Exploring the Madlands
(June 11-12, 2017)
11: "Instinct is a great matter." -Shakespeare, 1 Henry IV, 2:4.
Dipper could sense how tense Wendy was, how she practically quivered as they waited out the dusk. "It'll be OK," he said. They still sat back to back, fur to fur, and did not have their telepathy to help them, but still—he knew her nerves were strung way too tight, so much unlike her normal laid-back self that she was almost a different girl.
"It's not that," she muttered. "I just feel so bad for what I did."
"It's my fault. I killed the bobcat."
"Not that, Dipper. Tasting your blood! I mean—yuck! But I couldn't help myself!"
"It wasn't such a big deal. It's stopped bleeding now, I'm pretty sure. And it doesn't hurt all that much. Tripper—"
"Go ahead, say it. He does the same thing, right?"
"Well, yeah. Mabel still gets plenty of skinned knees, and he'll lick—but he's trying to help. I kind of understand why you did that. It doesn't matter to me."
"That's not all. I got us into this mess, thinking we'd explore a place you'd never heard of."
"You didn't know about it," he pointed out. "I'd never hold that against you."
"Yeah, but also I was the one who went up that dumb slippery hill and skidded into the crater. And then you went in for my ring—"
"I'd have dived for it even if we'd known what it would do," Dipper said.
For a few minutes Wendy was silent. Then she said softly, "Dipper, whatever happens tonight—whether we change back or not—you gotta have your Grunkle Ford come and dig up that bobcat. Have it tested."
"For what?"
"Rabies!" She drew in a deep, long, tremulous breath. "I mean—I don't think it's likely. If I remember right from my wildlife biology class, in the last five years, I think no dogs, one cat, two foxes, and two coyotes tested positive for rabies in the whole state. They get it mostly from eating diseased bats. About one out of twelve bats in Oregon is a carrier. But when they get it, it kills them fast. Carnivores that eat the dead bats can get it—but bobcats aren't scavengers. No bobcats on record as being rabid. But just to be safe—"
"It didn't bite me," Dipper pointed out. "These scratches came from its claws, not its teeth."
"Gashes, not scratches," Wendy corrected. "Ask Dr. P. to check it out anyway. And whatever, have the doc at the clinic treat those wounds, even if he doesn't have to give you stitches. Promise me."
"I promise," he said. After a moment, he added, "Either him or the vet, whichever is appropriate."
She didn't respond to his feeble effort at joking. "You still got my ring?"
"It's still in the zip-up pocket of my pants. I checked when we, you know, got undressed."
"Bring it into the circle with us?"
"Sure," he said. He got up and fetched the pants. She didn't look around at him, out of consideration for his feelings, he figured. "I'm gonna leave the ring in this pocket, though. Harder to lose that way."
"Thanks, Dip. Whatever happens tonight, man, remember—I love you."
"I love you, too, Magic Girl," he said.
"Bill's not around in your head tonight, huh?"
"What?" he asked.
"You haven't called me 'Red,'" she whispered.
"You hate that."
"Right now I'm so scared and lonely, I'd love to hear it," she admitted. She was panting. "Just found out something, dude. Make a note of it. Wolves, no matter how sad and scared they feel—they can't cry."
In the dimness of dusk, a darker shadow flowed down the hillside. Anyone glimpsing it would be hard pressed to say what it could be—it resembled a huge snake, or part of one—it slithered, it made its way in sinuous curves, but it wasn't all that long, maybe ten feet, but broad enough to be an anaconda.
And if one listened, it did not move on its belly, but on dozens of short scrabbling legs. It glided with its front segments reared slightly, its vaguely humanoid swiveling head questing left and right, perhaps trying to follow a scent or to catch sight of something or someone.
It did not move fast, but implacably. The animals and birds—the normal ones, the field mice, the quail, the twittering, darting swifts that came out with the sunset—avoided the flowing shadow, sensing something wrong about it, something twisted, abnormal, different in a deadly way.
However, the creature was not interested in feeding. Only in following the urges the valley itself gave it—to find the two escapees and eliminate them. Secrets must be kept.
Long and weary years before, the creature had been human, a hunter who had discovered the low tunnel and ventured into the hidden valley in search of game.
He found none. Rather, in the end, something found him.
Over decades, his body changed, devolving, transforming still recognizably bipedal, from something with two legs and freedom to run to this lowly, creeping form, more insect than animal. His mind had broken long ago, but a faint memory still lingered, a memory of being human and going on two legs.
It did not evoke sorrow so much as hatred of those who still had some semblance of humanity left to them.
Instinct drove it—the instinct to bite with its horrible venomous pincers, to inflict a fiery death that would pulse through the blood until the blood stilled forever.
Instinct told it to come swiftly, in the dark.
To move stealthily, especially in the final approach.
To die itself if need be, but to accomplish its task before dying.
Beware instinct.
As William Shakespeare had his character Falstaff proclaim, instinct is a great matter.
In times of crisis, it supersedes reason and thought itself.
It's in the driver's seat.
When it calls, one must answer. When it commands, one must obey.
Fear the dark? Fear the unknown? Fear the creeping monster?
No.
First and above all, fear blind instinct.
A sliver of silver rose above the trees in the east—the still-fat moon, very nearly full, maybe just full enough.
Dipper stood and recited the strange incantation, in a language that no one living could read or write. Who could understand it? Well, perhaps the ghost of Paracelsus, or Queen Elizabeth I's private wizard. John Dee, or maybe, at a pinch, Roger Bacon and his powerful wizard friend Prospero—or, going back to the wellspring, Simon Magus of antiquity.
He held the words in his memory, the sounds of them, though the meanings no one could tell him: "K'ai leune, megistras nictus, abrax ch' kharm t' enturn'ik; kuradha nus, t' nefen'avath; attus luxim, attus fint'acar, attus pachis."
He stood and could feel the moonlight—a physical force on his body. "I think it's starting," he said.
"Dipper—"
"Can you feel it?"
Wendy snarled. She strained out an anguished word: "Run!"
He turned. She had gone into a feral crouch. With a growl, she pounced, threw him down on his back, pinned him, her jaws slavering inches from his face. "Can't—help—it—"
She's going to rip my throat out!
Strangely, he felt no panic—just the flat thought. "I didn't want to do this," he said.
Straining, fighting her own impulses, Wendy groaned, "If I can let you up, run!"
He put his arms around her. "Listen," he said.
She froze, and he felt the quivering tension in her nearly tearing her apart. But then her flattened canine ears perked forward as he sang, as best he could, crushed there by her weight—
". . . so go up and greet your mammy, mammy . . . ."
She began to shake.
He continued, and when he wrapped up with "Don't, don't, don't you forget about the ba-a-aby!"
And the red wolf collapsed atop the small white sheep, laughing. "Oh, man, Dip!"
"We OK?" he asked, caressing her. His hands moved down her back. "Hey—your tail's smaller."
"It is?" She pushed up from him. "Oh, yeah, I'm startin' to feel something."
"Lie down on your stomach—not on mine! And let me lie next to you. If the moonlight's starting to work, we're home free."
They lay stretched out, face-down. Then Wendy grunted. "Oh, man, this is beginning to hurt me. I can f-feel my bones—ugh! Changing!"
"Me too," Dipper said through clenched teeth. "Grunkle Ford didn't—ahh—say it would hurt this much—my fingers are growing."
"Mine, too. Claws are all gone. I think—oh, God, my legs! I think I got less—ahh!—fur now—look at me—"
"Your face is going back to normal—ahh, dang!"
"Yours too. I—wish—you—could keep the—lamb's ears! They're cu—cute—" Wendy spasmed and howled. Bones reshaping were indeed agonizing. And they would still have to turn over and bask their front sides in the moonlight. "That was a bad one. Hey, Dip—kiss me, man."
Their mouths were the right shape again. He turned partway on his side, she turned partway on hers, and their lips met. And they spread out the pain, shared it, told each other to bear with it, and that made it easier.
"You—gonna miss having—ugh!—a girl with six b-boobs, Dipper?" she asked.
"I'll settle for the normal—normal two," he grunted, shuddering as his feet became more human.
"How's my tail?" Wendy asked. "I can't feel it anymore."
He ran his palm down her spine. "Just a little brush now," he said. "It's shrinking away."
"God, how long does this go on?"
He glanced up in the sky and blinked, astonished. "It's already been hours. Moon's almost at the zenith."
"Time—oh, God!—flies when you're having pain!" she said.
"Better turn on our backs," Dipper said.
They did, and found they could hold hands—and, mercy of mercies, their hands were so nearly human that their telepathy worked again.
This isn't so bad, Wendy told him. Dipper, I'm so sorry—I couldn't help pinning you down. And I might have—hurt you if you hadn't—
—Humiliated myself by singing the Lamby Lamby song? It's OK. I'm mature enough to accept my dorkhood. I just thought for sure that if I could make you laugh—
Yeah, I got it. Wolves can't cry. But they can't laugh, either. You did it, Dip. You turned off the instinct and turned on the human part of me that will love you forever.
—You're looking good in the moonlight, Wen. Hardly any fur at all. We're past the hard part now. Hey, roll on your side.
They both did, facing each other.
Mm, you're my big guy again. Within an inch of being as tall as me.
—I can see your freckles now. We've it beat.
And they might have, but for the shadowy form that crested a rise a few yards away from them, crouched, and clashed its evil pincers in anticipation.
To be continued