Twelve Impossible Things Before Breakfast (7 page)

The brown rays caught them all in the middle of changing and—too late—Zena thought about the collar again. Marnie was wearing hers, and Lazlo his. When she turned to check on Nick, all she saw was a flash of yellow teeth and yellow eyes. For some reason, that so frightened her, she skittered collarless through the tunnel ahead of them all and was gone, Wilding.

The park was a dark, trembling, mysterious green; a pulsating, moist jungle where leaves large as platters reached out with their bitter, prickly auricles. Monkshood and stagbush, sticklewort and sumac stung Zena's legs as she ran twisting and turning along the pathways, heading toward the open meadow and the fading light, her new tail curled up over her back.

She thought she heard her name being called, but when she turned her head to call back, the only sounds out of her mouth were the pipings and chitterings of a beast. Still, the collar had been in her pocket, and the clothes, molded into monkey skin, remained close enough to her to lend her some human memories. Not as strong as if she had been collared, but strong enough.

She forced herself to stop running, forced herself back to a kind of calm. She could feel her human instincts fighting with her monkey memories. The monkey self—not predator but prey—screamed, Hide! Run! Hide! The human self reminded her that it was all a game, all in fun.

She trotted toward the meadow, safe in the knowledge that the creepier animals favored the moist, dark tunnel-like passages under the heavy canopy of leaves.

However, by the time she got to the meadow, scampering the last hundred yards on all fours, the daylight was nearly gone. It was, after all, past seven. Maybe even close to eight. It was difficult to tell time in the park.

There was one slim whitish tree at the edge of the meadow. Birch, her human self named it. She climbed it quickly, monkey fingers lending her speed and agility. Near the top, where the tree got bendy, she stopped to scan the meadow. It was aboil with creatures, some partly human, some purely beast. Occasionally one would leap high above the long grass, screeching. It was unclear from the sound whether it was a scream of fear or laughter.

And then she stopped thinking human thoughts at all, surrendering entirely to the Wilding. Smells assaulted her—the sharp tang of leaves, the mustier trunk smell, a sweet larva scent. Her long fingers tore at the bark, uncovering a scramble of beetles. She plucked them up, crammed them into her mouth, tasting the gingery snap of the shells.

A howl beneath the tree made her shiver. She stared down into a black mouth filled with yellow teeth.

“Hunger! Hunger!” howled the mouth.

She scrambled higher up into the tree, which began to shake dangerously and bend with her weight. Above, a pale, thin moon was rising. She reached one hand up, tried to pluck the moon as if it were a piece of fruit, using her tail for balance. When her fingers dosed on nothing, she chittered unhappily. By her third attempt she was tired of the game and, seeing no danger lingering at the tree's base, climbed down.

The meadow grass was high, and tickled as she ran. Near her, others were scampering, but none reeked of predator and she moved rapidly alongside them, all heading in one direction—toward the smell of water.

The water was in a murky stream. Reaching it, she bent over and drank directly, lapping and sipping in equal measure. The water was cold and sour with urine. She spit it out and looked up. On the other side of the stream was a small copse of trees.

Trees! sang out her monkey mind.

However, she would not wade through the water. Finding a series of rocks, she jumped eagerly stone-to-stone-to-stone. When she got to the other side, she shook her hands and feet vigorously, then gave her tail a shake as well. She did not like the feel of the water. When she was dry enough, she headed for the trees.

At the foot of one tree was a body, human, but crumpled as if it were a pile of old clothes. Green face paint mixed with blood. She touched the leg, then the shoulder, and whimpered. A name came to her. Marnie? Then it faded. She touched the unfamiliar face. It was still warm, blood still flowing. Somewhere in the back part of her mind, the human part, she knew she should be doing something. But what seemed muddled and far away. She sat by the side of the body, shivering uncontrollably, will-less.

Suddenly there was a deep, low growl behind her and she leaped up, all unthinking, and headed toward the tree. Something caught her tail and pulled. She screamed, high, piercing. And then knifing through her mind, sharp and keen, was a human thought. Fight. She turned and kicked out at whatever had hold of her.

All she could see was a dark face with a wide hole for a mouth, and staring blue eyes. Then the creature was on top of her and all her kicking did not seem to be able to stop it at all.

The black face was so close she could smell its breath, hot and carnal. With one final human effort, she reached up to scratch the face and was startled became it did not feel at all like flesh. Mask, her human mind said, and then all her human senses flooded back. The park was suddenly less close, less alive. Sounds once so dear were muddied. Smells faded. But she knew what to do about her attacker. She ripped the mask from his face.

He blinked his blue eyes in surprise, his pale face splotchy with anger. For a moment he was stunned, watching her change beneath him, no longer a monkey, now a strong girl. A strong, screaming girl. She kicked again, straight up.

This time he was the one to scream.

It was all the screaming, not her kicking, that saved her. Suddenly there were a half-dozen men in camouflage around her. Men—not animals. She could scarcely understand where they'd come from. But they grabbed her attacker and carried him off. Only two of them stayed with her until the ambulance arrived.

 

"I don't get it,” Zena said when at last she could sit up in the hospital bed. She ached everywhere, but she was alive.

“Without your collar,” the man by her bedside said, “it's almost impossible to flash back to being human. You'd normally have had to wait out the entire five hours of Wilding. No shortcuts back.”

“I know that,” Zena said. It came out sharper than she meant, so she added, “I know you, too. You were one of my ... rescuers.”

He nodded. “You were lucky. Usually only the dead flash back that fast.”

“So that's what happened to that...”

“Her name was Sandra Maharish.”

“Oh.”

“She'd been foolish enough to leave off her collar, too. Only she hadn't the will you have, the will to flash and fight. It's what saved you.”

Zena's mind went, Will/won't. Will/won't.

“What?” the man asked. Evidently she had said it aloud.

“Will,” Zena whispered. “Only I didn't save me. You did.”

“No, Zena, we could never have gotten to you in time if you hadn't screamed. Without the collar, Wild Wood Central can't track you. He counted on that.”

“Track me?” Zena, unthinking, put a hand to her neck, found a bandage there.

“We try to keep a careful accounting of everything that goes on in the park,” the man said. He looked, Zena thought, pretty coolish in his camouflage. Interesting looking, too, his face all planes and angles, with a wild, brushy orange mustache. Almost like one of those old pirates.

“Why?” she asked.

“Now that the city is safe everywhere else, people go Wilding just to feel that little shiver of fear. Just to get in touch with their primal selves.”

“ ‘Mime the prime,' ” Zena said, remembering one of the old commercials.

“Exactly.” He smiled. It was a very coolish smile. “And it's our job to make that fear safe. Control the chaos. Keep prime time dean.”

“Then that guy...” Zena began, shuddering as she recalled the black mask, the hands around her neck.

“He'd actually killed three other girls, the Maharish girl being his latest. All girls without their collars who didn't have the human fight-back know how. He'd gotten in unchanged through one of the old tunnels that we should have had blocked. ‘Those wild girls,' he called his victims. Thanks to you, we caught him.”

“Are you a cop?” Zena wrinkled her nose a bit.

“Nope. I'm a Max,” he said, giving her a long, slow wink.

“A Max?”

“We control the Wild Things!” When she looked blank, he said, “It's an old story.” He handed her a card. “In case you want to know more.”

Zena looked at the card. It was embellished with holograms, front and back, of extinct animals. His name, Carl Barkham, was emblazoned in red across the elephant.

Just then her mother came in. Barkham greeted her with a mock salute and left. He walked down the hall with a deliberate, rangy stride that made him look, Zena thought, a lot like a powerful animal. A lion. Or a tiger.

“Princess!” her mother cried. “I came as soon as I heard.”

“I'm fine, Mom,” Zena said, not even wincing at the old nickname.

Behind her were Marnie, Lazlo, and Nick. They stood silently by the bed. At last Nick whispered, “You OK?” Somehow he seemed small, young, boneless. He was glancing nervously at Zena, at her mother, then back again. It was very uncoolish.

“I'm fine,” Zena said. “Just a little achey.” If Barkham was a tiger, then Nick was just a cub. “But I realize now that going collarless was really dumb. I was plain lucky.”

"Coolish,” Nick said.

But it wasn't. The Max was coolish. Nick was just ... just ... foolish.

“I'm ready to go home, Mom,” Zena said. “I've got a lot of homework.”

“Homework?” The word fell out of Nick's slack mouth.

She smiled pityingly at him, put her feet over the side of the bed, and stood. “I've got a lot of studying to do if I want to become a Max.”

“What's a Max?” all four of them asked at once.

“Someone who tames the Wild Things,” she said. “It's an old story. Come on, Mom. I'm starving. Got anything still hot for dinner?”

HILARY HATED BABY-SITTING at the Michells' house, though she loved the Mitchell twins. The house was one of those old, creaky Victorian horrors, with a dozen rooms and two sets of stairs. One set led from the front hall, and one, which the servants had used back in the 1890s, led up from the kitchen.

There was a long, dark hallway upstairs, and the twins slept at the end of it. Each time Hilary checked on them, she felt as if there were things watching her from behind the closed doors of the other rooms or from the walls. She couldn't say what exactly, just riling.

“Do this,” Adam Mitchell had said to her the first time she'd taken them up to bed. He touched one door with his right hand, the next with his left, spun around twice on his right leg, then kissed his fingers one after another. He repeated this ritual three times down the hall to the room he shared with his brother, Andrew.

 

Once a night,
And you're all right,

 

he sang in a Munchkin voice.

Andrew did the same.

Hilary laughed at their antics. They looked so cute, like a pair of six-year-old wizards or pale Michael Jackson clones, she couldn't decide which.

“You do it, Hilary,” they urged.

"There's no music, guys,” she said. “And I don't dance without music.”

“But it's not dancing, Hilly,” Adam said. “It's magic.”

“It keeps Them away,” Andrew added. "We don't like Them. Grandma showed us how. This was her house first. And her grandmother's before her. If you do it, They won't bother you.”

“Well, don't worry about Them,” Hilary said. “Or anything else. That's what I'm hired for, to make sure nothing bad happens to you while your mom and dad are out.”

But her promises hadn't satisfied them, and in the end, to keep them happy, she banged on each door and spun around on her right leg, and kissed her fingers, too. It was a lot of fun, actually. She had taught it to her best friend, Brenda, the next day in school, and pretty soon half the kids in the ninth grade had picked it up. They called it the Mitchell March, but secretly Hilary called it the Spell.

 

The first night's baby-sitting, after they had danced the Spell all the way down the long hall, Hilary had tucked the boys into their beds and pulled up a rocking chair between. Then she told them stories for almost an hour until first Adam and then Andrew fell asleep. In one night she'd become their favorite baby-sitter.

She had told them baby stories that time—“The Three Bears” and “The Three Billy Goats Gruff” and “The Three little Pigs,” all with sound effects and a different voice for each character. After that she relied on TV plots and the books she'd read in school for her material. Luckily she was a great reader.

The twins hated to ever hear a story a second time. Except for “The Golden Arm,” the jump story that she'd learned on a camping trip when she was nine. Adam and Andrew asked for that one every time.

When she had asked them why, Adam had replied solemnly, his green eyes wide, "Because it scares Them.”

After she smoothed the covers over the sleeping boys, Hilary always drew in a deep breath before heading down the long, uncarpeted hall. It didn't matter which stairs she headed for, there was always a strange echo as she walked along, each footstep articulated with precision, and then a slight tap-tapping afterward. She never failed to turn around after the first few steps. She never saw anything behind her.

 

The Mitchells called her at least three times a month, and though she always hesitated to accept, she always went. Part of it was she really loved the twins. They were bright, polite, and funny in equal measure. And they were not shy about telling her how much they liked her. But there was something else, too. Hilary was a stubborn girl. You couldn't tell from the set of her jaw; she had a sweet, rounded jaw. And her nose was too snubbed to be taken seriously. But when she thought someone was treating her badly or trying to threaten her, she always dug in and made a fuss.