CHAPTER XX
Max was swept up and lifted high in the air and finally set down on the shoulders of the Bull. The Bull — that seemed to be his name — followed Carol into a cave under an enormous tree. Inside the cave, there were two torches illuminating a golden oval of a room.
The Bull put Max down and rooted around in a small pile of rubble on the ground. He soon retrieved a scepter, copper-colored and bejeweled, and gave it to Max. Max inspected it reverently. It was heavy, but not too heavy. It was perfect, with a hand-carved handle and a crystal orb at the top.
The Bull continued to dig through the rubble. Curious, Max peered around the Bull and saw that it wasn’t a pile of sticks and rocks but a pile of what looked to be bones. They were yellowed and broken, the remains of what seemed like a dozen different creatures. Twisted and spotted skulls and ribs in sizes and shapes Max had never seen in any book or museum.
“Aha!” Carol bellowed. “There it is.”
Max looked up to see that the Bull had pulled a crown from the heap. It was golden, rough-hewn, and the Bull turned to place the crown on Max’s head. Max pulled away.
“Wait,” he said, pointing to the pile of bones. “Are those … other kings?”
The Bull glanced quickly to Carol with a look of mild concern.
“No, no!” Carol said, chuckling. “Those were there before we got here. We’ve never even seen them before.”
Max was unconvinced.
“What are those, anyway?” Carol asked the Bull.
The Bull shrugged elaborately.
Then Carol and the Bull did a quick jig atop the bones, reducing them to dust.
“See?” Carol said, grinning, his eyes nervous and alight. “Nothing to worry about. Just all this dust.” He turned to the Bull. “Make sure you dust in here next time!”
Sensing Max’s apprehension, Carol stepped forward and spoke with great solemnity. “I promise you have nothing to worry about, Max. You’re the king. And nothing bad can happen to the king. Especially a good king. I can already tell you’ll be a truly great king.”
Max looked into Carol’s eyes, each of them as big as a volleyball. They were the warmest brown and green, and seemed sincere.
“But what do I have to do?” Max asked.
“Do? Anything you want to do,” Carol said.
“And what do you have to do?” Max asked.
“Anything you want us to do,” Carol said. He answered so quickly that Max was convinced.
“Then okay,” Max said.
Max lowered his head to receive his crown. Carol gently placed it on Max’s head. It was heavy, made of something like iron, and the metal was cool on his forehead. But the crown fit, and Max smiled. Carol stood back and looked at him, nodding as if everything had finally fallen into place.
The Bull lifted Max and placed him on his shoulder, and as they made their way out of the tunnel, there were deafening cheers from the rest of the beasts. The Bull paraded Max around the forest, as everyone whooped and danced in a very ugly — drool and mucus spraying left and right — but celebratory kind of way. After a few minutes, the Bull placed Max atop a grassy knoll, and the beasts gathered around, looking up to him expectantly. Max realized he was supposed to say something, so he said the only thing he could think of:
“Let the wild rumpus begin!”
CHAPTER XXI
The beasts cheered. Then they waited for Max to tell them what to do. They knew how to rumpus, but they wanted to make sure they did it to the pleasing of their king.
Max shimmied down the Bull’s torso and began to spin around like a dervish. “Do what I do!” he demanded.
And they did. The beasts were terrible dervishes, clumsy and slow at spinning, but this made it all more entertaining for Max. He watched and laughed as they spun themselves into a mass of dizzy fur and feet, each of them crumpling to the ground.
For the next five or six hours, Max thought of every fun thing he could possibly think of, and he made sure all the beasts did these things with him.
He sat on Ira’s back and made him act like a horse (though Ira had never heard of a horse). He lined them all up like dominoes and ordered them to knock each other over. He made them assemble themselves into a giant pyramid, and he climbed on the top and deliberately caused the pyramid to fall. The beasts were extraordinary diggers, so Max made them dig dozens of holes, huge holes, for no reason at all. Then it was back to knocking down trees — the ten or twelve that remained. It was Max’s task to think of as many ways as possible to knock them down, and to do it as loudly as possible.
Next Max thought it would be good to run up to the closest hill and roll down like giant furry earth balls. So he ran and the beasts followed him up the hill. At the top, he demonstrated how it should be done. He somersaulted down the grassy hill and when he was finished, he saw that Douglas and Alexander had already followed his lead and were rolling down after him. But their speed was about triple his, and they were headed directly for him.
He jumped out of the way just in time, and made a mental note to remind them to be more careful next time they rolled down the hill with him nearby. But just as he was dusting himself off, Carol and Judith barreled down the hill even faster than their predecessors, again directly toward Max. Again he had to jump out of the way, but this time his foot was clipped by the Judith-ball, and he yowled in pain.
“What’s the matter?” she asked, unspooling herself at the bottom of the hill.
“You rolled over my foot!” he said.
Judith looked at him blankly. “And?”
“You shouldn’t do that!” Max said.
Judith gave him a look like he’d just said by far the most insane thing. Max had the momentary thought that he should bash her over the head with a stick or rock. He looked around for something that would do the job. But before he could, Carol stepped in.
“Judith, did you roll over the king’s foot?” Carol asked.
“I don’t know what I did,” she replied dryly. “I have no memory of any of it. Wait, where am I?”
“You know very well what you did,” Carol said, stepping closer to her. “And if you do that again, I swear I’ll eat your head.”
Max, flattered that Carol would come to his defense but startled by the threat, patted Carol on the arm. “That’s okay, Carol. But thanks.”
Judith was aghast. “‘Thanks?’ You say ‘thanks’ for threatening to eat my head? That’s what you’re thanking him for? What kind of king thanks someone for threatening to eat one of his subject’s heads?”
While Max tried to concoct a response, Ira was trying to figure out the king’s point of view.
“So we should try not to run over your foot when we turn ourselves into balls, but then if we do run over you, we get our heads eaten?”
“Yes,” Carol said, relieved that someone had finally figured out the obvious.
“No!” Max wailed. “No. There won’t be any running over feet, and no eating of heads. No eating any part of each other. That’s just the main rule, okay?”
“But what if we want to?” Douglas asked.
“What do you mean?” Max asked.
“I mean, we shouldn’t eat heads, and that makes sense. But what if we find ourselves in a position where we really want to eat someone’s head or maybe arm?”
Again there was a wide murmur of approval over this worthy question.
Max was having a hard time controlling his exasperation. He took a number of deep breaths and explained, as slowly and carefully as he could, the rules under which he wanted his subjects to live. There would be no eating of each other under any circumstances — even if they wanted to — and no running over each other in any way at all, and no …
Alexander interrupted. “But what if someone’s head falls off? That sometimes happens. Can we eat it then?” he asked, eliciting a chorus of approving murmurs.
“No eating at all!” Max roared. “No eating any part of each other under any circumstances. Never. Not e
ven if a head pops off.”
Max wanted to stop talking and start howling, so he ran away, leading everyone to the edge of the island.
“C’mon!” he said, and they all followed.
He did somersaults along the way, and they did them, too. He skipped, and they skipped, too — or tried to. He made machine-gun sounds, and they did their best. And soon they were at what must have been the highest point on the island, a cliff overlooking the ocean, hundreds of feet over the water. When they had all joined him at the edge of the cliff, Max knew there was nothing more appropriate to do than howl.
So Max howled. The beasts howled, too, louder and more convincingly than Max, but he didn’t mind. Nothing could improve upon the moment or spoil it. Max howled and howled and felt more like himself — part wind and part wolf — than he ever had before.
Nothing could spoil the moment, not even when Alexander joined the group, pushing everyone from behind and nearly killing Max. When Alexander bumped the group, the bumping continued until someone bumped hard into Max, and suddenly there was no ground beneath him. He looked down for a split second and saw only the white mess of the sea meeting the chalky rocks below. But just when Max realized that he was in the air, that he was about to fall four hundred feet into the ocean, he was pulled back and put on solid earth. It had been Carol. He was caught just in time and quickly put back on solid ground. Max was too shocked, too disbelieving, to even register how close he’d just come to disappearing from the world of the living. Instead, he planted his feet wide and howled at the sea that had been robbed of his flesh.
The rest of the beasts joined in. They howled loudly, crazily. They howled until they were hoarse. When they were unable to howl any more, Max heard a giggling coming from the side of the group.
He turned to see Katherine, the stringy-haired one, smiling at him in a smirky, knowing sort of way.
“What?” he asked.
“Nothing,” she said.
Her voice was that of a scruffy young woman. It was low and gravelly, but appealing, even musical.
Max looked at her, not understanding. He was intimidated by her smirk. “What?”
“Nothing. You’re having fun,” she said.
“What does that mean?” Max asked.
“Nothing,” she said.
“Nothing?” Max asked.
“It means what it means,” she said. “It’s nice.”
Just then Max heard a loud thump coming from the forest. He looked through the trees, what was left of them, to find Carol jumping high in the air, like a kangaroo but far more powerful. Each jump sent Carol forty feet in the air, and he landed each time with a thunderous thump.
Katherine seemed to know that Max wanted to follow Carol. “You go ahead,” she said. “I’ll see you later.”
“Okay,” Max said, and chased into the forest after Carol, trying to get his attention. “Hey!” he yelled. “Hey!”
Carol slowed down and finally stopped. Max caught up. Carol grinned, breathing heavily through his nostrils.
“You’re a good jumper,” Max said.
“Yeah, I know!” Carol said. “I’m better than you think. I’m even better than I think I am!”
Max had noticed a great straight branch above them, and had an idea. “Can you jump up into that tree and catch yourself with your teeth?”
Carol made a face. “Of course I can,” he said.
He jumped up, about twenty feet high, with his great mouth open, and when he got to the branch overhead, he timed it wrong. Instead of gripping the branch with his teeth, he hit it with his nose, and then fell to the ground awkwardly. The earth shook.
“Ow,” he said.
Max was about to apologize and call off the experiment, but Carol was determined to do what Max had asked. He jumped again, growling on the way up, and this time caught the branch with his teeth. He hung from the branch, and looked down at Max proudly.
“Like this?” he asked. With the tree in his mouth, it sounded like “Ike gish?”
“Yeah, that’s good,” Max said, truly impressed.
Neither Max nor Carol was sure what to do next. Carol didn’t want to jump down too soon, and Max was entertained by looking up at Carol, hanging there by his mouth.
“How’s the weather up there?” Max asked.
“Fine,” Carol tried to say.
Max laughed. “How much do you weigh?”
Carol tried to say “I don’t know” but it came out in a barky muffle. Max laughed harder.
“How’s it taste, that tree? Like pâté?” he said.
Carol had no idea what pâté was, but the ridiculous-sounding word caused him to laugh, and when he laughed, his teeth lost their grip, and he came plummeting down again. “Gow!” he yelled.
“Sorry,” Max said. He felt awful about the idea, and about causing Carol to fall.
“No, no!” Carol said, doing a quick dance of pain, spinning around, holding his mouth and stomping his foot. “Not your fault. It was fun. It’s just that something’s caught in my tooth or something.”
Douglas and Ira appeared. Douglas was dragging Ira by his feet, like a caveman with a bride, but backwards. Ira seemed exceedingly relaxed while being dragged, as if he were reclining on a hammock.
“Hey you guys,” Carol said, standing in front of them. “Look at this. Do I have a piece of bark in here?”
Carol approached Douglas and Ira and opened his giant wet mouth, revealing two hundred or so huge, extremely sharp teeth in three concentric rows. Douglas leaned slightly away from Carol.
“I don’t see anything,” he said. “Clean as a whistle.”
Carol looked down to Ira — who was still laying on the ground — searching for an answer.
“Nope. Clean as a whistle,” Ira said, though there was no possible way Ira could see anything from his angle. He looked up to Max and extended his hand. “We haven’t formally met. I’m Ira. I put the holes in the trees. Maybe you saw them? Or maybe not, I don’t know. Anyway, it’s what I do. It doesn’t really help anyone, like you do. It’s not crucial to the future of the world, like you are. And you probably already met Douglas. He’s the one who gets the work done around here. Indispensible. Builder. Maker. Steadier of the unsteady—”
“Hey. Focus here,” Carol said, pointing to his mouth again. “You gotta get closer.”
“Heh heh. Looks good,” Ira said. “All clear. Clean as a …”
“Yep, as a whistle,” Douglas finished. The two of them seemed to be in a terrible hurry to get away from Carol’s open mouth. “Come on, Ira, we have to go over there and … put some rocks in a pile.”
Douglas led Ira away. Watching them leave, Carol’s face hardened. Max saw all of this, concerned for Carol and the way Douglas and Ira didn’t seem to trust Carol not to eat them. As Max was trying to figure out why Carol’s good friends wouldn’t want to get close to Carol’s mouth, Carol turned to Max.
“Hey King, do I have something stuck in my teeth?” he said. He squatted down toward Max and opened his mouth.
Max peered into Carol’s mouth. “I don’t see anything.”
Carol opened his mouth wider. “Maybe you need to look farther in?”
Max, before he could think better of it, put his knee on Carol’s gum and ventured inside Carol’s mouth.
“No, no. Even farther,” Carol said.
Max went farther still, putting his knee onto the ridge of Carol’s mouth. It was wet inside, and the smell was astounding. “Whoo. You’ve got bad breath!”
“Watch it,” Carol said, laughing. “I could take your head off in one chomp.”
And now Max could see the problem. There was a piece of bark, as big as a baseball mitt, stuck between two of Carol’s back teeth. “It’s a big piece,” Max noted as he gently dislodged it. He emerged from Carol’s mouth and presented the bark like a trophy fish.
Carol looked at it, amazed at its size. “Oh wow, thanks,” he said. He held it in his hand for a while, staring at it. “Thanks, King.
Really. I can’t tell you how much that means to me,” he said, and looked up to Max as if seeing him for the first time.
They were interrupted by Judith and the Bull and Alexander, who were running toward them, each of them blindfolded and carrying a dozen or so tiny cats. They were giggling like lunatics, and ran past Max and Carol and on down the hill, toward the remains of the forest. Max knew he had to follow, had to get himself a blindfold and some tiny cats, so follow he did.
CHAPTER XXII
There was a good deal more rumpusing done over the course of the night, all the way until the night paled into dawn and dawn tipped toward morning.
Max was becoming tired, at last, when he saw Katherine, the one who had given him the knowing smirk. She was alone, observing the mayhem from afar. Max watched her as she took everything in, processing it, a bit dismissively.
Then Max did the obvious thing: he ran up a tilted tree-trunk until he was above her, and then jumped onto her back, growling like a wolf.
Surprised, she stumbled back and fell to the ground, giggling. “I’m eating you for breakfast!” he yelled, as he pretended her stomach was oatmeal and his thumb was a spoon.
“Okay, okay,” she sighed. “Just don’t use any spices. I’m good enough as is.”
This made Max laugh, and it caused in Katherine a full-throated laugh, and the laughing aroused the attention of the rest of the beasts.
“Get over there and be social,” Judith said, pushing Alexander directly onto Max and Katherine.
Now Max was on top of Katherine, and Alexander was on top of both of them, and because there seemed to be a pile in progress, Carol came running over and jumped atop them all. Seeing where this was going, Max ducked into the pile and found a safe pocket and covered his head. Judith soon jumped aboard, and Ira followed, and finally Douglas and the Bull. Each landing shook the earth.
When they had all arrived, Max found himself in a hollow at the bottom of the pile. It was dark and furry there, but he could imagine the look of the scrum from outside — probably twelve thousand pounds of hairy flesh, piled thirty feet high.