by Paula Guran
The cataphract had stopped moving. The small gods roared. I moved my head; pain stabbed all the way through the back of my skull. “Jong?” I croaked.
Jong was breathing shallowly. Blood poured thickly from the cut on her face. I saw what had happened: the panel had flown out of my hands and struck her edge-on. The small gods had taken their payment, all right; mine hadn’t been enough. If only I had foreseen this—
“Fox,” Jong said in a weak voice.
Lights blinked on-off, on-off, in a crazed quilt. The cockpit looked like someone had upended a bucket full of unlucky constellations into it. “Jong,” I said. “Jong, are you all right?”
“My mission,” she said. Her eyes were too wide, shocky, the redand-amber of the status lights pooling in the enormous pupils. I could smell the death on her, hear the frantic pounding of her heart as her body destroyed itself. Internal bleeding, and a lot of it. “Fox, you have to finish my mission. Unless you’re also a physician?”
“Shh,” I said. “Shh.” I had avoided eating people in the medical professions not out of a sense of ethics but because, in the older days, physicians tended to have a solid grounding in the kinds of magics that threatened shape-changing foxes.
“I got one of them,” she said. Her voice sounded more and more thready. “That leaves one, and of course they’ll have called for reinforcements. If they have anyone else to spare. You have to—”
I could have howled my frustration. “I’ll carry you.”
Under other circumstances, that grimace would have been a laugh. “I’m dying, fox, do you think I can’t tell?”
“I don’t know the things you know,” I said desperately. “Even if this metal monstrosity of yours can still run, I can’t pilot it for you.” It was getting hard to breathe; a foul, stinging vapor was leaking into the cockpit. I hoped it wasn’t toxic.
“Then there’s no hope,” she whispered.
“Wait,” I said, remembering; hating myself. “There’s a way.”
The sudden flare of hope in Jong’s eyes cut me.
“I can eat you,” I said. “I can take the things you know with me, and seek your friends. But it might be better simply to die.”
“Do it,” she said. “And hurry. I assume it doesn’t do you any good to eat a corpse, or your kind would have a reputation as grave-thieves.”
I didn’t squander time on apologies. I had already unbuckled the harness, despite the pain of the broken ribs. I flowed back into fox-shape, and I tore out her throat so she wouldn’t suffer as I devoured her liver.
The smoke in the cockpit thickened, thinned. When it was gone, a pale tiger watched me from the rear of the cockpit. It seemed impossible that she could fit; but the shadows stretched out into an infinite vast space to accommodate her, and she did. I recognized her. In a hundred stolen lifetimes I would never fail to recognize her.
Shivering, human, mouth full of blood-tang, I looked down. The magic had given me one last gift: I wore a cataphract pilot’s suit in fox colors, russet and black. Then I met the tiger’s gaze.
I had broken the oath I had sworn upon the tiger-sage’s blood. Of course she came to hunt me.
“I had to do it,” I said, and stumbled to my feet, prepared to fight. I did not expect to last long against a tiger-sage, but for Jong’s sake I had to try.
“There’s no ‘have to’ about anything,” the tiger said lazily. “Every death is a choice, little not-a-fox. At any step you could have turned aside. Now—” She fell silent.
I snatched up Jong’s knife. Now that I no longer had sharp teeth and claws, it would have to do.
“Don’t bother with that,” the tiger said. She had all her teeth, and wasn’t shy about displaying them in a ferocious grin. “No curse I could pronounce on you is more fitting than the one you have chosen for yourself.”
“It’s not a curse,” I said quietly.
“I’ll come back in nine years’ time,” the tiger said, “and we can discuss it then. Good luck with your one-person revolution.”
“I needn’t fight it alone,” I said. “This is your home, too.”
The tiger seemed to consider it. “Not a bad thought,” she said, “but maps and boundaries and nationalism are for humans, not for tigers.”
“If you change your mind,” I said, “I’m sure you can find me, in nine years’ time or otherwise.”
“Indeed,” the tiger said. “Farewell, little not-a-fox.”
“Thank you,” I said, but she was gone already.
I secured Jong’s ruined body in the copilot’s seat I had vacated, so it wouldn’t flop about during maneuvers, and strapped myself in. The cataphract was damaged, but not so badly damaged that I still couldn’t make a run for it. It was time to finish Jong’s mission.
“OWL VS. THE NEIGHBORHOOD WATCH”
DARCIE LITTLE BADGER
When Nina first met Owl-with-a-capital-O, harbinger of death, destruction, and despair, He resembled Athene cunicularia, a wee burrower. Owl perched on a twig outside her bedroom window as Nina toiled over seventh grade geometry homework. Between questions eleven and twelve, she glanced outside; yellow eyes met brown.
Owl tilted His head, as if puzzled.
That night, Nina fell asleep on a pile of pencil shavings and graphing paper. She dreamed that somebody replaced her nerves with puppet strings. The unseen puppeteer resisted every move she made, and Nina was still ensnared when sunlight tickled her eyes open. For weeks, her actions lagged, leaden, as if cement thickened in her marrow, her skull, and her heart-bearing chest.
Later, Nina learned the puppeteer’s name: Depression.
Owl returned before the next depressive episode as Bubo virginianus, great horned owl. His yellow eyes were crowned by cowlick tufts. “Mom warned me about you,” Nina said. “She says you appeared before Dad almost died. Don’t visit anymore. Leave me alone!” She whisked the curtains shut.
Flower-printed cotton was an ineffectual shield against misery.
A year later, Owl came as Strix nebulosa, great gray. Dagger-sharp talons encircled the thickest branch outside her window, and His bulbous head blocked the moonlight. In His shadow, Nina whispered, “God. My God.”
“Am I really?” Owl wondered. His melodious voice could belong to bird or man.
Nina gasped.
“Am I? Really?” He repeated. “Am I God?”
She screamed.
Nina’s doctor prescribed mood stabilizers and warned her to get immediate help if birds spoke to her again.
“It’s not a delusion,” she said. “Owl comes with trouble. He’s the flash of light before thunder. Stop treating Apache beliefs like they’re superstitions. Would you tell a Christian that angels don’t exist?”
“Have angels spoken to you recently, Nina?” Dr. Grigory asked.
“No!”
She never discussed Owl around doctors again.
During college—four-year, private, double major in biochemistry and philosophy—she rented an apartment in downtown Austin. The nearest tree branch grew a block away from her bedroom window. Maybe that’s why it took a year for Owl to find her there. He arrived on two feet, His human-shaped disguise betrayed by round, yellow, too-large eyes. Owlas-a-Man loitered outside her apartment, barefoot. From toes to brow, a white feather pattern rippled up His brown skin. The ghostly hospital gown He wore—why a hospital gown? Nina wondered—seemed at once too baggy for His body and too skimpy for the winter chill that night.
She opened her second-floor window and leaned outside. “Not now,” Nina said. “Classes are going so . . .”
A waste of breath, pleading with Owl. Better spent sighing and crying. She exhaled a dissipating cloud above His upturned face.
“So what?” Owl asked. “Going so what? Poorly? Well?” When she did not answer, He laughed, a tittering sound, and strolled away. Owl rarely lingered.
As a new professor, Nina bought a house in forested Middle-of-No-where, Filly Lane. The neighborhood had owls, mostly Tyto alba, ba
rn owls without barns. For a few years, Owl kept His distance.
One portentous night, restlessness swarmed through Nina’s anthill-busy brain, down her spine, and through her veins. She paced. It wasn’t enough. Nina slipped into a reflective jacket, grabbed a mini flashlight, and went jogging. Outside, a waning moon helped light her steps across the uneven dirt.
They who lived on Filly Lane, a winding, unpaved Appalachian road, shared little but a street name. Nina knew her neighbors by their mailbox labels and outdoor habits.
First, she passed the Kilpatrick home. The married couple, empty nesters, had a splendid lawn. Daily, Mrs. Nancy Kilpatrick worried over their roses and bluegrass, allaying the drought with a tin watering can. She rarely missed a chance to comment on the weather when Nina passed her in the garden.
Next lived Gorey: single man, forties. Nina rarely saw him.
Vaude: family of five. Matriarch Vaude, Patriarch Vaude, and their young daughters shared a two-story Victorian-style house that was built in 1980. The girls often played in the gigantic oak in their front lawn. A hammock and tire swing dangled from its boughs.
Wordsmith, two fathers and their son, occupied the last house on the lane. The teen walked his German Shepherd before and after school. Both boy and dog were exceptionally polite.
Nina saw few signs of life during her midnight jog. Moths battered against the Kilpatrick porch light. A raccoon scampered under the Gorey jeep. One window in the Vaude household—second story, half-concealed by the oak—was bright, its light filtered by a pink curtain.
Filly Lane spilled down a tilted valley between two mountains. The incline accelerated Nina toward a dead end; where the road terminated, a narrow footpath plunged through the forest. When she first joined the neighborhood, Nina had investigated this trail. It went on for a quarter-mile and ended at a natural clearing peppered with empty beer cans and paintball shells. The desolation made her uncomfortable, so she had never returned.
Owl-as-a-Man stood at the threshold between forest and road, His eyes reflecting the flashlight beam. Recoiling, Nina mentally listed all the tragedies that might befall a jogger at night. “What have you come for?” she asked.
“I live in the beech tree.”
“The beech tree?”
She’d seen several beeches near the clearing: old, branchy trees that probably supported dozens of bird species. “Since when?” she asked.
“Tonight. What are you doing here, Nina-I-Rarely-See-Anymore?”
“Filly Lane has been my home for years.”
“Pity.” Owl smiled, but the expression did not reach His eyes. None did. “I’m inclined to stay.”
“Why? Are we in danger?” Nearby, the German shepherd barked, as if disturbed. She’d barely whispered the question; maybe the dog had keen ears. Or maybe Nina and Owl weren’t the only ones outside. She swept her flashlight up the road: empty.
“Probably,” Owl said.
“You can’t be more specific?”
He tilted His head. “Supper time. Good luck, Nina.” As Owl returned to the forest, His unfastened gown fluttered in a breeze that ran up the valley. The rippling pattern on His back resembled feathers.
“Don’t need your kind of luck,” Nina said, “Schadenfreude Featherface.”
At home, she brewed coffee and listed catastrophes in her spare laboratory notebook.
One: contamination. Heavy metals, carcinogens, or toxic chemicals might poison the dirt and water. Unlikely, but easy to rule out.
Two: natural disaster. A tornado, flood, or wildfire could devour five houses in one violent sweep.
Three: human malice. Serial killers had to live somewhere.
Four: plague. Lyme disease was named after Lyme, Connecticut. What maladies bred in Filly Lane?
Five: something strange. Alien abductions, ghosts, goatmen.
“Might as well include meteors and evil clowns,” she said, noticing a familiar silhouette beyond her bedroom window. “Right, Owl?”
“I do not understand the question.”
Nina peeked through the half-cracked venetian blinds. Owl lounged on her ornamental balcony, snug between potted chrysanthemum plants. His hospital gown and face were sullied with blood, black speckles trailing from lips to chest.
She asked, “Why me?”
“Why anybody?”
“I’ve seen you a dozen times since seventh grade!” She snapped the blinds shut. “It’s excessive! This is harassment!”
“At least I warn you,” He cooed. “I warned you. I did. I warned you . . .” The voice became distant, a whisper that flew with the wind up Filly Lane.
“You didn’t warn me. You teased me.” How could one woman stop a plague, a serial killer, a forest fire? Mania, depression? Why did she always try?
Her zero-win record did not bode well for Filly Lane.
Maybe she should take a vacation until doom blew over. It was Memorial Day weekend, a perfect time for traveling. Unfortunately, Nina was haunted by four names: Kilpatrick, Vaude, Wordsmith, and Gorey.
How could she prepare them for a yet-unknown disaster? They weren’t her undergraduate students; Dr. Nina Soto could not lecture the neighborhood about safety protocol.
She had to get creative.
Nina parked in front of her computer, opened a word processor and search engine, and typed:
Disaster preparedness
Ctrl-c
Ctrl-v
Forest fire safety
Ctrl-c
Ctrl-v
Emergency phone numbers
Ctrl-c
Ctrl-v
FBI most wanted
Roadside accident procedure
Common household risks
Snake bite treatment tornado flood first aid constitutional rights self-defense carbon monoxide ammonia+bleach CPR lightning strike real zombies CDC
By sunrise, toting homemade educational booklets, Nina took to the street; a horn bleated furiously, and gravel sprayed her legs. She’d been one step away from death by Goodyear tire under the Kilpatrick min-ivan. “The limit is twenty-five miles per hour!” she shouted. “Twenty! Five! Not fifty!”
Why the hurry?
Murderer, burglar, car theft, trunk full of silverware and corpses? Either that, or one of the lovely Kilpatricks drove like a street racer.
Nancy was working in her garden, which ruled out the car theft theory. She clipped wilting roses from a hedgerow bush, dressed in overalls, white gloves, and a pink bandana.
“Good morning!” Nina called.
Nancy closed her shears and walked to the edge of her driveway. “You’re awake early.”
“It’s strictly business.” Nina held out a booklet. “I’m spreading safety protocol for the neighborhood watch preparedness initiative.”
“We have a neighborhood watch?”
“Sure do! Any questions?”
Nancy flipped through the papers, her eyebrow cocked. “Fire safety. Emergency numbers. The proper way to sneeze?” She laughed. “You cover all the bases.”
“If only that were true! Can I bother you for a soil sample?”
“Hm?”
“We’re screening for toxins.”
“Go ahead.” She gestured to her lawn with the shears. “Just don’t make a mess.”
One sample later, Nina approached the next household. As she slipped a booklet in the red-paint-on-tin mailbox, the front door swung open. Gorey leaned outside, wearing nothing but a checkered bathrobe. He hollered, “That’s a federal crime!”
“I just—”
“Not goddamn interested!”
“I’m your neigh—”
“Don’t touch my mailbox!” He charged across the porch, and Nina fled before Gorey could pull a gun—or something worse—from his robe. She dropped his booklet on the curb; littering might be a crime, but was it a federal crime?
Thankfully, the rest of her neighbors were quiet, with one exception; the Wordsmith German shepherd barked when Nina approached his family’s mailbox.
She much preferred his outburst to Gorey’s.
A lab tech from the university took the soil samples later that morning. “What am I looking for?” he asked.
“Everything,” Nina said. “Lead, mercury, arsenic, cadmium, chromium, DDT, DDE, DDD, PCBs, TCE—”
“You live in a rural neighborhood, no known contact with commercial, industrial, or agricultural sources of contaminants. Don’t expect much.”
“What’s the ETA?”
“Thursday,” he said, “at the soonest. Dr. Soto, are you . . . is everything all right?”
She rubbed her eyes. “Just tired. Thanks for meeting me here.”
“Any time.” He chuckled dryly. “Wouldn’t want to disappoint your neighborhood watch.”
In the empty-handed, idle lull after the drop-off, Nina wondered how safety booklets and a soil test could accomplish any good whatsoever. She ordered hash browns and coffee from a McDonald’s near campus and brooded over her breakfast.
How could she defy Owl’s intuition? How could anyone? If, like the flash of light before thunder, Owl was inextricable from disaster, she was attempting the Sisyphean. Nina felt the piles of her hope collapsing. Desperate, she called the only number on speed-dial. After two rings, a groggy voice asked, “Honey? Are you okay?”
“Hi Mom. I need a favor.”
“Oh no . . .”
“Nothing big! Remember when you saved Dad’s life? Can you tell me about it again?”
A pause. “Are you hearing birds talk? Should we call somebody?”
“Christ. No.”
“Right.” She did not sound convinced. “I wish you’d visit more often. I’m cooking pancakes for brunch.”
“Work has been hectic. Next weekend. Promise. Pancakes sound fantastic.” Nina dabbed grease from her hash brown with a napkin. “Now, about Dad . . .”
“What do you want me to say? He got carbon monoxide poisoning in the garage. I left work early and saved his life.”
“Why did you leave work early?”
“I never should have told you about—”
“Owl, right?”
“A bird landed on the fence outside my office window. Coincidences happen.”
“That’s not what you said fifteen years ago.”