Beasts of Extraordinary Circumstance

by Ruth Emmie Lang

  “I’ll be fine,” Weylyn answered. “Your mom wants you to clear back so you can get a better view.”

  “A better view of what?” Micah asked warily.

  “I’ll see you in a minute,” Weylyn said and walked toward the light.

  I loaded the kids into the truck, and Bill pulled out. We were almost at the house when the earth shook beneath us and the sky flashed green. I tried to get the kids to look away, but they wouldn’t. I saw it in the side mirror: the terrible bright light, the shards of flying metal. The kids screamed, and so did I. I couldn’t help it.

  Bill slammed on the brakes and motioned for me to take the wheel. “Take the kids back to the house.”

  “Where are you going?” I said, panicked.

  “To look for your brother.” Bill ran back toward the light, which was still billowing in the sky like a mushroom cloud.

  I jumped into the driver’s seat and drove home as fast as I could. I rushed the kids inside the house and ran to the living room window. The explosion had subsided, and the light had transformed into a bright sphere the size of a small house, suspended in midair like a second moon.

  Down the hill, I saw our neighbors’ lights blink on.

  I switched off all the lights and sat in the dark, rocking my children as their tears formed wet rings on my clothes. Weylyn had told me not to worry. He knew what he was doing, he said. He would be fine, he said. Our conversation from earlier that summer rang in my head:

  Because it’s not safe with me. Nothing is.

  I closed my eyes and prayed for the first time in twenty years.

  Then I heard a familiar voice behind me. “Who died?”

  I snapped around to see Weylyn standing behind me, his clothes and hair a little tousled, but otherwise fine. “Oh my God!”

  “Weylyn!” Micah leaped out of my arms and into his.

  “I found him in a goddamn tree,” said Bill, who stepped out from behind him and pulled Clay and me into a round hug.

  “That’s so cool!” Micah was practically yelling with excitement. “What happened? Did you fly? I thought you said you couldn’t fly!”

  “Micah, honey. Will you give me and your uncle a second?” I asked.

  Micah looked disappointed. “But—”

  “He can tell you all about it tomorrow,” Bill said and escorted the boys into the other room.

  “Dammit, Weylyn!” I slapped him across the face.

  Weylyn grinned stupidly while his left cheek turned pink. “It’s good to see you, too, Lydia.”

  I grabbed him and squeezed him tight. “You idiot. Don’t you scare me like that ever again.”

  * * *

  Power for the whole county came back on that night. It didn’t take long before I started getting calls from neighbors who noticed the giant glowing orb near my house. Did I know what it was? How did it happen? Was it dangerous? My answer to most of them was: I don’t know. When I woke the next morning, the orb had dissolved into nothingness, leaving behind an unexplained energy source and wild rumors about what had happened that night. By the time word of a mysterious stranger and a truckful of glowing jars reached the local news station, Weylyn was long gone.

  We were sitting at the kitchen table, drinking coffee and watching birds sing from the branches of the dogwood tree in the backyard, when Weylyn handed me his letter of resignation. “I’m sorry, Lydia, but I have to resign from my duties as beekeeper. I have more work to do, and I’m afraid I can’t do it here.” Then he added, “You probably think I’m running away again.”

  “No, I don’t,” I said sadly. “I wish you didn’t have to leave, but I understand why.”

  Weylyn looked surprised. “You do?”

  “You have to find Mary.”

  Weylyn smiled and looked out the window at the swaying ears of corn in the field beyond ours. Mary had to be somewhere in that impossibly vast everywhere, and if anyone was going to find her, he would. “I’m not ready yet,” he said wistfully.

  I squeezed his shoulder. “You’ll get there.”

  * * *

  He left early the next morning, while we were all still asleep. It was Sunday, and I had planned on making him a pancake breakfast before he left. Instead, I found a postcard with his handwriting on the kitchen counter next to a jar of honey.

  Dearest Lydia,

  I didn’t want to wake you. I gathered the honey this morning. You should have less of an issue with volume now that I’m gone. I know I have no say in the matter, but I think Micah would make an excellent candidate for my previous position as beekeeper.

  Also, please tell Micah I did a little research on your computer, and apparently, arrowroot is rumored to have some magical properties. I don’t know if there’s any truth to that, but it might be worth looking into.

  You can tell Bill that I talked to the mice, and they agreed to find another place to take up residence. I found an abandoned shed a quarter mile from here that might fit the bill, so I offered that up as a possibility.

  I should also mention how grateful I am. I feel more hopeful than I have in years, and it has everything to do with you and your family. My wolf brothers and sisters have a saying (or a howl) that goes, “Don’t leave anything you can’t come back to.” I know I can come back here and I will be welcomed, and that brings me more comfort than anything else in this world.

  Your favorite brother,

  Weylyn

  I put the postcard in a box where I keep other objects that are precious to me and started cooking. Soon the Sunday morning rumpus began and pancake orders were hurled at the back of my head like fastballs. As I bent over the hot stove, my tears left salty impressions in the batter like the ghosts of blueberries past.

  * * *

  Weylyn Grey was always welcome in my home. He continued to visit me long after the kids had left and Bill had passed. He even delivered the eulogy at Bill’s funeral when I didn’t have the courage to do it myself. He added his own little joke about mice at the end that no one else understood but brought me to tears (in a good way).

  Most of the time he’d show up unannounced, usually in some peculiar way—I once found him on top of the garage helping a family of birds build a nest. We’d make pancakes and talk about the adventures he’d had and the people he’d met along the way. He came here when he needed a break, a sanctuary, a friend.

  He wasn’t really my brother, but he was my family and one of the best friends I ever had.

  59

  MICAH BARNES

  Tarquist the Fire Starter was the name I was given after I set the tree ablaze that was the goblin Gungrot’s home and life force. As the tree withered and burned, so did he, and the Prince Clayborn was saved.

  “Let this tale be a warning to the rest of the goblin kingdom!” I cried from atop the pile of ashes. “Tarquist the Fire Starter does not play with fire—he commands it!”

  But then the pile of ashes became a new foe more terrible than Gungrot and all the goblins in the kingdom. Its name was Darkness, and it blotted out the setting sun. I commanded the fire to set the beast ablaze, but Darkness swallowed the flames whole and jetted them from its nostrils.

  All seemed lost; then there was a faint glow from behind a bank of trees. Out stepped Greylord, Keeper of the Light, and his staff, Firefly. Greylord swung Firefly against a rock, smashing its glowing glass bulb. A brilliant flash of green light filled the sky, and Darkness howled with terror. The creature crumbled back into ashes, revealing a starry sky and a great, glowing boulder of light floating where its black head once was.

  “This is my gift to you,” said Greylord, Keeper of the Light. “May it keep darkness away when the sun cannot.”

  Then the wolves made sounds at the sight of it, a long train of Os with a soft beginning and ending. That was their name for it, so we called it Moon, also.

  I looked up from my notebook and scanned the bored faces of my classmates. I guess fantasy wasn’t for everyone.

  “That was wonderful, Micah!” my t
eacher, Mr. Nickels, gushed. “Keep writing like that, and you’ll be an author someday.”

  He was right. I kept writing and rewriting that silly little story until seventeen years later, it was the first of a series of published novels with my name printed in Gothic-style lettering on the cover. Beneath my name, standing between two beautifully illustrated gray wolves, stood a man with silver eyes and a knowing smile.

  fourth interlude

  WILDWOOD FOREST, OREGON

  2017

  ROARKE

  All the blood seemed to drain from Ruby’s face. “Is that a wolf?”

  “Yep. A mean one, too.” A group of kids had crowded around me at the bus stop to gawk at the photographic proof of my battle with a vicious wolf.

  “Are you hurt?” Ruby said, gently placing her hand on my wrist as if double-checking that I still had a pulse.

  “Never been better,” I crowed and glanced over at Mike, who was leaning against a stop sign, pretending he didn’t hear me. It was the first time in my life I had ever truly been able to render him speechless.

  It went on like that for the rest of the day at school. Kids would ask to see the pictures, and I would recount the whole grisly tale: how Old Man Spider had tried to feed me to his wolf, and how I had made my escape by blinding the beast with my camera flash.

  My mom didn’t find it quite as amusing, however. In my haze of glory, I forgot to delete the photo from her camera before handing it back to her. A few minutes later, I heard a piercing scream from the kitchen. Unsurprisingly, I was grounded and forced to look at pictures of victims of animal attacks until I was queasy.

  * * *

  A week later, my grounding was lifted, and I joined my friends in the patch of woods behind our school’s soccer field for another round of Truth or Dare. My run-in with Old Man Spider had garnered me a status bump among my peers and a new nickname. “Hey, Wolfman,” Ruby said with a coquettish flick of her ponytail as I dropped my backpack in a pile with everyone else’s. I winked at her, which sent her and Olivia into an adolescent giggle fit. Mike snorted in disgust, then dared me to stick my hand inside a burrow and hold it there for thirty seconds (presumably to give whatever animal happened to be inside ample time to bite me).

  Normally, I loved a good dare, but my heart wasn’t in it that day. As I lay on my belly with my arm in that dank hole, worms wriggling between my fingers, I thought about Weylyn. For someone who had spent his whole life having adventures, his present circumstances were pretty dismal: living alone in a run-down cabin covered in cobwebs with only his pet wolf to talk to. I imagined him standing at the kitchen sink, staring out the window with a vacant expression as spiders spun webs around him. Eventually, he was just another forgotten thing in that house, something that had gotten stuck and left behind.

  “Roarke!” someone shouted, jolting me out of my thoughts.

  “What?”

  “It’s been like two minutes,” Ruby said, pointing to my arm that had, by this point, fallen asleep.

  “Oh, yeah,” I said, pulling my arm out of the hole and shaking it back to life. Mike looked disappointed that I still had all my fingers. “I have another dare for you,” he said, handing me a rock.

  “But I just had my turn,” I protested. “What’s the rock for?”

  Mike pointed to a raccoon with a stubby tail, rummaging inside a dead tree stump. It looked a lot like Weylyn’s friend Matilda. She was probably out running Weylyn’s secret errand for him, the one he had acted so squirrely about a couple of weeks earlier.

  “You want me to hit the raccoon?” I said. Ruby let out a horrified gasp. This was low, even for a jerk like Mike.

  “Sounds like you’re scared.”

  “No. I’m just not cool with hurting animals.”

  “But I dared you.”

  “I don’t give a shit!”

  “Fine!” Mike snatched the rock from me. “If you won’t do it, I will.” He pulled his arm back to throw.

  “No!” I shouted and shoved him as hard as I could in the chest. Mike hit the ground, and the rock tumbled out of his hand. Ruby gasped again, this time covering her mouth and candy heart nose with her hands.

  “Asshole!” Mike groaned and rolled onto his side, clutching his shoulder in pain. I turned to Matilda, who was now intently watching the whole episode from on top of her tree stump. She blinked in a slow, deliberate way that I interpreted as a show of gratitude, then scampered off. Rather than see if Mike was okay, I ran after her.

  “Hey!” Mike yelled. “Roarke! Get back here!”

  I ignored his cries and followed the raccoon to the outskirts of the woods, where I saw a little house on a quiet street surrounded by fir trees. I hung back as Matilda darted across the road and squeezed under a hole at the bottom of the cedar fence.

  I pulled myself onto the branch of a nearby tree to get a better view, but I couldn’t see the raccoon anywhere. I was about to leave when the front door swung open. Out walked a woman, late forties, wearing jeans and a light sweater. There was something familiar about her, and while she checked her mail, I tried to figure out what it was.

  Then it came to me. It was from a picture in my yearbook, one of a lady from the zoo who had visited my classroom with her wolf puppy, the same lady who had tried not to laugh when her wolf peed on Mike’s backpack. In the picture, she was bent over, holding on to the pup’s hindquarters as it curiously sniffed the toes of my classmates. The Wolf Lady, I thought. Could it be?

  “What are you doing here?” said a voice.

  I jumped, nearly losing my balance and falling off the branch I was sitting on. I steadied myself and looked down to see Weylyn glowering back at me, trees casting menacing shadows across his face. “Weylyn? Geez, you scared the crap out of me.”

  “What are you doing here?” he repeated.

  I turned back toward the house, but the woman had gone inside. “Did you see her? It’s Mary!” I scrambled down from the tree. “Mary’s the wolf lady!”

  “Wolf lady?”

  “The one from the zoo!” I said. “I told you about her. She came to my class.”

  “Oh. Right.”

  “I saw her! She lives in that house over there.”

  Weylyn cast a nervous glance at the house but didn’t look surprised.

  “Wait…,” I said, finally putting the pieces together. “You already knew she lived here, didn’t you?”

  He sat down on a fallen log and nudged a pinecone with his foot. “She’s the reason I moved here.”

  I stood there, confounded by his nonchalance. “But … if you know where she lives, why haven’t you gone to see her?”

  “I have seen her.”

  “You have?” Now I was pissed. This whole time, I thought Mary was some long-lost love when, in reality, she was never really lost at all, just temporarily misplaced like loose change beneath couch cushions.

  “Well, only from a distance,” Weylyn said, almost too quietly for me to hear.

  “What do you mean, ‘from a distance’?”

  “I mean that I haven’t actually spoken to her.”

  “Why not?” I said curtly.

  Weylyn looked longingly at the little house across the street. “Because I was waiting until I was ready.”

  “What do you mean, ‘until I was ready’?”

  “I had to make sure she’d never get hurt again.”

  “So, are you?”

  “Am I what?”

  “Sure?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe,” he said tentatively. “It’s hard to tell.”

  “Well, there’s only one way to find out,” I said pointedly.

  Weylyn stole one more nervous glance at the house. “I can’t,” he said, then jumped to his feet and disappeared back into the forest.

  I shook my head. What Weylyn needed was a confidence boost. He needed to be reminded of the man he was before the blizzard, the one who stared down hurricanes, not houses. As his friend, it was my job to help him.

  * * * />
  “You are persistent, I’ll give you that,” Weylyn said when I showed up at his door for the ninth day in a row. My last eight attempts at getting him to see Mary had failed, but I was nothing if not stubborn. This time, I had brought supplies.

  I shoved past him carrying a large green suitcase.

  “Why do you have a suitcase?” he asked. “You’re not expecting to stay here, are you? Boo is prone to night terrors, and believe me, you do not want to be in the room with him when he has one of his nasty spells.”

  “It isn’t for me,” I said, unzipping the suitcase to reveal a wrinkled pile of men’s clothing.

  Weylyn pulled out a checkered dress shirt with a small ketchup stain on the collar. “You brought me clothes?”

  “My dad was donating a bunch of stuff to charity, so I stole a few things. I thought you should have something nice to wear for when you go see Mary.”

  He dropped the shirt back into the suitcase, annoyed. “That won’t be necessary.”

  “Come on,” I whined. “At least take these.” I held out my dad’s electric hair clippers and razor to him. “You said it yourself, you need to shave.”

  Weylyn eyed the clippers, combing his knotty beard with his fingers. “It would be nice to feel my face again…” He mulled it over a little longer, then took them from me reluctantly. “This doesn’t mean I’m agreeing to anything.”

  “Of course not.”

  “I just really need to shave.”

  “Sure.”

  Weylyn shot me one more leery glance, then disappeared into the bathroom. Half an hour later, he reappeared clean shorn with a dozen little cuts on his chin and neck. I laughed. “You look like you lost a fight with a cat.”

  He gingerly dabbed at his chin with a tissue and winced. “I’m a little rusty.”

  “It looks good, though. You know, minus all the blood and stuff.”

  Weylyn checked out his reflection in a copper skillet that was hanging from a web that had trapped most of his other kitchen utensils. “You think so?”

  “Definitely. Mary will love it.”

  I could see Weylyn’s pained expression in his reflection in the copper pan before he turned back to face me wearing a cordial smile. “Thank your dad for letting me use these,” he said as he handed the clippers and razor back to me. “And I appreciate the clothes, but I won’t be needing them.”