Kesh (15 page)

“She's sick and can't see anybody,” she snapped and slammed the door.

Kesh growled. “What an old…”

“No!” Jesse cut him off. “She's upset, Kesh. She acted that way because she's worried. Something is wrong with Kiran.” He knocked once more, and again the door opened.

“I told you boys she can't see you, so please leave her alone.”

This time she started to close the door more gently when a soft voice said, “It's okay, Aunt Gwen. They're my friends from school.”

The old woman glanced toward the back of the house then back at the boys. “Are you sure, Kiran?” Kesh noted her expression had softened a little and the anger in her voice and on her face disappeared, leaving only concern.

A small, tired voice responded, “Yes. I'm sure.”

 “Fine,” she huffed. “But they can't stay long. You need rest, Kiran.” She wagged her finger at Jesse. “You got that?”

“Yes, ma'am.”

She stared at the boys for another long moment. Her face wrinkled up as if she tasted something rotten. “Okay, if Kiran says it's okay. Just don't be too long. Come on in then.” She led them through a neat, dark living room and into a sunroom at the back of the house where Kiran sat listlessly in an armchair. Her skin was pale, and her small hands shook slightly.

“Hey, that was something, wasn't it?” said Jesse.

“Yeah,” she replied flatly. “It was really something.”

Nobody spoke for several minutes, while Kiran stared into the wall. Finally, Kesh said, “Are you all right, Kiran? We're worried about you.”

She gave them a forced smile. “I don't know. I just feel kind of empty now. You know?”

Simultaneously, the boys said, “Yeah,” but Kesh knew they were both lying. Finding his animal spirit was terrifying in more ways than he could count, but he could not possibly know what Kiran had experienced. Suddenly he understood that losing that connection to the coyote, to nature, would be like having a huge chunk of his soul ripped out.

Even she
, he thought, couldn't
really understand what she has lost
. So he wondered if it was fair to say anything and to risk making her even unhappier than she already seemed to be.

“We have something for you Kiran.” Kesh had placed the tiny branch with its delicate bit of the spider's web into a little gold cardboard box his mother had given him. The twig rested on a puff of cotton from a medicine bottle.

Kiran looked at the glittering strand, and then looked to Kesh as if she were searching for something that was almost in reach. Her eyes were dull and gray, no longer the color of the sky at twilight. Then she turned away, leaned into the wall, her head tucked into her arms, and she began to sob softly. Kesh looked to Jesse, his eyes imploring. The older boy shook his head, helpless.

It couldn't have lasted more than a minute or two, but Kesh felt the crush of indescribable pain on his heart, and it seemed to him that he could not breathe for a very long time. Then the web glowed intensely for the briefest moment, and Kesh breathed. It was as if the oppressive air in the room suddenly lifted, leaving a softer, lighter atmosphere.

Kiran sniffled and wiped her face with her sleeve. She smiled weakly and said, “I'm sorry guys. I'm going to be okay, so don't worry about me.” She took Jesse's hand, then Kesh's in each of hers. “Really.”

Kesh did not expect the strength and determination that showed in her eyes, and he saw something else there, something unfamiliar and distant. She said, “I'm okay guys. I mean it.” Softly, she added, “I'm so glad you came, and…,” she hesitated. “I love you both.”

Outside, neither boy spoke for a while. Each walked as if he were alone though the quiet, snow-muffled morning until, finally, Kesh said, “Garou really hurt her, didn't he?” Jesse said nothing. Kesh said, “Did you see her eyes, Jess? Jeez. I don't know what to think; I don't know what's going to happen to all of us. He really hurt her, Jess.”

Jesse stopped, gripped Kesh's shoulders in his hands, and looked hard into his friend's face. He laughed out loud, and said, “She remembered, Kesh! She remembered!”

“What you mean?”

“When she took the Web, just before she turned away, just before she began to cry, I saw the coyote in her face. I saw it, and I know she felt it at that moment. I'm sure of it.”

“Come on, you imagined it. I didn't see anything.”

“You were looking at her hands and the box, so you didn't see. You had to be watching her face, man. It was just an instant, a flash, but I tell you the coyote was there. Kiran's spirit showed itself to me.”

“Okay, so what if it did? She's a mess, Jesse. It couldn't have been much, so it probably didn't mean anything.”

“So what? So what? Don't be so dumb Kesh. It means she's going to be back. Kesh, she needs time, but Kiran will be back.”

Kesh sniffed. “Even if she is, it won't be in time.”

“Listen, man. Maybe it will come in time, maybe it won't. What's important is that my…. I mean Muskrat was right. Kiran is going to be all right.”

“I hope you're right, Jess, but there was something else, something else wasn't right.”

“Duh! Of course, something was wrong, you idiot. She's been through a lot. You wouldn't be right either. But now I'm sure the coyote in her is stronger than anything Garou could do to her.”

Kesh fell in alongside his friend as they walked home. “You're probably right, Jess. She'll be fine. Still, something felt wrong, and I'm worried.”

That afternoon, snow began to fall in flakes as big as soft white paws. Kesh watched from his bedroom window as his front yard, the street and the town were softly cloaked in a deep, cold cushion of snow. He thought the world had never been so quiet or so beautiful. Yet he could hear hidden, muffled sounds, the movement of things beneath the surface, of creatures burrowing down through the deep drifts of snow, through layers of leaves and grass and soil and roots into cool, dry dens.

There was more, something troubling and unseen. His senses caught traces of sulfur and chlorine and other, even more dangerous substances, mixed into the molecules of hydrogen and oxygen in the pristine snow covered town. This sky, he knew, brought Garou's poisons to every inch of his small world. It laced the snow and, he also understood, it seeped into the ground and soaked into roots, stems, and leaves along with the soil's nourishment. The plants were constantly fighting off the toxins and, with them, the insects and other creatures struggled to survive.

He was observing this secret world with the ears and nose of a coyote. So when the doorbell rang, it surprised him so completely that it could have been from an alien place. He snapped back to the world of his room and hurried downstairs to answer the door. His mother was already at the front door.

When Kesh arrived, she said,” Kesh, Taylor George, from across the street is here.” Kesh didn't see anyone in the doorway. Then he looked down. Outside the door a broad, flat path cut through the snow leading to the badger that waddled into the entryway. Mrs. Jones closed the door behind Taylor and said, “Would you kids like some hot chocolate?”

The badger answered, “Yes, please. Thank you, Mrs. Jones.”

At the kitchen table, Kesh sipped his cocoa and watched Taylor work on what looked like a big coffee mug full of squirming white mealworms. “So, you know?”

“Oh, yeah. I've known since that day you came home with that policeman. Don't you remember seeing me?”

“I guess so, but I didn't think you could see me. I mean, I thought you could only see the Kesh me, not the coyote. Besides, I wasn't sure what I was seeing that day. It all felt like a dream.”

“Boys never think anybody else knows anything. There are a lot of us kids who know what's going on Kesh, and most of us are girls.” She paused, dipped her sleek snout into her cup, chewed and swallowed. Then she said, “Have you heard about the factory?”

“What you mean?”

“I mean, mister big ears, Louis Garou is going to be busing kids out to the factory starting tomorrow. From what I hear, he's already gotten fifteen or more kids signed up. And that includes Carl Reid, the mayor's son, and Stephanie Nichols.” When that statement didn't get an adequately outraged response from Kesh, she added, “Stephanie Nicols. You know, tall, skinny as a wire, perfect teeth. Her mother is Andrea Nichols, State Representative Andrea Nichols! Mister Garou is going after all the kids with rich and powerful parents. That's why you don't know, I suppose. I don't expect him to be knocking on our doors any day soon. Anyway, before you know it, the kids will be humongous fans of the factory, and their rich moms and dads will go out of their way to make Mister Garou happy. You know what that means?”

“Yeah. That means Garou will be able to make the factory as big as he wants, and it means he'll be able to take whatever property he wants. Even if people don't want to sell their houses, it won't matter. The county will take their houses and their land and sell it off to Garou. It also means he'll be able to keep poisoning the river and the countryside. He'll be able to do anything he likes.”

“It's more than that, Kesh. A lot of us know what's going on, you know, the greenhouse effect, global warming and the melting glaciers and all that stuff. We're not as dumb as grown-ups think we are, and we know we'd better do something before it's too late. Did you know that a kids' movement just closed two factories near the capitol? It's happening all over the world. Kids are learning to see, and a lot of grown-ups are beginning to catch on too, but Garou and a lot of other people like him are working like crazy to find ways to make people blind again, to stop them from seeing the truth.”

Kesh was impressed. Taylor had always been intimidating, but now she was almost a force of nature. “How do you know all of this?”

“I just do. Don't you worry about what I know, Kesh Jones. Worry about what we're going to do to stop him.” She smiled and added, “big ears.”

Kesh sighed and shook his head. “Why do you think Garou is doing this? I mean, he lives here too. Why would he want to ruin everything?”

“He's greedy and mean. Maybe he's nuts. Who knows what's up with people like him? Listen Kesh, you and I aren't going to make Louis Garou Mr. Green Earth, so we'd better just get to work on what we can do. Like, I want to know what's going to happen to those kids. I mean, Garou is rich, but they're not stupid, at least most of them aren't, so it'll take more than cake and gift certificates to Stereo City to convince them to be on his side.”

Kesh's face went pale. “Oh my God! Garou is going to do the same thing to all these kids that he did to Kiran.”

“Kiran? Who's Kiran?”

“Kiran Curtis.” Kesh told Taylor about the meeting with Muskrat, the other two coyotes and about their run in with Garou and his men. He said, “Garou caught Kiran and did something terrible to her.”

“What?”

“I'm not sure what he did, but it was really bad. Kiran was pretty messed up when we went to see her, you know, forgetting what happened and all. Mostly, she looked really scared, and she is totally not able to transform into her coyote spirit. I don't think she even remembers who she is deep inside. Jesse said he thinks she'll be okay, but I don't know. She just seemed so lost.”

The badger grunted. “I'll see what I can find out. Sometimes girls are more willing to talk to other girls about these things.” Then the badger did a double-take and stopped chewing. “Did you say Jesse? Do you mean Jesse Madosh?”

“Yeah. What's wrong with that?”

“You can't really mean Jesse Madosh! God, Kesh. He's trouble. Why are you hanging out with him?”

“Why not?”

The badger grunted and rolled her eyes. “You've got to be kidding! Jesse Madosh is only the meanest, dirtiest, creepiest kid in school. And what does he have to do with this?”

Kesh felt his hackles rise. He took a deep breath and willed himself to ignore Taylor's comments. “Do you even know Jesse, I mean the real Jesse?” She shook her head and nipped a grub in half. “I know you don't. Jesse is a coyote, like me, but not like me. I mean, he's awesome. And, he's a good guy. People just don't know him. Besides, you, more than anybody, should know that it's not right to judge him because he's Indian.”

Taylor looked at her cup of increasingly slimy, increasingly dead mealworms, sighed, and looked at her friend. “Okay, big ears, you're telling me the scariest kid in seventh grade is just misunderstood because he's got brown skin. Well, I get my share of that too. It's not always easy being one of five black kids in town, and three of them are my brothers.”

 She sniffed and shuffled over to Kesh. “Okay, I'll buy that if you say so. I guess I wasn't being completely fair, and your new buddy Jesse Madosh is a saint.”

She doesn't sound completely convinced
, thought Kesh
, but she'll come around
.

“Did your awesome friend Saint Jesse say what he thought happened to Kiran?”

“Neither of us knows for sure. But it seems logical to me that Garou would've used some kind of chemical on her. After all, that's what he makes in his factory, and my dad says a lot of the stuff coming out of that place is pretty nasty.”

Taylor let a half-eaten grub fall to the floor. “Oh my god Kesh! I bet Garou tortured Kiran, then injected all kinds of horrible drugs into her. Poor Kiran.”

Kesh shuddered. He suddenly felt a little like vomiting, and he wanted to cry. He had considered the possibilities before, but hearing Taylor say out loud what he had been thinking, made it seem more real. But he didn't cry. Kiran, and everyone else, needed him.