The Wild Things (21 page)

She turned back to Max.

“Did that offend you, Max? I’m sorry if you were offended by that. You know, people don’t always like me because I say what’s on my mind. I tell the truth, but I do it for the good of everyone. And the truth is, if this little secret door maneuver of yours does what I think it’ll do, someone else might see fit to eat you. I might have to eat you myself.”

“No, no, no!” a voice was yelling from the fort.

It was Carol. He was on his knees, his ear to the ground. “Wait wait wait. What’s that? That’s not right.”

Douglas was close by. “What is it?”

“It’s bad,” Carol whispered.

“Is it chatter?” Douglas asked.

“So much chatter,” Carol said.

Judith and Ira rushed over.

“And what about the whispering?” Judith asked.

“Yup. There’s a lot of whispering,” Carol said, lifting his head and looking to all of them gravely. “I’m afraid it’s reached us here, even inside these high walls.”

Alexander was hyperventilating. “What does that mean? We won’t be safe here?”

“I’m not sure,” Carol said. “But I do know that something’s wrong with the design of this fort.” He turned to look at Max. “Something’s very wrong. I
knew
there shouldn’t be secret doors. Arrrgh!”

Carol stormed around the walls. He glared at the secret doors with unchecked contempt.

Now Max was on his knees, listening for whatever it was that Carol heard. Max couldn’t hear anything.

“There can’t be chatter here,” Max said. “Not inside the fort. It’s too big and powerful to worry about things like that.”

Carol gave him a look registering disappointment in a dozen varieties. He began to mark walls and beams with his claws. “We’ll have to start over,” he said.

“But the fort’s not done yet,” Max said. “Shouldn’t we wait—”

Carol cut him off. “Max. Your voice is one I don’t want to hear right now. We need to remake it. We need to tear down all these parts and start over. We’ll need a moat. And higher walls. And an outer wall. I don’t know what I was thinking. It could never have made us safe, the way it was designed.”

A black mood passed over everyone.

Night came and Max was afraid. The beasts were acting strangely. Alexander was crying so hard he was hiccuping. Judith was off in a corner, eating tiny cats by the handful, while Ira gnawed on her leg.

“Max, come to me,” Katherine said.

She was in a quiet and dark corner of the fort. Max went to her, letting her close her arms around him. But just as Max was beginning to feel safe and was drifting off to sleep, he looked out and saw that Carol was staring intently at the two of them together. Carol’s eyes narrowed and he returned to clawing at the walls of the fort, marking it for destruction.

Carol’s voice boomed through the darkness.

“Wake up! Wake up! Get out here! Everybody come out here! Now!”

Everyone woke up, disoriented, and walked outside. It was the middle of the night. Carol was staring into the sky.

“Look!” he roared. “What are we going to do?”

“What’s wrong?” Douglas asked.

“Where is it? It’s supposed to be right there!” Carol roared.

“What?” Douglas asked.

“The sun! The sun hasn’t come up!” Carol said.

Everyone else was hanging back, thinking it better that Douglas handle the problem.

“What do you mean, Carol?” he asked measuredly. “I … Well, I think it’s still night.”

“No it’s not,” Carol said gravely. “I didn’t sleep. I’ve been up all night, counting the hours. It’s morning, Douglas.”

Ira gasped.

“But it’s dark,” Ira noted.

“
Exactly
,” Carol said, pointing to Ira as if he were the only sane one among them.

Now Douglas looked to the sky as if beginning to see Carol’s point. “Maybe it’s just late to come up,” he said.

“Don’t be an idiot,” Carol fumed. “It’s never late!” And now he looked at Max. “It’s dead!”

Max tried to protest. “No! That’s not gonna happen for a long time.”

Judith turned to Max. “What do you mean? How do you know?”

“I told him—”

“You told him the sun was gonna die?” Judith said, enraged. “What did I tell you about saying things to upset Carol? And why didn’t you tell
us
?”

Alexander ran to Judith and hid between her legs. “The sun can’t die, can it?”

“Of course it can,” Carol said. “And it just did!”

Ira’s hands were over his mouth. “Oh my god. The void. It’s really here.”

All of the beasts stared at the place in the sky where the sun was supposed to be. There was nothing but black.

Now Max was worried. Though he knew in his heart that the sun would not, could not, die for millions of years, he was starting to believe that Carol might be right, that the sun had indeed died just hours ago. Maybe things were different on this island.

“We have to think of a new way to live,” Carol said. “And the first thing we do is get rid of this fort.”

“What?” Max said.

Carol ignored him. “Douglas, start tearing it down.”

“What’s wrong with it?” Douglas asked.

“Everything!” Carol said, and kicked down one of the interior walls. “This fort was designed so that things like this wouldn’t happen. And now they’ve happened. It’s a failure, and I want it taken down completely.”

“Please,” Douglas said. “Not again. Just wait—”

Carol kicked down another wall. “Wait for what? Another sun to grow in the sky? This fort is just a reminder of our failures.”

“Carol, calm down,” Douglas said, putting his hand on Carol’s shoulder.

Carol shook himself free. “Don’t try to calm me. This is the end of the world, and you’re trying to be calm? I knew I couldn’t trust you.”

Carol ran himself into one of the log-pillars holding up the roof. It cracked and sent half of the ceiling crashing to the ground. It barely missed Alexander, who began to cry and shudder.

“There you go again,” Douglas said.

Carol ignored him and turned to the other beasts.

“We need to take this fort down. Let’s go. Right now. No one will be safe in there.”

“Yeah, not with you around,” Douglas said, blocking his path.

Carol followed him, exploding. “What does
that
mean?
I’m
dangerous?
I’m
scary? Ira, tear it down!”

Douglas wheeled on him. “Fine, you’re going to tear it down eventually anyway. Burn everything!”

“Shut up!” Carol yelled.

“Eat everyone!” Douglas hissed.

“Maybe I will!” Carol yelled, and grabbed Douglas’s arm, as if to pull him away. But Carol intended something else, and succeeded: he pulled Douglas’s arm off. He ripped it from the socket and held it aloft, as if he’d grabbed something rotten and rank.

Douglas stood with wet sand pouring from his shoulder. He put pressure on the hole with his other hand, but the sand leaked between his feathered fingers.

“Your arm’s not so great now, is it, Douglas?” Carol said, and tossed it away like it was nothing.

Douglas stalked off, and Katherine followed him, trying to stanch the sand from flowing. Max was left standing in the doorway to the fort, and there he locked eyes with Carol. Carol looked afraid, knowing he could never take back what he’d just done and what Max had just seen. He turned away and walked into the woods.

Just then, the first light of day split the darkness like a knife prying the sky from the earth. The white gumdrop sun broke the horizon and the birds began to gossip from the trees.

Max entered the remains of the fort, with Judith, Ira, the Bull, and Alexander close behind.

“So wait,” Alexander said, “The sun’s not dead? That’s the same one?”

“Yes it’s the same sun,” Judith snapped, looking intensely at Max. “It was just
nighttime
!” She stormed up to Max. “Things sure have gotten messed up since you got here. We just got scared out of our minds because
you
made Carol think the sun was going to die!”

Alexander, hiding behind Judith, added his own invective: “Douglas lost his arm because you needed a fort,” he said. “It was a bad idea.”

“I know that!” Max said.

“Well, you have a lot of bad ideas!” Judith said.

“I KNOW!” he said.

Judith loomed over him. “I’m hungry. Aren’t you, Ira?”

Ira, even Ira, had narrow eyes for Max. “Kind of. Yeah.”

“No you’re not,” Max said, standing his ground. “No one’s hungry.”

Judith looked at him as if he were a grape who had learned to speak. “Who says?”

“I do. I’m the king.”

Alexander scoffed. “King? You’re just a boy pretending to be a wolf pretending to be a king.”

Max glared at Alexander. He’d never hated a face more than he hated Alexander’s. “I’m not pretending to be the king!”

Alexander rolled his eyes. “Then you’re just not a very good one.”

“Yes I am!” Max yelled.

“You don’t even know who you are!”

Max lunged. He tackled Alexander against the fort wall. Alexander hit his head hard and fell to the floor. Max leaped on top of him and began beating him with his fists. He’d never hit anyone so hard and so many times. It felt so good, his knuckles against Alexander’s scratchy face, Alexander’s arms flailing to block the blows. Max punched and punched until his arms were tired and his knuckles were sore. He punched until Alexander had stopped shrieking and crying and was curled tight, waiting for it to end.

When Max finished and rose to his feet, the beasts were staring at him with what seemed to be a new respect.

“I kinda liked that,” Judith said, then burst into a quick trill of a laugh.

“Me too,” Ira said.

Max was dazed. He couldn’t look at the beasts. He didn’t want to be near them or anyone. He needed to be away from them and everyone for a while. If he could leave his own skin, he would have.

He left the fort and wandered toward the sun, which was hovering low over the water like a mother over her children.

Max spent a few hours at the beach, thinking about what he could and couldn’t do, and what he had to do. The sun was high when he made his way back to the fort.

He found the beasts curled up in various parts of the-half-ruined fort, napping after their sleepless night. Douglas was there, his head on Judith’s stomach, and Ira’s arm was hanging over Douglas’s, as if protecting the wound from being known. The Bull was asleep, his back flat on the ground and his limbs splayed in surrender.

Max saw another figure in a far dark corner of the fort. He walked closer to find Alexander sitting inside the king’s chamber, behind the secret door, left ajar.

Max sat down outside the door.

“You want me to move?” Alexander whispered.

“No,” Max said. He looked closely at Alexander, realizing at last that they were more alike than different. Their size, their fur -- they were versions of the same undersized and overtrying creature. He thought about putting his hand on Alexander’s back, but when he raised his arm, Alexander flinched. There was a raw wound there, the fur missing and the skin red and bruised.

“Did I do that?” Max said.

“Yeah.”

Max stared at the wound for a moment, then knelt down next to Alexander.

“Does it hurt?” Max asked, hoping the answer was no.

“A little, yeah,” Alexander said, wincing.

Max took the tail of his wolf suit in his hand and licked it, using it to clean the wound.

Alexander smiled. “That’s better. Thanks.”

“I have to leave and go somewhere else now.”

“Where?” Alexander asked.

“Anywhere. I ruin every place I go. I ruined this place, too. I … I didn’t want Douglas’s arm to … to get …”

Max couldn’t say it.

“You didn’t rip it off,” Alexander said. “Carol did.”

“But I wanted a fort. And I told Carol the sun would die. And I wanted secret doors …”

Alexander looked at Max like he was mad. “You really think you wrecked this island? You think you’re that powerful? That you’re the reason that everyone is happy or sad?”

Max wanted to say
No
, but this is exactly what he was thinking. “But I hit you. I hit you a hundred times.”

“Well, you did do that. No doubt about it.”

Max finished cleaning the wound and dropped his tail.

“That’s why I need to leave. I don’t want to ever do anything like that again.”

“But you still might,” Alexander said.

“But I don’t want to.”

“But you still might. Wherever you go.”

Max wasn’t sure if he was making himself clear.

“But I don’t
want
to,” he said.

Alexander barely paused. Instead, he smiled, as if Max was being particularly dense.

“But you still might.”

They sat in silence for a while, watching the rest of the beasts sleeping. In their slumber, the giant creatures were infant-like, almost cute, and at the same time pathetic, tragic, burdened by all they carried with them, far more than Max or Alexander could know.

“With all they’ve done, all they’ve devoured, all they’ve said and—” Alexander laughed.

“What?” Max said. “What do you mean?”

“Well, it’s amazing they sleep at all,” Alexander said.

Max needed to see Carol. He could only think of one place he’d be, now that he knew the sun would live another day.

Max ran across the island, through the forests and over the lava field and to the rocks along the shore. He could see Carol’s studio up high above the cliffs, but there were no boulders there to climb on. Max and Carol had thrown them all into the sea below.

Max went back into the lava field and approached the studio from above. It was more difficult than the boulder route, and he felt terrible about having made it harder to get there. He would apologize for that, and a good deal more, when he saw Carol.

When he entered the studio, Carol wasn’t there. But he’d been there recently. The entire mini-city had been ravaged. There were remnants of it splayed out, glass and metal everywhere, as if Carol had destroyed it in a rage. Fish lay all over the floor, one or two still breathing slowly, and at that moment Max realized that Carol had actually gone through with his ideas, building Max’s underwater city, complete with a submarine subway train. Max felt sick seeing all of Carol’s work crushed and splintered.