think anymore and continue to be glad that I’m apart from Mom for a bit, giving me the time to sort through some thoughts in my head.
Thoughts like, (c) Mark doesn’t exist in any meaningful way, apart from in the Dreaming, and (d) Mark is a fricking coyote. Or Coyote, I should say, with a capital C. Whatever.
I’m sure there’s an e too, and f and g and h, in terms of good reasons to be in this wood-paneled room on my own, but I don’t follow that train of thought because there’s a quick way to get answers.
Holding the knife, I close my eyes and focus on finding the gap between worlds, between here and the Dreaming. It is getting easier and easier, and part of it is thinki
ng about sound, thinking about those vibrations coming into my ears, the rushing of the river water, the breathing of the elks, the hooting of owls, far off in the distance, the canyon and above it the long strip of black sky, dusted with—
Stars.
Chapter 29
The scene takes a second to resolve itself in front of me, and then the wolf is flying through the air toward the first of the trapped elks.
Huh, I think. Mark was right. Time doesn’t pass the same in the Dreaming, when I’m in my world.
I move forward, thinking in some vague way that I have to try to protect the elks, though who knows what I’m going to do. At the same time, the coyote that used to be Mark is flowing, there is no other word for it, flowing liquidly toward the same place—
and the elk leader is moving too, all of us converging—
but it’s the leader who gets there first, the big elk who carried me over the river, and he lowers his head as he charges, folds his forelegs so he skids across the sand—he must weigh close to a ton, and when his antlers hit the leaping wolf, they spear it right through.
The elk stands, then violently shakes its head, and the wolf is dashed onto a rock, lying limp and unnatural over it, blood haloing the elk’s antlers. The elk bellows, stamping its foot.
The coyote slides to a halt, panting.
For what feels like a long time, there is silence. The elks are all watching the coyote, fear in their eyes. All apart from the leader, who is looking at it—looking at Mark, I keep having to remind myself—with an expression of prideful resistance, and something like anger. But mixed up with … what? What would you call it?
Submission, I think. A kind of reluctant, angry submission.
Coyote, says the big elk. Then the resistance fades from his eyes, and he lowers his head.
Coyote, say the others. Tension pulses in the brightness of their eyes, and they bend their front legs and bow, half in trepidation, half in tribute—the posture says fear, very clearly. But unless I’m imagining it, it also says reverence.
Tension hangs in the air, like mist.
Coyote, says the first elk, when finally he looks up. Would you change your skin? You are scaring our young.
