The Council of Animals

by Nick McDonell

  MEYAAHAOW!

  A terrible pain shot through one of the cat’s back paws, and she was pulled up short. All the breath left her body.

  A snare!

  Even as the wire tightened, cutting into the pad of her paw, the cat was aware of the witch. She had stopped.

  She was coming back.

  * * *

  * * *

  Down in the tunnel beneath the hut, the dog was worried. The cat had been gone a long time. Just like a cat to go off mission like this!

  “Moles, what do you think? You’ve worked with her before. Is this standard operating procedure for cat missions? Have we got a bit of a loose cannon on our hands?”

  The moles sat cross-legged in the tunnel around him, silent.

  “What do you think? Get up there, have a look?”

  Still the moles said nothing.

  Unbelievable, thought the dog, these goddamn useless moles. He decided to investigate on his own. Carefully, he inched his way over the edge of the tunnel.

  Jaw on the dirt, he paused, listening.

  There was the boy—awake. He was reading again by candlelight. Looked as though he had only a few pages of the book left.

  The dog liked the boy immediately. He hadn’t spent a lot of time with human children, but his memory of the time he had spent with them was pleasant. On R&R, away from the wars, at human celebrations. Children chasing after him, staring at him, frightened of him, and the grown humans reassuring them, teaching the children how to treat a dog: with respect.

  Still, the dog’s memory, in his advanced age, was not so sharp. He wasn’t sure he remembered how it was for other dogs with human children. He vaguely recalled meeting dogs at the fences of the bases in the bacon wars who reported that human children were cruel, rock-throwing hooligans. Anyway, it was impossible to predict the behavior of this child in particular, and rule one was: adapt to the mission. Still no sign of the witch. Only the boy. And, the dog suddenly noticed:

  Ants.

  Around the edge of the hole, a column of carpenter ants, steady in their procession. One of them wasn’t looking where he was going and mounted the dog’s snout.

  “Get down!” shouted another ant. And then a chorus of ants: “Get down!”

  But it was too late.

  The dog’s nose twitched. And he tried—with all his military training—he tried to repress what was coming. But he … he … he inhaled mightily, and … the ant whooshed up his nostril.…

  “No!” the ants below cried, in the moment before their brother was rocketed back out, a comet among the droplets of dog snot.

  “ACHOO!” sneezed the dog.

  And in the room, the boy closed his book.

  “Hi! Dog! Do you want to come in?”

  The dog scrambled back down the tunnel as quickly as his paws would carry him.

  The moles looked at him with their cold black eyes.

  “The boy!” said the dog, tail wagging madly. “The boy…”

  The lead mole held his diggers out: yes?

  “The boy spoke! He spoke grak!”

  The moles frowned, looking at each other.

  “It’s bloody impossible,” said the dog. “But on my honor, on my word as an officer, I heard him speak grak!”

  The moles gestured: and?!

  “He invited me inside.”

  And?!

  “And that’s it!”

  The moles shook their heads. The dog was obviously mistaken. Too old for the mission. The stress must have pushed him over the edge. The boy wasn’t a witch, couldn’t speak grak.

  The moles indicated that the dog should calm down, maybe even lie down.

  “Don’t patronize me, moles. I know what I heard—”

  “Mammals!”

  From the side of the tunnel, a row of ants interrupted.

  “The dog is right,” said the ants. “He sneezed one of us and the boy invited him inside … in grak. We heard. And the cat left the hut.”

  The moles’ tiny eyes went wide.

  * * *

  There is a common misconception, a myth really, that ants don’t lie. Even creatures as sophisticated as the cat believed this myth. Its origins are hazy but may have to do with the nature of communication in ant colonies. Ants are constantly communicating with each other, and it was widely believed that if even one ant lied to another, the colony would go haywire. Those long lines of leaf carriers would circle in on themselves or splay out into chaos, what have you. Humans were better informed on this topic than many animals.

  But I cannot blame my fellow creatures for their ignorance. The work of dispelling myths is Sisyphean, as ants especially know. For what was underneath that boulder Sisyphus rolled for all eternity? Anthills. Crushed on every ascent and then rebuilt. In the ant version of the story, there is no greedy king who brings this predicament on the colony. It is simply the way things are when humans are around. Ants’ relationship with mortality is different from humans’—they expect they may die at any moment, that a drop of rain may stun and sweep them into oblivion. To vertebrates, this may sound like a grim state of affairs, but not to the ants. In ant, it is worth noting, there is no first-person singular, only the plural—no “I,” only “we.”

  But I digress. This is not the place for a disquisition on ant linguistics.

  Ants lie as frequently as any other creature. But here they told the truth.

  * * *

  * * *

  The cat, meanwhile, had never been in a trap before. She’d heard of traps, of course. But pre-Calamity, for a city cat such as herself, the closest she’d come to a trap was a mousetrap. The thought of a cat trap, or rabbit trap, or whatever this was, hadn’t even occurred to her. In those panicked first moments she recalled the most horrifying traps she had ever heard of. Also:

  The zoo.

  When she was a kitten, there had been one close to her home with the humans. She had been able to see it from the balcony, had pitied the animals behind bars there, but was never moved to act on their behalf. Better dead, she’d thought as a kitten, than in a zoo. Once she’d had a conversation with a revolutionary pigeon who had been trying to organize a zoo break. The pigeon never had any success the cat knew of, but now, with wire snaring her own leg, she regretted how she had dismissed him.

  This just a fragment of all the thoughts that rushed into her cat brain before they rushed out again, leaving only the maniacal desire to escape.

  The cat scratched and bit the wire madly. She looked at her paw, caught and bleeding. She considered chewing it off.

  She could hear the witch coming closer.

  And then the witch was upon her, looming, her hat shadowing her face in the moonlight. The cat hissed and bared her teeth, tried to scratch, to escape.

  In a single deft move, the witch un-snared the cat, lifted her by the scruff, and dumped her inside a sack.

  Chapter 22

  As the adventures of the dog, cat, bear, and dangerous moles were unfolding—indeed, even in the moment of greatest drama for the cat—the other animals who had attended the council were on their own adventures.

  Not all were so dramatic. But it does not behoof the historian to focus only on the dramatic or spectacular. And so—while the cat faced the witch, and the moles struggled with the implications of what the dog and ants reported, and the bear slept (in despair)—the horse was back among his fellows to report on the vote regarding the fate of humanity.

  Opinion was divided in the herd as to the vote’s wisdom. Still, the horses agreed they would support the council’s decision—though, being herbivores, they would not be eating the humans, only helping to kill them. There was general disappointment at the lack of sugar cubes, but it was pointed out that in some parts of the world, sugarcane must still grow. It was agreed that after this business with the humans, the herd would set out in search of that delicious plant. In the meantime, the great herd began to make its way to the human camp in the forest.

  The other animal emissaries wer
e likewise back with their species. A vast murder of crows had convened. Their meeting, as usual, had taken a long time to begin, on account of the numerous prayers to The Egg. The murder filled the sky with shrieks of approval over the vote even as, in the hearts of the younger crows, doubt flowered. This was many years before the Birdist Schism, but some scholars trace its origins to this meeting—even the origins of Bird Atheism.

  The baboons’ meeting was much simpler. The emissary’s news whipped them into a hooting frenzy. Some did not hoot as hard or as loud, but even the most peaceful baboons were too frightened of the rest to stand up and object. And so all began knuckling their way to the camp, to execute the will of the council.

  Chapter 23

  In the tunnel beneath the hut, the dog frowned at the ants.

  “Ants,” he growled, “tell me straight: what do you mean, The cat went outside the hut? That’s not part of the plan.”

  “We saw her leave the hut to follow the witch.”

  “Bloody biscuits,” shouted the dog. “Why would the cat do that? Moles, did you know about this?”

  The dangerous moles shook their heads.

  “Shh!” said the ants. “Listen.”

  In the hut above their heads, footsteps.

  “I’ll recon,” said the dog. But before he could creep his way back up to the hole, two of the moles blocked him and shook their heads again.

  “What’s this then, mutiny?”

  The moles put their diggers to their lips for quiet, and one produced the cocoon. He held it up for the dog to see. A crack ran along its side; the butterfly was peeking into the great beyond. Time was running out.

  While the dog parsed this news, the third mole crept up and peeked over the edge of the tunnel.

  The witch had returned.

  She was looming over the boy, who was again asleep.

  “Edgar!” said the witch roughly.

  The boy was a light sleeper but wasn’t up quite fast enough for the witch. She gave him a kick in the ribs. The boy didn’t let out a cry—he seemed to be used to this kind of treatment.

  “Shift yourself and gather mushrooms. Cat stew today. I’m off to borrow Agnes’s machete. If that greedy bitch will even give it to me. If she doesn’t, we’ll use a sharp rock.”

  The witch dumped the cat in the sack heavily on the floor and walked back out of the hut.

  * * *

  See them there: the boy, watchful, back against the wall. The cat in the sack tied tightly with a string; the hole in the corner, a dangerous mole peeking over its edge. The rosy-fingered light of dawn just beginning to flow over the dirt floor. The silence in the hut broken only by songbirds in domestic argument.

  Then the boy spoke.

  “Hello, moles.”

  The cat distrusted her ears—it sounded foreign, and yet familiar.

  Grak in a human voice.

  The unflappable moles’ hearts raced.

  “You can come inside, moles. I won’t hurt you.”

  The moles turned and disappeared down the hole.

  The boy sighed heavily. The cat heard him step closer to the sack.

  “Hello,” said the boy, “hello, cat inside the sack. I’m going to let you out, but don’t try to bite me, okay?”

  In the darkness of the sack, the cat crouched, ready to leap. She could hear the boy untying the string … and the sack was open!

  The cat bolted, fast as she could on her wounded leg, to the corner of the hut.

  “Wait!” said the boy. “Don’t go, I won’t hurt you.”

  But the cat was already down the tunnel. She was in such a fluster that she landed on the dog and the two of them slid a ways, a tangle of paws and tails.

  Above, the boy peered down into their tunnel.

  “Come back!” cried the boy.

  Down in the tunnel, the dog and cat separated and shook themselves off.

  “Steady on, cat,” said the dog. “You’re wounded.… Medic!” The dog smelled the blood dripping from the cat’s leg.

  “I’m fine,” said the cat, licking at her wound. “I’m fine. I have to go back up there.”

  “Are you mad?” said the dog.

  “The boy speaks grak!” said the cat. “We have to speak with him!”

  “So what if he speaks grak? They want to make you into stew!” said the dog.

  “Then why did he let me out?”

  “Psy-ops!” said the dog. “This has primate written all over it. A trap for the rest of us, setting you free to lure us all inside.”

  “Fine,” said the cat, “let’s vote on whether to go back up. Moles?”

  “Blast it,” said the dog, “this isn’t a voting situation! This is a question of security, and I’m making the call. You’re a civilian, cat, and wounded.”

  “Come or don’t, dog, I’m going to talk to the boy.”

  And she limped back up the tunnel and into the hut. Growling, the dog followed.

  Chapter 24

  The boy broke into a grin when the animals reappeared at the edge of the tunnel.

  “You came back! Come in, come in! Are you hungry?” The boy opened the trunk and pulled out some mushrooms, which he lay on the ground in offering.

  The dog and the cat were rather hungry, especially the dog. But neither went for the mushrooms.

  “When is the witch coming back?” said the cat.

  “Don’t worry,” said the boy, “she won’t be back soon. And she’s not a real witch. She’s just my aunt.”

  The cat relaxed a little, stepped into the hut. The dog followed.

  “But how … how do you know how to speak grak?” asked the cat.

  “Well,” said the boy, picking up the book he’d been reading, then putting it back down, then picking it up again. “I can’t … I can’t tell you.”

  “Why in the blazes not?!” barked the dog, greatly agitated. To hear with his own silky ears: grak spoken by a human—which he had always known to be impossible—and then to be denied an explanation! It was infurriating.

  One may sympathize with the dog. Or hiss him quiet, like the cat did.

  “Shhhh!”

  The cat, licking a paw, turned to the boy. She was frustrated, too. “Well,” she said, “I’m sure you have a good reason why…?”

  The boy nodded.

  “I promised I wouldn’t tell,” he said. “It’s a secret.”

  “Hmm.”

  The cat purred in thought. And it is a testament to the wisdom of this cat that she decided not to press the issue. I know firsthand the frustration of generations of historians who have set out to learn the boy’s secret. A whole discipline, really, has sprung up around this quest—a quest I will address in section II. But the cat, while curious, knew better. And anyway, she was in purrsuit of a more pressing goal than knowledge: survival.

  “Do any of the other humans,” she asked, “speak grak?”

  “My aunt pretends she can talk to animals, but she can’t. Hey,” said the boy, interrupting himself (as was his wont), “can you stay here for a minute? I have to go to the woods. I’ll be right back!”

  * * *

  If you are fortunate enough to have seen depictions of these fabled moments, you may be surprised, even shocked, at my account. The tree carvings are magnificent, of course, stretching as high as the old human cathedrals and depicting in heroic posture the boy, dog, cat, and moles. In the carvings, they stand on top of a mountain, extending hand to paw, and the sky is full of birds, olive branches in their beaks.

  As you read here, however, the truth was less … formal.

  The educated reader will be familiar with the various excellent historians of the body—but not enough attention is ever paid these scholars. We all spend so much time defecating and sleeping, and yet this is so little in our discourse! It seems to this historian that, recognizing that the Boy Who Spoke Grak was also a boy who had to race to the woods after waking up, we might be more inclined to open-mindedness. For reader, don’t you have to race to the wood
s, sometimes, as well? And so aren’t you like this boy?

  Certain more cynical members of the department have argued that this argument is naïve. I recall well how vociferous the opposition was during our last seminar.

  But I digress.

  * * *

  While the boy was out of the hut, the cat and dog confurred.

  “The witch didn’t show the boy any respect,” said the dog.

  The cat licked her injured paw.

  “We’ll be with him when he warns the humans,” reassured the cat. “We can prove he speaks grak somehow. They’ll have to listen to him. Look, he’s coming back.”

  The boy returned, carrying a bit of dried meat.

  “Squirrel,” explained the boy, placing it next to the mushroom on the floor. “Maybe you want that, instead of mushroom?”

  The squirrel jerky was appetizing. Even if it might be a piece of their intel team. But the dog and cat held back.

  The boy sat down. “Do you want to read what’s in the book? Or, or, do you want to go to the creek? I know a place where it’s deep enough to swim—you probably won’t like that,” he said to the cat. “But maybe,” he continued, to the dog, “you like to swim?”

  The cat sighed. The boy was lonely. And as the cat got a good look at him, she saw cuts and bruises, skin stretched hungry over his bones. It looked like a hard life for this boy.

  “What’s your name?” said the cat.

  “Edgar,” said the boy.

  “Well, Edgar, we can’t swim.”

  “I can swim,” said the dog. “I was with marine reco—”

  “I mean, we don’t have time to swim,” said the cat, cutting off the dog. “We came here because we need your help. We’ve been watching you.”