The Wild Things

CHAPTER XXIV

The room was high-ceilinged and wide and full of peach-colored light. It was a studio of some kind, messy and full of projects — kite-like contraptions hanging from above, hexagonal boxes all over the floor, everything carved with dizzying detail, patterns upon patterns. There were a hundred skylights above, all of them oval and allowing the brilliant sun, filtered by some kind of flesh-colored glass, into the room.

Max walked around slowly, taking everything in. There were contraptions everywhere, facsimiles of animals carved or assembled from wood and stone and gems. On the walls were endless drawings, paintings, diagrams, plans.

On the main worktable, an entire city was laid out, almost twenty feet long and six feet tall — buildings shaped like mountains and hills in an organized, almost grid-like format. The city’s architecture was similar to that of the village they destroyed — long straight lines, slowly curving, twisting like reluctant corkscrews. The details were immaculate and painstaking. It looked like it would have taken ten years to make. It was a model world — controllable, predictable, tidy.

“Did you make this?” Max asked, his voice an awed whisper.

“Yeah,” Carol said, looking at it anew through Max’s eyes.

“It’s really good,” Max said. “I wish I could shrink myself down and get inside it.”

Carol’s mouth opened wide into a goofy grin. “Well then, you should!” He guided Max under the table, where he had carved open a hole in the platform. Max popped up through the hole and now was in the middle of the model world.

“I’ve only shown this one other time, and she didn’t really get it,” Carol said, seeming pained even recalling the memory. Realizing his darkening mood, Carol changed the subject. “Oh! Put your eyes right here.”

Carol’s huge paws moved Max’s head so his eyes were at the street level of the model city. As Max was focused on the minutiae of the buildings, he heard the sound of water. Carol had tilted a jug, and soon water slowly flowed through the streets.

“I always thought it would be better if we had rivers to get around from place to place,” Carol said.

Max watched from ground level. The streets were now paved with water, and a tiny boat sailed through an intersection, in and out of view.

Now Max could see that the tiny boat held tiny, crudely carved facsimiles of Carol and Katherine. The rowboat soon merged with a boulevard carrying many other canoes, all holding creatures. Soon the canoe carrying Carol and Katherine took a turn — at a fork, it sailed left while the rest went right — and in a moment it ran into a pole, knocking the two models out of the boat. They promptly sank.

Max looked up at Carol, astounded. Carol didn’t notice — he was carefully working on a new structure for the model city. With great delicacy he carved into a thin sheet of wood with his pinkie claw.

It amazed Max how Carol, roped with muscle and easily seven hundred pounds, could work with such finesse. Max’s gaze drifted back to the city. He looked underneath the table. There was nothing there, just a few drips from where the streets leaked.

“What would happen under the city, with all this water?” Max asked.

“I don’t know,” Carol said, his curiosity piqued.

Max examined the underside more thoroughly.

“You could have a whole underwater world. It would be upside down and everything could hang from the ceiling like stalactites. There’d be fish under the streets. And the subway trains would have to be submarines.”

“Wow,” Carol said, pondering it all. “That’s a good point. Yeah. I like your brain, Max.”

Max smiled. It was the first time anyone had ever said that to him. He loved that Carol liked his brain.

Carol looked over the city, seeing it through Max’s eyes. “I love making buildings. This is the first one I ever made. I try to make buildings that feel good to be in. Like this. C’mere.”

Max took a step toward him. Carol suddenly enveloped Max in a bear hug.

“What’s that feel like?” Carol asked.

“Ummm, hairy? Warm. Good.”

“Yeah. I want to build a whole world like that. Have you ever been in a place that should feel good, but it feels out of control, like you’re really small? Like where all the people are made out of wind, like you don’t know what they’re going to do next?”

Max nodded vigorously.

“When?” Carol asked.

“Well,” Max said, surprised to be put on the spot. “This one time I went to my friend’s house, and everyone in his family had these huge mouths but no ears. And where they were supposed to have ears they just had more mouths so they couldn’t listen.”

Carol was rapt.

“And when you talked,” Max continued, “they couldn’t even hear you. Even the mom’s boyfriend had three mouths. And all they would do all the time is eat and talk.”

Carol shivered theatrically. “Ugh. Who wants to be in a house like that? We need a place where people don’t have three mouths, where the sun can’t die on you and a mountain can’t just fall on you. I want to make a place where only the things you want to happen happen.”

After a few hours in the studio, Max and Carol felt they should make their way back to the others.

“Your royal subjects await,” Carol said.

Max nodded solemnly. “It is so,” he said.

But on the way down the rocky hillside, Max had an idea, and it seemed an idea that needed to be enacted for the good of the island.

He wanted Carol to lift one of the enormous rocks on the hillside — one of the steps that led to the studio — and throw it off the cliff and into the ocean below.

Carol smiled. “No, really?” he asked.

“Yes,” Max said seriously. “That’s an order.”

“Good enough for me,” Carol said, and squatted before the boulder. With a loud grunt he lifted the rock, his face a mess of contortion and veins. He shuffled a quick few steps over to the edge of the cliff, and then heaved it down. They both watched as it tumbled and ricocheted violently, bouncing off the face of the cliff and disappearing into the sea below. Along the way, it brought about a hundred other rocks with it.

Max turned to Carol, grinning. “Wow, that was a good idea! Let’s do more!”

Max pointed to another boulder, and Carol duly lifted it and tossed it down the side of the cliff. Again it brought a good chunk of the cliffside with it.

“All right, who wants it next?” Max asked, looking at the remaining boulders. He looked at three of them, pointing to each one, eyeing each with great suspicion.

He pointed at one: “You?” The boulder said nothing.

“You?” This next boulder, too, chose to remain silent.

The third boulder, Max thought, was giving him a smartalecky look. “Carol, get ’im,” he commanded.

So Carol lifted this boulder and threw it down the cliff. As it bounced toward the sea, a mini-avalanche roared into the ocean and landed with a long loud hiss.

With all the boulders that had previously led to Carol’s studio now in the sea below, it would make getting there difficult in the future, but Max and Carol weren’t thinking of that right now. Max wasn’t, at least. He was thinking of just how much fear they’d struck in the hearts of the rocks on the hillside, and probably all the rocks on the island.

Max laughed till he snorted. “Man oh man, these rocks are really scared of us!”

Carol smiled. “That they are, King. And they should be. Well done.”