Part 6 (1/2)
Abalone falls asleep. I lie swinging, too awake and hunting for words.
”You'll never take me alive,” I murmur as I finally fall asleep.
In the evening, Abalone sleeps past the time the Tail Wolves and the Four rise and leave. Their activity awakens me and I lie in my hammock watching them dress and depart, a nighttime rainbow. My mind tries to find words to tell Abalone of Betwixt and Between's warning, wis.h.i.+ng for not the first time, that my friends could talk to the dragon.
When the commotion below has thinned, I slide down to the floor level and go to wash. I am soaping in one of the showers rigged in a curve of the Jungle tank when I hear soft cursing from down by my feet.
”d.a.m.n, d.a.m.n, d.a.m.nety, d.a.m.n!”
Tilting my face into the gentle fall of water, I rinse my eyes and look down. A small stuffed rabbit sits in a puddle half-hidden by the edge of the shower curtain. The water has soaked into the plush and one ear is limp and bedraggled.
Recognizing that it belongs to Peep, who has recently left begging to become a Tail Wolf, I scoop it up and wash off the soap sc.u.m before wringing out what water I can.
”Ouch!” the bunny yells as I wring one ear. ”Madre de Dios, that smarts!”
”And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain,” I chuckle, hanging it by the ears to drip while I continue rinsing myself free of soap.
”You heard me?” the bunny says incredulously.
I nod, reaching for a towel and wrapping my hair.
”How did you do that? No one ever heard me before except for Peep sometimes.” The soggy bunny appears to sag. ”And he hears less and less these days, now that these b.u.g.g.e.ring hedonists have him by the cojones cojones.”
I shrug and finish drying, but am pleased to have found another friend. The things that talk to me have never done so in the condescending fas.h.i.+on that even the best humans do. Betwixt and Between get bossy, but that's different.
Once I am covered, I take Peep's bunny and ascend to the Heights. Abalone is only starting to stir, so I sit on the hammock swing-style and wrap the bunny in the drier of my two towels. Betwixt and Between express lively interest in the soggy toy, especially when it refuses any breakfast.
”What's your name?” Betwixt asks.
”Conejito Moreno,” the bunny replies. ”Do you belong to this strange senorita senorita?”
”We watch out for her,” Between says. ”We took up with her first back in the Inst.i.tute. One of the other patients had us first and talked to us all the time. Like Sarah, this fellow could understand us, but he was wilder than her. He could talk to almost anything, even people. It ripped...”
Between halts, suddenly aware that I am listening, Betwixt hesitates, then takes up the story.
”It ripped his mind up sometimes. I think he might have gone crazy, but they moved Sarah to the Home and he gave us to her before she went, so we never saw him again.”
When the conversation drifts to more general things, I stop listening. I barely remember the Inst.i.tute; something like cotton is wrapped around the memories. Still, I know that it was different than the Home. Since I couldn't talk at all, I was pretty much left alone.
My few memories of the place are a jumble of corridors and things that sometimes spoke and erratic sessions with intense people whose words said less than did their actions, whose favorite pen or lucky coin might warn me to never ever speak with them or they would drive me as mad as they had Dylan.
Dylan. I had not even realized that I knew his name, but now I recalled him. Skinny, eyes full of fear. Ears full of voices that he could answer in a way I could not.
I bite on the knuckle of one balled fist, fighting a certain urge to scream. For in that moment, everything in the room is talking to me-Abalone's tappety-tap, the hammock beneath me, the walls, the painted tent from which Head Wolf is emerging, Edelweiss's pillow.
Clamping my hands over my ears, I scream, ”Much learning doth make thee mad!”
Abalone comes awake so suddenly that only habit keeps her from falling. Those of the Free People who have not gone hunting grow silent and then their eyes turn to me, the buzz of their voices rising.
Head Wolf grabs a ladder and swarms upward. He lands beside me, gesturing the eyes away, but it is Abalone's shoulder on which I weep, burying my eyes and aching senses in her sweet-smelling skin as if it will smother this sudden awareness.
As she pats me, muttering soothing nonsense, the voices fade until all I hear are hers and Head Wolf's. Concerned, Betwixt and Between whisper softly to each other and Conejito Moreno.
Grabbing a guide rope for stability in a way I have not since I graduated from the cubwalks, I finally sit up, wiping my eyes on my s.h.i.+rt. Neither Head Wolf nor Abalone ask me to explain what happened. Perhaps they know I could not find the words.
”She was stressed out when I came in this morning,” Abalone offers, searching for an explanation. ”Did something happen to her while I was gone?”
”b.u.mblebee made a move on her, but she handled it well.” Head Wolf considers, swinging back and forth, his feet anch.o.r.ed on a cable. ”You have been working her hard. Give her a rest-I'll absorb the fee.”
”Thanks.” Abalone's tone is threaded with emotions I am too drained to reach after. ”Beer and pizza.”
That dawn, we are heading back to the Jungle after spending the night with Professor Isabella when Peep intercepts us. He draws us away into the trash-filled alcove between two rusting tanks with a conspiratorial jerk of his head.
Something in me hurts as I look at the transformation the Tail Wolves have wrought in him. He has been poured into a skintight yellow tank top and a pair of matching pants that hug his little boy's a.s.s. His sun-bleached brown hair has been styled so that his bangs drop coquettishly over his left eye and his M&M eyes have been ringed with eyeliner. The pupils are wider than they should be, even in the dim light.
”Edelweiss said keep quiet and the Tail Wolves, they say so, too. The Four, they not so sure, but I make up my own mind.”
He smiles at us, an innocent boy's smile from which the streetwise cynicism vanishes for a moment. Then he draws us closer.
”I decide for me”-he pokes himself in the chest-”I hear you saved my conejito conejito for me, when I left it this nighttime.” for me, when I left it this nighttime.”
I nod, quivering at the memory of what Betwixt and Between's talk with Conejito Moreno had released. Abalone steadies me.
”She did,” she confirms. ”You thanking her?”
”Yes, I pay my dues.” Peep hesitates, then, ”The Home is hunting Sarah-they want to take her back.”
Inadvertently, I tense, but Abalone is still holding my hand.
”How do you know this, Peep?”
”The word's out.” He shrugs. ”The Home has room and wants back those that they let loose-like her. Some might be real happy, but I don't think she'd be-she's one of the Free People, like you an' me.”
He touches the running wolf that fastens his belt and Abalone raises a finger to her tattoo.
”Yes, Sarah's one of us,” she agrees. ”Thanks, Peep, I'll check this out.”
”We be of one blood ye and I,” he confirms, and with a brotherly grin for me, moves out into the street.
Abalone and I wait to let him get clear before following.
”The Tail Wolves never have liked that you didn't join them-but don't take that personally,” Abalone says. ”They're still your Pack. We'll sleep on this-no one'll find you here. In the evening, we'll go and see if Professor Isabella has heard more. We can also speak with Jerome or Balika and ask how hard the Home is looking or if this is just a gesture to make peace with the public for throwing nutcases out into the streets.”
We duck into the halogen-lit tangle of the Jungle, alive with the Pack returning from the night's hunting. Music dins from a dozen sources; lithe bodies with hair and skin in every color planned by G.o.d, and many never antic.i.p.ated, hang from the Web. Laughter and joking compete with the music.
Peep, Conejito Moreno snuggled under his arm, sucks his thumb in his hammock while b.u.mblebee rocks him. Deep in conversation with Midline of the Four, Head Wolf pauses from painting a denim jacket. Edelweiss and Chocolate arm wrestle near a camp stove.
An ordinary dawn before sleep stills the Free People. I climb to my place, loving the colorful chaos with my eyes as I cannot with words.
Abalone tucks me in with a tenderness she has rarely shown since her earliest days as my Baloo. She makes certain that Betwixt and Between are near at hand.