The Wild Things

CHAPTER XL

That night, as the fort neared completion, the beasts ate together again, this time feasting on the huge flat feet of some animal Max hadn’t even seen intact and now wanted no part of devouring. Afterward they all collapsed in exhaustion and gluttony, arranged in an interlocking chain of limbs and torsos, circling the dimming fire.

They all fell quickly to sleep, but Max was awake, thinking of monkeys being eaten in one quick bite. Since his morning with Katherine he had thought of little else. Though the afternoon had been full of triumph — the walls were all assembled, the staircases had been built, the basement finished and covered, the tunnels dug in every direction for escape from any and all calamity — Max was stricken with the idea that he could be just as easily eaten as a carrying monkey, and at any time.

Would Carol do such a thing? He had seen flashes of his anger, had been surprised when he was willing to actually kill his enemies on the field of fake-battle. It was one thing to fear the devouring of the rest of the beasts, for Max always had Carol to protect him. But if Carol himself decided to eat him, his head and arms and legs, what would stop him?

Max had been among creatures so much bigger than him for so long that he had to fear, in some small way, for his life more or less at all times. It was just a matter of proportion, really. It wasn’t that they were always meaning to harm him — though they had threatened to eat him many times — but they had also, mistakenly or carelessly, almost maimed or murdered him a half-dozen other times. He had nearly been knocked off a cliff, had been pelted with hairless buffalo, and had almost been crushed by rolling beast-boulders.

He could spend a lot of time, now or in the future, trying to figure out what motivated them all — why they did certain things he wished they didn’t do, and didn’t do other things he wished they would. The creatures were often doing confusing things when he stumbled upon them: he would be running through the forest, looking for something to do, when he would see Judith’s back, and perhaps the side of Ira. And then he would see Ira’s hand inside Judith’s ear, and Judith’s left foot tapping quickly, and the both of them humming intensely. “Oh, hi King,” they would say, and Ira would immediately remove his hand from Judith’s ear and the humming and tapping would cease. He found Douglas more than once sitting alone near the chalky cliffs, moaning and rocking and once even punching himself in the head.

And as Max was contemplating all this, a scraping sound came from Carol’s direction. Max looked over to find him in the middle of his own restless dream. He clawed the ground with his talons, creating deep grooves in the dirt. Max watched as Carol whimpered, growled, and bared his teeth menacingly, all while asleep. Suddenly, Carol, in the middle of some nightmare, lunged toward Max, his claws coming within inches of Max’s face. Max gasped and recoiled. He backed up, crab-style, until he was nestled into Katherine, who murmured something welcoming. As Max burrowed deeper into Katherine, Carol continued to grab and groan and Max continued to watch, wide-eyed, from the shadows.