Wild Things Transpire
How unfortunate that love cannot be taught or trained,
like a seal or dog.
Instead it is a wolf on the prowl with a mind of its own.
And it makes its Own way,
undeterred by the damage done
Down by the stream where the curves of the fleshy embankment wrap around and around coiled like the fibrous body of a snake, the water is so clear you can see down into the guts of the Earth. And time seems almost malleable, a clearly defined substance that could be cupped in the hands, pressed, issued forth or back. This is the place people commonly fall in. Here there are men that live like animals.
In the first light of day they are beautiful. The sun rises slowly kissing along Mother Earth's neck, girding her from her heavy eyed slumber. And all of their ferociousness is bathed in a subtle golden light. Soft and creamy like juice in a sweetly streaming fountain, gushing from a heat ripened fruit. Sometimes the village women catch them. The wildest ones, crawling along naked as the day they arrived in the world, their faces close to the ground, noses brown with dewy soil.
The women know they should be afraid. But they are not. They are tantalized. There is something in those eyes, those slivers of black, darker than a starless night sky that calls to them. They will follow the wild men all the way to the water's edge. And days later their bodies turn up, lying out against the bank as if they had waded in for a swim, come back, and then collapsed simply too tired to drag themselves any farther inland. Petticoats twisted about their broad, milky thighs, fish scales glinting like diamonds in their loosely tangled hair. Their eyes bright and shining, lips parted in a farewell smile. It is the smiles that terrify the village men the most. The frozen, unceasing smiles.
If the village men had their way they would banish the filthy animals to the furthest reaches of the universe. Or at least kick them out of Konoha. They cannot stand the thought of a man that speaks sky. They dream of gunmetal eyes and bloody paw prints. Their kitchens, and pubs, and waters stink of blood. That ruddy, raw, redolence that can never be mistaken for the smell of anything else.
At night they fear the sound of wolves howling outside their windows. They burrow down into their beds, securing the covers up above their noses, closing their eyes and pulling their wives closer. It's common knowledge that wolves are not indigenous to Konoha. Everyone knows that great beasts of such size are more likely to be spotted farther North where there is less fear and greater prey. Still the men find themselves saying their prayers, repeating them over and over and over again, even if they do not believe in anything hovering above them, watching with a committed eye. Still, the hairs on the backs of their necks stand erect.
Hinata feels courage pulsing like a small silver fish in the stream flowing in the cache of her collarbone. Had she been someone else she'd do more than just sit in wait. She'd take action. She'd tell Consequence to come and take hold of her, ferociously with its righteous arms out around her throat. But many say she is like a flower. Or a butterfly spooned in its magnificent shell, content to lie cocooned, having never seen the vibrancy of the outside world.
She had pulled the tattered strips of courage she had been saving up out of her lockbox, and saying her prayers she'd tucked them into her pocket, to pay the cost of this pseudo-adventure at the river. Of courage she had nothing left, which her heart seemed to know. It throbbed as if it were broken in two in her chest.
The moment she climbed down from her bedroom window that morning, early enough for the frost to still be drying in the shape of the wind's wet lips on the panes, she began to second guess her decision. She left her compound, cutting through brush and ducking under the arms of the spindly apple trees, and despite the throbbing in her chest she didn't allow herself to look back until she had reached the boundary line, marked with twigs and signs carved in the careful hand of someone disciplined amongst the circle of Hyuga. And by then it was far too late to turn back, she would surely have been caught. And Hinata knows that whatever is out there in the dark, twisting woods could not be nearly as scary as what lies behind her. The wrath of kendo sticks and milky eyes that pierced right through you.
She climbed down the big grassy hill to the river. But Kiba is not here where he said he'd be. And looking off into the woods where the shadows seem to grow longer and taller, stretching up into the sky like knobby black bones, she cannot be certain he will appear at all. Hinata wishes she was not bound by the spell of the men that live like animals. If only he hadn't kissed her. But she knows what it is like now to test the waters for that first clandestine quench of a thirst you could not have known existed. She knows the feeling of having towade deeper into the rushing waves, hoping for a second taste, even if you are already out too far, even if you can feel the clear, illuminated water pulling you down. Even if you know there is no way back.
Kiba cannot remember the exact moment he stopped dreaming of his father. It was not just during the darkness, it was always. When he was still, motionless enough to feel the belly of the Earth crying for nourishment, as the Inuzuka elders had taught him to do, he could slip away inside himself, dreaming while wide awake. He could dream with his eyes wide open.
It was in these sweet, glorified moments of clarity that he could make out his father clearly. The broad, still iron rods of his back, the nest of reddish brown hair capping his head…
Reasons for his father's absence were left unuttered. Were baked into meat casseroles and kicked into closets. His mother, strong enough to exhibit both the male and female presence needed for a child never gave the topic more than a throaty grunt. His sister, older, must have remembered more than he the man who fed the other half of their genetic make-up. But all Kiba seemed to be able to wean from her concerning this was an old, weathered smile, dog eared at the corners that never quite seemed to spread beyond her mouth.
No one in the compound talked much about Kiba's father, except to say almost every time they saw him that Kiba had his eyes. When he was younger this filled him with an exuberance he almost couldn't contain. It was almost as if his heart were a balloon in his chest that had come un-tethered from something and so continued to float up and up, higher and higher. Soon, he'd be able to fly.
Kiba would stand in the bathroom for hours on tiptoe. The mirror was high above his head, but grabbing onto the sink he could position himself just so to catch sight of his reflection. He would gaze deeply into his eyes wondering about the man they truly belonged to, wondering who he was. Since the eyes were only on loan to him he was careful with them. He didn't ever look directly into the sun, not even mistakenly. He did not engage in the petty staring contests of other children his age for fear that the heated gaze of another would defile the sacred gift. These were his father's eyes and perhaps somewhere the old man was waiting for the perfect opportunity to come and take them back. Every time he thought about this the balloon in his chest swelled a little more.
It was until he was a little older, just past the precipice of blissful youth that Kiba learned eyes like his were the inheritance of all the men in the Inuzuka clan. Then he wanted to gouge them out with his hands, with his fury. When he looked in the mirror it was only himself he was seeing, no face beyond his. There was no balloon in his chest. Probably no heart either. If either one had ever been then perhaps someone had stabbed them over and over again with a needle or something, now all he could feel were the leftover layers of deflated tissues, the piles of shredded rubber.
It was not enough to think of his father as just "gone". That did not explain the emptiness in Kiba's head when he lay down in bed at night and couldn't find sleep. Nor did it explain the one-sidedness to his supposed symmetry. The missing part he carried around with him like a prosthetic arm when at clan meetings looking over campfires at the faces of boys his own age, he always noticed glowing next to them, their father's faces in the flickering light. When after a particularly grueling mission there was no one to slap him on the back and ask how many ninja he killed, there was only his mother licking his wounds, brushing his hair back from his sweaty face. So, he grew to think of him as "dead". And then he grew to like it.
On the day Kiba's father returns to the village, Kiba has scheduled to meet Hinata at the river's edge, the dip in the embankment where the water is as clear as glass. It is to be the clearest day of the year, the Inuzuka elders have tracked the galloping of the sun with their sundial bodies. And Kiba can think of nothing more magical than to hold Hinata close under all that sunlight, halos overflowing and dripping down from between the clouds onto their shared lips.
The first touch was delicate, a heated moment of change, of chance, sparked by an inner curiosity. One that blazed so brightly it might have been mistaken for desire. It was deeper than that though, and they both understood that it was purer than that. At first. At first it was just their hands. Just their palms pressed together, his long fingers towering over hers like the spires of a sprawling city watching greatly from above the people living in it. And then other body parts got involved. But then he made the mistake of pulling her too close, of kissing her too warmly. And then there was a strange light in her eyes when she looked at him. And when she did he felt as if he were being pulled in different magnetic directions, strong forces ripping him apart, all vacuuming him up into her stare.
It was a look that promised she would see the stars differently now. She would make wishes on the falling ones, even though previously they had both agreed that falling stars were quite sad. Like angels hurtling from grace at lightning speed. It was a look that whispered that she might follow him wherever. Over the edge of the Earth, their hands clutched to soften the landing. Under the corners of the ocean, legs and arms and lips entwined to preserve oxygen. Into the jungles of his body. Searching for light under the canopies.
The terrible thing is that he cannot seem to shake her. It would be one thing to feel her stare and know he will never get wrapped her silky trap. But she has become the tumor he carries around in his heart. And the bed he wants to lie down in. And she is Hyuga. But he cannot control himself. But he cannot help but to hope.
Sadly, though all thoughts of love are banished from Kiba's mind on that crystal morning. Because when he comes down from his room and wades into the kitchen, forcing the sleep from his eyes with his browned fists, Akamaru swaying uncertain on his big sleepy legs behind him, he finds there is a man sitting at the table. A man he does not know.
And the kitchen is too quiet. He listens for the sound of his mother's incessant barking. But she is standing at the sink with her back turned to him, doing nothing with her hands, her dark bangs falling into his eyes. His sister is at the table with the stranger, a plate of eggs under her chin. She doesn't eat. She doesn't move. The only one who seems to still be alive, a moving breathing human is the stranger. He stares at Kiba, blinking slowly as if trying to make out all the tiny details in a difficult picture. Kiba looks around for his mother and sister's dogs but they are nowhere to be found. Behind him Akamaru widens his stance, the hackles along his thick back rising as if he had been shocked by lightning. A low growl rumbles edgily in his throat.
"Call him down." says Kiba's mother from underneath her hair. A simple hand motion, a slight click of the tongue. But Kiba cannot bring himself to move. The stranger has not taken his eyes from the boy since he came into the kitchen. His head is jutted forward on his neck just a bit in a way that would remind you of an old turtle. He has purple patches on his cheeks and Inuzuka eyes. His grin is dark and lopsided, he reaches for the cup of coffee before him and takes a long, thirsty gulp. His hair is loose around his ears and thinning, brown with copper strands swimming through it. Kiba feels frozen in the icy throes of those hungry, wolfish eyes.
Kiba's mother turns on the tap water and lets it run. "Kiba, come meet your father."
It's like he's been slapped. Hard enough for his nose to break, hard enough for his vision to blur. He stumbles back stepping on Akamaru's paw. The stranger's smile has widened now like wrought iron gate swinging open to invite him in.
"Well are you just going to stand there like an idiot?"
He cannot escape that vulnerable neck. And the eyes are too familiar. And the lips he knows well, too. It's the purple marks on the stranger's cheeks. Purple when all of the others in the room, Kiba, his mother, his sister wear red. Kiba does not know all of what this is about. But he knows there are probably other Inuzuka with purple marks on their cheeks too. Probably another woman and another set of children. Neither his mother nor his sister will meet his gaze.
Kiba takes off at breakneck speed. He runs past them all and out of the kitchen. He runs for the horizon. He runs towards a place in time where there is no space to think about breathing, nothing wasted on what makes you hurt inside. He doesn't stop running. Even though his breath catches in his throat, even though the sky turns red above him, the sun sinking down into the Earth. Even though he can hear Akamaru losing him to the distance, whimpering after his master's shadow.
Kiba has never before participated in the clan hunt. But he can feel the weight of those purple marks like tender grape sized bruises on his flesh. But he can hear the hunger inside his heart rattling around in his chest as he runs. And he knows that at sundown, when the first fingers of darkness uncurl across the woods he will follow the clan killers into the trees. He will take up his cross and claim his manhood. He will be out for blood.
Hinata sits idle, her legs folded under her. Her eyes are on the sky. The clouds have parted and bright bands of light appear, dancing in golden threads through the milky depths of the thick black canvas. Black and gold. Black and gold. Black and gold. The sound of drums approaching breaks up the silence. It sounds like thunder. It sounds like guns shooting on and on and into the distance.
Rat-a-tat-tat! Rat-a-tat-tat!
The deer in the woods lift their heads.
The bodies are streaked with war paint. They move like serpents. Like turtles. Like tigers. Like beams of lightning touching the earth, dark, charr marks left in grass in their wake.
The deer open their mouths. Their cries resound like those of a baby who's mother has refused her milk. The drums beat and beat.
Rat-a-tat-tat! Rat-a-tat-tat!
Hinata can hardly discern that the moving bodies are people. She can hardly tell the men from the animals. She can see the power in their arms pulsing up through veins that are like tubes of taut leather, when they rip apart the deer spines.
Hinata tries to scream, but the sound has dissolved inside her. Has trickled out of her body and is pooling beneath her feet, running in steady tributaries to mingle with the blood of the deer. She moves her feet, desperate to back away.
One of them turns and finds her amongst all the reeds, beside the water. He looks directly at her with a ferocity in his eyes that reminds her of a wolf. Spattered blood has turned the war paint on his body a mellow, rusty color. His hair is matted to his forehead with sweat. His gaze is unwavering. If not for his hands, for their long fingers like spiraling towers she would not have recognized him. Kiba. Hinata never knew before that she could run as fast as she does then.
The Inuzuka are hunting Nara deer. Hiyashi Hyuga knows this better than anyone, better than the Nara themselves even. He knows because he hates the wildness of them more than the village men do. And so he watches them as if his life depends on it. Which in a way it does.
He can always tell when one of them is coming from miles away. The scent of them lingers in the air like an animal's. He wrinkles his nose at their dirt brushed chins, at their hair tangled with bows of twigs and stems as if they all go rooting in the dirt for herbs like pigs.
He and a few others have been sharpening their teeth and asking around. Hiyashi knows how dangerous the Inuzuka River is. The Hyuga have lost many a foolish woman to the cleft in the shore. But Hiyashi never thought his own daughter would be so ignorant. While he has always suspected that Hanabi is the more level-headed of his children, he would never allow himself to imagine the depth of Hinata's foolishness. The height of her dreaming. Now, however he is certain that she is the type that would be lured to her demise like a blind woman following another.
But Hiyashi is glad he followed her that morning, when lying in his bed he was stirred awake by the sight of a pale white foot dangling questioningly from above and outside his window. He is glad he saw the deer carcasses. And the blood on the wolf boy. And the wild look in his eyes. Momentarily he admits to himself that he was afraid, but Hiyashi and his men know how to turn fear into power. How to make it into an advocate for opportunity. And it's just as well. Hiyashi and his men are planning something that will make the rivers of that wild land run with blood that does not belong to their women.
They have gunpowder and righteousness. They have numbers and secrets. And blueprints of destruction. They are ready for war.
If Hinata could have anything she wanted, any wish of hers granted, she would elect to be magically transformed into someone else. Another girl who was prettier and smarter, who was not pulled by puppet strings around her heart. She tells herself that she will let go of everything she felt. And perhaps if a heart could blister like a heel, or a finger, or a palm she would have been telling herself the truth. But heart cannot blister and then rise from the hardened skin newer, fresher, prettier. The only way a heart can get stronger is to break. Then you pick all of the pieces up and re-align them, making sure to fasten them much sturdier than before at the joints so as not to fall prey to the same faulty manufacturing again. The only thing about this is that few people truly survive a sincerely broken heart. And Hinata does not think she could.
So even though she told herself she wouldn't, she climbs down the hill and returns to the spot near the river. The place she might have fallen in. As if they had read each other's minds Kiba is there. Perhaps waiting on her, perhaps not. He sits with his knees shoved up to his chest and Summer fattened centipedes crawl in between his bare toes, looking for warmth and shelter and happiness, looking to manifest their inalienable rights. One of Kiba's hands threads hypnotically through Akamaru's fur, and the big dog lies docilely and unmoving at his master's feet. Hinata goes and sits beside him on the river bank, but he doesn't lift his head. His eyes stare straight ahead into the future. And she can tell he hasn't put heavy consideration into cleaning himself. Yesterday's blood has crusted in patches under the awnings of his eyebrows, in a wide happy curve on his cheek. They wade waist deep in the frothing silence.
The skies are not as clear today. There are no golden ribbons twining through the clouds. But the water gently kissing their toes is like a mirror, the reflections so sharp Hinata can see herself in Kiba's eyes. She reaches out to rub Akamaru's broad head and their hands brush together briefly. She is threatened by the feel of his skin then, just as she was that first day they touched hands.
"Now do you see? Now do you see what I am? May'be your father was right all along."
Hinata knows good and well what her father thinks of the Inuzuka Clan. It has never mattered to her much before, but now she can feel Kiba's eyes on her. His stare so hot she fears it might burn the skin from her cheek revealing the useless teeth and cowardly tongue beyond all the dense flesh. And she realizes it has mattered all along to him. But Kiba keeps talking.
"You know you're lucky. To have a father that actually cares what happens to you. How do you think that makes me feel?"
She kisses him then. Because there are no answers she can give him outside of their cool breath mingling, their hearts beating wildly as one. She forgets the taste of blood on his lips. And soon she wonders which pair of lips are hers anyway, she loses the distinctions of her body in the boundaries of his.
They are still kissing when the first shot calls out over the hill. Akamaru barks urgently. And even though she registers that it is her father among the men standing there on the grassy hilltop like a sergeant; she cannot quite discern her eyes from Kiba's. She cannot think to look. She cannot move. But she can smell the gun powder in the air. And later she will wonder how it all came down to this. And later they will say they were shooting at wolves. That some lone grey beast had wondered into the woods to attack their families and they were scared for their lives, and they were only trying to kill what did not belong there in the first place.
But Kiba's body stiffens, knocking her backwards into the deep clear water. The surface of the mirror breaking, shattering into a thousand tiny droplets that cut through her shoulder blades like fragments of knives. And even then as she is pulled under, she cannot help but to wonder which heart the bullets pierced.