The Mother watches impassively. Fifty times our size, as tall as the trees that line the stream, covered with thick plates, her tail lashes with enough force to cripple the unwary. I wish for her to notice me—my size, my dominance—but if she notices, I cannot tell. I will grow bigger still, and when I am able, I will show her my worth. I don’t know how, but in the way of knowing, which led me to destroy the membrane, I know that soon her great, shining eyes will rest on me.
We spread over the stream bank that separates water from the great, green deep where The Mother goes to hunt, but we are not allowed. The first time she rises to hunt, some of us race after her. She stops and lowers her head, bellowing heat and the smell of rot into our nostrils. All of us stop except a single, foolish youngling. She pounds the ground and raises a footpad, claws extended. Swift and graceful, she dips and catches hold of the youngling and flings him back towards the brood, a chaotic scramble of teeth and claws. Before he strikes the ground we catch him in our jaws and devour his flesh.
None of us try to follow The Mother again.
The weakest have died. Some from lack of food, others cut open, a few broken by The Mother’s lashing tail. The food she drops has changed from scraps to whole animals—things with tan fur and branching horns, useless for fighting. I slice through a ribcage and bury my head, pulling out the soft things within. Rising on hind claws, shaking mouthfuls of the pulsing flesh, I bellow my gratitude to The Mother but she does not respond. Why does she ignore me? Doesn’t she see that I am special?
I watch her carefully, anxious to learn. Each day she lumbers into the green deep and returns with dead things clamped in her jaws. Where does she find prey? I have never seen one of the soft-horns except those The Mother drops for us. How does she hunt them? Will she take me with her one day? My jaws are strong and my horn long. Why does she delay? What must I do for her to take me with her?
While she hunts, the others lie atop the shale at the edge of the river. They have grown lazy. With only four of us left, hunger never sinks into our guts the way it once did. The Mother brings enough food that we no longer bother to rouse ourselves and fight.
Great, whirling birds circle in the blue. What do they see? What does the below look like to them? My eyes see poorly—far things clouded like the fog that rises off the stream in the early morning. The breeze carries a thickness of smells, as varied as the spread of color made by light caught and thrown by water—bringing no picture to my inside eyes. I have seen so little and know so little. I root in the moldering thickness at the edge of the green deep, unearthing squirming things full of bitter juices. I carve marks high into the trunks of trees, slicing through their skin and releasing golden resin. But I dare not go into the green deep and instead travel far along the bank of the stream.
The flat where the husk pods have dried to powder disappears. I follow the stream until the sweet bloom of purple and orange flowers overpowers the scent of my kin. Stalks line a pool where the stream slows. Beneath the surface, a flash of movement! I plunge my head into the water. Silver fish dart over gray pebbles and dodge between reeds. Two fierce warriors battle over a gray fish carcass, their claws locked in combat. Rich with happiness, pleased by their display, I watch them grapple until my air grows short. Rising, sucking air through nose holes, I trumpet happiness into the blue.
I return to the sunning stones and close my eyes but my inside eyes replay all that I have seen so that I cannot sleep. How can the others sleep when such wonders exist? What does The Mother see when she goes off to hunt? If I want to learn, I must risk following her. Then I will learn where she finds prey and how she kills. Together we will make many kills and eat until swollen. Perhaps she and I will never return to the stream. We will travel on and on and we will create trumpet sounds for everything that we can scent and taste and kill.
The next time the Mother leaves for the hunt, I follow. The sleepy ones watch absently—they don’t desire the attention of The Mother or care about what lies in the deep. They are like the fish that school in the pools of the stream—happy to eat and grow—content, wanting only food and a place to sun themselves.
I keep downwind of The Mother. I slide between trees without cracking them, claws retracted, footpads light over the spongy undergrowth. Brightly colored birds flit through the treetops and call out angrily as I pass under them. Soon I will see the soft-horns that she brings to us, sometimes still alive, their eyes full of dread as we scissor them open. Saliva drips from my tongue and I tremble with anticipation.
She shows no sign of noticing my presence. I stay far from her, trusting that her eyes see no better than my own, until the sun slides high into the blue and we reach a wide expanse of wet and mud. At the far edge of the wet, another green deep begins—strange and shimmery, like light over water. I hide at the edge of the mud, eyelids retracted, tongue extended, scenting the air. Scenting . . .
What?
Not The Mother, my brood, prey or anything I have smelled before. My plates flatten against my back and I root the air, eyes swiveling. The smell comes from the shimmer—I do not like the smell and I do not want her to go near it. I choke down a trumpet of warning, afraid that if she finds me she will break me with pounding feet and lashing tail.
The Mother thumps over the mud flat. As she nears the strange shimmer I see another Mother! The second mother looks like The Mother and moves towards her, stride for stride. Their noses touch and the new mother swallows The Mother and she disappears.
I charge forward, rage escaping me in a terrible shriek. My claws dig the muck, plates plowing the mud. Ahead, a heavy-skulled brood mate rushes towards me, head lowered for battle. Where did he come from? How can this be? I stop and the other stops. I blink and the other blinks. The smell of the shimmer burns harsh in my nostril holes. And then I understand—the shimmer is like the surface of the pool. In it I see my reflection. My muscles quiver and my tongue buries itself in my throat and I back away, ashamed of my fear until I remember how I submerged my head in the water and discovered silver fish. This shimmer might contain a pocket of life as well—a different sort of deep hidden away, known only by The Mother. If I can breach the shimmer and find her there—perhaps that is what The Mother has waited for. A brave one—a finder.
I paw the mud and trumpet my intention to the brood at the edge of the stream, to all of the creatures in the deep green, and most of all to The Mother. I charge, all four of my legs trembling with their strength—leaping, head extended. I slam into myself. A crack rips the air. A jolt of white agony travels down my horn and I fall backward into darkness.
I wake to the haze of a night sky obscured by mist. I ache with pain like thousands of wounds beneath my plates. The shimmer ripples, impenetrable. How did the mother enter it? Is her strength that much greater than my own?
Again I throw myself against the wall. Crackling heat sears into my bones. I roar and slam into the wall, again and again. Blood and chunks of shattered teeth fall from between my gaping mouth. I turn towards the wall once more and fall, heavy, unable to move. Flat on my stomach, I press my face into the mud. The Mother is gone, dead—swallowed by the wall like I swallow the flesh of prey.
I am lower than nothing. The Mother. Oh, The Mother.
From within the rushing blackness I feel distant vibrations rising from beneath me. Trumpets of joy, teeth, and ripping, sounds from the stream bank. Have my siblings grown so hungry they have hunted on their own? Cold and weak I rise up and thrash back to the stream.
Buzzing black flies circle a carcass picked free of meat. The others lie on the flat stones, soaking in the lingering warmth. And there, amongst them, head resting on fore claws, is The Mother. How can she have survived the fury of the shimmer? Did she slip past me while darkness filled my mind? Did she not see me, alone on the mud flat?
I roar and paw the ground and shake my head. The others rise up to look at me and then slump back—prey consumed, they have no interest in my challenge. I sidle up to The Mother, my head t
urned, one black eye level with hers. The eyes look dead and do not move, as if she cannot see me, pressed against her body. My trumpeting becomes plaintive—mournful, sounds far beneath me, but I cannot stop. The pain I feel is worse than the shimmer wall, worse even than the belief that The Mother had died.
I will make her respond.
I thrust, pushing my horn between two belly scales—a small wound, painful but quick to heal. The liquid oozing from her side smells wrong. I know our blood smell—I have tasted it! The others rise, suddenly alert, three pairs of eyes watching intently.
I push farther into her flesh. How I wish that The Mother would turn on me and attack with her terrible strength. Run my body through or stamp me into the ground. In death, knowing that she knew me the way that I have known so many of my kind—their taste and essence merged within me, intoxicating. Instead, my horn slides easily inside her, meeting no resistance from a ribcage. Then my head presses against The Mother’s side.
I lift and The Mother rips open.
Empty.
Her body splayed like the clams I hunted when very young. No pulsing organs, no entrails. Her arms and legs kick wildly, her head rolls on the end of her neck, and her tail lashes, useless. Black juice spurts thin and reflective, nothing like blood—nothing at all. Something crackles inside of her chest and a hot smell like the shimmer fills my nostrils, acrid and foul.
The others set upon me. I whirl and strike at them, a flurry of blows, but they do not turn back. They rage and bellow, blind, unable to see that the thing writhing in death is not a mother and was never a mother. It is an empty husk. I hate it with the intensity of the midday sun.
Claws grip my plates and teeth sink into the soft places underneath. Bucking, biting, crushing, I lose myself in the fury of battle.
The brood is dead. The Mother is dead. And soon, I will die as well. I crawl over the ground, thick with blood, and stare at the empty eyes of the false mother. I will do one thing before my blood leaves me. With great effort, I slice downward, severing the false mother’s head from her shoulders. I lift her head on my cutting horn and turn my back on the dead.
The shimmer reflects my broken body, the false mother’s head mounted on my cutting horn, and her unseeing eyes. She never saw me. She never saw anything. But soon I will know what is on the other side of the shimmer, or the shimmer will bring swiftness to my passing.
The shimmer ripples like water, opening before the false mother’s head. Forward into a feeling of suspension, weightlessness, bound on all sides. I remember this feeling. I remember the time before I learned to love The Mother when all I wished for was freedom and the light. I push and the shimmer dissolves into warmth and dazzling brilliance.
Whirring and clicks sound from above, and when my eyelids finally retract I see the mothers. Many, many mothers, identical to mine, motionless, rest on shaped stones the color of moonlight. Beyond them, many great spaces full of herds of prey. Streams of the grey material run outwards to green spheres that hang like droplets of water suspended from blades of grass—larger than the sand flat or the green deep and as high as the birds that wheel in the sky.
I whip my horn from side to side until The Mother’s head flies free. Rising on foreclaws, I trumpet long and deep. I keep bellowing until the sound becomes a rasp and then a gurgle and a great many pink, hairless things swarm out of an opening like ants from their crushed nest. Tiny eyes peer up at me and then they scatter—running, frantic.
All but one. Soft and pink, it approaches, forelimb extended. I lower my head and root the air but the pink one doesn’t stop. It chirps like a tree bird and moves closer, closer, a clawless paw extended.
Warmth spreads where it caresses my flank. I slump unto my belly, weak and dying. The eyes of the pink one move rapidly. It chirps away, paw stroking my neck, tiny blue eyes flitting about as it looks at me—sees me. My trumpet of surprise comes out as a mournful sigh. Before my eyes close, the pink one leans in close. Wetness forms in its eyes, suspends from lashes, and finally breaks free.
nathan m. beauchamp
writes speculative fiction ranging from hard science fiction to transgressive horror. his work has appeared in pantheon magazine, under the bed, and a number of themed anthologies. he attends western state university where he is earning his m.f.a. in creative writing and will graduate in july 2015. he teaches english at concordia university and lives in chicago with his wife and two young boys.
EVERYTHING
IN ITS
PLACE
ADAM PETERSON
Watched from a far enough distance, it’s difficult to know who anyone truly is. It’s not the silence, but the bodies. Without words there is only the bracing of shoulders and the shifting of weight from foot to foot. From a far enough distance, any person can appear beastly. Take this boy. He jumps from the black car the moment it stops, too impatient to wait for the garage door. It’s a beautiful afternoon and he’s only minutes out of school. He is free and he is home and his yellow home is bright and big with love. He skips. From a far enough distance, it looks like the best afternoon of his young life. But his father. Take this father still in the idling car as the garage door opens to reveal a dollhouse, a blue dollhouse, occupying an entire stall. The father could pull forward into the other stall and be done with it. Instead he rolls down the window and says something that stops his son like a bullet just as the boy hops up the last step of the porch. The boy turns, his smile gone, the reprimand greying his face. He sulks back to the car and throws himself into the seat before the car moves forward and the garage door swallows them up. Across the street I watch from my truck, and I would swear the boy might never recover.
So it is important that I’m careful with what I write in my notebooks. I have to remind myself that I do not know the man. Or at least I know him like I know the stars by studying the night. I know only what shines—not what’s there, not what’s died.
Near the end, my wife told me she did not know me at all. I told her I knew her better than I knew myself.
“How?” she asked.
“I watch.”
We were going to have a farm, my wife and I. We bought a place far on the opposite side of the city from the man’s yellow house. With only 10 acres, calling it a farm was a joke between us. On our backs in bed, we would dream of all the things our farm would someday have.
“Goats?” my wife would say.
“Of course.”
“And apples. Maybe peaches, too.”
In the morning, we would wake up and make coffee and look at each other like we’d done something shameful the night before. The very sight of the other would make us both blush. Anyone watching us would have thought we were not in love.
So I am patient with my understanding of the man. His name is Jones. We did speak, once. It was on the third Tuesday since I began watching him. On Tuesdays and Thursdays Jones leaves work early to pick up his son from school. His son’s name is Jacob. The rest of the week, his wife does it. His wife is younger and far more attractive than the man, and she seems completely happy with their life. Or at least that is how it looks from across the street. She sparkles. Her name is Alice.
Four times I had followed the man and watched as he led his son back to the car. Twice they had held hands. Twice they had not. I think about this while watching the sleeping house. In the starlight, the yellow house looks purple and deserted, as if all the light bulbs have died or, like a dollhouse, it never had any at all. I think about how on the third Tuesday, I left the man at work and drove to the school early. It was a risk, but I wanted to get closer. Around me, mothers put hands behind their children’s heads and guided them home without ever touching their hair. A female teacher in a blue sweater supervised the departures. All of the laughter and movement made me nervous, and I suspected the teacher knew I was not supposed to be there. My shirt did not look like a father’s shirt. My eyes were not searching for threats. Maybe I was the threat, and she knew.
Jacob was alone on t
he cement steps stealing fearful glances at the street. I wanted to tell him I was afraid, too.
“I’m sure your ride will be here soon,” I said.
He tightened and loosened the straps of his backpack and checked the line of cars. The teacher glanced in our direction.
“My dad is always late.”
This, I knew, was a lie. In all of the Tuesdays and Thursdays, this was the first time Jones had been late.
“I know he’ll be here,” I said to reassure him, but this only made him more worried.
Only a few students remained when the black car swerved into the school parking lot. Jones took the corner so fast the tires squealed, and the man nearly ran from the car. My heart raced as I tried to think of what I should say, but luckily he spoke first.
“Thank you for keeping my son company,” he said. His voice was high-pitched and thin. It was shocking when unexpected, like hearing your alarm clock in the afternoon. His maroon tie was loose and his hair stuck up from running his hands through it. He appeared too old to have a son so young, but from a distance he had always seemed younger than I knew him to be, a very distant star.
“I’m waiting for my own son,” I said. “The teacher held him after class. Simon.”
The man paused but then lost his nerve and said farewell. In my truck, I check to see if I made a note about Jacob’s face as the man pulled him roughly away by the hand, but I see I only noted the man’s: flushed.
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