Kesh (8 page)

Evan waved his hand dismissively. I'm getting to that part, Fart Face.” He took a deep breath and continued. “So this guy and girl are walking along, holding hands, getting all kissy-faced, when all of a sudden, a terrible storm begins to brew in the sky to the East. The unsuspecting couple takes shelter in this old run-down workman's shack on the bank, and they start to see things, you know, movements just kind of flashing in and out of the shadows. They get scared. Then they laugh, the way people always do in these movies. It's like, we're just imagining things, and all that. And then you see the eyes, red, liquid, glowing in the corner—then a barbed leg, then another, and this huge spider appears, and you think she's ready to pounce and to suck the juices out of the kissy-faced victims. Before you know it, the guy is running for his life, and he's left his dumb girlfriend behind to be stung, wrapped in spider's silk, and hung from the rafters.” Evan got really quiet to emphasize the drama. “But the spider doesn't kill her. It tells the girl that she has been chosen for a mission.”

Kesh jumped back. Too much of this story was familiar. “Wait a minute, Evan! What kind of idiotic movie is this? I thought you said it was gory. That's the dumbest thing I ever heard.” He heard his own words, but he didn't believe them, and he was feeling queasy. “I'm out of here!” He yanked his tray from the table, spilling what was left of his milk carton, and stormed out of the cafeteria.

Evan sat back, stunned and called after Kesh, “What's the matter with you, Laimo? It's just a freakin' movie.”

That's when Kesh's day got worse.

 

Sixth period started out in the usual way. Mister Johnson opened class with a pop quiz. The class groaned. He always started class with a “surprise” quiz, so everybody knew that any student with half a brain would be prepared. Not that there was much to worry about anyway. Mister Johnson's quizzes never changed.

Obediently, Kesh began filling in the blanks. He was determined to get it done and over-with as quickly as possible. Everybody knew the teacher didn't actually read what the kids wrote anyway. These quizzes were more something to occupy the students' time so Mister Johnson could glance through his newest issue of
Car and Sport Magazine
.

So, he was diligently filling in blanks with words from Mister Johnson's list of right answers when Kesh heard a snuffling to his side. He tried to ignore it, but the wet, snuffling grunts were too much to ignore. Where Andy Moore should have been, one desk over was a bristly pig that smelled like the porta-potty at the State Fair in July. More accurately, Andy seemed to be a boar, the kind of wild pig Kesh had seen on television and read about in books, and its snout was mushing all over the desk and the paper.

Kesh stared.

His strange dreams came flooding back to him in vivid high definition reality. Suddenly, this safe place, this predictable world of friends, bullies and teachers and annoying school work was becoming very foreign. Soon Andy wasn't the only wild boar rooting around the desks. He was joined by his best friend, Mark. Kesh thought they had always seemed a lot alike. Now he knew they were more similar than he had imagined.

The two pigs were snuffling around Hazel Zukowski's toes, but she didn't seem to notice because she was too intent on preening her feathers. Kesh wasn't sure of what kind of a bird Hazel had become, but based on its bare pink neck and bony head, he was pretty sure it ate carrion. He jumped and glanced around when a deep roar exploded from the back of the room. It should have been sweet little Morgan Sikes back there, but she too had changed. There, towering above her school desk was a grand lioness, a regal and clearly unhappy cat.

Kesh caught his breath and turned back to the front of the room where Mister Johnson still had his nose buried in his magazine, oblivious to the chaotic zoo around him. Before long, the classroom was populated by monkeys, rats, snakes, great wheezing fish and, of course, a badger with serious attitude. Kesh scanned the room for some sign or recognition, but the other kids in the room clearly did not know he could see their animal spirits. And a couple of kids hadn't changed at all; they were still just kids.

Marty Anderson was obediently filling in Mr. Johnson's worksheet and picking his nose. Nothing had changed there. But the chaos scared Kesh. He felt his chest tighten and his stomach began to hurt. He wanted desperately to run out of the room, and to get home where he could hide from the chaos and confusion, but he remembered the confident strength of the wolf, the fearless conviction of Muskrat, and the quiet power and selfless sacrifice of Grandmother Spider, and he fought off the panic.

He took a deep, calming breath to regain his composure and locked eyes with the girl across the room. He knew her name was Kiran Curtis, but he had never actually talked to her. She never really said much. She was just kind of there. For now, he noticed she was not behaving like the others. She was still Kiran, but she appeared completely aware of what was going on around her, at least it seemed so to Kesh. Her eyes were taking in the whole chaotic scene as if she were studying her classmates and calmly calculating what it all meant. Her eyes met his and for the tiniest fraction of a second, he imagined he saw a quick smile.

Then, suddenly, the boy felt a slap to the back of his head, and with a loud pop, the room snapped back, and instantly, he was surrounded by kids again. He swung around to see who had smacked him. It was Karl Johnson, who had moments before been an otter. Like every other animal spirit, the otter seemed just right for Karl, the jokester, and the playful dancer. “Ow! Don't do that.”

Kesh sneered at Karl then turned back and looked about the room for some sign of the bizarre children's zoo, but everything seemed normal. Kids were finishing Mister Johnson's busy work, and nobody seemed even faintly aware of the insanity that had existed just moments before--almost nobody. Morgan Sikes was working diligently on the last of her fill-ins, as unlike her animal spirit as she could possibly be. Kesh thought, S
he seems to be more like a mouse than a lion
. Then, Morgan shot him a quick look that hit him like an electric shock to his forehead, and he understood.

Kesh flipped to the back of his notebook and wrote.

 

Morgan Sikes is not who she seems to be. I have a feeling she's someone to be reckoned with. I don't know exactly what she might do, but I'm going to have to look out for her in the future. I never would have figured her for a lion.

 

Even so, he wondered if Morgan or any of the others had any idea of who they were, or could be, deep down inside. Maybe they would never know. And he wondered if any of them had experienced these strange dreams and visions. He was still trying to understand what it meant to be a coyote and, most important of all, what it meant to be chosen by Grandmother Spider…or if any of this was real and made sense at all. Then his eyes settled on Kiran Curtis. She was the same as always, quiet, small, almost insignificant, but even as she completed her quiz, she seemed to be wearing that same subtle smile.

As the day went on, Kesh kept catching glimpses of the wild creatures here and there. Mickey Milse (he never understood how grownups could be so mean as to give their little boy such a ridiculous name) flicked a serpent's tongue. It was just an instant, easily missed, but Kesh knew Mickey was definitely not a mouse. The principal, Mrs. Williams-Battle, had all the signs of a jackrabbit: whiskers, big fluffy paws, and gigantic wooly ears.

There were many others, all just flashes of recognition: a scaly tail here, a protruding fang or horn there, a couple of grunts and caws and grrrrrs. None of them lasted for long, and Kesh did not see another complete transformation that day, but he began to understand that this was just the beginning.

That night he recalled the policeman's advice, and he decided that he definitely would have to tell his mother and father about what he had seen the night he ran away, and about everything else that was going on. He wouldn't do it right away, he decided. After all, it was going to take a lot of thought and planning before he could drop this bomb. He didn't want them to think he was crazy. That was one of the funny things about all of this. He was pretty sure he wasn't crazy. In fact, he was starting to believe this could be real, and most of all, he was beginning to sense that Grandmother Spider's prediction was more than he had imagined. Something very important was going to happen, and he was going to be part of it.

As sure as he was that he was not crazy, it was natural for Kesh to worry some. And although the strange occurrences seemed real enough, what was happening in his world were not the kinds of things most kids experienced, at least nobody had let him in on their animal sightings. So, when he found the note, he had mixed feelings.

 He was a little scared, but he was also a little bit relieved and excited to know that someone else close to him might be seeing and experience the same things. The note was folded up neatly and tucked into his library book. In perfectly formed printing and excellent spelling, the note said, “I know who you are, Kesh.” That in itself was not clear enough to prove that the mysterious writer really did know, but what followed was pretty convincing. It said, “Do you howl at the moon?”

Kesh caught his breath, and he felt hot. He hurried into the bathroom and splashed cold water onto his face. When he looked up, looking back was the face of a twelve-year-old boy and the shadowy outline of a sleek, clear-eyed coyote.

 

It's almost December and the weather has been really crummy lately, cold and wet. It's not warm enough to ride bikes or do much of anything outside, and until yesterday, it hadn't been cold enough for snow. It's just been wet, sloppy and sleety. I've started to get used to the weirdness at school. Well, kind of. Every time I turn around, I think I'm going to run into some kind of critter, and I have to admit it's a little hard to get used to seeing mice, skunks, porcupines, and everything else when I'm expecting Carl Hodge, Katy Balbierz, and Bobby Nystrom. But at least most of them are kind of normal animals. Some of the others are pretty hard to swallow. Like the other day, I walked into the cafeteria and discovered Becky Kuhn flopping around on the floor gasping for oxygen.

 I almost panicked and gave myself away, not that anyone would have believed me anyway. But I caught myself and stayed as cool as could be, at least on the outside. I had to remind myself that no matter how messed up Becky the trout seemed, the human Becky would be just fine. I also finally figured out that when we talk about somebody as being a fish out of water, there was a good chance that deep down the person really is a fish out of water. Becky was one of those kids who never seemed to fit in, no matter how hard she tried.

 

Kesh was starting to see the way things worked, and it was almost making sense. One morning he rounded a corner on the way to the boy's room, and he ran smack into a gigantic golden grizzly bear. This time he was too surprised to stay cool, and he let out a shriek. Luckily, the only one who witnessed his reaction was Mister Carrelli, the gym teacher, who also happened to be the bear in question, and he wasn't surprised. Everybody knew Carrelli was scary. He growled, “Sorry, son. I didn't mean to scare you.”

At least things were back to normal at home. But even that wasn't enough to settle his nerves when the surprises popped up here and there. He wasn't feeling very sure of himself just now, and he was beginning to rethink his dream theory. Something had happened on the night he ran away, and chances were more than good that he wasn't crazy. At least, he knew he felt perfectly normal, and the note from school was definitely not a hallucination. The more he let himself think about it, the more he began to slip back into doubt and confusion. That whole night was still impossible, starting with the animals in the living room and getting weirder from there.

Now, he could add the menagerie at school. His inability to believe felt like a big problem to him, but there were others. He still didn't know who had slipped the note into his book. Somebody knew who he was, or more exactly,
what
he was, and that made him nervous. Muskrat had led him to understand in the most ominous of terms that not everybody was a friend, and he still wasn't sure if the bad guys also had animal spirits.

He remembered the man he and Muskrat had met on the trail, the only one that night who did not appear in animal form. He wondered if the man could ever come to him as an animal, or if he was always human. The problem was he didn't know, and he didn't know what that meant. He also wondered where the other coyotes were. Grandmother Spider had said there were a lot of other kids like him, yet he hadn't seen even one coyote at school. It worried him. He could not do this – whatever
this
was – alone. Finally, he was worried half to death about the role he seemed to have been given, or maybe forced into. He wasn't a hero. He was just a kid, and he was scared. Who wouldn't be?

Autumn quickly fell behind them and November turned into December. Kesh began thinking about the coming Christmas holidays and all the freedom, celebration, and presents they would bring. He may have been twelve, but in a lot of ways he was still happy to be a kid, and he was just as charged up by the excitement of the holidays as everybody else, so much so that he nearly forgot all about his problems. Almost. With vacation just a week away, Kesh went to bed as a soft, deep snowfall muffled the outside world, but he did not dream of dancing fairies, presents, and sugar plums.

Chapter Nine

 Not Alone

 

Kesh's head snapped up as he realized he had started to doze off.
Weird
, he thought,
I'm dreaming about falling asleep while I'm sleeping
. Then he thought,
but this doesn't feel like a dream
. He opened his eyes, and he was no longer in his room. He was back in a strangely familiar place and, dream or not, he knew he had to take care of himself here and now. He made a quick survey of the surrounding woods and the riverbank to be sure nobody or nothing had snuck up on him while he was napping.