Still, you can read the earlier bits of this whole thing by choosing appropriately from the following selections--1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, and 44--and we'll all meet back here next week for Part 46!
Oh, and the final prompt? "Saying goodbye."
Now, I'd like to say that I woke up the next morning ready
to take on the world, ready to kick my fears down the stairs,
chuck my doubts out the window, give the butterflies in my
stomach the ol' heave-ho and face the future with firm chin and
steely eyes.
But, well, I'm trying to be honest in this whole thing,
aren't I? So instead, I've gotta admit I woke up bleary-eyed,
choking, and itchy, a fair portion of El Brujo's considerable
bulk spread over my face.
Have I mentioned she sheds in her sleep?
This led to some flailing, sneezing and gasping on my part
and some growling, sniffing and recriminations from El Brujo:
"Were you humans not so devoid of sensible fur, you'd no doubt
suffer far fewer allergic reactions."
Falling into my chair, I somehow got myself down the hall
to the bathroom, scraped away the layers of dander and dried cat
spit till I found my face, scrubbed it with the hottest water I
could stand, and rolled back into my bedroom only to see Serena
and Honoria perched on the windowsill, El Brujo seated like some
Egyptian statue on my pillow. "Well??" Honoria shrieked, waving
her wings so wildly, she would've knocked Serena right over
backwards if the squirrel hadn't ducked. "We going into
business or what??"
I spun to close the door--most animals are pretty quiet
when they speak, but, well, crows are crows. "Gonna choose
'what,' I think," I told Honoria. "As in 'what the heck are you
talking about?'"
El Brujo's tail twitched. "Apparently, the other partners
in our little endeavor have been brainstorming all night. And
they've decided--"
"I heard it all!" Honoria leaped onto the pillow beside El
Brujo and strutted to the highest point of my mounded blankets,
her black eyes gleaming. "Outside Deena's window last night!
How we're going into the dog training business!"
And those butterflies in my stomach I mentioned earlier on?
Each of 'em grew another couple pairs of wings at that point.
"We?" I managed to ask.
"Well, yeah!" She cocked her head. "Like El Brujo said,
we're partners, right? All working to get you and Deena
together and happy and all that! And Traveler thinks this is
the best idea he's ever heard!"
"It is!" Serena jumped to the top of my bedstead, her tail
jittering over her head. "I have said so from the beginning,
and to hear Mr. Traveler agree only confirms my opinion that he
is a very smart dog!"
I stared from her to El Brujo to Honoria and back again, my
mind a jumble. Because, well, I'm pretty sure I've mentioned a
couple times--OK, maybe more like a couple dozen times--how much
I didn't want to use my ability to understand and speak
to animals that way. But more than that, sitting there, looking
at a squirrel, a cat, and a crow all standing within a yard of
each other and not hissing or screaming or fighting, it--
It just wasn't natural! And it was all my fault!
Which, I'll admit, sounds kind of stupid to say, but again,
I'm trying to be honest, trying to lay out exactly--more or
less--what was going through my mind when all this stuff was
happening. And one of my major worries was something El Brujo
had said way back at the beginning, back six months ago when
Donna had first brought her into Chrysalis House and she'd
decided I was the most interesting case in the place.
See, in the four-and-a-half years before that, I don't
think I'd gone outside the House more than twice. But El Brujo
kept after me to show her around the neighborhood, and, well,
maybe you know what it's like when a cat wants you to do
something? A few hours of her commentary, each phrase more
pointed than the last, and I was rolling out the side door of
Chrysalis House with her stretched over my lap for the first
time.
But the more I went out, the more I started talking with
the birds and the possums and the cats and dogs and lizards and
all. And the more I talked to them, the more their behavior
started changing.
Because as I started talking to them and them to me, they
started talking to each other, too, started getting to know each
other, started forming friendships and alliances and turning the
six or eight blocks around Chrysalis House into something like
nowhere else in the world: a real actual neighborhood of
animals.
At first, I'd thought this was great, hearing the jazzy new
riffs the birds put into their songs or gophers debating the
ethics of stealing from human gardens. But then El Brujo had
said something in passing after I'd recited one of the poems
Traveler had put together in her honor. "Yes, yes," she'd said,
her ears flicking, "culture's all very well, of course, but how
does a dance routine help a crow stay alive? What if a squirrel
becomes so distracted in contemplating the concept of existence
that she gets snatched up by an owl or a hawk?"
It had gotten me thinking, and I didn't much like the place
those thoughts had taken me. It all came back to me, after all,
to me being the bridge between human thought and the animal
kingdom. Just by talking to them, I was getting them thinking,
and by thinking, they were changing, saying good-bye to the
natural world and becoming--
I had no idea what they were becoming. And I doubt any of
them knew either.
Sudden movement in my lap, Serena blinking up at me, her
front paws clasped before her chest. "Is he all right?" she was
asking. "Mr. Augie? Can...can you hear me?"
"He can," came El Brujo's voice, dry as the Santa Ana winds
that blew out of the mountains sometimes. "That's part of the
problem, actually."
A fast rattling sound from Honoria. "Well, wake him up!
We're s'pposed to meet Jefe and Traveler to go over what we do
next."
Serena scurried up the front of my pajamas, touched her
nose to mine. "Mr. Augie? Will you please wake up and be
alive?"
I puffed out a breath, her ears folding back. "I will," I
said. "'Cause whatever happens next, I'm pretty sure it won't
be boring."
El Brujo gave a feline snicker. "That, August, is truly
one thing you needn't worry about."
Continue on into the fourth act, if you dare, by utilizing the link attached to the number 46!
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