Fauna

by Alissa York

  It’s like a thunderclap, that name on those bare, chapped lips. “Oh. Well, she’d brought Fire along too. He wasn’t badly hurt—just a few scratches—but they’d never been separated, and Lou-Lou said she sure as hell wasn’t starting now. Dr. Gupta told her to go back to the waiting room when he realized he’d have to take out the eye, but she said the only way she was leaving was if he tranquilized her too. Lots of people cry, you know, but not like Lou-Lou. She never made a sound, just stood there with the tears running down her cheeks.” Kate drops her gaze. “She was so beautiful. She had blue eyes. Really blue—you could see the colour across the room. And her hair was black.”

  “Like yours.”

  “Darker. Really, truly black. She wore it in a bob, you know, with those perfect little bangs. I know it sounds weird, noticing stuff like that when somebody’s crying their eyes out—”

  “It doesn’t sound weird.”

  Kate looks up. “It was crazy. I could barely hear what Dr. Gupta was saying to me. I felt like I was drowning when I looked at her. Like I was going to die.”

  The kettle stops her from going any further—not the ear-splitting scream she grew up with, but an ascending harmonica hum. Lou-Lou thought about things like that, the sounds a person hears over and over in her home. Kate lifts it from the element, staring for a moment at the glowing coil.

  “Down, Billy,” Lily says behind her. “Lie down.”

  Kate turns to see Smoke puffed up double in the doorway, her lone eye wide. Behind her, Fire stands frozen. One or both of them leaking that terrible close-mouthed precursor to a wail.

  “It’s okay,” Lily says softly—to Billy? To Kate’s two cats? She slips from her chair onto all fours. “It’s okay,” she breathes, and this time it’s clear she’s addressing all of them, every disquieted soul in the room.

  Stephen’s bench in behind the pine trees is peaceful. The night smells of forest and traffic, and Rosie has wormed her way up beside him to nestle her chin in his lap. The Rottie-shepherd cross was a rescue case, chained in a shit-smeared concrete yard until the cops raided the meth lab she’d been tasked to protect. She flew at Stephen the first time he got close to her cage. By the fifth approach, she contented herself with snarling. By the fifteenth, she was ready to sniff his palm. At first he only dared exercise her in the outdoor pens, but they’ve been on three proper walks now, though she always hugs in tight against his leg.

  He won’t see the girl again. Kyla. It’s the wrong time of day, and anyway, who says this is even her regular route? He closes his eyes and calls up her image, finding it noticeably changed. In his mind she wears little if any makeup. Her long, pale hair is bundled into pigtail braids, still the same sweet stripe at her crown.

  It could happen. Say she started work at noon—wouldn’t she be heading home right about now? How long is a dancer’s shift? How many hours of taking off her clothes and getting dressed so she can take them off again? Everybody knows Jilly’s. And now Stephen does too. Before returning Tiger to the shelter that day, he made it his business to circle past the brick block at the corner of Queen and Broadview. Larger-than-life women adorned its grubby front—lacy good girls and leather-clad bad girls and schoolgirls in tiny plaid skirts.

  He’s only ever set foot inside a peeler club once. Somehow it was easier to try new things when you were one of a dozen cologne-soaked, crewcutted young men, fresh from nine punishing weeks of soldier qualification training. The girl on stage was one thing; by the third mug of draft he could just about maintain a comfortable distance from her in his mind. The one who approached him where he sat was another matter. His fellow celebrants howled when she turned to show Stephen her wagging backside, and for a second he thought, sure, bring that tanned ass down. Then what? Would she grind against the fly of his new chinos until he was straining against the seams, until he was—what? Wet in his Jockeys? Wiping up afterwards in the john?

  It might have worked if she’d kept her back to him, lowering down on him as though he were a chair—but she didn’t. She turned. He’d seen that look before, on a face nowhere near as pretty or painted-up. It was the look Ruby Hopper wore when he caught sight of her through that pitiless crowd.

  He pushed the lap dancer away. He had no wish to hurt her—not even her pride—but he had to get out of that chair. She stumbled back as he rose, slapped away the hand he held out to steady her. “I don’t feel so good,” he said softly.

  “What, he’s puking already?” Collins, the thickset son of a miner, roared. “Come here, girl. Come and meet a man who can hold his beer!”

  Kyla wouldn’t do that, would she? Straddle strangers in a crowded bar? It doesn’t bear thinking of. He can think of nothing else.

  Until Rosie growls. His eyes snap open as her head lifts up off his thighs. Tightening his grip on her lead, he feels a corresponding restriction in his chest. It’s his heart, of course, but the sensation is somehow external—a familiar combination of stricture and weight. Stephen knows he’s not wearing body armour over his hoodie. Knows it almost to the point of being sure.

  It was hard to get used to, eighteen-odd kilos of Personal Protective Equipment whenever you set foot outside the wire—suddenly becoming a larger, harder creature than you actually were. He was glad of the burden the day he took a round in the plate. The impact knocked him back, left him breathless and dry-heaving in the ditch. His buddies thought they’d find him lifeless; they laughed like Stanley Cup drunks when they discovered he wasn’t even hit. Got a furball, Carnsew? Atta-kitty, you cough that fucker up.

  He took the round over and over that night, back safe and sound at KAF, in the snoring, foot-stinking comfort of Bravo Company’s Big Ass Tent. Top-bunk trauma every time he closed his eyes; by midnight he felt certain his heart would burst. Not long before reveille, a thought fluttered through between flashbacks. What if the round had hit home—if the spreading bruise on his chest were replaced by an unfathomable hole? Careful what you wish for. It was a virus that got him in the end, but he couldn’t help feeling he’d invited it in.

  A sound brings him back, footsteps on pavement, someone coming up on him from behind. He presses a hand to his whumping heart. Feels for his C7—not there, not for nearly two years. Rosie’s still beside him, but she’s no longer lying down. She’s crouching, making ready to spring.

  “Pardon me …”

  The voice is foreign, maybe even Middle Eastern. By the time Stephen can find his feet, the dog in his charge is going mental. Who needs an assault rifle? If he were to let go of her leash, Rosie would sing through the air and cut the creeping enemy down.

  Only he’s not. Enemy. He’s not.

  Stephen blinks, sees the small dark-skinned man backing away with his hands in the air, the beat-up Rapid Courier Corolla idling open-doored in the alley. In the next instant, Rosie leaps from the bench. No longer trusting the leash, he tackles her—her deafening voice in his ear, her teeth mere inches from his human throat. Tear it out, girl, he thinks, go on, but the Corolla’s reversing down the alley at high speed, and the retreat of its whining engine dampens the dog’s desire to kill.

  After a time, she ceases to struggle. The pair of them lie panting, her breath damp, vaguely rancid, against his cheek. Minutes pass before she softens fully in his arms. Minutes more before he releases her and rolls onto his back in the grass.

  For a time the night is still—unnaturally so, as though some great speaker has come unplugged. Then a sound so faint, Stephen mistakes it for the skipping of his own pulse.

  Tht-tht-tht-tht-tht.

  Rosie can hear it too—he can see as much from the cant of her ears—but whatever its source, she’s clearly unconcerned.

  Stephen squints, looking up through feathery branches to a lamplit patch of night. A bat is circling. A lone bat above him, turning perfect laps.

  Tht-tht-thwwwt-tht-tht-tht.

  There must be a healthy population of them roosting under Toronto’s many roofs; he often catches sight of them by half-li
ght, contracting, banking hard. Never like this, though. Never this warm-blooded orbit, this steady, almost soothing, return.

  The bat hasn’t been awake long. She slept through the sun’s fall, its long rays lulling her through the wall of the day roost then rousing her with their sudden withdrawal. She hadn’t far to fly before coming upon the night’s first offering. The human love of light has its pluses: their buzzing, burning globes draw midges, a living cloud.

  Shunning the lamp’s core, she circles at the gloomy fringe. It’s no great feat maintaining course; a circle is only one wing outflapping the other. Upstroke, downstroke, back and chest. Heat escapes through her wings, rising from the silky black skin.

  The echoes tell her where she is. Long waves describe the wider setting—clumps and clutches of trees, the mesh of a human barrier, the staggered backdrop of their many walls. The ground below supports a lone human, lying prone alongside a sizable dog. Both of them quiet, though definitely drawing breath.

  Fingers spread, the bat cups the ringing air. Short, sweeping waves sing of the details. The faster she sends them out, the faster they come lapping back, flecked with a myriad of forms. Taken singly, the midges are minute, which is why the bat takes them en masse. On every pass she scoops a whispering haul into the membrane surrounding her tail, dips her muzzle into the stretchy pouch and feeds.

  And now, a new presence, fluttering at the edge of her keenest field. Another loop and she’s certain: this is no muzzy, fumbling school of food, this is a moondust delicacy, a sensitive, substantial meal. She stalls, sideslipping from the circle’s grip as she intensifies her calls. The moth detects her signal and folds its silvery wings, but the bat is made for such manoeuvres. She slices down at a mad angle, halting the plain progress of its fall.

  The futon might as well be a cement sack beneath her. No rest for the wicked—or if not wicked, then certainly weak. How hard could it be to tell him? How does she know so much about animals? Funny he should ask.

  She hadn’t exactly set out to become a federal wildlife officer. Her career path, though seemingly direct and deliberate, was in fact a series of tentative steps. The summer job at Bruce Peninsula National Park felt like better luck than she had a right to expect; while other kids in her class flogged hot dogs and soft-serve, she led guided hikes and gave bear talks by the light of a blazing fire. The park warden only had to mention the program at Fleming College once. Having been an average student for most of her life, Edal sailed through the fish and wildlife technician course. It only made sense to stay on for the additional law enforcement year—two more terms in her bright little dorm room in Lindsay, far from her mother’s mess.

  The deputy conservation officer posting came as a happy shock—the only drawback being that she’d be working out of the area office in Owen Sound, which meant moving back to within drop-by distance of home. To be fair, Letty showed up rarely, but when your mother was a scarecrow in a grubby T-shirt, dragging you out to look at her latest carload of crap, one workplace visit was more than enough. When Edal heard Environment Canada was hiring, she told herself only a fool would pass up better job security and higher pay. Not once—internally or otherwise—did she call the new position what it was: a ticket out of Letty’s shopping grounds, her insatiable collector’s reach.

  Five years now she’s been wearing the blue and gold badge with pride—so why keep it a secret? Because telling would mean admitting they were right about her in the first place. She is the spy Stephen initially took her for. She is, for all intents and purposes, a cop.

  It’s a soft night, the air gentle, almost damp. Lily kneels beneath a quarter-moon in the grass out front of her tent, drawing the brush through Billy’s fur. She’s come to love the little clearing. Maybe no one will ever find it, and they’ll be safe here together for good. Or at least until the first big snow.

  Billy sighs as she rakes the dark slope of his back. Her arm is getting tired, but she can hardly give up when he loves it this much. He deserves it, too, after being so good with Kate’s two cats. It was an uneasy truce, vibrating with mistrust, but it held. The three of them might even come to like each other, given time.

  Besides, left untended, Billy’s lovely coat would soon degrade to the state it was in when she found him. She was walking the twilit shoulder back from the arena, skates in hand, when he came bounding out of the scrub. They were strangers to one another, yet she felt no fear. It was as though he’d belonged to her since weaning. As though he’d broken her heart by going missing but had finally found his way home.

  They were both still babies, Lily not yet twelve, Billy full height but only half as solid as he would become. She laid a hand to him and felt the evidence of neglect—untold twigs and burrs, great clots and shingles of felted fur. After sneaking him into the garage, she smuggled out three cans of Chunky beef soup to keep him busy, and set to work with an old brush of her own. It was the wrong tool for the job. In the end she had no choice but to cut the whole mess away.

  Clipped down to a centimetre of fuzz, he could no longer hide the hunger he’d endured. It may have been what saved him. She’d never dreamt she’d be allowed to keep him, but it turned out the sight of a naked, emaciated dog could touch even a rotten heart. Or it might have been simpler than that. No favour without a price tag. No debt that doesn’t come due.

  Lily lays down the brush and looks up at the skinny moon, a massive claw left hanging in the sky. She knows what’s really up there—the pocked and stony sphere, the earth’s fat shadow playing tricks—yet she can’t help but believe in what she sees.

  Closing her eyes, she works her hands into Billy’s neck ruff, feeling for ticks. So far there’s been no mention of Mowgli picking parasites off his fellow wolves, but he must have; it wouldn’t be fair to keep those clever fingers to himself. Baloo, too—why wouldn’t they like bear blood? It’s hard to imagine one latching on to Bagheera, though. Piercing that perfect black hide.

  She’s had a few herself—one in her neck, a few in her armpits and crotch—but in general they seem to prefer the taste of dog. She hates the idea of them clinging to him, forcing their little heads into his flesh.

  It was Stephen who taught her how to get them out. The third time she visited the wrecking yard, Guy wasn’t around. The pretty-boy who came when she buzzed seemed to know all about her, and leaving would’ve meant finding Billy’s breakfast elsewhere, not to mention going without something to read.

  After following Stephen back to the kitchen at a safe distance, she filled the kibble bowl to overflowing then crossed quickly to Guy’s room. When she returned with Never Cry Wolf in her hand, Stephen was kneeling in front of her dog. She knew the flush of unreasonable panic she always felt when Billy made a new friend. It turned to shame when Stephen showed her the three black bloodsuckers he’d found.

  “You’re bound to miss a few in a coat like this,” he told her. No way to take that but as a kindness. “You know not to twist them out, right? Don’t pop them while they’re dug in, either. Just pinch in tight against the skin and pull, slow and steady, until you feel it release.”

  Having ploughed through Billy’s mane, Lily shifts to the rich hunting ground around his ears. Sure enough, at the base of the left one, her thumb stumbles on a swollen nub. She gets in tight with her nails and tweezes, lifts the tick and the skin it’s anchored to, and counts off the seconds in her head. At seventy-seven the fucker finally lets go.

  She could flick it into the bushes, but what if it finds its way back, crawls up onto Billy and bores into him again? Better to finish the job.

  Lily combs the grass, feeling for a suitable leaf. She rolls the tick up in a long, lightless tunnel then crushes the tunnel flat. It’s a good method, quick and clean. Not, however, entirely satisfying. Some part of her—a small part wholly within her control—would prefer to do it the dirty way. Press the bloated thing between her fingers. Feel the greedy bastard pop.

  14

  Ring of Dark Timber

  A
month passed before Jim Dale came gunning up Edal’s driveway again. She stepped out onto the porch as his truck shuddered to a halt, her mind already leading him across the yard to the path that began between the two red pines. She would name every tree they passed, not in a show-offy way but as a kind of conversation, though he would speak little, if at all. Noises would suffice. Closed-mouth sounds of approval, the odd whistle of disbelief. Stupid. She didn’t know why he’d come, but she could be sure it wasn’t to go for a walk.

  “Hey there, Edal.”

  He remembered her name. What was more, he said it as though it were normal, like Donna or Christine.

  “Hi, Mr. Dale.”

  He smiled. “Jim’ll do. Your mom and dad home?”

  “My mom’s working.” She hesitated. “There’s only my mom.”

  “That so. Well, come on over here, I’ve got something I want to show you.”

  She was dressed like a hobo—baggy cut-offs and her Aerosmith T-shirt with half the band rubbed away. She felt her lack of footwear keenly as she walked toward him. She hadn’t thought to slip on her runners when she’d caught sight of the truck, had thought only of rushing out to meet him so he wouldn’t see inside the house.

  He turned, reaching for something on the passenger seat. When Edal saw him straighten up with a liquor store box in his arms, she felt a tightening in her chest. Books. She couldn’t refuse—it was rude and it might hurt his feelings. And anyway, how could she begin to explain?

  He set the box down on the hood, loosened its crossed flaps and lifted out a handful of white fur. Edal heard herself squeak. She accepted the kitten without question, folding it to her chest. Up close she could see its eyes weren’t exactly a pair—one blue, the other leafy green.

  “Somebody left a whole litter on my doorstep. Do you believe that? Six of them. I found folks to take the others, but nobody wanted this little guy.”

  Nobody wanted the white one? The one with the blue and green eyes? “How come?” Edal said softly.