At the Mouth of the River of Bees: Stories (24 page)

She turned away. “They’re waiting.”

“They’re not. You’re sick. You need help.” Richard reached for her hand, but she brought the heel of her palm up to his chin hard, and punched him twice under the ribs.

Richard lunged for Addie. She jumped back and cracked the back of her knees against the bed frame. Before she could regain her balance, he caught both her wrists. For a moment they stood toe to toe. She glared into his eyes, her teeth bared and the cords of muscle in her jaw sharp beneath her blistered skin.

The cuffs still lay on the table behind him. Richard grabbed the hoops, snapped one around her thin wrist. She pulled back and fell onto the bed. She kicked him in the thigh and he dropped to his knees. Grabbing the open hoop as it swung, he snapped it shut on the bed frame. He ripped the key from its lock and dropped it into a pocket.

Addie fell heavily against him. Thinking she’d fainted, he caught her shoulders and tried to rebalance her before he noticed she was scrabbling at his pocket, the one with the key. He knocked it from her hand. It hit the door and fell beside the stove. Addie howled and lunged after it. Caught short by the cuff, she slammed onto her side on the floor, whimpering in pain, her arm wrenched high over her head.

Richard slid the key into the wrist of the gloves he was wearing, where it settled cold in his palm. He looked down at Addie. Her face lay against the floor, dust and snow catching in the blood and blisters. Tears seeped from her closed eyes. She shook, but he couldn’t tell if it was from sickness or grief. She made a horrible whining noise, like an injured animal.

“Addie,” he said, afraid of the sound, “I had to.” He crouched beside her. “You know I have to do this, don’t you? I can’t let you kill yourself like this.”

The whining continued.

“We’ll get you out of here. You’ll be fine. You’ll be warm, it will be okay.” He reached for her hand, curled close to her face. She snatched it away. Her other hand, still stretched over her head, pulled at the handcuffs.

“You don’t know,” she said in anguish. “They accepted me. They let me share a kill. They let me sleep with them. They’re
waiting
for me.”

“Maybe you’re prey, Addie.”

“You can’t know what it’s like, to want to be with them—” Her voice broke.

“Don’t I?” he said softly. “I used to watch the pack in Como Zoo. They paced a dirt path twelve inches from the wire fence, all around. I could see the road on the other side of the enclosure, sometimes cars, sometimes other people watching. The wolves ignored us all, just kept walking. Except once, the alpha, a long-bodied gray, he looked at me, not afraid, just curious. That’s all we get.”

She raised her face to look at him. The tears had cleared tracks through the mask of blood and dirt and pus. “Let me go.”

Richard turned his head away from the terrible wild eyes that glowed within the mask. “I can’t.”

She said no more. He packed the rest of his things, then sat staring at the meaningless marks of his writing on the cover of a notebook, trying not to hear her hopeless crying.

When Richard heard the first sounds of an engine, he ran outside and to the lake shore. The wind snapped heavy flakes in his face. He couldn’t see the plane but the drone grew louder. It was a full minute before the Beaver appeared in the southeast, facing into the wind for a landing. It hit the ice on one ski and bounced sideways before it settled onto both skis and ran smoothly away from him. For a moment, the plane sounded as though it masked a wolf’s howl, but it was only the overtones of the slowing engines. It slowed to a crawl, turned and began taxiing back. Richard waved his arms at the small figure behind the windscreen and ran back toward the cabin.

“Addie,” he yelled as he approached. “He’s here, we’re getting out.” He scrambled around the rock that hid the cabin.

There was blood everywhere by the entrance, splashed red against the white snow and the pale walls. Indistinct footprints and a broad trail of bloody marks wove southwest across the meadow into the ribbon forest, toward Horsehead Mountain.

Richard ran into the cabin. Sheathed in blood, the cuffs still hung from the bed frame, one hoop swinging closed and empty. The chain between the rings had been smashed by something sharp but was unbroken. Blood soaked the bed’s blankets and heavy drops trailed down the walls. In a pool of gelling blood by the bed lay a severed hand, bones extending just past the ragged cut.

Richard staggered out the door, away from the thick cold smell, to fall vomiting by the cabin, holding a corner until he could stand alone and look again at the path that led into the fir and spruce.

She couldn’t be far away, losing blood as she was. He’d easily overtake her. He looked at her path, the mountain beyond it, and the clouds dark behind that. New snow was falling, drifting over the stains. After a long moment, Richard turned his back and walked north, to Lake Juhl and the waiting plane.

Ponies

The invitation card has a Western theme. Along its margins, cartoon girls in cowboy hats chase a herd of wild Ponies. The Ponies are no taller than the girls, fat and bright as butterflies, with short, round-tipped unicorn horns and small fluffy wings. At the bottom of the card, newly caught Ponies mill about in a corral. The girls have lassoed a pink-and-white Pony. Its eyes and mouth are surprised round Os. There is an exclamation mark over its head.

The little girls are cutting off its horn with curved knives. Its wings are already removed, part of a pile beside the corral.

You and your Pony ___[and Sunny’s name is handwritten here in puffy girl-letters]___ are invited to a cutting-out party with TheOtherGirls! If we like you, and if your Pony does okay, we’ll let you hang out with us.

“Yay!” Sunny says. “I can’t wait to have friends!” She reads over Barbara’s shoulder, her rose-scented breath woofling through Barbara’s hair. They are in the big backyard next to Sunny’s pink stable.

Barbara says, “Do you know what you want to keep?”

Sunny’s tiny wings are a blur as she hops into the air, loops and then hovers, legs curled under her. “Oh, being able to talk, absolutely! Flying is great but talking is way better!” She drops to the grass. “I don’t know why any Pony would keep her horn! It’s not like it does anything!”

This is the way it’s always been, as long as there have been Ponies. All ponies have wings. All Ponies have horns. All Ponies can talk. Then all Ponies go to a cutting-out party with AllTheGirls and they give up two of the three, because that’s what has to happen if a Girl is going to fit in with TheOtherGirls. The Ponies must all keep their voices because Barbara’s never seen one that still had her horn or wings after her cutting-out party.

Barbara sees TheOtherGirls’ Ponies all the time, peeking in the classroom windows just before recess or clustered at the bus stop after school. They’re baby pink and lavender and daffodil-yellow, with flossy manes in ringlets and tails that curl to the ground. When not at school and cello lessons and ballet class and soccer practice and play group and the orthodontist’s, TheOtherGirls spend their days with their Ponies.

The party is at TopGirl’s house, which has a mother who’s a pediatrician and a father who’s a cardiologist and a small barn and giant trees shading the grass where the Ponies are playing games. Sunny walks out to them nervously. They touch her horn and wings with their velvet noses and then the Ponies all walk out to the lilac barn at the bottom of the pasture where a bale of hay is broken open for them.

TopGirl meets Barbara at the fence. “That’s your Pony?” she says without greeting. “She’s not as nice as mine.”

Barbara is defensive. “She’s beautiful!” She knows this is a misstep and adds, “Yours is so pretty!” And TopGirl’s Pony Starblossom
is
pretty. Her tail is every shade of purple and glitters with stars; but Sunny’s tail is creamy white and shines with honey-colored light, and Barbara knows that Sunny’s the most beautiful Pony ever.

TopGirl walks away, saying over her shoulder, “There’s Rock Band in the family room and a bunch of TheOtherGirls are hanging out on the deck and Mom bought some cookies and there’s Coke Zero and Diet Red Bull and diet lemonade.”

“Where are you?” Barbara asks.

“
I’m
outside,” TopGirl says so Barbara gets a Crystal Light and three frosted raisin-oatmeal cookies and follows her. TheOtherGirls outside are listening to an iPod plugged into speakers and playing Wii tennis and watching the Ponies play HideAndSeek and Who’sPrettiest and ThisIsTheBestGame. They are all there, SecondGirl and SuckUpGirl and EveryoneLikesHerGirl and the rest. Barbara only says anything when she thinks she’ll get it right. It seems as though it’s going okay.

And then it’s time. TheOtherGirls and their silent Ponies collect in a ring around Barbara and Sunny. Barbara feels sick.

TopGirl says to Barbara, “What did she pick?”

Sunny looks scared but answers her directly. “I would rather talk than fly or stab things with my horn.”

TopGirl says to Barbara, “That’s what Ponies always say.” She gives Barbara a curved knife with a blade as long as a woman’s hand.

“Me?”
Barbara says. “I thought someone else did it, a grownup.”

TopGirl says, “Everyone does it for their own Pony. I did it for Starblossom.”

In silence Sunny stretches out a wing.

It’s not the way it would be, cutting a real pony. The wing comes off easily, smooth as plastic, and the blood smells like cotton candy at the fair. There’s a shiny trembling oval where the wing was as though Barbara cut rose-flavored Turkish Delight in half and saw the pink under the powdered sugar. Barbara thinks,
It’s sort of pretty,
and throws up.

Sunny shivers, her eyes shut tight. Barbara cuts off the second wing and lays it beside the first.

The horn is harder, like paring a real pony’s hooves. Barbara’s hand slips and she cuts Sunny and there’s more cotton-candy blood. And then the horn lies in the grass beside the wings.

Sunny drops to her knees. Barbara throws the knife down and falls beside her, sobbing and hiccuping. She scrubs her face with the back of her hand and looks up at the circle. “Now what?”

Starblossom touches the knife with her nose, pushes it toward Barbara with one lilac hoof. “You’re not done yet,” TopGirl says. “Now the voice. You have to take away her voice.”

“But I already cut off her wings and her horn!” Barbara throws her arms around Sunny’s neck. “Two of the three, you said!”

“That’s the cutting-out, yeah,” TopGirl says. “That’s what
you
do to be OneOfUs. But the Ponies pick their own friends and that costs, too.” Starblossom tosses her violet mane. For the first time Barbara sees that there is a scar shaped like a smile on her throat. All the Ponies have one.

“I can’t!” Barbara tells TheOtherGirls, TopGirl, Starblossom, Sunny. But even as she cries until her face is caked with snot and tears, she knows she’s going to. When she’s done she picks up the knife and pulls herself upright.

Sunny stands up beside her on trembling legs. She looks very small without her horn, her wings. Barbara’s hands are slippery. She tightens her grip.

“No,” Sunny says suddenly. “Not even for friends. Not even for you.”

And Sunny spins and runs, runs for the fence in a gallop as fast and beautiful as a real pony’s. But there are more of the others and they are bigger, and Sunny doesn’t have her wings to fly or her horn to fight. They pull her down before she can jump the fence into the woods beyond. Sunny cries out and then there is nothing, only the sound of pounding hooves from the tight circle of Ponies.

TheOtherGirls stand, frozen, their blind faces turned toward the Ponies.

The Ponies break their circle, trot away. There is no sign of Sunny beyond a spray of cotton-candy blood and a coil of her mane torn free and fading as it falls to the grass.

Into the silence TopGirl says, “Cookies?” Her voice sounds fragile and false. TheOtherGirls crowd into the house, chattering in equally artificial voices. They start up a game, drink more Diet Coke. Soon they sound almost normal.

Barbara stumbles after them into the family room. “What are you playing?” she says uncertainly.

“Why are
you
here?” FirstGirl says, as though noticing her for the first time. “You’re not OneOfUs.”

TheOtherGirls nod. “You don’t have a pony.”

The Cat Who Walked
a Thousand Miles

Chapter 1

The Garden

At a time now past, a cat was born. This was not so long after the first cats came to Japan, so they were rare and mostly lived near the capital city.

This cat was the smallest of her litter of four. Her fur had been dark when she was born but as she grew it changed to black with speckles of gold and cinnamon and ivory. She had a little gold-colored chin, and her eyes were gold, like a fox’s.

She lived in the gardens of a great house in the capital. They filled a city block and the house had been very fine once but that was many years ago. The owners moved to a new home in a more important part of the city, and left the house to suffer fires and droughts and earthquakes and neglect. Now there was very little left that a person might think of as home. The main house still stood but the roofs leaked and even had fallen in places. Furry green moss covered the walls. Many of the storehouses and other buildings were barely more than piles of wood. Ivy filled the garden and water weeds choked the three little lakes and the stream.