The Wild Things

CHAPTER XLII

“Psst. Come here,” came a voice. Max turned around to see Judith.

Max stepped over to Judith, who had just emerged from a hole in the ground — the fake tree tunnel. Ira was next to her, chewing quietly on her arm.

“Secret doors, huh?” she said, her head tilted, her eyes squinted. “You know, I’ve been watching you. And just yesterday I thought you had really saved us, but now I see what’s happening. And it’s really interesting to see you work.”

Judith stared at Max, not paying the least bit of attention to Ira, who was gnawing with increasing intensity on her arm. Max didn’t know what she was talking about.

“You’re really manipulative, you know that?” she said. “Do you know what that word means?”

“Yeah,” Max said, though he didn’t.

“No you don’t,” she said. “It means the ability to find the exact opportune moment, and the exact way, to get someone to do what you want them to do.”

“I didn’t do that,” Max snapped.

“But look how you made Carol feel. Just because you’re scared he might eat you, you need some kind of secret chamber? That’s nuts. You know, if you care about him and he wants to eat you, he should be able to eat you. Get your priorities straight, King.” There was a sound of teeth on ligament, like the snapping of chewing gum. She turned to Ira. “Ow. Stop.”

She turned back to Max.

“Did that offend you, Max? I’m sorry if you were offended by that. You know, people don’t always like me because I say what’s on my mind. I tell the truth, but I do it for the good of everyone. And the truth is, if this little secret door maneuver of yours does what I think it’ll do, someone else might see fit to eat you. I might have to eat you myself.”

“No, no, no!” a voice was yelling from the fort.

It was Carol. He was on his knees, his ear to the ground. “Wait wait wait. What’s that? That’s not right.”

Douglas was close by. “What is it?”

“It’s bad,” Carol whispered.

“Is it chatter?” Douglas asked.

“So much chatter,” Carol said.

Judith and Ira rushed over.

“And what about the whispering?” Judith asked.

“Yup. There’s a lot of whispering,” Carol said, lifting his head and looking to all of them gravely. “I’m afraid it’s reached us here, even inside these high walls.”

Alexander was hyperventilating. “What does that mean? We won’t be safe here?”

“I’m not sure,” Carol said. “But I do know that something’s wrong with the design of this fort.” He turned to look at Max. “Something’s very wrong. I knew there shouldn’t be secret doors. Arrrgh!”

Carol stormed around the walls. He glared at the secret doors with unchecked contempt.

Now Max was on his knees, listening for whatever it was that Carol heard. Max couldn’t hear anything.

“There can’t be chatter here,” Max said. “Not inside the fort. It’s too big and powerful to worry about things like that.”

Carol gave him a look registering disappointment in a dozen varieties. He began to mark walls and beams with his claws. “We’ll have to start over,” he said.

“But the fort’s not done yet,” Max said. “Shouldn’t we wait—”

Carol cut him off. “Max. Your voice is one I don’t want to hear right now. We need to remake it. We need to tear down all these parts and start over. We’ll need a moat. And higher walls. And an outer wall. I don’t know what I was thinking. It could never have made us safe, the way it was designed.”

A black mood passed over everyone.

Night came and Max was afraid. The beasts were acting strangely. Alexander was crying so hard he was hiccuping. Judith was off in a corner, eating tiny cats by the handful, while Ira gnawed on her leg.

“Max, come to me,” Katherine said.

She was in a quiet and dark corner of the fort. Max went to her, letting her close her arms around him. But just as Max was beginning to feel safe and was drifting off to sleep, he looked out and saw that Carol was staring intently at the two of them together. Carol’s eyes narrowed and he returned to clawing at the walls of the fort, marking it for destruction.