The Wild Harmonic

by Beth W. Patterson

  Her henchmen are in attendance, and they command me to address them by their official titles. They are all named for angels: Raphael, Metatron, Azrael, and Uriel. No Gabriel, of course.

  I try crooning the wild harmonic. All of the angels except the one called Metatron turn to glance at me.

  Waiting for the Chimera to make her grand entrance, I am already plotting her demise. I don’t even lie to myself about the hatred I feel. She is killing the happiness I have finally found with my pack, and now she has gone after me personally. Trying to aggrandize herself wasn’t enough, nor could she merely remain a megalomaniac. She is a dictator, she is an abomination …

  The curtains part from a side door and she enters. She is a goddess.

  The woman called the Chimera stands in palomino centaur form, her golden blonde hair cut short like the crest of some prehistoric bird. Butterfly wings the size of my car spring from her back, each wing marked like the tip of a peacock feather. A single narwhal tusk springs from her forehead.

  Her face is perfectly symmetrical, an exquisite work of art. Her brushstroke lips curve into an amused smile as she meets my gaze. Her eyes are a thousand colors at once, each more beautiful than the last. Each of her angels kneels before her and she bestows her blessings: bags of white powder, chunks of resin, and syringes. They scuttle off to receive their divine messages, leaving the two of us alone.

  She extends a graceful hand to stroke my head, and I feel the urge to grovel at her feet. Did Rowan grovel at her feet? a tiny voice within me asks.

  For once my jealously saves my life, and I instantly jerk back a split second before she can grab my hair. I growl. This time she is genuinely delighted. Peals of musical laughter echo and bounce around the throne room like light from a prism.

  “Such bad manners, you little bitch!” Her voice is like honeyed opium. “My angel Ezekiel, better known to you as Calvin Quinn, was right: you are nothing but a stupid little bitch! You can only change into one form, and you show no respect for your gods. Even if you could change into different animals, you would lack the intelligence and power to take on multiple attributes!” I bite back the overwhelming urge to beg her forgiveness. No! She is wielding some sort of mind control! I hum to ground myself, and the feeling vanishes.

  She changes forms like water pouring from one fantastically shaped vase into another. A splitter. Dividing into multiple signals. She now appears as the Sphinx, lion body lean and athletic, gargantuan wings stretching up from her back until they touch at the tips. Her claws flex in and out, and she lashes her tail to whip the air inches from my face. Laughing as I jump back, she lowers her voice to a purr.

  “Answer me this, little cur:

  The bitter fruit of lame defeat

  Produced a wine that tasted sweet

  Terror is as terror does

  Meek and ugly as it was.”

  “Your mom!” I snarl without a second thought.

  Her face does not change expressions, but her eyes become laser-piercing. Her wings extend like satellite dishes, trying to tune into my frequency. “That is correct. My mother was a she-wolf like you. She was hideous and weak. Yet she produced me! But she lacked the finesse to raise me to the immediate glory I so richly deserved.

  “Things that were once legendary are now a reality because of me! I am the incarnation of all the humanoid therianthropes: centaurs, mermaids, fauns, minotaurs, bat-winged angels, and serpent-tailed imps. They were depicted in art because people witnessed shifters in mid-change. But they were nothing more than stories.

  “And now, I am here to bring all shifters to full glory. We will hide our true natures no longer. All humans will die, and all shifters will worship me.” She sits up on her haunches for effect, wings cleaving the air in bass notes like slow helicopter blades. Dropping back to all fours, she reaches a massive paw toward me and pins the leg of my jeans to the floor with a single claw.

  “I could kill you now as originally planned, but it seems that it would be more beneficial to keep you alive for a while. You are resistant to so much. I could use a strain of that. Perhaps you would like to pay tribute to me? Passing along your DNA will be a way for you to immortalize yourself in my mission. But hold … you smell familiar.” She pauses, nostrils flaring.

  “Well, well, well … aren’t you a special little bitch? I should have known, given your musical connection. I know that smell of Rowan’s passion, little worm—oh, yes I was well acquainted with it once. His standards seem to have fallen awfully low!” In spite of myself, I can’t help agreeing with her. “He’s such a fighter. I should have killed him in his sleep!”

  I imagine my mate slumbering next to this beautiful creature, this demon-beast, and growl in spite of myself. A lightning jolt of mad energy, and she is a mermaid with deadly lionfish spines down her supple back. A webbed hand grabs me by the throat, and a talon sharper than a broken seashell nicks my skin. My will to live suddenly overrides all else and I remain as still as possible until the angels take me away, back into the underworld that is my new home.

  I am guessing that no one hears me growl, “Oktibbeha Tallahatchee,” under my breath, because no one cuffs me.

  By the time they drag me back to my cell, I am foaming at the mouth. Lapin says nothing, just hums while I curl up into the farthest corner and snarl. The snarls become soft howls, howls diminish into weak sobs.

  “How long is she going to do that?” I hear a new voice query.

  There is now a third man in our cell, compact and powerful. Lapin glances around for any signs of approaching guards before saying, “Birch, I present to you our secret ally, Petit Puce. He is the smart one of the two of us, for he hid in my fur well enough to escape the anti-transformation dart. I hope you don’t mind sharing your cell with a flea.”

  Petit Puce looks like a cartoon strong man: exaggerated muscles, shaven head, even an outrageous mustache that would probably be a handlebar if we weren’t prisoners of war. I inhale until my lungs creak, trying to ground myself. I force a tight smile and extend my hand. “Enchanted. Some of the best bass players are fleas.”

  A crescendo of heavy footfalls, and by the time a guard walks past us, Petit Puce has vanished entirely. Only Lapin remains, sitting on his hands in an effort not to scratch his beard.

  I understand. Petit Puce is so healthy because Lapin lets him feed in his animal form. He would be a formidable defender if we weren’t so grossly outnumbered by the henchmen, or angels, as they are called. But as a spy and go-between, he is perfect, and I am lucky to have this flea in our cell.

  And so begins my chthonic life. I had thought that mere incarceration would be the worst of it. But the lack of sunlight nearly drives me insane, causing me to almost look forward to being taunted by the Chimera in her bright throne room.

  The guards, or “angels,” are all shifters. They frequently slip into their forms of cicadas, birds, and other night singers. They whisper messages while we get whatever sleep we can: our lives are meaningless. We must become useful to the cause or die. The only henchman that does not shift is Azrael. He remains in human form the entire time, and I am too groggy to wonder why.

  The hunger pangs surpass anything I have ever felt before. I am desperate to fill my belly with anything at all, even if it’s inedible. I search my pockets and come up with nothing but my little lead soldier, the folded poem penned by someone who cannot hear, and a dirty Kleenex. After another day, I begin to eat the Kleenex in hopes that the fibers will at least settle my stomach.

  At least there are toilets in the cell, albeit little more than outhouses dug into the floor. No privacy, of course. Lapin and I are courteous enough to look away from each other, but we cannot spare each other the indignities of sounds, especially during frequent bouts of sickness.

  The most maddening thing is the airhorns. They blast every hour or so. Not only can I get little sleep, but the constant startle has my nerves permanently on edge.

  “Why doesn’t it hurt the henchman’s ears?” I a
sk Lapin one night—or perhaps it is day—as the blast sends us both quivering from our blankets.

  “Petit Puce says that he is deaf. The Chimera has named him Metatron. He can speak and read lips, but takes no auditory cues. He is the only person who can carry out the tasks of his mistress without going mad, including hearing the screams of the tortured and executed.”

  There are other auditory tortures. The guards form a discordant choir, singing a strange harmonies on odd sighing voices, like the lowest possible scream. The Stygian Mode, I realize. It’s clearly a structure designed to break people’s wills, not unlike the higher-pitched music intended to agitate World War II prisoners. I mumble my favorite Rush lyrics to myself under my breath each time those broken voices swell, hoping to counteract the weight of those notes that insist that I give up the fight.

  One day, food is delivered to our cells. We are hog-tied first, forcing us to eat facedown on the ground. Our fare is little more than cornmeal mush, but we are suddenly grateful. Several fights over the rations break out in other cells, as many cellmates do not speak each other’s language and begin to forget their empathy toward each other.

  After several weeks, I begin to fantasize about food. It would be so divine to have cornmeal mush with chicken. Or perhaps cornmeal mush with chocolate. All I can ever imagine are variations on my staple diet. On the occasions that Lapin is sleeping and I am not, I fight the voice in my head that reminds me that his shifted form is a prey animal. I am always brought back to my senses, either with a song or a needle-stick itch on my skin, as fleeting as it is sobering. Our tiny stowaway reminds me that the smallest of creatures feed upon us all.

  There is without a doubt some sort of drug in our food. After each feeding, I feel complacent, and my wolf counterpart is very far away. Something to facilitate mind control, and an anti-shifting drug, the same one used in the tranquilizer dart, is what Lapin theorizes. So I cling to the memories of my wild self and my loved ones, refusing to give in.

  I sometimes compose letters in my head to Rowan. Impossibly, his scent floods my senses, as though he were close enough to embrace. The hallucinations are alternately comforting and cruel. I send out thought vibrations to him, but wonder if we are even in the same world. I often take out my little toy soldier—now slightly misshapen from my body heat—and imagine him marching as to war, scratching little diagrams in the dirt floor. I sing little songs to him: You have no head, you should be dead, perhaps you are a cockroach instead. I use him to scratch pictures of wolves on the walls, thinking of the cave artists from my vision so long ago. They may not have been trying to immortalize themselves or further their careers. Perhaps they were just trying to stay alive.

  The guards are in constant rotation in both human and animal forms, always keeping us awake in various ways. They never call me by my name, first or last. They address me as Chimera’s Bitch until each time I hear it, I know that they are talking to me. If I try to speak to them, they only parrot my words back in my face. At some point I finally fight back and tell the male guard known as Ramiel, “I have no penis!” just to see if he will actually say it back. He freezes and we study each other’s faces. As he pulls a slow grin, I can see that his teeth are pus-yellow, set in swollen red gums. His eyes are rotten cores where intelligence should be. He lets out a childlike giggle, then punches my face, knocking me to the ground. The pain almost blinds me, rattling me from jaw to shoulder blades. He spits on me before walking away to taunt other prisoners.

  As the stars clear from my eyes, I push my tongue around in my mouth to feel for broken teeth, but they all seem to be intact. Since I still care about my teeth, that must mean I still have my pride. This gives me the tiniest hope, the span of a dragonfly’s landing, and then it’s gone even more quickly.

  Metatron visits our cell the next day. Lapin is dragged out to do some sort of work, and I don’t see him for hours. He returns smelling fed. I am about to tell him how lucky he is for being granted permission to leave his cell, to walk awhile, but my first words die in my throat. Lapin has a look as if he would be better off dead.

  The deaf henchman and I lock gazes, and a spark of his true nature surfaces for the first time. His blue eyes are searching, confused, and afraid. He doesn’t want to be here any more than I do. What happened to this man, that he fell into such desperation? There is the faint crackle of paper bending in my pocket, which I know he doesn’t hear.

  My hand instinctively closes around the paper, and something makes me hand him the poem. I observe how cautiously he unfolds it. His hands tremble as he reads, sending me furtive glances the whole time.

  I only know some basic signs. I draw my index finger across my palm. What … My index and middle fingers of both hands extend, then stack across each other. Name.

  His eyes flood with tears. T-r-o-y he finger-spells slowly.

  B-i-r-c-h I respond, and he suddenly turns on his heel.

  He walks back to the compound, and there are no airhorns that night.

  Lying face down in the dirt, I don’t have the energy to get up. My stomach is beyond growling. I never knew it was possible to feel this hungry. It’s like a dull knife constantly pressing in my gut.

  “You know, if you’re hungry, that means you’re losing weight.”

  I know that voice. I raise my head to find Cal crouched in front of me.

  This can’t be right … he’s dead, I think. But not even Sylvia could confirm it. Oh, gods, he’s back to work for the Chimera.

  “You should know better. You have to look good for the cameras.”

  I cannot change, but lift my lip in a snarl anyhow. Words seem to have eluded me anyway, and this is the only way I can make myself understood.

  Cal rises to stand above me in my filthy cell, smiling his familiar winning grin that charmed even the most hard-nosed cynics. With his glossy hair and expensive bomber jacket, he could not look more out of place. He takes my elbow and hoists me up. “You know I was right. You couldn’t have sold any records if you couldn’t fit into those stage clothes. You never looked as good as those girls in the peeler joint, but you were okay as a sideman. But only that.”

  I have never been what the tabloids would call pretty, but I am worn out from being reminded of this every day. Why is he talking about my career as if nothing cataclysmic has gone down? Where am I?

  “You were getting too big for your britches, literally,” he chides me. “Food is pain, don’t you remember? Food is pain!”

  He turns and lifts the lid of a covered dish. A sumptuous meal appears before me: half of a spit-roasted chicken, red beans and rice, and cornbread. I defy Cal’s admonishments and snatch a mouthful of chicken, which is inhumanely hot and sears me to the skull. Pain and starvation engage in battle within. Eyes streaming, I let my jaw flop open to release the steam and the skin on the roof of my mouth peels away in one piece.

  Cal laughs. “You will never learn, will you? No. Because you’re nothing but a stupid little bitch.”

  Digging into his pocket, he produces a small cassette recorder and pushes a button. There’s a phone ringing somewhere in the tiny machine. The click of an answering machine takes over, and the fiberoptic crackle of my parents singing happy birthday to me resonates in the cell. My parents! My throat tightens and I crawl toward the sound, a near infantile instinct.

  Cal’s body stretches and uncoils, and an enormous serpent now flexes before me. I have never seen him in full snake form before: a thickly muscled rope extending thirty feet, graceless head blunt and unsightly. The meaty serpentine tail whips out, grabbing me so hard around my waist that my diaphragm forces my breath out in a vocal grunt. My parents continue their cheery message, oblivious to my creaking ribs.

  Dragging me back to face him, the snake says, “So touching. Like you deserved some sort of special treatment, a reward for aging. Your parents took such pity on you. That’s only because they have no clue as to what you really are. Someday I am going to call them up and set them straight. I’m the on
ly one who knows what’s best for you, and they know it too. Who are they going to believe? A failed sideman, or a successful businessman?”

  His tail pushes the button again, and I hear the sound of a mic check in the darkness. Cal sets me down hard onto my feet. “You have a show to put on for the Chimera in a few weeks. And you’d better not fuck up in front of her. Last time I saw you perform you made seven mistakes. Seven. There’s no excuse for a pro to be doing that …”

  “I was hungry,” I mumble my protest. “I couldn’t concentrate. I was lightheaded …”

  The tail lashes me across the face. “Missing a meal won’t kill you, trust me! And you shouldn’t have even looked at the monitor man once your levels were set. If you don’t want to be treated like a whore, you’d better stop acting like one.”

  Somewhere, wolves are singing. The firelit cave forms around me once again. They cannot take away the wolf within! Fight, my child, fight!

  I am too weak to attack him, but I use my body weight and gravity to fall at him, aiming for his neck on my way down. He hisses, slithers out of my cell, and another man suddenly stands in his place. I snarl at the new intruder.

  “Mon Dieu! Birch, it’s me! Lapin! That snake man played on your hallucinations!”

  I am horrified. “Lapin, oh gods, I am so sorry!” I sink to my knees and he crouches next to me, stroking my shoulders and reassuring me that I haven’t hurt him. The horror of reality sets in again, the reality that Cal is still alive and that I am dying.

  I would cry, but I have no tears to spare. A howl tears from my throat, and Lapin lets go of me at the sound of fast approaching feet. We cannot be seen in alliance with each other, we have to appear hostile or at least uncomfortable in each other’s presences.