Beasts of Extraordinary Circumstance

by Ruth Emmie Lang

  Then I heard a voice. “Stop!” I looked up and saw the bees reluctantly retreating, and the man I thought was dead was looming over me. Without a word, the stranger bent down and lifted me over his shoulder. I was too shocked to object. It was the first time Tarquist the Unseen had ever lost a fight, but it was also possibly the first time he had encountered real magic.

  50

  LYDIA KRAMER BARNES

  I was in the kitchen, on hold with the phone company, when Weylyn burst through the back door with Micah slung over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. I dropped my phone on the floor, causing the battery to pop out, and my first thought was, Shit! I lost my place in line. Thoughts like Is my son okay? and What is my estranged brother doing in my kitchen? came shortly after. “Weylyn? What are you—”

  He skipped the pleasantries and cut right to the chase. “Is he allergic to bees?”

  “Micah? No. We had him tested,” I answered, addled.

  He unloaded Micah onto a kitchen chair and pulled the beekeeper’s helmet off his head. His arms and legs were covered in swollen red bumps. Thankfully, his head and neck were normal. I ran to him. “Micah! Shit! Are those bee stings?”

  He shrugged. “I have to go back. My wand—”

  “You’re not going anywhere,” I bristled.

  Weylyn cut in, “Do you have a pair of tweezers? We need to pull out the stingers.”

  “Down the hall, last door on the right. In the medicine cabinet.”

  Weylyn hurried off to fetch the tweezers.

  “You know that man?” Micah asked.

  “He’s your uncle Weylyn.”

  “That’s Uncle Weylyn? He looks like a homeless person.”

  “Don’t talk about your uncle like that!” I scolded. I then added quietly, “Although he does look pretty homeless.”

  Micah lowered his voice also. “He was sleeping in the beeyard. I thought he was dead. And the bees were all over him, but he just kept sleeping or whatever, like he didn’t even notice it. It was weird.”

  “You shouldn’t have been in there,” I said sternly.

  “But you said when I was fourteen—”

  “That you could help. Under supervision. But Rodger isn’t here,” I corrected. “And what’s this I hear about you hitting your brother?”

  “He called me ‘Frog’ like all the other jerks at school,” he whimpered pitifully.

  “That was a crappy thing to say. I’ll talk to him about that, but you’re old enough to know you shouldn’t hit anyone ever for any reason.”

  Micah nodded solemnly. This kind of behavior wasn’t like him. Clay had provoked him, that was obvious, but Micah was usually so even tempered. I was worried.

  Weylyn came back with the tweezers and bent down next to Micah. He turned to me. “Do you mind?”

  “No. Go ahead.”

  Weylyn addressed Micah. “This might be a little uncomfortable.” Micah nodded and watched Weylyn, transfixed, as he pulled the stingers out one by one. “I recommend an oatmeal bath,” Weylyn said when he was finished. “It will help with the itching.”

  “Go upstairs and start the water,” I instructed Micah.

  “But—”

  “Now.”

  Micah muttered something under his breath and sulked up the stairs. I turned to Weylyn, finally getting a good look at him. He was taller than I remembered and older, of course—forty-three by my count. But under the grubby clothes and earth-smeared skin, he was still as handsome as the last time I saw him. I didn’t know where he had been those last fifteen years, but he looked forgotten, like a pressed flower in the pages of a book.

  Before I had the chance to ask him one of the hundreds of questions that were tumbling over each other in my mind, he spoke. “I’m sorry. I’ve made a terrible mistake.”

  He went for the door, but I grabbed him by the arm, stopping him. “Where do you think you’re going?”

  “I shouldn’t have come.”

  He tried to yank his arm away, but I held fast. “Weylyn Grey! If you think you’re going to come into my home after fifteen years and leave after fifteen minutes, I will punch you in the nuts so hard you won’t be able to walk straight for a week! Now … Sit. Goddamn. Down.”

  Weylyn sat tentatively in a chair like a shamed child. “That’s better,” I said and sat in the chair next to him. “Fifteen years … What the hell happened, Weylyn?”

  “I prevented a hurricane from destroying a town, accidentally grew a forest that indirectly caused a blizzard, became alpha of a wolf pack, was kicked out of the wolf pack, and wandered the country until I found your address,” he said by rote like a bored schoolboy reciting the alphabet.

  Then he added, “Oh, and I think the bee attack on your son was my fault.”

  I couldn’t tell if he was joking or not. I guessed the part about the wolves was probably true, but the stuff about hurricanes and forests sounded like something out of one of Micah’s books. “You always did have a weird effect on animals.”

  “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have been there.”

  “If you weren’t there, he’d be in the hospital right now,” I said. “I am mad at you, though.”

  “Why?”

  “I think it’s bullshit that in fifteen years you never called.”

  “Sorry. For most of that time I had really bad reception.” I decided not to ask what he meant by that because I already had a pretty good idea.

  “Why’d you come here?”

  “Because you’re the only family I have left. And I missed you.”

  “I missed you, too.” I gathered him in a hug. He smelled like wet mushrooms, but I didn’t care. “Micah says you were sleeping back there?”

  “Yeah, I got here early this morning and didn’t want to wake you, so I took a nap.” He ran his fingers delicately over the curved arm of the chair. “It’s been a long time since I sat in an actual chair.”

  “Are you sure you don’t want a crate?”

  Weylyn laughed. “I’d forgotten about that. The look on your mother’s face…”

  “You’d think a drag queen had come to dinner.”

  Weylyn laughed again, but in a weary sort of way. “How is Dad?”

  “Good. Seventy-eight years old and still preaching. He worries about you.”

  “Really?”

  “You should give him a call.”

  “I will.”

  Weylyn self-consciously rubbed the back of his dirty hand with his thumb. “There’s another bath off me and Bill’s room,” I said. “I’ll run you one.”

  “Thank you,” he said, abashed.

  I ran a bath and set out a towel, soap, and a clean set of Bill’s clothes for Weylyn to wear. I sat on the edge of the tub, listening to the roar of the water and thinking about my brother who wasn’t really my brother. Even accounting for his obvious concern over Micah, I knew from the moment Weylyn walked in the door that morning that something was wrong. He had the pained look of a man who had wandered for so long that he had forgotten what he was looking for. My heart broke for him, but I was also kind of glad that his wanderings had led him here. He would stay here as long as he needed, I decided as the steam fogged the mirror above the vanity. I wasn’t going to lose him again.

  I turned off the faucet and shouted down the stairs, “Water’s ready!”

  51

  MICAH BARNES

  From the top of the stairs, you can hear everything that’s being said in the kitchen. That’s how I knew about my surprise birthday party last year, and that’s how I knew Uncle Weylyn was a wizard. My jaw dropped when I heard him list his powers: talking to animals, controlling the weather, growing forests with his mind! Maybe he was trying to be funny, but it didn’t sound like a joke. It was real. It had to be.

  I heard my mom start up the stairs, so I darted into the bathroom and turned on the water. A minute later, she brought me oatmeal for my bath and examined my stings again. “I know it’s itchy, but try not to scratch. Scratching only makes it worse.” I
nodded and she left, closing the door behind her.

  The oatmeal water looked like puke, so instead of climbing in, I sat on the toilet fantasizing about the adventures my uncle and I were about to have and the spells he’d teach me. I wrote a list of all the things I wanted to learn on a piece of toilet paper, then wetted my hair and unplugged the drain.

  52

  LYDIA KRAMER BARNES

  I made spaghetti with meatballs for dinner—from what I could recall from our childhood, it was Weylyn’s favorite. Bill arrived home from his errands and joined me in the kitchen. He seemed flummoxed. “Clay’s face is cut, Micah looks like he has smallpox, and there’s a stranger in our house wearing my clothes.”

  “He’s my brother,” I said while draining the noodles.

  “The adopted one that you haven’t seen in years?”

  “That’s the one.” I divided the spaghetti between five bowls.

  Bill gave a lazy, noncommittal nod. “What about the boys? What happened?”

  I ladled sauce and meatballs onto the nests of noodles. “Clay and Micah got in a fight. Micah was stung by bees, and Weylyn saved him. I think we should offer him a job. Will you help me take these to the table?” I gestured to the bowls on the counter.

  Bill picked up two and carried them to the kitchen table. “A job?”

  “We need a new beekeeper.”

  “Does he have any experience?”

  “He’s always been good with animals,” I said, trying not to smile.

  Bill thought for a moment. “If you think it’s a good idea, it’s all right with me.”

  “Great. Now go get the boys. Dinner’s ready.”

  “Okay. Oh, and your brother told me to tell you he’s not hungry.”

  “Oh?”

  “When he told me, I thought he was just some homeless guy, so it threw me off a little.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “On the porch. Want me to tell him dinner’s ready, anyway?”

  “No,” I said, remembering the crate Daddy had given Weylyn to sit on at the dining room table when he was a kid. “He’ll come in when he’s ready.”

  53

  MICAH BARNES

  I woke with the long yawn of sunrise, with the birds and the beasts and the Sunday school teachers. I must have woken before my parents, because I didn’t hear the clink of spoons in coffee mugs or the smell of burned bacon. Parents slept in, too, sometimes, I reminded myself.

  I fanned my toes like a deck of cards and peered bleary-eyed out my bedroom window at the beeyard below. There was Weylyn, barely more than a shadow in the dim morning light, moving from hive to hive like a ghost looking for his own headstone, hoping that someone had left flowers. He reminded me of a character from the Wandering Wizards, Magnus Thunderblood. He was a great wizard that lived in a shack on top of the highest peak in Wist. His only friends were the eagles that lived on the sides of the cliffs and brought him fresh fish and news from the cities below. Magnus was the most powerful wizard in all the Seven Earths. A single sneeze could sink a whole armada. It was because of this power that he isolated himself from the rest of mankind, lest he bring it to ruin.

  I crept downstairs and out the back door. The cuffs of my pajamas soaked up the morning dew as I crossed the yard to the utility shed. Inside hung Rodger’s beekeeper’s suit. My skin still burning from the day before, I gingerly pulled on the too-big suit and made sure it was properly zipped before stepping into the beeyard.

  Uncle Weylyn saw me straightaway. “Your mom said I’m not allowed to let you in here.”

  “I’m just here to get my wand,” I said as I bent down and picked up the birch twig. “What are you doing out here this early?”

  “The bees are less active at this time of day.”

  “But that shouldn’t matter to you.”

  “Oh? Why is that?”

  “Because you’re magic.” He shifted his weight, obviously uncomfortable with my accusation. “It’s why you don’t have to wear a suit. I’m in training, so I still have to wear one.”

  “I don’t wear a suit because I don’t react to bee stings,” he said coolly.

  “I heard you and my mom talking. I know about the hurricane and the wolves and all that.”

  “Did it occur to you that maybe I was joking?”

  “You don’t look very funny.”

  “A story, then.”

  “I guess it could have been…”

  “Well, there you go. Mystery solved,” he said dismissively and went back to his work.

  “Only … that doesn’t explain how you stopped the bees from attacking me.”

  Weylyn looked up from the hive, exasperated. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I want you to teach me.”

  “Teach you what? How not to get stung by bees? Start by avoiding the back end. It’s the pointiest.”

  “Here’s a list,” I said and pulled out the piece of toilet paper I had written on the day before. “I figured we’d start with invisibility, then move on to levitation, but I’m open to suggestions.”

  I handed him the note, but he had no more than glanced at it before he held it back out to me. “I think you should go back inside before your mother finds out you were here.” He glowered at me with his piercing gray eyes. Magnus Thunderblood could set a man on fire by raising his left eyebrow. I decided not to take my chances.

  “Mom makes pancakes on Sundays. I like mine with honey,” I said defiantly and turned back toward the house.

  If he wasn’t going to tell me the truth, I’d have to hide in the shadows and wait for him to show his hand. I was Tarquist the Unseen, after all. You didn’t know I was there until it was too late.

  54

  LYDIA KRAMER BARNES

  Sunday was Pancake Day. It sounds like a holiday, an awesome one where you wake up, eat a fat stack of pancakes, then sleep till dinner. That’s pretty much what it is, unless you’re the one making them: two hours over a hot stove, pouring giant Frisbees of batter while people shout their orders at you:

  “Blueberries!”

  “Chocolate chips!”

  “Raisins, coconut, banana, walnuts!”

  By the time everyone else is fed, there’s a puddle of batter left at the bottom of the bowl, just enough to make yourself a small saucer of a pancake. Every week, you up the amount of batter you make to adjust for this disparity, but the outcome is somehow always the same. “They’re growing boys,” I tell myself as I pour syrup over my comedically small breakfast.

  This particular day was a Sunday, so I hauled myself out of bed and headed down to the kitchen. I had barely started the batter when Bill stomped into the room carrying a sledgehammer. “Damn mice,” he growled.

  “Why are you carrying a sledgehammer?” I asked, trying not to sound concerned.

  “Damn mice have chewed through all the wiring in the house and killed the power!”

  “The power’s out?” I tried the light switch, and sure enough, nothing happened. If only I had an electric stove, I thought. Then I wouldn’t have to cook.

  Clay came crashing into the room. “Moooooom!” he cried. He was still wearing his soccer ball pajamas and his hair stuck straight up like a Muppet’s. “Super Punch Ninja is about to start and the TV won’t turn on!” That was his favorite show. It was rated TV-PG for “animated scenes of kicking and punching.”

  “The power’s out,” Bill explained.

  “What?” Clay shrieked.

  “What makes you think it was the mice?” I asked Bill.

  Bill walked over to the toaster and held up the power cord. It was frayed like it had been chewed on. “I caught the little guy in the act, but he got away.”

  “Moooom—” Clay tried to interject.

  “He was probably just a decoy to distract you from the larger plot.”

  “I’m serious, Lydia.”

  “How am I s’posed to watch Super Punch Ninja?” Clay shouted and punched my blender, knocking it off its base a
nd onto the counter.

  I turned to him, exasperated. “Dammit, Clay! You’re not going to be watching any Super Punch Ninja if you keep punching my appliances!”

  This infuriated Clay even more. “It’s not fair!”

  “Neither is the corporate tax code, but the world keeps spinning.”

  I turned to Bill to back me up, but he had his ear up against the wall. “There’s a scratching sound…”

  “It’s a power outage, Bill!” I had lost all patience. “Let me call the electric company before you start demo-ing my walls. And you!” I said, pointing at Clay. “Go to your room. I’ll call you when breakfast is ready, and you’d better have calmed down by then or no pancakes.”

  Clay heaved a childish groan and headed back up the stairs while Bill slinked out the back door.

  Finally alone, I closed my eyes, sucked in a deep pocket of air, and let it slip out of my lungs in a slow stream like a crowd filtering out of an auditorium. When I opened them, Weylyn was standing in front of me. I jumped. “Weylyn!”

  “Sorry. Did I scare you?” he asked.

  “No … yes, but it’s okay. Is that honey?”

  He held up the golden jar with a faint smile. “Micah said he likes it on pancakes.”

  “He does. Thanks,” I said, taking the jar. “I wasn’t expecting honey on your first day, but then again, you’re…”

  “Full of surprises?”

  “Yes. Definitely.” I put the jar on the counter and got to work on the pancake batter. “You want some?”

  Weylyn shuffled his feet awkwardly. “No, thank you. I should get back to the bees.”

  I pointed my spatula at him menacingly. “I wasn’t really asking. You’re eating breakfast with us, and it’s going to be terrible.”

  “Terrible?”

  “You’ll see.” I put my spatula on the counter and turned back to the batter. The look on Weylyn’s face when he sat down at the kitchen table was the same one Clay wore when I told him to go to his room. It had been a long time since he sat down for a meal with a family, so I understood his hesitance, but I had to break him back into human life, and that wasn’t going to happen if he spent all his time with bees.