The Wolf With the Silver Blue Hands

by Eric Ellert

  Rau got an arm around her neck and broke her fall. They lingered for a moment. It didn't matter how strange the world was, it was going to be ok. "The lama likes me. It talks now."

  "Why do you say things like that?"

  He wasn't wearing his armor, just a green t- shirt and jeans. Faudron reached up and lifted a corner of his shirt. The wound showed as just a light scar but nothing more. She couldn't say, I wish you hadn't healed, but she wanted to. "You want to tell me?"

  "I would have told you." Before she could ask, he said. "It's safe in the day."

  She picked up the metal detector Rau had been using. "Lose some change?"

  "Looking for tunnels."

  "Tunnels?"

  "They get out from time to time. I don't bother with the werewolves from town. They're harmless and stupid unless you're stupid-enough to be outside of a car at night, if you're not home."

  Faudron was going to mention the cemetery but the lama shook its head no.

  "Heard the others talking in the woods the other night. Something's going to change for them. And they know it's going to change."

  "I thought they just growled. Nice of you to tell me, by the way."

  "Not these," Rau said, pointing towards the reservoir. "All their wits or most of them about them, one might even call them beautiful...and vain. And when they sing and play the piano, the very birds sing."

  "You almost sound as if you like them."

  "Never said I didn't. Leave it at that." He smiled and touched her face. "Go home. I'll stop by."

  He mounted the horse and rode it toward the water.

  Faudron had no desire to go to the island, but when he left, she wasn't quite sure of the way back, and didn't trust the lama. It was hiding in the woods behind her. She could just see its fury hoofs sticking out from behind a tree. She jerked her thumb towards the water.

  She couldn't see the lama's face, but it was smart. It would figure it out. Faudron would tell Rau on her if it cut out on her. "Take me with him, no tricks."

  "It would just hurt him," the lama said, backing up, getting ready to leave her out here.

  "No. It would only hurt you, because you knew and you let it go on."

  Faudron and the lama caught up to Rau a few minutes later. Faudron tugged on the lama's hair to make it follow. "Go ahead and spit now."

  It spit.

  "We'll talk about that later," Faudron whispered in its ear, then raised her voice. "It's a great animal, isn't it?"

  "Not really, no. But they're a lot smarter than horses, and a lama can kill a wolf."

  "Please let me go to the island with you."

  "It's not a good idea," Rau said.

  "It's a good idea for you?" Faudron asked. "I don't want to x out here. That's how it seems. Something about these hills. People didn't live here because they weren't supposed to. Something about it sucks the life out of you, changes the people, makes them weird."

  "I've not lived anywhere else. Thanks."

  "Sorry, but it's true."

  Rau started to speak, but just cleared his throat and looked at Faudron as if she couldn't possibly understand then spurred the horse on.

  They swam the animals across the reservoir. The animals didn't swim as well as those in the movies and Faudron was sure the lama's hair would get so heavy from the water it would sink, and being out here didn't seem like the best idea as the fog surrounded them and curious eels brushed against her legs. There must be something in the water too, because her legs stung and the top of the water shimmered green in the dim light as if it was the top of a pool of anti-freeze. "Did you bring the steaks?" Faudron asked.

  "They are for vampires, which of course don't exist." Rau forced a smile. "I'm going to talk to the big blue man." He turned away.

  "Rau, Rau. I didn't see Avatar but I heard the big blue people ate people. Rau, Rau, that's a joke. Not a funny, ha, ha joke."

  She found herself alone in the fog, Rau so quiet and the lama so noisy, she couldn't tell which direction he'd gone in and felt as if the lama were swimming her around in circles until it would tire and sink. "Answer me."

  Rau came back and stopped just when she could see his outline. They must have been swimming through a pool of bad water because Faudron's eyes stung and she wanted to hold her nose.

  "The big blue man is the gardener and I am not the gardener. I have never spoken to him before but I want to speak to him now, because if another wolf gets off the island, my orders are to kill all of them, him first. They'll be no warning because I know what he'll do. It's his way; it's my way."

  He disappeared into the fog

  Faudron was sure the lama had slowed for spite and left her alone in the middle of the reservoir again. She didn't care what the reason was; you couldn't kill your brother. She wasn't sure if she wanted to be alone with Rau, then again, he hadn't killed his brother and who knew how long he'd been here. Maybe he slept in that sarcophagus thing, and the brother in another sarcophagus thing, until the hunt made Kau rise to slaughter and sleep again.

  She pulled the lama's ear. "I'm going to call the dog catcher and they'll put you in Jungle Habitat. They'll leave you there with the wild baboons to starve. And I'll be glad."

  "What would be the difference?" the lama asked. "One evening he will die on that island and I will go to the graveyard and lay down until the snow comes."

  "And you think that's ok?"

  "I'm a lama, I go where I'm told."

  "And Rau?"

  "Far beneath my station. He's so crazy; he goes because he wants to, but that's how he was made."

  Made, she couldn't bear the sound of the word. She whispered it, and it rolled off her tongue like a sponge full of anti-freeze, devoid of life or the hope of life. "And why doesn't he know about the kids?"

  "He doesn't wan to know about the kids," the lama yelled.

  "But he's nice."

  "Who says he's nice; you say he's nice. I never said he's nice."

  "Don't spit."

  It spit.

  ***

  The lama showed its anger for pulling its hair during the swim by dumping Faudron in the water a few times and when they climbed onto the swampy-edged shore and rested on the long, green grass of some forgotten, military lawn, Faudron was soaked, her shirt clinging to her and though Rau had noticed he'd pretended he hadn't and then noticed again.

  It was too awkward, so many secrets in the air, half truths, every feeling half-said, snd he was an alien. She let the fantasy play fast-forward -- place in Westchester, four kids and the TMZ truck permanently parked on the lawn, cause they'd be Roswell kids. Maybe they'd even get a reality show, which was the surest way to divorce they'd yet invented since the home video camera. No it was all bad jos. That was a word dad had picked up somewhere. She thought about him for a moment. He was lucky, really lucky, and it had been impossible that they'd let anything real time leak out over a cell-phone network. Maybe it was a warning, a way to draw her to Florida. She would have gone. She could have gone but she hadn't, but she wouldn't think about him yet.

  She just needed to find mom and go.

  Rau and the animals hurried into the distance, scouting the area. Like everything else in this town, it had been placed here like a giant HO train layout house. Everything was a caricature of things, like those awful eels, which should be at the bottom of the ocean, yet writhed on shore like gorgon curls. She wanted to call Moren, just to hear her voice, and make sure she was home but dare not. The phone was connected through hillbilly wires, right through Mrs. C's desk.

  Faudron hated being alone, especially in this weird fog but she wasn't about to give Rau the satisfaction and call his name.

  He came back just a moment later. "All clear." He nodded and the horse jumped back into the water.

  The lama reached back as it passed Faudron, grabbed her collar in its teeth and pulled her back until she tripped.

  "It really doesn't like you," Rau said as he helped her up, his own footing sketchy in the marshy edg
e of the island.

  Faudron lingered in his arms accidentally and there was a moment, then she realized he'd sent the beasts back to look after Moren, though he must need them. She shouldn't have come. He wasn't hunting the way other people hunted. The thing's he hunted could kill him and by the way he walked, would kill him one day and by the half-light in his eyes, he had accepted that fact.

  Before Faudron could ask and she had so many questions to ask, Rau said, "In the daylight, the island wolves are just wolves. Not even like the one's in town. These are as scared of you as you are of them, but in the night they become the men of wolves, faster, stronger, smarter than you or I, killers; they dance in the moonlight on two legs." He played an air fiddle.

  "And they like Mr. Blue Man?"

  "The Big Blue Man. He doesn't have a name or doesn't give it. He helps them."

  "And you have to come to an understanding."

  Rau looked at her for a long moment as if he ought to say more then put his arm around her and led her further into the island. "They were wronged."

  "And in three days? What happens?"

  "If I can't find and kill the chief wolf, those guards outside of town, well no one leaves, except you and Moren, weather you like it or not. It could be real bad if you don't. Might not be so great if you do. And I have nowhere to go." He smiled, then laughed at a joke he wasn't going to tell her as he waived a hand in front of the air between them. "Nowhere to go but up."

  "I might be willing."

  "Then you would be me, and I would be you and we'd be right back where we started. You just go. It's a big world I hear."

  "But we'd talk."

  "Don't be silly. The government would warn you, and being decent people with others you care about, you'd comply and believe me resistance is futile."

  "You don't seem like a sci-fi fan."

  "It's quaint. But some of it's watcheable."

  Faudron's clothes felt so heavy; it was hard to walk and the breeze made her chest shake and worse she and Moren had nowhere to go. Rau didn't understand. Faudron closed her eyes hard, picturing her dad's telephone call bouncing back and forth from the earth to the Space Station, but there wasn't a Space Station, just bits and pieces of what used to be a Space Station floating around the earth and a frozen man in a tinfoil suit, no matter what her intuition told her. She had no one to tell. She dare not wonder if a birthday mention of her birthday doctor visit was enough to have gotten dad killed. It was impossible, but so were rows of Six Million Dollar Man dolls in new boxes.

  "You don't believe me?"

  Faudron walked ahead, and slipped off the path, in and out of the close-together trees and back out again. Spanish moss hung from tall oaks, like a swamp in a warm climate, planted here like a garden, and maintained here strangely. Of course she didn't believe him. Only a fool would. For all she knew, that machine in his basement hadn't healed him, but remade him out of swamp water and muck. "And my parents knew?"

  "Just a bit of it. But they didn't have much of a choice, but to bring you here."

  She felt so nervous. Maybe this was a kind of Jungle Habitat and they went to the mall so someone in the sky could watch people strut about the way they watch the killer whales suck down fish. She decided she was gong to trust him. She tried to think of something clever to say but blurted out. "You know the theme song from Coast to Coast am?"

  "Never heard it. I work nights. I cut that part out when I record it."

  "Oh, well it goes, Art Bell, music, Art Bell music, Art Bell music. See the words fit the song perfectly. I was going to write in, but I came here instead."

  He paused before speaking as if waiting for Faudron to say something else stupid. "I'll take care of you. Both of you."

  "And we'll take care of you. I got an uncle who used to work for NASA. I bet he could help us disappear. Maybe Texas. It could be its own country. He thinks pretty soon it will try."

  ***

  Rau took her by the hand and they hurried out of the fog to a row of old, cinderblock barracks. 1940's war architecture she guessed. Lots of dad's bases had left-over buildings, all of them like this.

  He led her inside the nearest building, though without doors or windows, inside and outside was a bit of a guess. The foliage thought so too.

  "Is my mother here?"

  "Yes and no. She's ok, for now."

  Faudron held her breath and pulled her hair back, pressing her hands hard against her temples, trying to find the part of her brain that wanted to curse at him for being so off the track, as if they had a hundred years to do a day's searching. "Yes or no, no one ever says yes or no around here. There's always a secret, always a screwball reason people do the things they do. And what's it to you, really? You probably can't even catch a cold. Just call for help. Let 'em bring in Predators. Stop this place; catch this place. I don't know why you bother; they'd cut you're throat if they could only get inside your house."

  "You finished."

  "I think I love you."

  He pretended not to hear her. "She's in the Back Beyond."

  "What the hell does that mean?"

  Rau spoke to Faudron as if she was stupider than the lama, over-pronouncing each word as if it was her second language and not his. "Easy, the Nords can listen sometimes."

  "They do?"

  "Trust me on that. If I said there's politics involved, would that do?"

  "No. Unspit. The lama spits when it doesn't want to answer a question, that's what your doing."

  "Oh. You two don't get along? She's a bit more than a lama, bit less than relative, but a bit more than a lama."

  "You're not like us. That's what worries me. I think we're like those people on islands they used to move to test A-bombs. They gave them checks and they bought Cadillacs and ran around and around their new island. We're better off as we were."

  "If I said we're people as you are people, it would be true." He took a step outside, looked around, found nothing and came back to her. "And of course there's a certain protocol and-"

  "-Protocol doesn't cut it."

  "If I followed you." He pointed southeast. "Right out the front gate and I said where I came from and what goes on here. They'd just let me go?"

  "She's my mother," Faudron whispered.

  "Your parents were given to the people on this island to study. It's all over, it's all done, but no one can just come out and admit what they did. Neither your government nor mine can get away with killing everyone here until they've given themselves enough time to try to make it right."

  "Take me back. This is a waste of time. I'll ask Splinter, the corpsmen. Two, three days and a wakeup. Who care's what they do?"

  "Your mother was raised here. By us. Some of ours were taken to other places and raised like you. She is of us." Rau touched her face. "As I am of Marcella, New Jersey and Eggbert's Lake. She was nice. Soon you'll have her back."

  "When?"

  He shook his head. "She wouldn't listen. There's a town buried beneath the reservoir. Her town...and yours and mine."

  "Oh, hell. Yellow footsteps?"

  "You have a good memory. I'll take you back if you like."

  "No, I want to stay. Was there a main building, records? They must have kept records."

  "Not that I know of."

  ***

  He wouldn't talk any longer and hurried ahead through barracks after barracks, each with six inches of water on the floor. The one on top of the hill looked better-preserved.

  When they entered he said, "Welcome home."

  Faudron was about to argue but the building was so familiar. They all looked alike but not this one. Rotted-out, old-style, electronic equipment lined the walls, offices in the back, everything deteriorating where it had lain as if the occupants had evacuated the place in an hour. Whatever it had been looked like really high budget stuff for its day. She noted the panel on the wall with the multi-colored lights. Star Trek lights she often called them when she'd seen similar lights on NASA documentaries. That would mean t
his dated from about 1964, not much later, unless they hung onto the old equipment.

  A trunk lay in the corner. Rau crossed the room and unlocked the padlock hanging from its front and center. "Here we are."

  Faudron turned her back to him. Outside, the empty windows lay a manicured, green field, with a flagpole in the center and a tattered-flag blowing in the breeze with forty eight stars, which was fitting since they'd lost Alaska and Hawaii last year.

  Then she understood him. Her parents weren't that old. He'd meant what he'd said when he'd told her that they weren't here as people think of people being present are present. That flag was up because, here, but not here, someone in the past was watching it. People in the offices were going about their duties, like the next or previous song on an album.

  She smelled something green, like fresh-cut grass and the scent of evaporating gasoline a lawnmower gives off. She leaned out the window. Lush, Kentucky bluegrass stretched out across the parade ground towards a barely visible set of buildings two hundred yards away. There was still order here and purpose. It was still on somebody's budget. She had a bad, funny intuition she couldn't shake and as she thought about it, it felt true, and solid and real. Rau didn't know everything, maybe he didn't know anything. It was all smoke and mirrors. The werewolves didn't matter at all, really. Sure, people died, so it was real to them, but the Nords, or us, but she was pretty sure the Nords would be the smarter party and the one in charge, had another purpose and like that flag, it was here and not here.

  So many new ideas popped into Faudron's head and raced around inside she wanted to share them all with Rau, but she'd keep her plans to herself. Mom wasn't lost; she had left, and if she left she could be followed. If it was to Heaven itself, you could get there. They might not let you in, but nothing was magic. Everything was here and she knew this, because those shadows she felt around her knew this, and they'd poked a hole in time and they'd been sucked into it like a canoe over a waterfall.

  Faudron heard a tap, tap like a wrench tapping a pipe and looked back at the flagpole but it was gone. She kept her back to Rau, trying to keep her face blank and her emotions to herself.