CHAPTER XXXVI
Much of the snow that fell the night before had now melted. Max’s vision was blurry as he woke up amid the pre-dawn light. His wolf suit was filthy. But he was so excited he had spent most of the night awake, waiting for the first blue light so he could find Carol and announce to him and the rest of the beasts that he knew how to change everything, once and for all.
When it was light enough for him to navigate his way to Carol’s perch on the high dunes, Max picked his crown from the ashes of the fire and put it on. It was still hot, and he flinched from the heat, but he steeled himself and headed to the sea.
When the forest gave way to the beach, Max could see that all the beasts were there, on the snow-dusted sand, and that they had slept there. It was probably the coldest place on the island that anyone might have chosen to spend the night.
Max found Carol sitting alone, on his high dune, facing the horizon. Max ran toward him.
“Carol!”
This woke up Judith and Ira, each of them wearing a thin blanket of snow. They watched Max pass by.
“Carol!” Max yelled.
Carol was still facing away, staring intensely at the sea. And just like the previous morning, just as the wet orange sun rose from the horizon, he heaved a great sigh of relief and turned around.
“Oh hey. Hi Max,” he said.
“Carol, I have an idea. I know what we’re going to do.”
“Good, good, Max. What’s the plan?”
CHAPTER XXXVII
Carol gathered everyone around and they found a good flat spot on the sand for Max to draw his plans. With a stick he recreated the sketch he’d worked on throughout the night. When he was done, it looked just like he’d envisioned and, though a bit crude, it was grand enough to convince anyone, he thought.
“What is that?” Judith asked. Ira was laying below her, chewing on her calf and drooling profusely.
“It’s a fort,” Max said.
“What’s a fort?” she asked. “And why is a fort better than, say, me eating your head?”
“It’s way better than that,” Max said. “It’ll be the ultimate fort of all time. It’ll be part castle, part mountain, and part ship …” He glanced at Carol and corrected himself. “Except it won’t sail, because it’s stationary. It’s definitely stationary.
“Yeah,” Max went on, “it’s gonna be as tall as twelve of you and six of me. It’ll be big enough to fit everyone inside. We’ll be able to sleep in a big pile like we did the first night.”
Carol and Douglas nodded respectfully.
Ira now had the whole of Judith’s lower leg in his mouth, but removed it long enough to say, “Hmm.”
“And it’ll make us feel good,” Max added, for Judith’s benefit. “All the time.”
“What will?” Judith said.
“The fort,” Max said.
“No it won’t,” she said. “Why would a fort for you make us happy? What about eating? That makes me happy.”
“Judith. Shh. Listen,” Douglas said.
“It’s not just my fort,” Max said. “We’ll build it together. It’ll be all of us on one team.”
Judith seemed almost impressed. “Oh. That kind of fort.”
“Yeah, and inside we’ll have everything we could ever want. We’ll have our own detective agency, and our own language. Alexander, do you want to be in charge of making up a new language?”
“No,” Alexander said.
“Okay, I’ll work on the language,” Max said, forging ahead. “And outside I want to have lots of ladders. And stained glass. And there’ll be a fake tree outside, but it’s not a tree, it’s a tunnel, and it’ll lead you inside, through a compartment …”
Max drew the tree outside the fort, but the Bull’s toe was on the beach, where the tree needed to be. Max drew half the tree and ran up against the Bull’s toe. He looked up to the Bull, but it was clear the Bull wasn’t going to move. So Max drew around the huge toe, such that the round head of the tree became a half-moon. The half-moon reminded Max of something. The fort needed tunnels. Lots of tunnels.
“Ira, will you be in charge of the tunnels?” Max asked. “They’re like holes, and you can make holes, right?”
“Yeah, I make holes,” he said.
“Okay, these tunnels need to be the longest holes known to man. And while you’re down there digging you can also make a basement, the biggest one of all time, where we’ll have a million games for when it’s raining.”
The beasts all nodded, listening intently, as if looking at a series of specific and reasonable instructions. Douglas made notations on his arm.
“We’ll have a huge turret for the owls,” Max continued. “We have to have lots of owls because they have good eyes and they don’t get scared. And we’ll train them and guide them with remote control. They’ll look out for invaders.”
“I know some owls,” Katherine said.
Everyone looked over to see that Katherine had been there for some time.
“Good, good,” Max said.
“Are these nice owls, or will they be aloof and judgmental?” Carol asked, giving Katherine a look askance.
“They’re not aloof and judgmental,” she answered, quiet but firm. “They’re good owls. They care. They just don’t know how to express it.”
Carol softened. “Okay. We’ll need some good owls.”
An electric current seemed to flow through the group, as everyone, from Max to Douglas to Ira and Judith, recognized that they had just witnessed a silent, unsigned-but-still-significant truce between Carol and Katherine.
“It’ll be us against everyone else,” Max continued, now with extra vigor. “No one that we don’t want in there can get in there.”
“And it’ll keep out the chatter, right Max?” Carol asked, almost rhetorically.
“Of course. How could chatter get in a place like this?” Max said, indicating the incredible size and strength of the fort as drawn with his stick in the sand.
Judith walked around the drawing, still skeptical.
“So what do you think?” Max asked her.
“I don’t really think anything like this ever works,” she said, “But if it did work …” she said, her voice rising to something like hopeful. “I don’t know,” she said, sitting down again. “I don’t know anything. But I do like the tree tunnel.”
“Best of all,” Max said looking to everyone, “we’ll all sleep together in a real pile. Like we did before.”
There was a general murmur of approval for this particular aspect of the proposal.
Now Max turned to Carol. “Will you be in charge of building it?”
Carol was taken aback. “Me? Oh. Huh. Well. I … I just …”
Douglas spoke up: “You should definitely be in charge, Carol. No one else could pull it off.”
“Yeah, yeah. I know,” Carol said, his pride lifting him. “You’re right …”
“Don’t you think Carol should build it, Katherine?” Max said.
“Yeah,” she said, surprising everyone. “No one else can do it.”
“Okay,” Carol said finally. “Then I’ll do it.”
CHAPTER XXXVIII
Construction began immediately and proceeded with remarkable speed. Carol measured the perimeter of the fort using Ira as the primary unit of measurement — he and Douglas carried him like a giant ruler — and soon the entire foundation had been built of rocks and mud.
The Bull was collecting boulders and trees, throwing them hundreds of yards from wherever he was to the fort site. Building materials were piling up.
By midday the first wall went up, straight and tall, easily thirty feet.
“Wow, this is almost fun, King,” Judith said, and then seemed confused about her own positive attitude. She went away muttering and counting on her fingers.
Douglas strutted by, alive with purpose. “Not bad, King,” he said to Max. “You and Carol together — you plan a smart fort.”
Even Alexander seemed to b
e enjoying himself. He was finding and packing the mud that held the walls together, and he took great pride in the messy work.
Max found Ira below. “Nice digging!” Max said, genuinely impressed. In just a few hours Ira had already dug a basement bigger than Max’s one at home, and the beginnings of the secret exit tunnels.
“Thanks, King. You know, I’ve never really thought about it, but basements are kind of like holes, except they’re covered. You really like it so far?”
“Yeah, it’s good,” Max said.
“It’s not too crumbly on the side or curvy, uh, on the bottom?”
“No, no. It’s just right.”
“Oh good. Good. I’m really glad,” Ira said, beginning to dig again. “I’m glad I’m digging for you, Max.”
The activity continued throughout the afternoon. Rocks were stacked, vines were woven, Douglas and Judith sank posts into the earth and stomped on them, pogo-style, to drive them deeper.
As the sun headed downward, the structure, though still skeletal, really was starting to look like Max’s drawing, for better and worse. It was a bit crooked here and there — and Carol had been strangely faithful to the half-moon entrance Max had made when drawing around the Bull’s foot — but in all it was an astonishing sight.
Max climbed a nearby ridge to get a better look at the construction. The fort was about eighty feet high already, and was climbing rapidly.
“What do you think, King?” It was Carol, who had come up from behind Max. He, too, was surveying the progress from afar.
“It’s amazing,” Max said. “I just can’t believe how big it is.”
“Is it too big?” Carol asked, suddenly concerned.
“No, no,” Max said, “it’s perfect. I was just surprised now that it’s real and everything. It’s exactly right. You’re doing a great job. The best.”
Carol beamed.
When night came the beasts were exhausted, happily so. They gathered in the main room of the fort-to-be, for a celebratory feast. Again they chose to eat something inedible to Max — it looked suspiciously like seal — and again he sat and watched them eat, his own stomach roaring with hunger.
“You know, I really think we’re onto something here,” Douglas said, sitting back after gorging himself. “I think this is the one that really might work.”
There was general agreement that Douglas had spoken the truth. And Max, hungry as he was, was very happy. His plan had worked, everyone was content, and they were sitting in a real circle, before a warm fire, in the fort he had designed himself, with a stick in the sand.
As he was recounting the day to himself, its many highlights, a sound began to weave itself into the night air. It sounded like a stringed instrument, a cello maybe, round and resonant and full. Max looked up, but no one was surprised or curious. No one else found it unusual.
Then he found Katherine, lying with her head on Judith’s thigh, her mouth open to the sky. The sound, some kind of singing, was coming from her. And soon others joined in. Judith was first, her sound sharper, coarser, but beautiful nonetheless — it seemed to circle and intersect with Katherine’s voice in perfect harmony. One by one the others sent their voices up to weave with the rest, each sound complementing and deepening the whole. It was the prettiest music Max had ever heard, and the fact that it could exist, that it could be made by these lumbering animals, seemed to render small and forgettable any problems that had ever existed among them.
CHAPTER XXXIX
“Max.”
A whisper.
“Max!”
A female voice.
Max had been asleep, using Carol’s arm for a pillow, when he opened his eyes to see Katherine, crouched beside him.
“We need to get the owls,” she whispered.
“Now?” Max asked.
“Yeah, this is the only time,” she said, glancing at Carol to make sure he hadn’t been woken. “Now!”
Max felt duty-bound to get the owls, essential for the protection of the kingdom. So he got up, careful not to wake Carol or anyone, and jogged after Katherine, who was already at the doorway to the fort. The sun was newly risen, and just as Max was realizing that this was the first morning Carol hadn’t felt the need to sit waiting for the sun’s arrival, Katherine lifted Max and threw him on her back.
“Grab my scruff,” she said.
Max did, and Katherine immediately leapt from the fort area, landing first in the many-colored meadow, then atop one of her striped treetop platforms, and then in a forest of pink translucent plants, each time touching the ground with the speed and delicacy of a hummingbird.
They saw parts of the island Max didn’t know existed — an area of high yellow grass populated by walking snakes, snakes who stood on hind legs of some kind, living in a clearing with a dozen geysers spouting bright orange plumes of sparks and mist. Finally they landed on the far side of the island, on a wide white beach with high dunes and corkscrew rock formations, cerulean blue, jutting everywhere from the sand.
“Do you like it?” Katherine asked.
Max nodded. He loved it.
“I come here when I want to be alone,” Katherine said. “I have to come here to remember who I am and who I’m not. See them?”
Katherine pointed up and Max saw two birds, red dots in the sky, flying in ellipses, then figure eights, crossing in perfect time. Max was hypnotized by the symmetry of their flight.
“Are those the owls?” he asked, hushed.
“Are those the owls?” Katherine repeated, mimicking him. “Of course they are. They’re not seals. Everyone ate the last ones for dinner last night.”
Before Max could think of a witty comeback, and just as the thought of real seals being eaten by his friends had sunk in, he saw one of the owls plummet. It had been hit by a rock, thrown by Katherine, and so a red blur fell, almost straight down, from the sky. Max watched in horror, frozen, not wanting to see the bird crash into the earth but unable to look away.
But just as it approached the ground he saw that Katherine was there, underneath, waiting nonchalantly for its arrival. She caught the owl like an outfielder would a pop fly. Without waiting a beat and while cradling the first owl in her arm, Katherine threw another rock into the air, it connected with a second owl, and this one followed the same course as the first — it fell precipitously. Katherine monitored its flightpath and caught it with great care.
With an owl under each arm, she jogged over to where Max had stood paralyzed, watching.
“Here they are!” she said. “Aren’t they great?”
Max wasn’t sure what to say. They were magnificent birds, with crimson plumage and great auburn wings, but they seemed disoriented and damaged from being knocked from the sky by Katherine’s rocks. Their pupils were spinning like tiny carousels. As if reading Max’s thoughts, she reassured him.
“They don’t feel it at all. Their bones and wings and everything are built to, uh, you know, make them not feel it when rocks hit them when I throw them,” she said. Now she grabbed them each by their talons and swung them upside-down. “See? There’s no damage at all. They love it, actually.”
Max wasn’t sure how this was being demonstrated by hanging them upside-down, but he was too confused to argue, and besides, what did he know about the health and welfare of sea owls?
“Let’s sit down and rest for a second,” Katherine said, plopping herself on a high dune.
Max wanted to get back to the fort site, to help with its construction and generally oversee things, but Katherine was in no hurry.
“Hey Max, do you like being carried?”
Max had no idea what this meant, but when he thought about it, being carried sounded like fun. It had been fun when he’d ridden on everyone’s shoulders during the parade. “Yeah,” he said.
“Yeah, me too! We’re so similar!” Katherine said, placing her hair behind her ear excitedly. “But this one time, I got a carrying monkey,” she said, making a gesture as if holding a baby. “I got him for Carol,
so he wouldn’t have to walk all the way to his studio. It’s so far, and I didn’t want him to be tired before he even gets there. And everyone likes to be carried, right?”
“Yeah,” Max said.
“Okay, right,” Katherine continued, “so I gave him a monkey and then when he carried Carol I laughed and said I was surprised the monkey was strong enough. But then Carol got offended because he thought I meant that he was fat or something. But I was joking! So he said, ‘Well, if I’m so fat I guess I should eat this monkey.’ And then you know what he did? He ate the carrying monkey! Can you believe that?”
Max couldn’t believe it.
“I don’t know,” she added, shaking her head. “He makes me think I can’t do anything right.”
They sat for a while, as Max tried to piece together what he’d just heard.
“Sorry to burden you with my issues,” she said, then brightened. “Hey, let’s make a wish.”
In one deft motion with her claw, she peeled a layer of dune away. Max knelt down next to her and watched. Just a few inches under the surface, she revealed lava flowing just as it did atop the hill, glowing red and oozing downhill, underground, very slowly. A few flames jumped out and onto the sand. Max backed up. Katherine laughed.
She grabbed a cerulean pebble and gave one to Max. “Think of something you want.”
Max closed his eyes tight, then nodded.
“Okay, now throw it in,” she said.
Max threw his pebble in, watching as it was quickly subsumed with a little spark.
Katherine closed her eyes, making a wish before throwing her own rock in. She covered the trench up again, replacing the sand and stamping it down with her foot.
“You know what I wished for?” she asked. “I wished that you’ll always be king. Is that what you wished for?”
Max nodded, but something was on his mind and he couldn’t force it away.
“But wait,” he asked. “He ate the carrying monkey?”
“Oh yeah,” Katherine said, nodding vigorously. “He’s eaten almost every gift I’ve given him.”