The Wild Things

CHAPTER XXIII

Max was still half-asleep, his eyes closed, when he realized he was bouncing. There was a gentle wind on his face, and the air was cool and crisp. He wasn’t in the pile anymore, he figured — that smell had been strong, the air thick with sweaty fur. For a moment he feared he was back on the rolling sea, but when he opened his eyes he saw Carol’s huge yellowed horns on either side of him, and realized he was on Carol’s shoulders, being carried high above the earth.

“I didn’t want to wake you up,” Carol said. “But I’m glad you’re up now. I want to show you something.”

“Okay,” Max said, starting to take everything in. On one side, the sea below was gold and glittering and endless, the sky a loud cobalt blue. All the colors here, on this island, from his perch atop Carol’s shoulders, seemed triply bright and clear, vibrating.

Max reached atop his head. “Where’s my crown?”

“You don’t need the crown today,” Carol explained. “I put it under the fire for you.”

“Oh. Okay, thanks,” Max said. Only after a moment did he realize he didn’t know why his crown was under the fire. But it seemed to make sense to Carol, and he didn’t want to question the custom.

They walked away from the cliff and through the forest, the undergrowth strange and new — ferns of orange, moss of yellow, vines of marbled white.

Max tried to take it all in, but he was exhausted. He couldn’t have slept more than a few hours. And he was dirty. He smelled more of his own bodily secretions than ever before, and now his own smells had been amplified by the far more pungent odors of the beasts. He was not a lover of frequent cleanings of himself, but that morning he really had a hankering for a long hot shower.

“So how’d you get here?” Carol asked.

“Me? I sailed,” Max said.

Carol whistled matter-of-factly. “Wow. You must be an extraordinary sailor.”

“Yeah. But I don’t like sailing much,” Max said, suddenly remembering the boredom of it all, the ceaseless blinding glitter of the sun against the water.

“Yeah, me neither,” Carol said excitedly. “Sailing is so boring! And there’s nothing I hate more than being bored. If boredom was standing there in front of me right now” — he suddenly got louder — “I don’t know if I could restrain myself. I’d probably just eat him!”

They both laughed at this. Max knew exactly what Carol was talking about. Max had wanted to eat or kill so many boring things. Too many to mention.

Along the path, Max noticed a row of trees with holes bored in their trunks. The holes were tidy and round, about beast-height. Those must be Ira’s, he thought.

“You were talking to Katherine last night,” Carol said.

“The girl?” Max said. “Yeah, she’s nice.”

“Yeah, she is. She’s sweet. She’s … she’s uh …” Carol did a fake sort of chuckle. “I bet she told you some things about me.”

“No,” he said, trying to remember. “No, she didn’t say anything.”

“She didn’t? No? Nothing?” Carol let out a big laugh, entertained by this. “That’s fascinating.”

Max and Carol continued down a winding path.

“Do you guys have parents?” Max asked.

“What do you mean?” Carol said.

“Like a mother and a father?”

Carol gave Max a puzzled look. “Of course we do. Everyone does. I just don’t talk to mine because they’re nuts.”

They passed through some of the most bizarre landscapes Max had ever seen or dreamt. Hills that pulsated like gelatin, rivers that changed direction in midstream, small trees whose trunks, almost translucent, swallowed the sunlight and spun it into something pink and glassine.

“See, Max,” Carol explained, as they left a forest and entered an area of grey-blue sand and tundra, “everything you can see is your kingdom. Everything on this island, pretty much. The trees with the holes in them are Ira’s, of course, and some of the beach is kind of Katherine’s, but otherwise it’s all yours. And then there are parts of the forest where animals will definitely kill you, even though you’re the king. They’re just willful, just don’t listen. But otherwise you’re definitely the supreme ruler, and you can do whatever you want with stuff. And if anyone tells you otherwise, or tries to eat your limbs or face, just come to me and we’ll crush them with rocks or something.”

Max agreed.

They entered a wide flat area, rocky and desolate. Max knew this kind of landscape from Mr. Wisner’s class. He climbed down from Carol’s shoulders to inspect his surroundings.

“See that rock?” Max said, pointing to a shard of curved obsidian. “It used to be lava. And someday it’ll be sand.”

Carol was greatly impressed. “And what will it be after that?”

“I don’t know …” Max said, stalling. “Maybe dust?”

“Dust, huh?” Carol said. “I thought you were going to say fire.”

They walked for a while, hearing only the wind.

“Did you know the sun is going to die?” Max asked.

Max blurted it out, unplanned. But now that the question was out, he was happy it was. He figured that Carol might very well have an answer.

Carol stopped and looked down at Max and then up at the sun. “What? That sun?”

Max nodded.

“Die? How could it die?” Carol asked, truly flummoxed.

“I don’t know. It’ll go dark and maybe become a black hole.”

“A black what? What are you talking about? Who told you something like that?”

“My teacher. Mr. Wisner.”

“Mister Wis-who? That doesn’t make sense.” Carol looked up again at the sun, standing still and shining bright. “Nothing like that’s gonna happen. You’re the king! And look at me. We’re big!” He held his hands out expansively, broadening his enormous chest. “How can big guys like us worry about a tiny little thing like the sun?”

Max smiled weakly.

“You want me to eat it, King?” Carol said. “I’ll jump up and eat that sucker before it can be dead or whatever.” He jumped up, grabbing for the sun with his hairy paw.

Max laughed. “No, no. Don’t,” he said.

“You sure? It looks juicy.”

“No, that’s okay.”

Carol put his hand on Max’s head. “Okay. But you let me know. C’mon, we’re almost there.”

They walked through the lava, and then through a maze of tall, sharp silver stones shaped like teeth. There were thousands of them, all around.

“Just wait till we get there,” Carol said, getting excited. “You’re gonna love it. If anyone would understand it, it would be you. I see the way you watch things. You have good eyes.”

Just then, an enormous animal — at least sixty feet tall — lumbered slowly by, far off in the distance, over a desert ridge. It looked a lot like a dog.

“What’s that?” Max asked, expecting to hear about a mythical creature with a mythical name.

Carol squinted and put his hand over his eyes to see better. “Oh, that’s a dog,” he said. “I don’t talk to that guy anymore.”

Max and Carol climbed up a steep hillside of oversized silver stones. Carol’s huge legs made climbing the giant rocks much easier than for Max. While Carol jumped from one to the next like he was walking up stairs, Max struggled to keep up, having to find toeholds in each boulder.

When he was just about too exhausted to continue, Max heard Carol’s voice from high above:

“We’re here. Or I am at least.”

Max looked up to see Carol standing in the entrance to a magnificent and dizzyingly intricate wooden structure built into the side of the mountain. The design was utterly its own, curvy like the homes they demolished on the first night, but it was far more complex and grand, a multi-tiered palace somehow anchored perpendicularly to the side of the cliff. Finally Max reached the flat stone on which Carol stood. Carol was grinning like mad.

“Ready?” Carol asked.

Max was heaving from the climb, but he couldn’t wait. He nodded.

Carol looked around to make sure no one had followed them, and then led Max inside.