After school, when Wolf arrived home, he went around the side of the house and into the backyard. “Hi,” he said to his mother who was on her knees in the garden.
“Hi,” she replied, waving one yellow, glove-protected hand. “Go inside. I’ll be in soon to make your lunch.”
Wolf entered the kitchen and climbed onto a stool, relaxing his arms on the countertop. As he waited for his mum, he noticed a black, swirling galaxy of ants bumping into each other on the countertop. He didn’t want his mother to kill them, so he grabbed some bikkies from the packet in the cupboard and crushed them into tiny pieces with his fist. Using the crumbs, Wolf created a trail on the laminex that ended at a tiny hole in the wall which would lead the ants to safety.
When Wolf finished the pathway, he noticed a solitary ant smelling the air before scurrying over to the crumbs. The tiny bug stood upright and waved its four top legs, and then Wolf heard a loud whistle before hundreds of other ants raced over to where the ant stood. All the ants began sweeping their finger-like feelers over the trail of biscuit crumbs, moving in a line towards the hole in the wall, and as Wolf watched, he noticed one ant running towards him.
When the ant was close to him, Wolf lowered his face and looked directly into the bug’s two swollen, iridescent eyes, noticing that this ant was wearing camouflage pants, a green t-shirt with holes for its four, spindly top legs, and a red, cricket cap.
“G’day,” the black ant said in a high-octave voice.
Wolf’s eyes widened as he shook his head, hardly believing that he could hear the ant’s words.
“You alright?” the ant questioned, removing the red cap from its head and holding it near its tapered waist.
“Yeah, I’m okay. Um, g’day to you, too,” Wolf replied hesitantly.
“Mate, I’m Aaron. What's your name?” he asked.
“Wolf. And mate, you can’t be in the kitchen. My mum will kill you and your friends with the stuff in the can.”
“Oh, wow, thanks for that,” Aaron said, putting his red cap back onto his head. “Those aren’t my friends; they are the Food Patrol,” he said, pointing at the line of ants exiting the kitchen, “and I’m their Captain. We are running low on food supplies in our lockers so we came in here, but since we have to abort our mission, I guess we’ll have to go back to our house and figure out where to search next. Hey, do you want to follow me and see where we live?”
“Sure!”
Aaron ran alongside the row of ants and all the way to the front of the line before disappearing through the small hole in the wall.
As Wolf left the kitchen, he grabbed a piece of bread, folded it into his pocket and sprinted out the door. He glanced briefly at his mother who was still digging in the garden, and then noticed the ants marching single file down the house’s olive-green rendered wall with Aaron at the lead, his red cricket cap a beacon for the others to follow.
When the ants reached the concrete pathway, they adjusted their bodies from vertical to horizontal and walked close to the edge of the path, their antennae sweeping the ground as they moved. Just over a metre later, the ants made a left-hand turn and disappeared underneath Wolf’s house, directly below his bedroom. Wolf got down on his hands and knees and pressed his cheek against the wood slats that blocked the gap between the ground and the raised house above, and between two planks, in the muted light, he could see thousands of small, black ants pouring in and out of a volcanic cone of dirt.
Peering through the slats, Wolf noticed Aaron’s red cap swerving towards him. Wolf moved away and watched as Aaron’s body, smaller than a grain of rice, crawled onto the edge of the wood slat.
“Ekekadido,” Aaron said, his hands cupping his miniscule waist. “That means welcome in my language.”
“Thanks,” Wolf replied.
“This is our house,” he said, pointing behind him. “Well, this is our main house. There are heaps of us here, including around eighty thousand cousins who just arrived from the Northern Territory. Oh, and we have a huge, fourteen level summer home in the wall of your shed, and it has lifts, a party room, and even a pool table. We go there in the summer when it’s hot because there is a nice breeze from the south.”
“Lifts? You have electricity?”
“No. We hoist ants up and down on a platform attached with strings, and the Ministry of Transportation makes sure that there are lift operators, day and night,” he said proudly. Gesturing at Wolf’s house above, Aaron asked, “Is this your main house?”
“Yeah, I guess you could call it that. It’s actually our only house. And, you shouldn’t go in there because, like I told you in the kitchen, my family will try to kill you.”
“Right. Thanks again for helping us out, mate. We owe you,” Aaron grinned, his smile revealing two rows of perfectly square, white teeth.
“No worries. Glad I could help. And oh, I brought you this.” Wolf pulled the mangled slice of bread from his pocket and used his palms to flatten and reshape it, then he slipped the bread through the gap in the wood and let it drop from his fingers, the bread falling onto the dirt beneath his room.
“Thanks mate. We’ll store that in our food locker,” Aaron grinned. “Okay, I’d better get going. You seem like a bloke that understands the need for discipline and staying focused, so I’m sure you can appreciate that I still have a lot to do today and need to stay on schedule,” he said, nodding his head. “Before I go, and since we’re friends now, would you like to come to our pool party this weekend?”
“Pool party? Sure, sounds fun,” Wolf replied.
“Rippa! We’ll all be outside your kitchen door on Saturday at ten. See you,” he said, disappearing behind the wood slats.
Chapter Seventeen
“Can we go and visit Junsaku from here?” Wolf said later that night, the weight of the blanket pressing down on his body as he lay in his bed.
“We can travel from wherever we are, Wolf. We don’t always have to be in the box to leave our bodies,” Polly answered.
Wolf turned and faced her, and she reached out and took Wolf’s hands in hers. They put their foreheads together and Wolf focused on Polly’s breathing, matching her pace until their breathing became one. After a few minutes, all the light and images behind his eyes disappeared, and everything went black.
When the blackness lifted, Wolf could see that he and Polly were sitting on a wood beam floor in the kitchen of an old Japanese house, their backs against a timber wall. Junsaku was sitting on a short stool in the center of the kitchen floor, leaning over a square-shaped fire pit with a pot placed atop burning wood and hot sand.
“He’s making tea,” Polly whispered.
As Wolf and Polly watched him, they heard footsteps approaching from a hallway. A paper partition door slid open, and a woman entered. Her lightly wavy hair, the color of caramel, reached down to her waist, and her olive skin was shades lighter than Junsaku’s. Her deep-set, green eyes stretched upwards towards her hairline like a sacred deer from Nara, and she looked at Junsaku with a relaxed gaze, her smile lifting her cheeks.
“Watashi no ai. Cecelia, my love,” Junsaku said.
Her long, lean arms seeped over his shoulders as she embraced him from behind. “Watashi no ai. My love,” Cecelia said, kissing the lobe of his ear.
Junsaku covered her soft hand with his calloused palm, sighing as he reveled in the powerful feeling he got from her hand placed near his heart, and then the quiet in the kitchen was interrupted by the sound of a crying baby.
“Fukano is awake,” Cecelia said. “I will bring her to you.”
As Cecelia left the room, her blue-grey kimono hugging her tall, curvaceous figure, Junsaku grabbed a rag, lifted the metal teapot off the fire, and poured hot water into two small, earthenware cups.
After a few minutes, Cecelia reentered the room. “Here she is, my love,” Cecelia said, hugging a newborn baby swaddled in white.
“Uchi ni oide. Come to me,” Junsaku said, taking the baby and cradling her in his arms.
“That’s Cecelia. She is Junsaku’s wife. And, that is their new baby girl. She looks like she’s only around one month old.”
“I didn’t even know he had a wife. And, she’s the same name as my bird,” Wolf said, his mouth slightly open as he stared at the family.
Cecelia kneeled next to Junsaku while he held the baby, and Wolf watched as the family huddled near the fire, Junsaku and Cecelia’s shoulders touching as they looked down at the infant.
“She’s pretty,” Wolf said, his eyes locked on Cecelia.
Polly smiled. “Yes, she is very beautiful. Junsaku loves her more than anything. She is the beat of his heart and the fire in his soul.”
“How would you know?”
“Just look at his eyes.”
Wolf looked at Junsaku who was looking at his wife, and he could see that the Japanese samurai’s brown eyes were glowing as bright as the embers in the flaming wood.
As Cecelia moved to kiss Junsaku’s lips, Polly squeezed Wolf’s hand and said, “We better get back to your bed. It’s going to be light soon.”
“Okay,” Wolf replied, a tinge of sadness in his chest at having to leave the family. “I like watching them together. It makes me feel happy, probably because I wish I had a family like theirs.”
“I guess,” Polly sighed.
Chapter Eighteen
Wolf was thrilled that Aaron had invited him to a pool party because he hadn’t been to one for a long time.
Last year, his schoolfriend Les had invited him to his birthday party, and because of Wolf's experience, he now declined all invitations. That year, twelve hyper-animated, excited kids attended Les’s fifth birthday party at his two-level, Victorian-style house. His mum decorated the downstairs with blue, green, and yellow balloons, and she played Elvis on the record player and games like pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey. And, in the center of a long, rectangular dining table, she showcased a chocolate cake with white frosting and five brightly colored Hot Wheels parked on top with the words ‘Happy Birthday Big Boy’ written with blue icing.
For the first hour that Wolf was there, he stood in a corner and watched the other children play games. Just as Wolf was about to tell Mrs. Sparrow that he wanted to try the game with the donkey, Les’s dad burst through the front door. He stumbled into the foyer, his body leaning to one side, and almost missed the peg when he went to hang his jacket. Wolf’s heart pounded because he could see, and smell, that Les’s dad was drunk, and it made him feel sad. However, when Les saw his father, he smiled, ran at his dad, and Les’s father bent down, allowing his son to bang into his chest before curling him in his arms, kissing him on his cheek, and whispering happy birthday in his ear.
Les unraveled himself from his father’s embrace and took his dad’s hand, pulling him into the loungeroom. “Dad, will you play hide and seek with us, and you be the finder?” Les asked.
“Sure, sure,” his father said jovially. “Okay, ready kids? Go and hide while I countdown. Twenty, nineteen, eighteen, seventeen…,” he began, his words slow and methodical as the children began to move skittishly in all directions.
Wolf ran up the old, wooden staircase and stepped inside a linen closet. After he closed the door, he squatted down, the shelf above his head pushing down on his black curls, and whispered, “Les’s dad is blotto. Why isn’t he mean?”
“Shush!” said Polly who was now crouching next to him, her forearm touching his. “He’ll find us.”
“He’s so different than my dad,” Wolf said, his words breathy.
“Be quiet,” Polly demanded as the door swung open.
“Gotcha!” Mr. Sparrow announced, chuckling as he poked Wolf gently on his forehead. “I heard you two talking. Now, go and wait in the loungeroom while I find the others. Here I come!” he shouted, walking away.
Wolf looked at Polly. “He said for us both to come out; did he see you? ”
“Seems like it. I didn’t expect that.”
“Me neither,” Wolf said, leaving the closet.
Polly stayed inside the closet as Wolf walked down the stairs and into the loungeroom. When he entered, three kids, Paul, Jenny, and Anna, were sitting on the couch rubbing their small hands on their knees as though trying to wipe away their excitement.
“Did you see the cake?” Anna asked.
“Yep. I’m going to eat the cars,” Paul joked, and the two girls leaned into each other, covered their mouths, and giggled.
Even though Wolf stood in the doorway in plain sight, they ignored him. As he watched, he felt removed from the scene, like he was watching a show on the telly, and that familiar feeling of not fitting in made him cringe. It was at that moment that he decided that he would never go to a party again.
But, when Aaron invited him to a pool party, he made an exception. After all, he thought, they were ants and not real kids, so he didn’t need to worry about feeling like he didn’t belong.
When he awoke the morning of the pool party, he dressed and went to the backyard. As he was pulling a weed as he promised he’d do each day, he noticed Polly floating in midair inside the aviary, her girlish shape rippling in luminescent waves, so he decided to go over to the birdcage and see what was going on. Wolf’s parents no longer locked the door because they figured he had learned his lesson the last time he got in trouble, but the only lesson Wolf had learned was that he needed to be more cunning and not get caught. So today, since his father and Orville weren’t home, and his mother was already in the front yard gardening, Wolf felt it was safe and entered the aviary through the main door.
Once inside, all the birds shrieked and chirped, and the big parrot said random words and phrases like ‘g’day’ and ‘stupid bird’. Wolf waved at them as he walked towards Cecelia’s bird box, their raucous, earsplitting noise ringing in his ears.
“Hello, Wolf,” the crimson rosella said in a cheerful voice, her red and purple feathers electrified.
“Hi Cecelia. Hi Polly,” he replied.
“Konichiwa,” said Polly, her dress fluttering lightly.
“How’s my favorite boy today?” Cecelia asked.
“Surprisingly good. Oh, surprisingly, that’s a good word!”
“Polly was telling me you had a restful night. That makes me happy,” Cecelia said, shifting her weight from one foot to the other on her perch. “And, what are you up to today?”
“I’m going to play with my friend Aaron.” Wolf looked at Polly dangling in the air and asked, “What are you doing here, Polly?”
“Actually, I was just leaving,” she said. “I’m going to visit my father. I’ll see you later,” she finished saying as a gentle breeze blew through the aviary, scattering her weightless body like dandelion seeds in the wind.
“She is something special,” Cecelia admired. “Next time around, I might decide to be just like that little girl and let my spirit float around freely instead of getting trapped inside a body, especially a bird body like this!” she said, her purple wingtips pointing to the bright red of her chest.
“I wish every day that I wasn’t stuck in this body, or this place,” Wolf said, kicking at dirt and birdseed.
“Well, here we are, so let’s make the best of it. Do you remember what we talked about last time you were here?”
“Yes. You said I need to stop believing that my life should have been different and find something to appreciate in the present.”
“Very good! You make me so proud,” the crimson rosella chirped. “Now, who’s this Aaron bloke?”
“He’s just someone I met. He’s an ant, and I think he’s a little older than me. He’s the head of the Food Patrol and they were in our kitchen searching for supplies, and I saved them from Mum’s spray. He invited me to a pool party today, probably to thank me for saving their lives. I’m kind of like a hero to them,” Wolf bragged, using his fingers to push back curls that had fallen onto his forehead.
“Aren’t
you too big to swim with ants? Won’t you hurt them?”
“Humph, I never really thought about that,” he replied thoughtfully, stroking his chin. “I’ve got it!” he proclaimed. “I’ll let them ride on my head and hold onto my hair like reins, or maybe they can sit on the end of my nose while I float on my back.”
Cecelia laughed, cackling at a high pitch. The budgerigars, or budgies for short, didn’t know what was so funny but erupted in laughter, too, bobbing their heads up and down and whistling gleefully. The laughter of the budgies was contagious, and eventually all the birds were chirping and cackling except Gary. The galah's pitch-black eyes showed no signs of amusement as he stood silently in the corner, his wings folded across his chest and his white beak bent downwards.
As the birds tweeted merrily, Wolf yelled to Cecelia, “I’m going to go find Aaron about swimming. I’ll come back later when it’s time to feed you. And, I’ll bring you some raspberries.”
As he left the aviary, Cecelia leaned to the side and lifted one wing, waving goodbye. The birds continued to chatter as Wolf shut the door behind him and stepped out of the aviary, walking back towards the house.
Then Wolf heard a shrill voice.
“Wolf! Wolf! Down here, mate,” said Aaron, standing on the pathway wearing his red cricket cap, blue togs, and shiny plastic wrap around his two, top arms. “Hope you’re going to swim with us today. It’s going to be a while, though. That monster is blocking our pool.”
Aaron pointed at Carla, the Australian Blue Heeler, who was laying under a tall oak tree near one of her water bowls, wide-eyed and alert. She lounged in the cool shade with her jaw slightly open and her chin on her paws, her pink tongue spilling over her gums.
“That thing is such a nuisance because we have a tight schedule,” Aaron huffed, “and after we swim, we have to get back to work. Anyway, we’ll be patient for a little while and see if it leaves.”
Wolf wanted to laugh because the ants were wrong about Carla. Wolf knew the dog wasn’t a monster and that she was sweet and kind. In fact, Wolf knew the dog better than anyone and considered her to be his dog and not the family’s.
She Named Me Wolf Page 7