The two gathered themselves up and ran off.
Max squatted down again, determined to watch a bit longer, to try and parse what was happening and why.
One creature seemed to be leading the melee. He had a big round face, sharp horns like a viking’s and dark bags under his eyes. He was getting ready to run toward one of the nests when the rooster-looking creature approached him and put his hand — it wasn’t a wing; he seemed to have hands and claws — on his shoulder.
“Carol, can I speak to you for a second?”
Max was astounded. Had that sentence just been uttered? It was said with such casual sophistication that his conception of the creatures was exploded. They weren’t just grunting monsters: they spoke like people.
“Not now, Douglas,” the big one, Carol, said, and moved the rooster to one side. Then Carol got a running start and barreled into the side of one of the nests, knocking it to splinters.
Meanwhile, a giant bull-like creature was running into various walls at even greater speed. He seemed disconnected, though, not seeking out anyone’s approval or interacting in any meaningful way.
“Good job,” Max said to him.
The bull stared at Max, but said nothing. Then he turned away, moving like a ship, and lumbered off.
Max could now see that a smaller creature was upset about all the activity. This one resembled a goat, standing upright and with white-grey fur. He was the shortest and thinnest of the creatures by far, closer to Max’s size than the others. He was yelling “Stop!” and “Why are you doing this?” and in between whimpering in a way Max thought kind of unappealing. He was pointedly ignored by the rest of the beasts.
Max watched and listened until he had a sense of all of their names and how they fit into what he had begun to understand was some kind of family.
There was the rooster. His name was Douglas. He seemed logical and even-tempered, and didn’t appreciate the way that Carol was trying to amuse himself and the others.
Carol, the main instigator and heartiest of the destroyers, was the biggest, the strongest, the loudest. His fur bore horizontal stripes on his torso like some kind of sweater, and his claws were huge and cleaver-sharp.
There was the female one with the horn and the red mop of hair. Her name was Judith, and she had a sharp, pokey voice and a harsh cackle for a laugh.
Max was having trouble keeping them straight, so using his Kodiak-drawing skills, he started sketching in the dirt under him, attaching names to his crude renderings.
Ira was the bulb-nosed one, and he seemed to be always close to Judith. Max guessed they might even be a couple, though a strange one. He had a sad sort of aura and poor posture.
There was the goat-shaped one, Alexander, with a snarl for a face and pin-thin legs. He was just a little bigger than Max.
And then there was the bull. He was gigantic, maybe thirteen feet high, and seemed built entirely of muscle and stone. He hadn’t said a word yet.
That made six. Six of the beasts overall. Wait. No, seven. There was one who didn’t seem to be participating in the destruction. She had a melancholy face and was sitting off by herself, on a boulder overlooking the chaos. With long straw-brown hair and little ears poking through, she had sweet, gentle eyes and fangs that despite their size (about as big as Max’s hands) seemed kind of cute.
Now Carol, the biggest one, was tossing Alexander, the goat, high into the air. He would toss him twenty or thirty feet, then catch him and toss him higher. It looked dangerous and crazy and Max very much wanted to be the goat. He wanted to be thrown, he wanted to fly, he wanted to knock things down.
After the fourth toss, Carol threw Alexander straight into one of the nests. Alexander emerged from the wreckage laughing what seemed to be a fake laugh, as if he hadn’t enjoyed it at all but wanted to seem up for anything.
Max was more intrigued every moment. The beasts jumped from trees into the nests, they tossed each other into piles, they rolled boulders into the remains of the structures. It was just about the best mayhem Max had ever seen.
But soon there was a lull in the action. One by one the beasts seemed to have quit their destruction. They sat down, scratching themselves and nursing small wounds.
“I’m bored,” one of them said.
“Me too,” said another.
The leader, the one named Carol, wasn’t happy to let it die. “C’mon!” he roared. “Let’s finish this!”
There was no answer from the rest of them. The bulb-nosed one sat down. Carol jogged over to him — they really were agile things, these creatures.
“Ira,” he said to the bulb-nosed one, “we’re not done yet. The job isn’t complete.”
“But I’m so tired!” Ira said. “And uninspired.”
“Hey, don’t think you can rhyme your way out of this. Uninspired? How’s that possible?” Carol turned to address the rest of the creatures. “C’mon, isn’t this fun? Who’s gonna really go crazy with me?”
No one responded. Carol jumped from beast to beast, trying to create some excitement. When he approached Douglas, Douglas questioned the entire endeavor. “Carol, why are we doing this in the first place?” he asked.
A quick cloud came over Carol’s face. His teeth — a hundred of them, each as big as Max’s hand — were bared in something between a smile and a show of force.
“Douglas, I don’t have to tell you, do I? We all know why they need to go. They weren’t good enough. You heard Katherine. She said it was time—”
“That’s not what I meant,” someone said. It was the almost-cute beast on the rock. This must be Katherine, Max thought.
“We all heard what you said,” Carol growled. “You said it was all wrong, that everything we’d made was cruddy and needed to be torn down.”
Katherine sighed, exasperated. “I said nothing of the sort. You mangle everything I say.”
Carol decided to ignore her. “All I need to know now is if there’s anyone on this island who’s brave and creative and wild enough to help finish this job. Is there anyone up to it?”
No one responded.
“Anyone?”
CHAPTER XVIII
Something clicked in Max. His thoughts lined up, his plan was orderly and clear. He needed to be that someone.
Max dashed down the hill and through the legs of Douglas and Ira, his face a knot of determination. The creatures towered over him, and outweighed him by thousands of pounds.
“Whoa, what’s that?” Ira said, alarmed.
“Look at his little legs!” Judith squealed.
“What’s he doing?” Douglas asked.
Max intended to show them. He took a torch from the fire and threw it onto one of the remaining roofs in the settlement. With a roar and a whoosh, the roof went up in flames.
The beasts cheered.
Max took another torch and threw it. He was aiming for another roof but it went too far; it sailed up into a tree, where it caught fire. The whole tree exploded into triumphant flame, as if soaked in kerosene.
The creatures cheered louder.
Max was aghast at the flaming tree but couldn’t do anything to extinguish it, or the enthusiasm of the creatures. They’d taken Max’s cue and now were throwing torches onto everything — roofs, trees, themselves.
One creature, the rooster-looking one named Douglas, was suddenly on fire. He wailed until he jumped into a nearby stream, dousing himself and then giggling wildly.
Whoosh! Another tree went up in flames. And another. Soon Carol was climbing one of the trees, as the flames went higher. He shook the low boughs and sent sparks showering down on them all.
The heat was incredible, and it made Max feel stronger than he’d ever felt. Max danced below the flames, thrilled with the chaos.
“Burn them all!” Carol said. “Burn the trees!”
And soon there were dozens on fire. The whole forest was on fire.
For a moment Max panicked, worried that he had started a fire that would consume the whole island. But
after some examination, he could see that the forest was not endless. It ran alongside a stream on one side and abutted a treeless hill on the other. The fire would burn through this small forest and end, he hoped.
In the meantime, the scene was spectacular. The sky was orange. Fire rained down. Birds left their nests and rose from the flames like embers, twisting and leaping into the sky. And Max had started it all.
“Yes!” Carol yelled. “Yes, yes! Knock them all down!” he said, and then ran headlong into one of the remaining nests. It popped open like a jack-in-the-box. Carol emerged grinning, and found Max grinning back at him.
Together they picked up a long log and ran together at another nest, laying waste to it. Max had never destroyed so much so well and so quickly. He followed Carol to one of the last nests and he and Carol both lifted large sticks over their heads, about to crush it with simultaneous blows.
“Hey new guy!” Judith snapped. “Don’t touch that one.”
Max hesitated.
“What?” Carol took exception to this command and shook his head at Max, dismissing the warning. “No, keep going. Knock it down.”
Judith turned to Max with a look of great severity: “Don’t you dare.”
Max stood between the two of them, unsure who to obey, who to defy.
“Don’t lay a finger on it,” she warned.
With a laugh, Carol kicked his immense foot into the structure, reducing it to splinters. “There,” he said. “Not a finger.”
Max had to laugh. That was pretty good. He watched as Carol, his comrade-in-arms, ran over to the other side of the clearing, looking for anything left standing.
Max looked too. But as far as he could see, there was nothing left to destroy. The trees, the few that still stood, were charred and their branches had been stripped or brought down. Max stood in the middle of a desolate grey plain. The nests were no more. He started to walk toward Carol, to congratulate him on the completeness of their wreckage, when Douglas appeared in front of Max, blocking his path.
“What are you doing here?” he asked.
“What? I’m just helping,” Max said.
“Then why are you burning and smashing our houses?”
“These are your houses?” This was news to Max. He’d assumed they were destroying some enemy encampment. “Why are you smashing them?”
“I’m not, actually. You’re not very observant for someone swinging that big stick around.”
Max dropped the stick.
“Wait,” Alexander said, standing in the wreckage, alone and teary-eyed, like a child lost at the mall. “Where will we sleep tonight?”
Suddenly there seemed to be a realization spreading throughout the beasts.
“I was trying to tell you all that,” Douglas said.
“Well don’t blame me,” Judith said.
“Why not?” Douglas said, “you were wrecking as much as anyone else. You wrecked everything but your own nest.”
“Sure, but I didn’t enjoy it,” she said. “And anyway, it wasn’t my fault.”
Douglas was shaking his head. “Then whose fault is it?”
Judith looked around for a moment and settled, rather happily, on Max.
“The new guy!” she said. “He’s the one who got everyone riled up. And the fire was his thing, too.”
Douglas paused thoughtfully, then nodded, acknowledging the truth in this. Judith, feeling empowered, pointed more forcefully.
“And you know what I say you do with a problem? Eat it!” she said, and started toward Max.
“Yeah,” Alexander said, “he’s the problem!”
Now Judith and Alexander were making their way to Max. Ira hadn’t been paying attention.
“What are you guys doing?” he asked.
“Oh, we were just gonna eat that,” Judith said, pointing to Max, as if picking out a lobster at a restaurant.
“Okay,” Ira said, shrugging and beginning to drool.
Max was very quickly in the shadow of the three of them, and soon Douglas and the bull had joined the throng, and it was very dark and warm with beast-sweat. Max backed up until he found himself against a mess of sticks and mud where a home used to be. There was no escape. The beasts seemed to notice this, too, and were grinning. Max looked from one to the other, as the four of them grew closer.
“He looks tasty,” Ira said.
“Does he?” Judith said, “I don’t know. I’m thinking gamey.”
“Gamey?” Douglas mused. “Really? I say succulent.”
“Succulent?” Judith said. “I don’t know. I’ll give you tasty, but not succulent.”
Alexander chimed in: “All I know is I’m getting hungrier just looking at him.”
“He’s an ugly bugger, though, isn’t he?” Judith said.
“Close your eyes then. I’ll feed him to you,” Ira said.
“Oh, that’s so romantic!” she said.
“Hold on!” a voice yelled from across the camp. It was Carol. Max felt some relief, and yet the creatures were still closing in on Max. It was too late to stop them. Max could feel their hot wet breath on his face, he could see their enormous teeth, each incisor as big as his foot. They could kill him long before Carol would have time to intervene.
Again the big one sent his voice from afar. “Wait!”
Ira licked his lips. The bull snorted, his hands reaching.
Max knew Carol couldn’t save him in time. He had to save himself — somehow. He arched his back and with a voice far louder and more commanding than he ever expected, he roared, “Be still!”
CHAPTER XIX
The beasts stopped. They stopped moving, stopped talking, stopping raising their arms to claw Max to death, stopped salivating profusely. Max couldn’t believe it. He didn’t know what to do next.
“Why?” said Judith. “Why should we stop?”
This was a tricky question, Max knew. If he were about to bite into, say, a strawberry, and it told him to stop, he too would want a good explanation.
“Because … Uh … Because …” he mumbled. The beasts stared, waiting, blowing roughly through their nostrils. Max knew he had to come up with something immediately, and to his surprise, he did. “Because,” he said, “I heard about this one time that they weren’t still and they …”
“Who?” said Judith. “Who wasn’t still?”
Now Carol arrived, standing behind the others. He had been impressed with Max before, but now he seemed in awe of this small creature’s presence and power.
“Um … The hammers,” Max explained, making it up as he went along, “they were huge ones and they didn’t know how to be still. They were crazy. They were always shaking and running around and they never stopped to see what was right in front of them. So this one time the hammers were storming down the mountainside and they couldn’t even see that someone was coming up to help them. And you know what happened?”
The beasts, enthralled, shook their heads.
“They ran right over him and killed him,” Max said.
There were a few gasps, but there were also a few sounds that said “Well, what else would they do?”
“And the thing is,” Max added, “he liked them. He was there to help.”
“Who was he?” asked Douglas.
“Who was who?” Max said.
“The guy coming up the hill,” Douglas said.
“He was …” And again Max fumbled in the velvet darkness of his mind and found, impossibly, a gem. “He was their king,” Max answered.
Max had never told a more bizarre story, but the creatures were just floored by it.
Carol stepped forward. “Do you like us?”
This was a tough question. Max wasn’t sure that he liked any of them, given they were, moments earlier, about to devour his flesh and brains. But in the interest of self-preservation, and because he had been liking them a lot when they were all breaking things and lighting trees on fire, he said, “Yeah. I like you.”
Ira cleared his throat and said, wi
th a hope-filled catch in his voice, “Are you our king?”
Max had rarely had to do so much bluffing in his life. “Sure. Yeah,” he said. “I think so.”
A ripple of excitement spread through the beasts.
“Wow, he’s the king,” Ira said, now seeming very happy.
“Yeah,” Douglas said. “Looks like he is.”
“Why is he the king?” Alexander said, full of sarcasm. “He’s not a king. If he can be king I could be king.”
Thankfully, as usual, all the other creatures ignored the goat.
“He’s very small,” noted Judith.
“Maybe that’s why he’ll be good,” suggested Ira. “That way he can fit in small places.”
Douglas stepped forward, as if he’d just thought of a stumper of a question that might decide it all: “Were you king where you came from?”
Max was getting good at the fibbing, so this one was easy. “Yeah, I was. King Max. For twenty years,” he said.
A quick happy murmur spread through the creatures.
“Are you going to make this a better place?” Ira asked.
“Sure,” Max said.
“Because it’s screwed up, let me tell you,” Judith blurted.
“Quiet, Judith,” Carol said.
“No, really, I could tell you stories …” she continued.
“Judith, stop,” Carol snapped.
But she wasn’t finished: “All I’m saying is that if we’re gonna have a king, he might as well solve all our problems. It’s the least he can do, after knocking over all our houses.”
“Judith, of course he’s here to fix everything,” Douglas said. “Why else would a king be a king and a king be here?” He turned to Max. “Right, King?”
“Uh, sure,” Max said.
Carol smiled. “Well, that settles it then. He’s our king!”
They all moved in to hug Max.
“Sorry we were gonna eat you,” Douglas said.
“We didn’t know you were king,” Ira said.
“If we knew you were the king, we almost definitely wouldn’t have tried to eat you,” Judith added, then laughed in a sudden, mirthless trill. She lowered her voice to a confessional tone. “We just got caught up in the moment.”