Animals We Made

Ash Land | Part 4

Silence.

They might've wished for the opposite.

In the living room hung a framed photograph: a woman in a dress kissing a man in a suit while two children looked up at the act and blushed. The animals now explored the dwelling with cautious, reverent steps. A tattered sofa reminded the dog of his favorite human, the one who'd plant her bottom on a similar couch and rub gloss on her lips and read magazines full of arts and crafts, of sports and hobbies, of girls in pink and boys in blue; as if sexes needed colors to distinguish themselves from each other, as if people might be confused otherwise.

Sunrays wiggled through gaps in the roof like fingers and marked the floor with neat tallies of light, chronicling days or weeks or months or years.

Chickpea relaxed.

This was a good place to be.

Nico climbed atop the sofa for a total view of the house, and the mirrors reflected his eyes—glowing in the dark since the lamps had no bulbs. He thought about feelings and how they crushed the soul and tempted it to dream.

Kraa zipped in through a busted window and landed on the mantel. "May I eat the dog yet?"

"He is still alive," the feline reminded him. "You are to eat him only after he dies."

"Yes, yes." The crow ran his beak through his greasy black feathers, preening them. "I recall the agreement."

"Such an odd agreement!" Mrumph raised herself on her hind legs and whipped her long ears and jerked, exposing her buckteeth. "Did the dog even agree to this, your agreement?"

"The agreement was made without my agreement," Chickpea told her, then sighed. "An agreement I never agreed to nor agreed to agreeing to at a later date. Who, then, did agree to this agreement? A cat and a crow? Regarding a dog who has not agreed? Oh, how disagreeable, this, their agreement."

She nodded, agreeing with his disagreement with the agreement, and whispered, "How very, very disagreeable, this agreement of theirs."

The group looked then at Nico, who usually got the final say on things, but his attention had shifted elsewhere, trained on a figure standing in the doorway to the hall.

"Whoa," said Mrumph.

Kraa lowered his head, as if royalty had entered the meek dwelling.

No one stirred for a while after that vast and ghostly pause.

The figure moved into the light, a boy who couldn't have been older than six. Around his neck was a gasmask he should've worn over his nose and mouth, but he did not seem to know better, and his arms went out as he cried, tears streaming down his face, his bruised legs wobbling under him.

"A pup," said Chickpea.

"A kitten," said Nico.

"A hatchling," said Kraa.

"A bunny," said Mrumph.

The child wept, snot oozing from his flared nostrils. "Vr-Vranch r-r-runch ubble clognog Mommy grunk ubble y-y-yapple dod u-ubble plob."

"What does he seek?" asked Kraa. "His nest?"

"Tren gl-gluck," stammered the boy.

Nico descended the couch. "He seeks an udder."

"Is he not too old?" Mrumph quirked an ear.

"Ah, perhaps." The cat approached the boy. "It is hard to tell. This species ages slowly."

"Does he know we are friends?" said the rabbit, paws balled at her chest.

"He must," said Kraa, hunching on the mantel like a sleep paralysis demon.

Now the child folded his hands, then sat on the floor and twiddled the laces of his boots. His jeans were ripped, and the tears he shed washed trails along his dirty cheeks.

Reaching for the feline, the boy mumbled, "Tutnup fwep z-zock rirrup lobgug y-y-yem?"

"What is he saying?" Mrumph scrunched her nose. "It is chaos!"

Nico rubbed his head against the knuckles of the boy's extended hand. Chickpea approached next to sniff the boy's wrist, and Mrumph hopped over to nibble the boy's laces. Kraa jumped down from the mantel and waddled over and gently pecked at the boy's boot.

The animals surrounded the child. He pet them, hugged them one by one, a gesture that worried the crow, who flinched but endured.

Soon the dog was curled up in the boy's lap.

"Get off the human," Nico scolded. "You'll make his legs cramp, and they will lose their blood, forcing us to sever them."

"He is abandoned like me." Chickpea licked the boy's inner elbow. "We are abandoned together."

The feline resented these words. Still, he could not disregard them. Humans may have broken the world, but this child had the future in his eyes. He talked, and the animals did not understand him. They talked, and he did not understand them either. Yet by some terrible, wonderful miracle, everybody understood everybody just fine.

Because language, in the end, had little to do with speaking.