Our feet are heavy, thick with mud. The smell is stuck in my nostrils. In my backyard, I like the smell, the feel of mud. Cool and musty. Here in the wild, mud is gluey and tiresome.
Beatrice shivers. Amelia looks pale and blue. Caleb wrings out his clothing, then tries to smooth the wrinkles he made doing so.
We are cold and wet to the core and muddy and hungry and thirsty and lost. I can say that, now that my scents have all washed away. Lost. Yes, we have light to follow. That doesn’t mean we know where we are.
Lost is a stray dog, with no jangly tags to tell you where to return it.
“Hey, look here,” Beatrice says. She runs her fingertips over a small board nailed to a tree. There are several small boards nailed to the tree, and a knotted rope looped over one of them. “A rope swing.”
Caleb isn’t paying attention. He’s looking up at the moontower lights, biting his bottom lip. “Maybe half a mile,” he mutters, then glances at his wrist-collar. “And twenty minutes to get there.”
I whimper because by the time I look back to Beatrice, she’s halfway up that tree with the knotted rope in her hand.
Caleb practically sizzles with anxiety. “What are you doing?!”
“Going for a swim,” Beatrice says. “We’re already soaked. And I’ve never been in Barton Springs before.”
Amelia is already looping her bag over her head, dropping it at the base of the tree, and scrambling up the trunk behind Beatrice.
“This is it, Beatrice!” Caleb shouts. I feel—we feel—as bothered as a flock of honking geese. “I’ve finally hit my limit! I’ve followed you around all day. I left church for you. I used a port-a-john because of you. I danced in the rain with you—”
“You did those things for you, dude.” Beatrice reaches the part of the tree where the boards stop. She throws her belly over a wide limb. I wince. I feel like I’ve been socked in the gut with her.
“I didn’t even give you grief when you punched me. But this? Swimming in this nasty lake with snakes and fish and gah! Who knows what?! At night! No. I have to say no.”
Beatrice stands. Wobbles on the tree limb. She clutches the rope. She is as high up as the roof of a small house.
Beatrice breathes in a deep, wavery breath. I can feel her jittery electric nerves from here. “You play enough chess to know, Caleb. You can’t always predict the patterns of the other player.”
And she leaps.
And she sings: “Fly me to the moooon!” as her fingertips sweep across the night, reaching for the light of the moontower.
Our hearts—my heart and Beatrice’s heart—skip one beat, maybe two.
Beatrice sails, sails, sails out over the deep blue lake. And then, and then! She lets go.
She drops. Forever, she drops.
Splash!
Beatrice disappears in a ring of white foam. I whimper. Where is she?
I can’t feel her spirit so far away, underneath all that water. I tumble down the steep hill to the edge of the lake and splash in its shallows, barking.
“Ahhhhh!” Beatrice surfaces, sucking in a huge breath. She lights up the surface of the water with her yellow joy. “Dude! This water is so much warmer than the rain.”
The rope swings back to shore, and Amelia plucks it out of the air.
“Amelia,” Caleb says. There is a twinge of pleading on the edges of his voice. “Don’t?”
Amelia smiles down at Caleb, and swings.
She lets go as gently as dandelion fluff and floats into the water.
I leap and splash and bark.
She surfaces, laughing. She splashes Beatrice in the face.
“Hey, you!”
They splash and squeal. I jump and bark.
“Come on in, Luna!” Beatrice calls. “Come!”
I want to go to them, I do. Their hearts, their voices call mine. They are my duty, those two. I whine. I rock back and forth on the muddy shore, trying to work up the courage to leap.
Courage. Before today, I would’ve said courage is a paved road, solid and steady and sure. Easy to map. But now I know courage is simply feeling no but saying yes. And we need it all the time.
I leap.
Water is everywhere—in my eyes, in my ears, in my mouth, in my . . . other places. The water is so warm I can’t help but pee a little. I float to the top and use my big paws to galumph and splash and paddle toward my girls. My nostrils are just above the surface of the water.
I’m doing it! I’m swimming!
We three—Beatrice, Amelia, and I—splash around in the warm water. They swim and float and laugh and even though they can’t see my tail, I’m laughing too.
We finally grow tired and swim to shore. Caleb is there, sitting on a wet patch of grass, Sandpaper purring in his lap. They are as content as a pink sunrise.
“That was fun but I’m glad you didn’t come,” Beatrice says, flicking her fingers and flinging water in Caleb’s face. He smirks and wipes his eye. “The sooner you learn not to follow me into all things Beatrice, the better.”
“I’m a fast learner,” he says.
He is, Sandpaper agrees. Knew immediately to scratch behind the ears.
Amelia wrings out her dress, takes down her braids. Her hair is long and wavy. I think I hear Caleb gulp. Sandpaper must notice the shift in Caleb’s attention because he nips the back of his hand. “Ow!”
Beatrice notices none of this. She’s studying the rope swing.
“Hey, who do you think hung this rope here?”
Caleb blinks himself back to the here and now. “I dunno. I think this is a state park. Maybe someone who works here?”
Beatrice grips a knot and pulls. The tree limb far overhead creaks, sways. “It’s strong. You think it’s been here awhile, this rope?”
Caleb looks at it closer. “A few years, probably. Yeah.”
Beatrice studies the rope. My whiskers tell me: she’s amazed. Amazed that this rope is frayed and twisted and knotted, and still, here it is. A survivor, this rope.
Beatrice gives the rope one more mighty yank and the tree limb waves goodbye. “I like this place.”
We scramble up the embankment. We’re almost to the trail when, nearby, we hear rustling in the woods.
“Another squirrel,” Caleb mutters, but he feels doubt. Doubt is the opposite of courage; you want to feel a yes but it is most definitely a no.
A stick breaks. A large one, by the sound of it. More rustling.
“Well, lookee here,” a voice cuts through the dark. “If it isn’t those Meddling Kids.”
21
A Lonely Lost Dog Is the Saddest Echo
Dark Glasses Bryce and Red Hat Luke unfold out of the shadows.
They seem harder, meaner, pebblier than before. Red Hat Luke clenches his teeth so tight, his neck strains. He marches straight to me, scoops me off my feet. It feels like I leave my stomach behind on the trail, it happens so fast.
“Hey!” Beatrice says, but Dark Glasses Bryce slides between me and my kids. It’s like a door slamming shut. I whine.
“We’re taking the dog,” Dark Glasses says. He shows them the palms of his hands. “You can either come with her, or we take her and turn her loose in some faraway part of the city. Hate for her to get lost like that.”
LOST? I squirm, trying to wriggle free, but Luke is strong and he tightens his grip. We’re lost now, but we’re lost together. But lost alone? A lonely lost dog is the saddest echo.
“Put Luna down,” Beatrice says calmly.
I wriggle more. Without even thinking about it, I bare my teeth. Growl.
I have an overwhelming desire to bite Red Hat’s arm. I want to sink my sharp teeth into his flesh. I can practically taste it. . . .
No! That’s instinct, I tell myself. Choose duty. I have been trained to never, ever bite a human.
My training did not cover this situation.
“So y’all just come with us, now—” Dark Glasses says.
“No,” Beatrice says. She breathes deepl
y. She is not a tight knot. “It’s not safe.”
“We’re just gonna take you back to your parents,” Dark Glasses says.
Isn’t that what I’ve been hoping for all along? Why am I fighting this?
Red Hat Luke begins climbing the hill up to a parking lot far above. His feet slip, and I squirm.
“Stay still,” he mutters, squeezing me too tight. I choke.
I wriggle to look over his shoulder at my kids. Amelia paces, biting her lip. Beatrice breathes, shrinks. My eyes lock with Caleb’s.
“ARRRRGHHH!” Caleb growls, kicking rocks up at Dark Glasses. “I am so sick of the jerks always winning!”
It’s exactly what Beatrice said earlier.
And then, for a flash, I see it. At the moment:
Beatrice is the shadow.
Amelia is the waterfall.
Caleb is the knot.
It is the very beginnings of empathy, and it is beautiful.
The seeds were there for them the whole time, but now that they’re a team—a team!—they know how to find those other things growing and blooming inside themselves.
Amelia blinks, takes a step forward, following Red Hat. I’m not letting Luna get lost. She doesn’t say those words, but Caleb, Beatrice, and I all hear them.
My instinct: Yes! They’re coming with me!
My duty: No! They can’t get in a car with these strangers!
I have to break free.
I wriggle.
I push.
I growl.
I hear growling.
Growling that’s . . . not mine?
Another stick breaks.
And then, between the trees above us, we see them.
Two yellow eyes.
22
This Is the Exception
The growling is so low and rumbly I can’t tell if it’s coming from me or from him, Yellow Eyes. His breath is warm and stinks of eating dead things and garbage. HUNGRY, he grumbles.
He takes one step. Two. Out of the shadows now, into a faint circle of light. A patchy, wet coyote. Matted fur. One ripped ear. Ribs march down his sides.
HUNGRY.
He turns his yellow eyes onto each of my kids. Onto the two teens, one of them still holding me too tightly. We are all frozen under his gaze. Amelia whimpers. Dark Glasses Bryce cusses.
Red Hat Luke grits his teeth but mutters over his shoulder, “Bryce?”
Dark Glasses: “Yeah?”
“Follow my lead.”
I feel Red Hat take a deep breath. Deeper. He readies himself. Shifts me in his grasp. I feel myself tense. He whispers, “One. Two. THREE!”
And he throws me.
At the coyote.
I flail through the air, paws churning, trying to right myself before I—
CRASH!
—land on top of a coyote.
It’s like tussling with a bag of bones, trying to break free. He smells like rotten eggs and his fur is knotted, sticky. I feel a sharp scratch across my left hindquarter. I yelp.
“Luna!” Beatrice shouts.
Caleb picks up a stick. I can’t see him, but I hear him whack trees near us. “Stop! Stop it!”
I wrestle free and leap away. We circle one another. We growl and show teeth.
I hear Red Hat and Dark Glasses slam car doors, start an engine above us. They ran, and my kids stayed.
My kids understand duty.
I growl louder. But this coyote is larger than me. Hunched and fueled by hunger. Hunger is stronger than fear, which is what fuels me.
He tries to focus his cloudy eyes, and pity washes over me. Pity is the swamp water of all feelings: green and stagnant. Smelly. But I feel pity because this animal isn’t supposed to be here, so close to a city. I feel it in his soul: he is lost. A sad, lonely echo.
But Yellow Eyes feels no pity for me. Lost or not, he still needs to eat. He flares his nostrils. Turns his cloudy eyes back on me. We begin circling one another, here on a hill covered in roots and rocks and slick leaves. My haunch burns where he scratched me. My back foot slips and Yellow Eyes lunges. Snaps teeth.
Hhhhhssssshhhhhh!
Sandpaper leaps between us, hissing. He lands, back arched, and swipes at the coyote’s dry nose. The coyote wails, recoils.
What are you doing? I cry, scrambling back onto four paws. Yellow Eyes shakes off the scratch, hunches taller, growls louder. His nostrils twitch between me and Sandpaper, like he’s deciding on a snack.
Every quest has a sacrificial lamb, Sandpaper hisses. Or in our case, a sacrificial cat.
As always, I don’t understand this cat. But he’s giving me enough time to flick my eyes around this scene to see how I can save my kids. My options don’t look good: scramble up a slick hill or back down into the river. The river, I guess? Can coyotes swim?
Take notes, Protagonist, Sandpaper jeers, never taking his gaze off Yellow Eyes. This is the moment where the narrator injects himself into the story and emerges the hero.
Wait! I shout. You said the protagonist is the hero!
Ah, you were listening, young protégé, Sandpaper says, back arched at Yellow Eyes. They circle one another. But I said USUALLY, Protagonist. Usually. This is the exception.
Sandpaper yowls like his soul is being ripped in two, and he leaps right at Yellow Eyes. Into the Abyss! he shouts, confounding as always. He is all claws and teeth and spit. Sandpaper bounds off the skull of Yellow Eyes and scrambles up the slick hill.
Come and get me, coyote! Leave these decent humans alone!
“No!” Caleb squeaks, but Beatrice grabs his arm and stops him from jumping into this quarrel.
Yellow Eyes roars with fury and scrambles up the hill, chasing Sandpaper. He loses his footing once or twice, hip bones jutting out. But he follows Sandpaper, up and away.
We, the four of us, are left breathless.
Four.
My heart whimpers.
I feel forlorn. It rhymes with thorn for a reason. It pierces. I hurt.
Caleb and Amelia both have tingly eyes, tight throats. Beatrice swallows, nods. She knocks on the nearest tree, hard. “He’ll be okay. That cat? He’s seen a lot. He’ll be okay.”
But she sounds uncertain. Uncertain feels swirly dizzy, like holding your breath too long.
Another yowl cuts through the night, and Caleb flinches.
Sandpaper. The hero of our quest. Just like he always said he’d be.
23
One Step. Two.
Grief. The hardest feeling of all to describe. I once stepped on a shard of glass, and it lodged in my paw for several rainbows before Tessa found it and helped. Before then, I couldn’t stop licking it. It hurt, but I couldn’t stop.
That’s what grief feels like.
Fat tears shimmer on Amelia’s cheeks. Caleb blinks repeatedly, clears his throat a lot. Beatrice scowls, sizzling with rage. We all grieve differently, which is part of the reason it’s so hard to describe.
“Let’s go,” Beatrice says. She wants to go go go and forget. “We’re so close. And we’ve got . . . what? Like ten minutes still. Before Hector leaves.”
It’s true too. The light from the moontower is so close, hovering almost over our shoulders. We find it, we find Hector.
The kids and I scramble up the hill, them pulling on tree limbs and roots to help get back to the trail. And we keep going. One step. Two.
That’s grief too.
Soon, very soon, we hear a rush of noise, constant but gentle, like the earth exhaling. More steps. The exhaling grows louder, until it sounds more like the earth roaring.
A cool mist sprays us. We round a bend, and—
“Checkmate,” Beatrice breathes. “This was why the trail was closed.”
A waterfall roars down the hill to our left, washes over the trail, and plunges to the lake below. Caleb steps forward.
“It’s a drainage ditch.” He points to the concrete trench cradling this rush of water, ushering it into the lake. “This water isn’t usually here. It’s because of
all that rain earlier.”
Blasted rain! Why don’t humans just turn that silly stuff off already?
Caleb takes another step forward, fingers outstretched. The mist stings them, my whiskers tell me. He squats at the edge of the water, dips his fingers in. He knows this waterfall. He is a waterfall himself, after all.
Chess is a game of precision. Water’s game is chaos.
Caleb appears to be calculating if we can cross this rush of water. I feel fear growing in my belly and realize Beatrice and Amelia feel it in their bellies too.
I wish Sandpaper were here to overexplain this to me.
“Well, we had a good run,” Beatrice says with an odd-sounding snicker.
Caleb stands, looks up to the top of the waterfall, down to where it crashes into the lake.
“Seriously, though.” Beatrice gulps. “I think we—”
“We go.” Caleb bites his lip, but his words are strong. “The tower is right there.” He points, and I can even see the faint shadow his hand casts from the glow of the moontower. “We can cross this. It’s five or six steps at the most. Worst-case scenario, we sweep into the lake like a waterslide. I think.” He chuckles, but it has a cold sound, like clinking ice cubes.
I don’t know what a waterslide is but it sounds alarming. Sliding is a loss of control.
Caleb places one tennis shoe into the rush of water, sploosh. Then another. He is wobbly, walking across, but his footing is helped by the concrete. His breath is high and tight, and I expect to sense fear radiating off him, but that’s not what he feels at all. Instead he feels . . . exhilaration?
Caleb throws himself onto the other side of the waterfall. He beams. Spins back to face us. He’s close but he feels far away. I whine.
“See? Easy-peasy. Except ugh wet socks. Glad I never have to do that again.”
Beatrice and Amelia look at one another, and Amelia sweeps her hand over the water, after you.
Beatrice knots her flannel shirt high at her waist. “Here goes.” She places her chunky black boot into the waterfall. “Checkmate, this water is cold!”
She does it too. Wobbly steps but she makes it across. Now two of my kids are close but far. My whine grows higher, tighter.
Luna Howls at the Moon Page 11