The Wild Things (15 page)

“Carol!” he yelled. Max was running faster than he’d ever run and could barely speak, but he needed to know what was happening. “Why are we running?” he managed to say, heaving and holding his side.

Carol didn’t answer him. He didn’t even look his way.

“Carol!” he yelled. Carol was going thirty miles an hour, Max figured. Max couldn’t hope to keep up. Just as Carol disappeared down a ravine, Max spotted Ira following him.

“Ira!” Max yelled. Ira was slower, but still far faster than he looked. Heaving and crying, he almost ran over Max, seeming not to have seen him at all. He didn’t say a word as he sped by.

Not one of the beasts seemed concerned about leaving their king behind. They were barreling into anything, knocking any and all in-the-way foliage flat. They were huffing and moaning, their eyes tearing and their arms grabbing at the air in front of them. They were crazed. All Max could do was follow the wide swath their stampede cut through the trees and underbrush.

Max ran until he was ready to throw up. Leaning against a tree and catching his breath, he finally spotted them beyond the woods, all six beasts, in a many-colored meadow. The grass there was long, soft, and arrayed in a patchwork of clashing colors -- ochre and black and violet and fuchsia. The beasts were all gathered in the middle, in a loose circle, heaving. A few had collapsed on the ground. As Max approached, they seemed to take little or no notice of him.

Max found Carol. “What was it?”

“What was what?” Carol asked.

“The sound. Whatever we were running from.”

“You don’t know?” Carol asked.

Max shook his head.

Carol looked surprised, or feigned surprise.

“You really don’t know?” he asked again.

Suddenly Carol was spun around. It was Judith, her claw on Carol’s shoulder.

“Where’s Douglas?” she asked, a panicked look on her face.

Carol shrugged. He turned to Max. “You see Douglas out there?”

Max hadn’t. Carol gave him an exasperated look, as if to say, What
do
you know, King?

“Maybe he wasn’t with us in the first place,” Carol said.

“Of course he was,” Katherine said.

But everyone else seemed suddenly unsure.

Katherine turned to Max. “Did
you
see Douglas with us?”

Max had, and was about to say so, but Carol interrupted him, placing his gigantic paw over Max’s mouth. “Don’t do that, Katherine. Don’t bring him into it. Douglas did not come.”

“Of course he did,” she said, astonished. “He was with us a few minutes ago.”

“Sorry. You’re wrong,” Carol said dismissively.

“I can’t believe you,” Katherine said. “Do you really not notice who’s around you? Are you really that self-centered that you can’t remember which four or five of us are near at any given time? Do you look at or hear any of us?”

This made Carol boil. But before he could formulate an answer, Katherine turned to the rest of the group.

“Okay, whoever thinks he
was
with us, stand up. And whoever thinks he wasn’t, sit down.”

Everyone began to sit down and stand accordingly, though they all were apprehensive to be picking sides.

Carol was exasperated. “No, no! Whoever thinks he
wasn’t
with us, stand up. And whoever thinks he
was
, lie down.”

“No,” Katherine said, her face reddening, “
I
was already standing! Why do you have to do that, even change the way I set it up? You make everything ten times harder than it needs to be.”

“No I don’t.”

“Yes you do.”

“Do not.”

Katherine turned back to the group, who were all watching the debate intently, like children at a puppet show. “Okay, everyone who thinks Carol makes things ten times harder than they need to be, raise your left hand. If you think he
doesn’t
make things harder, raise your
right
hand.”

Everyone began, tentatively, to raise one arm or the other.

“Wait,” Judith said. “Should we be sitting down, too? Or is that part over? I don’t like sitting down when people tell me to sit down. It takes the pleasure out of it—”

“Forget it,” Katherine said. “It’s not worth it.” And she walked away, disappearing into the forest shadows before leaping upward.

A moment later, a rustling came from the woods, and Douglas emerged from between two trees and entered the clearing. He looked dazed, exhausted.

“Did you find out what it was?” Judith asked him.

Douglas shook his head. “No.”

“Did you hear anything?” Ira asked.

“No. Or maybe,” he said. “I don’t know. I did hear a loud, rhythmic sound, like a huffing. It was really loud, and lasted the whole time I was running. Now it’s gone though.”

Ira and Alexander looked worried. Carol nodded solemnly, as if this, unfortunately, confirmed his suspicions. Only Judith thought to second-guess it. She rolled her eyes and sighed elaborately.

“That was your own
breathing
, Douglas. Of course it stopped. You stopped
running
.” But though Judith was skeptical of Douglas’s account of the sounds underground, she didn’t doubt the existence of the chatter. “Carol,” she said, “when you heard it, did it ever sound like huffing?”

Carol was diplomatic. “I think it might have, somewhere down there. And it sounds different to different ears, of course. You might hear something more jagged and angry, Judith. It might be chatter specifically about you, and all the things you’ve done wrong. Ira might hear something open and hollow, like an empty, void-ish sound, the sound of a well with no bottom. They really know how to get to us.”

Judith was staring hard at Max. “So what should we do, King?”

“About what?” he asked.

“What do you mean, about what? About the sounds that run under the ground and are mean to us. What else?” she said. “We need to kill it dead, right, Carol?”

Carol nodded.

Max had no plan at all. “So what does it sound like again?” he asked.

Judith was apoplectic. “Wait. You don’t know about the chatter? I don’t know what’s worse -- the chatter, or the fact that our king doesn’t know anything about it. How can you rule this place if you don’t know about the sounds in the ground?”

“I didn’t say I didn’t know,” he said. “I just was asking you guys what
you
thought it was. Where I come from the chatter just sounds different.”

Max got on his knees and listened to the earth. “Yeah, I hear it for sure. But it’s just quieter than where I come from. Our chatter is super-loud and it sounds like teeth.”

This had everyone’s attention.

“So what did you do about it?” Douglas asked.

“Oh, a lot of things,” Max said, having no idea at all.

“Like what?” Ira asked.

“Well, one thing is that we yelled a lot. We yelled out in the air a lot because then we didn’t hear the chatter.”

This didn’t seem to impress anyone.

“And the other thing was that we stomped on the ground really hard. We stomped like we did at the parade. We did that all the time, to let the sounds know how big we were. Sometimes with heavy boots.”

This was somewhat more convincing to the beasts.

“Okay,” Judith said. “So you scared it with the boots. What else? I’m assuming you got rid of it?”

“Oh yeah, pretty quickly. It was easy,” Max said.

“How?” Carol asked, his eyes pleading.

Now Max was up a creek. He couldn’t see or hear the thing they feared, but he had to think of a way to kill it. He was sure he could find a way to kill anything in the world if he could
see
it -- especially with seven giants on his side -- but if he knew nothing about it? He was stuck. He had to stall for time.

“I can’t tell you today …” he said, “but tomorrow I can. Tomorrow I will.” It was lame, Max knew it was lame, but it was working. They were nodding, as if acknowledging that such a problem needed a day of kingly consideration. He added the finishing touches to the lie. “I just need to stay here awhile, testing the ground and, uh, seeing which one of my killing methods will work best.”

They all nodded vigorously, picturing the many killing methods they knew themselves.

“You heard the king,” Carol said, shooing everyone away. “He needs time to think. Let’s give him some room.” He hustled them out of the meadow. Before he left Max by himself, Carol turned back to him.

“I really hope you kill it, Max,” he said. “It would really help us a lot. I feel like I haven’t slept in years.”

And with that, he left.

Max took off his heavy crown and sat in the many-colored meadow, alone, trying to piece together exactly how he came to be sitting in the many-colored meadow, alone.

There had been the parade, and that was good. Then the different route with Katherine, which was also very good. But when he arrived at the lagoon, Carol had not been happy about him leaving the parade. Carol seemed upset about Max’s time alone with Katherine. Max had to be careful about that in the future. He also needed to be careful about Ira and water -- Ira definitely didn’t seem to like bellyflopping down a waterfall. And Judith didn’t like sitting down on command; she liked to sit when and how she wanted to sit. That seemed easy to remember.

All Max had to do, then, was to make sure that he didn’t upset Carol by spending time alone with Katherine, or upset Katherine by being alone with Carol, and he had to make sure Judith was being entertained and that Ira was being kept from the void. He wasn’t sure what the Bull wanted, but he knew for his own safety he needed to steer clear of Alexander, who’d had a very personal problem with Max from the start. Was that everything he needed to think about?

Oh, food. There was food to think about. Could it be that he hadn’t eaten since he’d left home? He really hadn’t. Nothing the beasts had eaten so far was edible for Max, and on his own he had no idea where to get food, or how to recognize it. And he couldn’t go into the woods looking for it, because it was getting dark quickly, and he’d seen snakes in the trees, and spiders the size of his fist, and knew there were countless other dangers unseen.

He felt reasonably safe in the middle of the meadow, though, and he realized that to remain safe all he needed to do was stay awake until the dawn. Easy. And while waiting for the sun, he only needed to solve the problem of the sounds in the ground that Carol heard whenever he was worried about something else.

Not expecting to hear anything, Max put his ear to the grass. Indeed, he heard nothing. There was no sound at all. But Carol knew this island far better than he did, and Carol’s ears might be better than his -- and anyway, whether Max heard the sound or not, he needed to find it and kill it, or at least get the beasts to stop thinking about it.

He had faced similar challenges at home, with his mom, a dozen times. She would come home drained, collapsing on the couch or sometimes even the floor, and Max would find a way to entertain her or soothe her or somehow bring her to a different, happier, place. Sometimes he brought her a piece or two of his Halloween candy. Sometimes he would put the candy in the music box on the mantel. He’d get it down and turn the crank and present it to her, so when she opened the top the music started and the candy was there, always something she liked, like Bit o’ Honey. Sometimes he drew her something -- a dragon getting its head cut off by a knight or a whale with arms and a mustache. There were a bunch of ways, he was sure, to lead someone out of a dark corridor of the mind.

Just then a sound came from the encircling woods. It was a high-pitched sound, something like a hyena’s laugh crossed with a woodpecker’s knocking. It was terrifying and arrhythmic, and growing louder. At any moment Max expected some animal to burst from the woods and bee-line toward him.

He knew he wouldn’t sleep this night. He would wait until first light and then go looking for Carol or Katherine, or anyone, really. And then he would have to set down some rules about leaving him, the king, alone in the middle of a meadow all night. He had to do so without implying that he was afraid of the dark, which he wasn’t, but that instead it was for their own good. They needed to be together, all of them, for together they were safer and happier. Or he hoped they would be.

He sat up in the meadow, scanning the forest for movement. Just then another sound came from the opposite woods. This one was a rough, zig-zagging call, trilling upward before ending with a loud sigh, like a truck at rest. It was just as threatening and eerie as the other sound, and soon the first sound and the second were trading calls, as if in a heated conversation full of threats and recriminations. Max had to spin back and forth, following the sounds, looking for anything moving. The fighting, if that’s what it was, seemed to be happening far away and didn’t involve him, but then again, how could he be sure? He might be the cause of it and very well might be its victim. And so he had to stay alert.

It was exhausting, but he knew the argument going on was useful in that it would certainly keep him awake -- he couldn’t possibly think of resting while it was all going on. And that’s how he got the idea that he got. He smiled to himself, laughing even, knowing he’d come up with the best solution possible to the problem of the underground whispering plaguing the consciences of the beasts. He couldn’t wait till morning to announce the plan and put it into action. It was so good he found himself cackling all night, in sudden and helpless bursts. It was the best plan, the only plan.

Max woke up before dawn, cold and wet with dew. He had somehow fallen asleep, and now he was hungry and thirsty and, he realized with a shudder, he hadn’t moved his bowels since he’d left home. His fur smelled terrible and now had a green tint to it -- the lagoon water had been full of algae and had gifted Max its thick stench.

And there was no sign of anyone.

But he knew, at least, that he would make everyone happy this day. He had a plan and only had to find the beasts to enact it.

In the pre-dawn light Max could see the tracks they’d made, and could clearly make out Carol’s huge footprints, leading out of the meadow and toward the cliff. He followed them across the meadow, through a narrow stand of trees, and into a clearing covered with a strange moss, black and yellow, alternating like a checkerboard. Beyond it, the ocean was a frenzy of white. Max scanned the electric blue horizon until he saw what seemed to be a figure sitting on the edge of the cliff, the same cliff where they had howled together on Max’s first night.