Beasts of Extraordinary Circumstance

by Ruth Emmie Lang

  As we approached the house, I wondered what Weylyn could possibly have to show me. I secretly hoped he was finally going to come clean about the rainstorm on July 4. Maybe he had his magic rain machine stashed inside the wicker laundry hamper shaped like a penguin.

  Weylyn paused at the front door. “Before I show you, do you promise not to tell anyone?”

  “I promise.”

  “Especially not your mom.”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  We stepped inside, and Weylyn’s eyes darted around like Ping-Pong balls. “Where is he? Merlin!”

  “You’re hiding a wizard in here?” I laughed.

  Weylyn got down on his hands and knees and started poking his head under furniture. “Merlin? Merlin, where are you?” Eventually, he emerged out of the bathroom carrying a brown piglet with a weird bump on his forehead.

  “This is Merlin?” I was impressed. Not even I had tried something that gutsy under my mother’s watch.

  “Mrs. Lowry helped me rescue him. He’s magic.”

  “Magic?”

  “Yeah. See his horn?” I looked closer. It was a horn, all right, no bigger than a candy corn. “That’s where all his powers come from,” he explained.

  “What powers?”

  Weylyn shrugged. “I don’t know. He hasn’t used them yet.”

  That’s because he’s a pig, I thought. He doesn’t have powers. “Are you sure it’s the pig that’s magic?”

  He frowned. “What do you mean?”

  Either Weylyn was trying to fool me or he was fooling himself. Maybe imposing magic powers on a pig was his way of dealing with it, his way of diverting attention from the real magic pig in the room. Regardless, I wasn’t falling for it.

  “Look. You and I both know something weird is going on with you. You don’t need to keep hiding it from me.”

  Weylyn looked stunned for a second, then angry. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Yes, you do. What about the rain?”

  “What about it?” Weylyn said, indignant.

  “I know you had something to do with it.”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Fine! Be that way,” I snapped back. “Have fun with your pig. I’m gonna go see how Jaws ends.” I turned sharply and yanked the front door open.

  As I stormed away, Weylyn shouted after me, “The shark explodes!”

  * * *

  Weylyn and I avoided each other the rest of the day the way kids do when they don’t want to admit they’re wrong. By the next morning, however, we were back to acknowledging each other’s presence, and by the afternoon, we were friends again. After school, Weylyn and I sneaked over to the carriage house and found Merlin sleeping inside a wicker basket filled with scraps from Mama’s unfinished quilting projects.

  “I feel bad waking him,” I said, not wanting to interrupt whatever adorable pig dreams he was having.

  “He won’t mind. Especially once he smells apples,” Weylyn contended.

  Our neighbors had a small grove of apple trees on the back of their property. As kids, they told my sisters and me to feel free to wander over and pick apples whenever we liked. As far as I knew, the invitation was still good, although I’m not sure it applied to stowaway pigs.

  Weylyn picked up the basket with Merlin in it, and we walked to the apple grove, keeping careful watch for Mama and her many spies—namely, my sisters. Once we were safely out of sight of the house, Weylyn sat the basket down on the grass under one of the trees. Merlin’s snout popped out from beneath the fabric scraps as he sniffed the air furiously. A split second later, he leaped from the basket and began looting the trove of rotting fruit that circled the base of the tree.

  “He’s hungry,” I said.

  “Me, too.” Weylyn reached up and plucked one of the few amber-colored apples that were still attached to the tree’s branches. “Want one?” he said, offering it to me.

  “No, thanks.”

  Weylyn shrugged and bit into it, not bothering to wipe the juice off his chin as he chewed. We sat cross-legged on the ground, the brittle, yellow grass prickling our legs, and watched Merlin greedily scarf down mushy apple after mushy apple.

  “Where do you think he came from?” Weylyn asked as he tossed his apple core over his shoulder.

  “A pig farm, I guess,” I said. From the unimpressed look on Weylyn’s face, I realized he’d hoped I’d whip up a more whimsical origin story. I thought for a moment, then added, “Or maybe he’s from the future.”

  Weylyn nodded approvingly, so I continued, “A future where pigs have evolved to shoot laser beams out of horns in their foreheads.”

  “So, it’s a weapon?” he asked, playing along.

  “It can be, but they also use them to slice apples.”

  “Yeah, that makes sense. But how’d he end up here?”

  “Because of the Great Apple Famine of 3026. He traveled back in time to gather apples so his family wouldn’t starve.”

  Weylyn looked accusingly at Merlin, who was busy stuffing his face. “He’s not doing a very good job of ‘gathering.’”

  “The time travel gave him amnesia. He doesn’t remember that he has powers or that he has a family back home or even where home is.”

  At that moment, Merlin lifted his head and gazed wistfully into the distance as if my silly story had triggered a memory. Weylyn burst out laughing, and so did I. It occurred to me that our time-traveling pig story was no more ridiculous than one about a wolf boy who controls the weather—aside from the fact, of course, that I had seen the latter with my own two eyes.

  * * *

  A few days later, an old truck pulled up to the carriage house. I watched from my window as a middle-aged woman climbed out of the cab and started unloading boxes with words like kitchen and books written on them in marker. She looked sad, an unashamed, nobody’s-watching kind of sad. Tears spilled over her lower lids like a tub overflowing and puddled in the crevices of her nose and upper lip. She exhibited all the symptoms of someone who had just gone through a breakup. Based on her age, I guessed it was probably more like a divorce. As the woman picked up another box, the bottom fell out, and something glass smashed on the concrete below. If this were a movie, I thought, it would be something symbolic like a cake plate she got as a wedding gift. She would bend over to pick it up, and as she did, she would catch her pained reflection in a hundred jagged pieces. But it wasn’t a cake plate, just a lightbulb, and the woman barely acknowledged it had broken.

  “You need any help?” I said as I walked up the drive. The woman jumped with surprise and clumsily knocked tears off her cheek with the back of her hand, “Oh. Sorry. I didn’t know anyone was home.” The skin of her face was raw, and her eyelids were plump with salt water. She was wearing a stained SCOOTER’S BARBECUE shirt that most people would have retired to the pajama drawer, and her wedding ring bit into her finger like a tourniquet. I figured she was only still wearing it because she couldn’t get it off. “Are you moving in?” I asked.

  “Yeah. Reverend Kramer, your … dad?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Your dad is renting it out to me temporarily.”

  “You’re Weylyn’s teacher, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah. Ms. Lowry. Meg.” She grabbed a potted plant from her passenger seat and headed toward the door. Without invitation, I followed her inside.

  She hadn’t brought much, just a few boxes and trash bags full of clothes. I opened the box that read, VIDEOTAPES and shuffled through her collection. They were classics mostly: Funny Face, His Girl Friday, A Streetcar Named Desire. I held up her copy of Casablanca. “Can I borrow this?”

  Ms. Lowry—Meg—shrugged. “Sure.” She set the plant down on the kitchen counter, grabbed a bottle of wine by the neck, and poured some into a plastic cup. It was noon.

  “I know it’s none of my business, but why were you crying?”

  Meg took a long gulp to give herself time to think. “I left my husband.”

 
I nodded like I knew what she was going through. “That’s rough.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why’d you leave him?”

  Meg slumped down in the ugly, plaid armchair that Mama’s uncle Ben had given her as a housewarming gift. It hadn’t been allowed to thaw her backside for more than twenty minutes before she banished it to the carriage house. “We wanted different things.”

  “You still love him, though?”

  “Absolutely,” she said and pulled off her shoes. Her socks had gray soles, and the right one had a hole that left her big toe completely exposed to the elements. I was so exhilarated by the unceremoniousness of it that I almost whipped off my own shoes. I wanted to dig my toes into the spongy, cream carpet, then spill a whole bottle of grape juice on it and watch as Meg shrugged like she did when that lightbulb had broken. “It’s only a carpet,” she’d say. Mama had removed all the carpet from the house because she didn’t trust us not to ruin it.

  “Sorry. I didn’t get your name,” Meg said.

  “Lydia.”

  “Lydia, I’m usually not like this. I’m pretty embarrassed.”

  “I don’t care. If you were puking or something, that would be different.”

  Meg shared one “Ha!” with me. Two is customary, but she was going through a divorce, so I cut her some slack. “Oh, and you know you’re sharing this place with a pig, right?”

  She nodded. “I think he’s in the bathtub sleeping.”

  “His name’s Merlin, and he likes tomatoes.”

  “Noted.”

  “Well … I guess I’ll get out of your hair,” I said and headed to the front door. I was about to grab the doorknob when I turned back to face Ms. Lowry and said, “Weylyn thinks Merlin has magic powers.”

  Meg’s eyes flitted to the plant she had left sitting on the kitchen counter. “Do you believe him?” she asked. Something in her voice made it seem like she was angling for a particular response.

  I hesitated. “About the pig?”

  “No … not exactly,” she said expectantly. Had she seen something, too? Had Weylyn made it rain in the cafeteria because they were serving cold frittatas again? If he had, I think I would have heard about it.

  I wanted to tell her everything, but I couldn’t. I had just met this woman, and now she was my neighbor. If she didn’t believe me, I’d have to leave for school every day with a bag over my head. “I’ll bring the movie back tomorrow,” I blurted and ran out the front door.

  * * *

  Two weeks later, I wore a coat to school for the first time that year. Fall had made its presence known in the form of wet, earthy smells and shivering tree limbs shedding leaves in various shades of exotic cat. I walked to school that morning, listening to the crisp sounds that punctuated each one of my footfalls and the honks of geese flying overhead. I found it strange that there could be so much beauty in the death of all these living things. Maybe it was only beautiful because we knew they would be resurrected next spring. I don’t think I would enjoy fall quite as much if I knew there was an eternal winter to follow.

  By then, Ms. Lowry had settled into her new home. After school, Weylyn and I would help her rake leaves or plant bulbs, and then we’d sit on the porch and drink hot chocolate, watching the steam draw treble clefs on a gray sheet of sky. She had done a lot of work inside, too, somehow managing to arrange the garage sale furnishings in a way that made them look almost intentional. Even Uncle Ben’s bedbug habitat looked vintage with the right throw pillow. She removed the more heinous knickknacks from the shelves and replaced them with her huge collection of antique books. I helped her organize them alphabetically and was browsing the titles when she said, “I only buy a book after reading it twice. If you can enjoy it more than once, you know it’s a keeper.” I couldn’t imagine how long it must have taken to read every one of those books twice. It took me four months to read book three of Wandering Wizards.

  Mama hated it when I went over to Meg’s. “I don’t want you spending all your time with a lonely divorcée,” she said. “It’s not healthy.”

  I wanted to mention that her loveless marriage wasn’t exactly healthy, either, but instead occupied my tongue with a large mouthful of mashed potatoes. I could only imagine how she would react if she found out there was a pig living there, too.

  Daddy had no issue with my friendship with Meg. “Ms. Lowry’s a teacher. She could help Lydia with her studies.” Mama looked as sour as month-old milk, but nodded the way her mama taught her to when her husband made a suggestion.

  On school nights, Weylyn and I would do our homework at Meg’s. She would help me with mine, but Weylyn had to fend for himself. “I assigned you that homework. What kind of teacher would I be if I gave you all the answers?” she said, then leaned over my shoulder to explain functions to me for the umpteenth time. He didn’t really need help, anyway. Weylyn was doing great in school, and not just for an orphaned wolf boy. His grades were better than mine, and I had eleven years of schooling that should have proved otherwise. Maybe he was only asking for help to make me feel less stupid. If that was true, he never let on.

  Sometimes Meg and I would catch each other watching Weylyn, the object of our mutual curiosity, but we never spoke about it. I would go back to my homework, and Meg would go back to grading papers as if nothing had happened. I suppose nothing had, really.

  June would come over some nights, but did very little actual studying. In fact, I think Merlin learned more of the French language from sniffing the pages of her textbook than she did. “How do you say pig in French?” June asked as Merlin used her French dictionary as a scratching post.

  “Why don’t you look it up?” I grunted as I drew a covalent bond in my chemistry notebook.

  June, Weylyn, and I were seated cross-legged on the floor with our books and binders piled in the center like we were going to have a bonfire later. It was December 20, our last chance to study before first semester finals.

  June yanked her dictionary away from Merlin and flipped to the Ps. She ran her finger down the page. “Pig, pig, pig … le cochon!”

  Merlin snorted, unimpressed.

  “Do you think there’s a French word for unicorn-pig?”

  “No.”

  “I guess you guys did kind of discover a new species. Are you gonna sell him to the zoo or the circus or something?”

  “No!” Weylyn snapped. “He isn’t going anywhere.”

  June looked surprised. “Sorry, man. I was just joking … kind of.” Weylyn deemed her apology good enough and buried his face back into his history book. “What do you think it’s for, anyway? The horn?”

  It had grown. It was now the size of a mini golf pencil and was brown and slightly curled like the fingers of women who grow their nails too long.

  “I’m guessing it doesn’t do anything. It’s probably just some piece of bone that ended up in the wrong spot,” I said in a distracted tone that would kill most conversations.

  “I bet it’s magic,” June continued.

  Weylyn poked his head out from behind his textbook. “You do?”

  “Yeah. Have you ever tried making a wish?”

  “No.”

  “Can I?”

  “Sure.” Weylyn sounded apprehensive.

  June cleared her throat and put a hand on Merlin’s horn. “I wish for Brandy Sweeney to turn into a frog!”

  I’m not sure if pigs can roll their eyes, but I was pretty sure I saw Merlin do just that. There was something odd about him, something ironic, like there was a joke he should be laughing at but didn’t know how (like the one about the pig that all the dumb humans thought was magic).

  “There’s something wrong with you, June,” I said impassively.

  “You should try. Turn Caroline into a frog. Here.” She pulled a tiara from her book bag and held it out to me. Caroline’s Miss Paris Crown …

  I gasped, “June! Where’d you get that?”

  “Duh. Her room.”

  “If she finds out it’s missing�
�”

  “She won’t care if she’s a frog.” June placed the tiara on Merlin’s head and shouted, “Presto chango!”

  “You have to put that back,” I said, unamused. “I don’t want to get in trouble trying to sneak it back in. Didn’t work out so well the last time.”

  “Relaaaax. I will.” June grabbed the tiara off Merlin’s head and placed it around her own black nest of hair. Coupled with her heavy eyeliner and red lipstick, the crown made her look like a Disney witch. “Just let me have tonight before my carriage turns back into a pumpkin. Pleeeeeease?”

  I reluctantly nodded and went back to my homework. Weylyn had stopped his work and was staring at Merlin intently.

  “I want to make a wish,” he said. He placed his hand on Merlin’s horn, then closed his eyes.

  After a few moments of silence, June interrupted. “Well? What’s your wish?”

  Weylyn hushed her and closed his eyes again. Seconds later, I heard what sounded like a dog howling in the distance. Merlin darted out of the room, and Weylyn looked as though he’d seen a ghost.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked. He ignored me and ran out onto the porch. We heard another howl, but this time it was Weylyn. I watched him from the window as he paced and panted, his left arm twitching like an agitated dog’s wag. As he let mournful vowels escape into the night air, the porch lamp backlit the first lonely drops of rain.

  16

  MS. MEG LOWRY

  It would have been a very white Christmas had the temperature been below freezing, but it had been an unseasonably warm week with highs in the midfifties, so instead, it was just wet. The less rational part of my brain thought that maybe I had Weylyn to thank for the balmy weather after what I had witnessed on my front porch the week before.

  By that point, I had managed to shake my obsession over the zombie plant and had chalked it up to stress and possibly a low-grade fever. Weylyn and I had grown close since the Great Pig Escape, and life in general had been mostly uneventful until that night. Something must have upset him, because Weylyn was out on the front porch whining and howling like a wild dog. I asked Lydia what happened, but she just shrugged. Then without warning, it began to pour. I wouldn’t have thought anything of it—it was just rain, after all—other than the fact that, a few minutes earlier, I had been stargazing through the skylight in my bedroom. As far as I could tell, there wasn’t a cloud in the sky.