“Huh?”
“It must be another one from the same litter,” Ginny muttered.
“Would two sister squirrels both be pregnant out of season at the same time?” I asked. Cass had risen up to catch the tip of the cob, exposing her swollen belly. She looked even bigger, all over her body, not just in her belly, than she did yesterday.
“Penny, are you sure she was dead, not just knocked out?”
“I didn’t feel for a pulse,” I snapped.
I tried to picture the shoe box. The lid had been shredded in long gashes from very sharp parallel claws. The box with its bit of tissue paper had remained undisturbed. A coyote would have left tooth marks in the cardboard. Could Cass have torn through the lid to escape?
Dyflyn joined me at the window, pacing back and forth along the sill, meowing. At every third pass, she’d rise up on her hind legs and paw at the glass.
The ubiquitous crows shifted. First one, then five, then fifty, lining the gutters of my house and Elliot’s. They rocked side to side from foot to foot. At first they moved
randomly, then gradually fell into a unison dance. Back and forth in a hypnotic and silent ritual.
Dyflyn crouched down, ears flat, front paws edging forward silently.
I’d had enough. Time to take back my neighborhood from this avian invasion.
Grabbing a coat as I ran, I dashed out the front door, heedless if it closed tightly. For the first time in my life I wished I possessed a firearm. Preferably a shotgun loaded with bird shot, or rock salt, anything to get rid of the black menace lining the roof trees and gutters.
Cass nodded to me and resumed her work on the corn cob.
I looked up, assessing what I had to do to convince the crows to move away, about three hundred miles away.
Just then the crow on the near end of my gutter swooped and jabbed its beak at Cass’s head. Then it landed in one smooth glide at the end of the line across the way. The lead crow on that side took its turn, repeating the motion. This time it came up with a tiny tuft of squirrel fur in its beak. It landed with a triumphant caw that echoed between the houses.
Elliot appeared on his steps inside the carport with two pot lids in his hands. He banged them together in a shrill clash.
The crows ignored him.
I headed for the garden hose neatly coiled inside the shed. By the time I’d attached it to the spigot, Dyflyn had escaped the house and climbed the four by four that held up the feeding station next to Cass and the corn.
The next crow in the queue lost a tail feather to Dyflyn’s claws. She snarled in disgust that she hadn’t drawn blood.
Cass finished with the corn and took notice of the
flurry around her. As the next crow dive-bombed toward her, she ducked and rolled into a tight ball.
The crow missed and noisily protested his disappointment at no fur trophy.
I aimed a spray of cold water toward the roof line. A crow rose straight up and down again. It croaked curses at me that made my hair stand on end. I kept up my watery barrage, forcing the line of crows away from the gutter’s edge.
Dyflyn caught the edge of the cascade. She hissed and spat, rightly blaming the birds as the cause of her getting wet. But she didn’t leave her post.
Amazing.
Then Cass uncoiled from her hedgehog roll. As she unfurled, she grew bigger and bigger yet.
My aim with the hose faltered, drenching the ground rather than the enemy.
Blue energy sparked from the end of each hair on Cass’s pelt. More than just puffing up with air to intimidate a rival. More than flexing her muscles. Her eyes glowed with the same blue electricity. Her fur bristled and took on darker, more metallic hues. She bared her teeth, and they elongated. Her claws grew almost as long as her stretching arms.
Blue flame shot from each knife-sharp talon.
The four-by-four post vibrated with the strength of her transformation. I felt the tingles of those sharp flashes all the way through my feet to my knees. My hands shook. I dropped the hose and wrapped my arms around myself to ward off atavistic awe.
Cass’s fur stiffened, flattened, forming overlapping panels of plate armor. She became the Incredible Hulk of all squirrels.
My heart skittered, and I knew fear.
Elliot stared at her gape-jawed, forgetting to bang his pot lids.
Down the post of the feeding station Cass flew, up the woodpile stacked neatly at the side of Elliot’s house. Then she leaped to the roof with Dyflyn hard on her heels.
They slashed and tore, snarled and hissed. Crow after crow hit the ground, disemboweled, wings broken, heads smashed. If Cass left one living, Dyflyn finished it off. And they moved on, to the next and the next.
Five died before I remembered to breathe.
Ten met their grisly fate before the crows got the idea this was no longer a safe place for them. The flapping of wings sounded like a single clap of thunder as they rose. With telepathic precision they circled and wheeled. One foolhardy hero made one more attempt to land beside the empty corn cob.
In a magnificent leap, the armored squirrel soared from the roof to the ledge, gouging beady black crow eyes as it landed. This bird fell too, pierced to the brain.
As one, the flock turned in the air and streaked west toward the valley and more hospitable climes.
They’d have to begin their world domination elsewhere.
Cass descended from her perch with dignity and scampered off into the woods.
Dyflyn came down more awkwardly. Still, she was full of herself and stropped my ankles until I praised and petted her with due admiration.
“Gonna freeze tonight,” Elliot said around a toothpick. “Might as well leave the buggers. Easier to handle when they’re stiff. I’ll bag ’em and put ’em in the garbage first thing in the morning before the truck comes.” He retreated with his pot lids.
By the time I’d put the hose away and gone inside, Dyflyn had settled in front of the fireplace. The look she gave me clearly said that I needed to turn on the gas log so she could dry off and warm up properly. I obeyed.
I also put out extra seeds on the back deck tray.
I never saw Cass again, though the sunflower seeds disappeared at an alarming rate all winter long.
By spring the crows hadn’t come back.
But if they do, there’s an entire litter of oversized squirrels ready to take them on. Dyflyn trains them regularly with games of follow my leader and catch me if you can.
I don’t think I’ll put out holiday lights again though.
This story is dedicated to
Lilac
My own dyflyn of a Siamese
5/5/1998—¼/2008
HER BLACK MOOD
By Brenda Cooper
Brenda Cooper has published fiction in
Nature
,
Analog
,
Oceans of the Mind
,
Strange Horizons
, the anthologies
Sun in Glory; Maiden, Matron, Crone; Time After Time,
and more. Brenda’s collaborative fiction with Larry Niven has appeared in
Analog
and
Asimov’s
. She and Larry have a collaborative novel,
Building Harlequin’s Moon,
available now in bookstores. Her solo novel,
The Silver Ship and the Sea,
was released in 2007. Brenda lives in Bellevue, Washington, with her partner Toni, Toni’s daughter Katie, a border collie, and a golden retriever. By day, she is the city of Kirkland’s CIO, and at night and in the early morning hours, she’s a futurist and writer. So she’s trying to both save and entertain the world, with sometimes comical results as the two activities collide and, sometimes, blend. Neither, of course, is entirely possible.
The doorway to the High Hills exists within a waterfall that exists within an arts festival that exists in
Laguna Beach, California, once every summer. Many of my stories have passed through this doorway. I hope you enjoy this one.
S
ummer sun beat down on Carly, washing out her skin and the sawdust under her feet and dulling the bright green and purple glazes on her mother’s pottery. The air had become a veil of heat-shimmer between herself and the path she squinted down.
Nothing but tourists in bright shorts with sweaty faces. Of course, the tourists were welcome for their wallets. But she wanted her mom. Or Marla the women’s shelter lady or Jack the handyman or anyone else she knew, for that matter. It was a drag to be stuck in the booth; she had to post a sign, carry the cashbox, and worry the whole time if she even went to the bathroom. She dug her toes into the hot sawdust and wiped sweat from her face and sighed, still looking.
If only she could just leave. She’d met some girls down on Main Beach, runaways living on the lawn by the boardwalk all day, flirting and laughing. She’d even made friends with one, a tall Latina girl named Toy who came by the booth once in a while. Maybe Toy would come today, and her mom wouldn’t get drunk until after the festival closed, and Carly could go to the beach with Toy and ask her and her friends some of the thousand questions she had. Where did they sleep? How did they eat? Where did they go when they left Laguna Beach after the festival?
It would be fun to go with them, wherever they went. Not that she would. She picked up a rag and rubbed the sawdust leavings from the platters and bowls on the lower shelves, still watching.
There. Finally. Not Toy, but her mom. Hobbling up the
ever-so-slight hill between the entrance wall and their booth, walking even slower than the tourists, as if she were fifty instead of thirty-five. When her mom finally stood inside the booth, she smelled of this morning’s whiskied coffee and the two or three bottles of cheap wine from the night before. Now that she was here, it was hard for Carly to remember why she’d wanted her here, even though she had. Carly mumbled, “Good morning.”
Her mom’s eyes fastened on Carly’s, and a thin smile touched her lips and cheeks, making her look almost healthy for a moment. “How’s it going?”
Her words slurred a little. Not enough for a customer or a cop to recognize, but Carly heard it. Damn her mom, anyway. “It’s almost three o’clock, Mom. I’m hungry.”
The older woman shoved her fist into her pocket as if there might be money there.
There wasn’t, of course. She glanced at the cashbox. “How’d we do so far?”
Carly looked away, barely keeping her voice even. “
I
did okay.
I
took in sixty-four dollars so far, even in the heat. Mostly mugs, but also the purple dragon platter.”
And another twenty-five I hid against the winter because you won’t.
But she didn’t say that since then the twenty-five would disappear.
“So take four dollars and go get lunch.”
Anger licked up Carly’s spine and flushed her face. “Four dollars? That’s a stale hot dog from Mumbly Pete’s. I opened six hours ago. And I get seventy-five cents an hour?”
“C’mon Carly. You know we have expenses.”
She’d hoped so hard this winter. After Carly’d started sleeping in the women’s shelter on bad nights, her mom had gotten worse. Then one morning Carly found her in
tears, slumped over the rickety fake-wood kitchen table in their studio. She’d raised her head and sworn she’d become a good mom. She’d pinky-sworn to stop drinking. She signed up for a regular twelve-step program and quit drinking for a full month. Even though the month had ended with a binge, it had been better for a while. It really had.
But not anymore.
A tear pulled itself into shape in the corner of Carly’s eye, and she turned away so it wouldn’t drive her mom to yet another drink. Carly reached into the cashbox and took out a twenty.
That
would buy lunch. There was a thin back entrance between their booth and the jewelry booth that faced toward the aisle behind them, and Carly was skinny enough to slide through a place her mom couldn’t follow.
The tear slid down her cheek and another one gathered, and she licked it coming down, a trick she’d taught herself as a kid. If you catch a tear before it falls, you can stop crying. Only this time, once she licked off the tear, it became an anger-stone in her belly.
Damn.
How come her mom couldn’t get her shit together? Marla and everybody else told Carly it wasn’t about her, but even if it wasn’t because of her, Carly should be able to help her mom. Except she never could.
The twenty-dollar bill in her pocket seemed as heavy as the tear-stone in her belly. She’d never stolen from their kitty before unless it was to save money to buy food in the winter, when there was no place to sell her mom’s pottery. She could take it back—she would take it back—but that didn’t take away the fact that she’d stolen it. One of the buskers or mummers would have shared food or a few dollars with her; they were always
willing. Anyway, she should have done something other than stealing the twenty.
She built up enough mad at herself and her mom that the tears stayed away as she stalked though the crowd.
Little kids squealed and splashed in the pool in front of the waterfall door. A ragged red towel had been draped over the NO WADING sign. Even the moms, who pretended they were chasing children, cooled their feet in the shallow pond while looking guilty. Carly waded right through them, managing not to step on anyone, walking into the rock wall so fast she didn’t have any time for doubt.
That was the only way she could go through this year. Running at the wall and trusting that the door didn’t dare refuse her. Last year had been easy, and the first year had been cake, as if the stone melted for her. But then, she’d been scared instead of mad. Jack had told her the trouble was because now she was mad instead of hurt, and the magic of the door didn’t like anger. But how was she supposed to stop being mad? Her mom was falling apart. Her grades sucked from worry, and she never knew where she was sleeping for sure till she saw how drunk her mom was any given night. Maybe by next year, she’d be so mad she wouldn’t be able to come at all.