Sheep and Wolves

by Jeremy C. Shipp

  I forced a smile, but I remembered Gloria’s Thumbelina—though it was only women who lost parts. What then, would I lose?

  That night instructed, dressed in the blue tunic my father had given me, I met the other men in the front yard. Before a word could pop my lips, they led me down the street to the house I’d passed mucho tiempos to and fro the gymnasium: the Green House. Mightily, I’d heard from my familia how ug this place was. Into the courtyard we went, and true enough, the stories reflected proper this wild place that zapped my peepers and nostrils. Bitter-stinking weeds where the grass should’ve been, some taller than I, swayed with the airbursts. Nearby, the forgotten forget-me-nots shivered. In the center court, a lady with red spots all over her clothes and skin froze in mid-step. Water was supposed to spurt from her mouth, but didn’t. And even though she lacked feelers and toes and even ears, if I squinted my peepers, the vines that grew up around her formed new feelers and toes and even ears. My familia hated this place, but I wanted to sit by the lady and harken her silent stories.

  Instead, my father led me toward one of the personal quarters that lined the courtyard. My Uncer and Gramper and some Cousers whooshed past, and entered first. By the time my father and I went inside, my familia had secured a young woman to her beddy bye. They gripped her wriggling arms and legs. They covered her mouth with tight cloth.

  My father and I stood beside her. He held out a cutter. After my hesitation, he said, “Take it.”

  So I did. And as I did, the flank of familiarity caused a buzz in my mind. So known was this momento because I’d been preparing for it all my life. The games the young baldies played in the gymnasium ricocheted through my skull. Cutty me, I cutty you—cut, cut, to, fro, on, on, anon.

  “Take a feeler, Newton,” said my father. “The same feeler they took from Gloria. Think about the pain she felt that night. Think about her tears. Think about the blood. Punish them, Newton, for what they’ve done. Punish them!” The words rumbled through his teeth, and I saw spit backflip off his lip onto the young woman’s arm.

  My vision crept from the spittle spot up to her peepers. She was mightily verily terrored. Hai, I did think about Gloria’s pain, but the Red—the fury of my ancestors—didn’t ignite in my own peepers. Instead, the spotted fountain lady awoke in my mind, and someone slashed at her viney feelers and toes and ears. With a cough, cough, cough, blood gushed from her wide-o mouth.

  I dropped the cutter, whoosh, and the Red-spotted lady (as well as the young girl on the beddy bye) happy-faced.

  *

  Morning, and my courtyard sparkled clean, clean, clean with shimmer stones and flatty grass. Our fountain maiden gurgled in missing-bits ecstasy of spread arms. But nada of that mattered a whittle whit, because I stood outside the quarters of my parents and harkened.

  “He’s just not ready yet,” said my mother.

  “Verily so,” said my father.

  “These things happen, Maximus.”

  “Hai, but not in my familia.”

  “Don’t give me that holier-than. Some tiempo is all Newton needs. A few weeks and he’ll be ready.”

  “If he fails again…”

  “He won’t.”

  The words bit at me too ravagely, so I backed away. Without forethinking, I rat-a-tatted on my sister’s door. Her hubber Francis helloed and let me inside.

  “Salu, Newton,” Gloria said, on the center-mat.

  I knelt beside her. “Did you hear?”

  “Hai.”

  Francis served her tea, completely—the way a man did for his fingerless wife.

  “Why didn’t you do it?” she said.

  “I…couldn’t,” said I. “I don’t know what happened.”

  Francis brought the cup close to her mouth, but she shook her head and he scooted away a little.

  “You should’ve just done it and got it over with, sibber,” she said. “It’s not hard what you have to do. Have you thought about what I’ve gone through? Have you? Do you know what they’ve done to me!?!” Her face shook. “Cham the Greens!”

  “Gomen, Gloria,” said I, my blurred vision drowning in my tea cup.

  “Sorries don’t change anything,” she said, and calmed her breathing, iiiiin ouuuuut. “I’m not mad at you. Verily, I’m not. But you’re part of this familia. Whatever it is that stopped you last night, let it flitter, flitter away. Concentrate on the Red.”

  I tried—verily, I did, to find the Red, find the Red, find the Red. But when I closed my peepers, all I saw was Green, held down, trembling, and the young girl’s pupils that vibrated in a way like bugs trapped behind glass.

  *

  Prox to sleep in my beddy bye that night, I saw my amicus eternal, clearer than I’d seen her for years and years and years. And let’s say, for the sake of sakes, that her name was Humpty. Let’s also say that she looked a little like the fountain maiden at the Green house, except her feelers and toes and ears were not made of blurry squinty vines, but feelers and toes and ears.

  “Cheeks up, Newt,” Humpty said, happy-faced beside my beddy bye. “So you didn’t chop her. So what? It’s not the end of Flapjack.”

  “My father hates me,” said I.

  “Mayhaps, mayhaps not. But what matters is that I got what I wanted, true enough?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Verily you’re joking.”

  “Iie, I’m not.”

  She piggle-giggled (with a snort), and said, “I made you whoosh down that cutter, of course. I whispered those dreadful thoughts right into your listen-hole.”

  “Why?”

  “What do you mean why? You know as well as I do, I hate all that bloody blood chop chop stuff. Cham it all to heckles.”

  “You didn’t used to say words like cham.”

  “Hai, but I’m a growing young woman, true enough? You should see the size of my twiddly-wink.”

  “Sick, Humpty. Don’t talk like that.”

  “Gomen, gomen.” She bowed. “Anywho, I’d better be off and hit that dusty hobo, as they say.”

  “No one says that.”

  “You’re obviously not yapping the right people. Well, sayonara, Newty-chan.”

  “Wait, where are you going?”

  Before her mouth could pop another word, she whooshed into the floor. Verily, I hadn’t spoken to Humpty and she hadn’t spoken to me for a mighty tiempo. But she’d always known how to lift my cheeks. And even now, both of us grown and sprouting, she helped me forget my lack of Red, even when I felt—

  *

  Humpty the Prisoner’s tearburst caused me to pause my tale. He collapsed to his knees and said, “Deserve I don’t such a thing as this. Verily, verily, verily I do not.”

  “What is it you’re talking about?” said I.

  “These things are for the Flapjack, not Wee-the-People. Temptation has poisoned my concordia. I only hope I can purge your words from me. But will they shatter my honored nightmares and haunt me with laetitia dreams eternal?” He quivered on the floor.

  “The story has only begun, Humpty.”

  “Humpty? Humpty?!? Who is that you speak of? I have no spoken name, for you have sucked away its purity.”

  “Then I shall have to tell my story to the void you have become, true enough?”

  “Iie! Even a void knows its place.”

  “I see. So you’ll never hear whether or not I ever became a man. You’ll never hear how it was you became a real person who all real people could see. I suppose I’ll count to three now, and then never, ever, ever speak again eternal. One mississippi, two mississippi, three—”

  “Hold!” He pushed himself up and sat. “Mayhaps…mayhaps I’m meant to hear your story, then struggle to recover. Mayhaps this is a test of my concordia. Mayhaps you can continue on anon.”

  “Hai,” and that I did.

  *

  The days following the mishap at the Green house felt like ground up wildflowers. Blooming rainbows burst and burst and burst into my mind, but every tiempo Humpty mad
e me feel concordia and laetitia, my familia would hack away with a chop chop chop, wielding their sharper-than-sharp silences. For instance, when I walked into the dining room to dine, my familia would shush-up with a bug-flap. Oh, what a difference it would’ve made if they’d pointed their feelers or nubs at me and said, “A bloody Hopper Lite, you are!” or “Coward child, go cham yourself!” But no, my bloody Redless failure of a night was too titmouse even for open rabble-rouse ranting. So they kept their lips as tight lines. Lines that read: You are solus.

  One night my Couser Betty helloed in my quarters.

  “Salu, Betty.”

  She clicked the door behind her, and stood by my beddy bye. “Newton…I…”

  “Betty, what’s wrong?”

  “I…”

  In my thinker, I imagined she was going to boom a tearburst, but instead she roared like some trollbeast. She sat beside me. Her hands shivered and her face vibrated.

  “What’s wrong, Betty?”

  “I…never had a sibber of my own,” she said. “You’ve been the closest thing to a sibber I’ve had.”

  “Hai, you’ve been like a little sibber to me.”

  “I don’t want to bother you, but there’s no one else I can turn to.”

  “Don’t worry about that, Betty. If there’s something inside you that needs letting, let it out to me.”

  “Well…it’s Uncer Matty. He used to…bounce me.”

  “What?” Uncer Matty was a man Uncer to the both of us.

  “Hai, he bounced me. Cham him!”

  “I’m so sorry, Betty. Have you told your parents?”

  “You know as well as I do, it wouldn’t matter if I did or not. They can’t do anything to him.”

  “We have to stop him somehow.”

  “Stop him?!?” She laughed with gritted teeth. “He doesn’t come around anymore since I reached the Red. He knows I’d bite his chamming face off.” It was true. Betty had become a woman recently. Skin glue shined on her new finger-ghost. “So really, there’s nada I can do, unless he enters my quarters. And he won’t. He’s a Hopper Lite at heart.”

  The words Hopper Lite thrashed me, and Betty must have noticed.

  She clutched my hand. “I don’t believe what the familia is saying about you. You may have dropped the cutter, but you’re not like Uncer Matty. Even as a boy, you’re a better man than him.”

  “I…I’d like to help you, Betty. But what can I do?” Hai, I asked the question, though I knew the answer.

  *

  Even then, my thinker and body were not animated by Red. Hai, I felt sorry for Betty in the tippiest, but, as pathetic as it seemed to me then, all I wanted was to forget Betty’s pain. I wanted to grab Betty’s hand and fly her into the dreambubbles above my beddy bye where Humpty lived. We’d play and play and play on the wildflowers, but no matter how many stomps we’d plant on the planties, they’d spring back up like a new spring eternal.

  The only alternative to taking her to the dreambubble that I knew about was bloody Red cut cut.

  “There must be another way, Newtrino,” Humpty said, springing, springing, springing on the biggy marshymallow. “Why don’t you ask those bloody blockbrained mommer and popper of yours?”

  “Betty’s right. Uncer Matty and them are the same gener. They can’t do anything.”

  “So now you have to?”

  “Hai.”

  “But you’re a Hopper Lite.”

  “Iie.”

  “Just accept it and go eat some parsnips.”

  “Iie!”

  The dreambubble popped, and for a while I labored to piece Humpty together again. But it was a puzzle of shattered butterflies and my feelers were too big. In other more thinkable words, no matter how verily Humpty was my amicus eternal, my familia was my familia.

  So outside I went with heavy zombie limbs, but soon the nippy airbursts reached in my yapper and yanked the nightsickness right out. I tip-toe tapped into my Uncer Matty’s quarters. Closer, closer, closer I slushed, careful as careful can be. But gravity played another one of its tricks, and my face slapped the wooden floor. I heard Uncer Matty rustle.

  My face still pressed, I didn’t know if he was looking down at me or not, but I didn’t move. Somehow, all the bitter silence my familia had force-fed me seemed to radiate deep inside my gut now. I used this internal-quiet to transform into a waterless fountain statue, like the one at the Greens. Only this time, the statue was not beautiful.

  After perhaps an hora, I convinced myself that Uncer Matty wasn’t staring down at me with burning dragon eyes, and pushed myself up. I stood slow and awkward in a way that felt like a growing tree.

  On the table by his beddy bye, a cutter smiled, reflecting white moon-teeth. I touched it and didn’t pick it up for a long while. Still, Red didn’t urge me on or thank me. No one lifted the cutter but little me.

  I peeled away Uncer Matty’s beddy bye coverings, then his body’s coverings. I wanted Humpty to speak to me then. I wanted her to break out of the fountain maiden outside the door like a chicky from a shell, and then run in and save me. But I heard not a word. All I saw were Uncer Matty’s peepers that stayed straight black lines. Lines that read Betty’s answer to my question: “Chop that tinkerdam twiddly-wink of his, so I can give it a proper burial.”

  *

  “Why do you hold?” Humpty said in his smally Wee-the-People voice.

  “Because that’s the end of that tale,” said I. “I’m trying to decide where the next story of my life begins.”

  “The end, you say? That it was not.”

  “If I were speaking a prayer, then hai, it would not be the end. So hear this amen and calm yourself: amen.”

  “That’s not enough.”

  “Praise be my suffering, amen. Is that better?”

  “Did you chop him or didn’t you?!?”

  “If you hadn’t noticed, Humpty, the stories I’ve been telling you have been going in the order of my life. Therefore, the next story I tell you will be an older me than before. I will either be someone-who-chopped-my-uncer-in-the-past, or someone-who- didn’t-chop-my-uncer-in-the-past. Don’t you think you’d be able to tell the difference between those two people?”

  “I…”

  “Rhetorical questions are answered by those who ask them, Humpty, so rest your yapper.”

  He rubbed at his forehead like he was trying to erase something. Finally, he said, “I’m sorry.”

  “What about?”

  “When you were in your Uncer’s room, you wanted Humpty to come in and save you. I’m sorry I…I’m sorry that Humpty wasn’t there for you. I’m sure she would have helped you if she could.”

  “Verily so.”

  *

  In the dining room, Red swirly-whirled in Uncer Matty’s peepers as they did everyever he and me were prox. My familia perceived his peepers as two cycloid mirrors that reflected my own Redness, where things looked even less mighty than they verily were. So sat Newton the Red Man, Hero of and to the Familia.

  On the left of me knelt Betty, (that being her chosen place now), and on the right knelt Venus, a young woman with outside genitalia—the newest dinner guest of my father, though of course he invited her not for his own self.

  “Can you help me with something, Newton-san?” my Uncer Edo said from across the table.

  “Hai,” said I.

  “My thinker wishes to acquire a new cutter, but I’m halted between the Bane and the Lance. Which model do you prefer, nepher-san?”

  The differences between those blades I neither awared nor cared, but “The Bane,” said I, the false prophet.

  “Hai,” my Uncer Edo said. “An older model, but proven mighty.”

  “Newton-san speaks wise,” my father said, anod. “Hai, there is a place for new innovations, but when it comes to war, it is trust most important to familia. I trust the Bane as I trust my son.”

  “Verily so. I shall take Newton-san’s advice,” my Uncer said.

  After a few momentos,
Venus fumbled with her teacup, though she was only missing two feelers on that hand. She set the cup down and turned to me. “Newton-san, could you help with my drink? My familia uses a different sort of cup, and my poor touchers can’t seem to get a hold of this one.”

  That wasn’t true, of course, but I obliged. I brought the cup close to her lips and she sipped. My familia watched and one of my Uncers—I know not which—made a hissy-whistle to tease me.

  Verily, part of why I served Venus her tea was because Venus and my familia expected such, but the other part had to do with my own horndoggy throbby. To serve a woman meant also to serve oneself.

  “Thank you,” she said. And in my freakshow thinker, those words implied gratitude for the dreambubbles whooshing out my peepers that replaced her missing parts with those I’d chopped from the beautiful Green butterflies quivering under a bloodmoon.

  *

  “Iie,” Humpty said, his arms and eyeroofs diagonal.

  “Pardon?” said I.

  “Mayhaps you did chop your Uncer, but chop the young Greens, you did not. Return and change your words.”

  “That I cannot.”

  “Words can be changed as stains can be cleansed.”

  “Hai, speak I mutable words, but the events their own selves remain stone. Mayhaps you don’t believe this to be my life’s tale, but that it is my tale, you can’t deny. Unless you believe my form and manner projected from your mind.”

  “Impure notion! I am my own self. You yours.”

  “Then allow me my own words.”

  Slow, he uncrossed himself and was open like a day-flower once again.

  *

  One might expect that acceptance would bring with it a lesser need for Humpty, but iie—the tighter they embraced me, the more I suffocated and yearned for fresh fairy-air. Night eternal, Humpty and I trotted through misadventurous meadows, but that was not enough. I needed tippy tippy tippy more, like a spiral-bearing druggy on neon brain-worms.

  Viz, nearly all my semi-wake horas I spent at the comper in my quarters, talkathoning with Humpty through the rat-a-tat pecking of my touchers.

  Often we spent our tiempo in the teahouse of my mind. There, mucho men thronged about the smally geisha, who wore patterns of open wounds and heroes of old and shimmering blades.