Chapter Six
Harper’s feet touched soft grass and wet leaves before they touched solid ground and that space between the curl of the fallen greenery and the ground beneath felt endless as she made her final descent. She hated every millisecond of it, but she kept going.
“Don’t you quit on us now,” her new inner voice demanded. “We’re almost there. Marcus needs you. No one else is going to do this. It has to be you.”
She agreed inwardly but didn’t give her new mental guide the satisfaction of hearing her say it. No way. She made it to the ground with a tentative step and then stumbled away from the bridge as she took in a huge gulp of air. Without even realizing it, she had held her breath the whole way.
Once she had the ground under her feet and her bearings about her, she immediately had to squat down and relieve herself. She was certain that a deluge was about to come out of her, but all that emerged was a tiny dribble. Annoyed, she stood and moved on.
She looked up at her tree, then counted the trunks and figured out more or less where Larissa’s tree was. Once she got closer, she’d use her light.
She stayed close to the trees on Larissa’s side of the main corridor. She told herself she would know it because it was so much bigger than everyone else’s, but there in the dark the trees played tricks on her. They seemed happy to change sizes and blend together as she tried to keep track of them. Also, the houses were hard to differentiate from Harper’s low angle. Everyone’s floor looked the same from underneath. It was above that layer, up inside their homes, where clues as to the inhabitants emerged.
Harper stopped and tried again. She’d moved five trees down from where she’d started, she was sure. Wait, had it been five or four? When did she start counting? She leaned against the trunk of the nearest inhabited tree and sighed, exhausted and frustrated. As soon as she did so the urge to pee came back and once again she squatted for a thoroughly disappointing session of relief. Great. Every shifter would know she’d been there by morning - her scent was everywhere.
She kept going, stretched her hand out in front of her and her fingers brushed the next trunk. She paused. This trunk felt older, a bit more stately. She attempted to reach her arms all the way around the trunk the way she could with her own, but this one was far too big. She’d made it! Larissa’s tree was right in front of her.
After a silent arm pump of triumph, she walked around it, keeping one hand on the trunk. She couldn’t see a thing. The flowers, bushes and vines of the forest were extremely thick all around the base of Larissa’s tree and all their details blended into one another until they became a solid black. She stared into that inky darkness and took a breath, then closed her eyes and waited a moment.
Silently, she begged her eyes to adjust. Then, a little spark inside her lit up. She was in her human form, not her half wildcat state. Perhaps, and it was a big jump, but it was just possible that her wildcat eyes would be able to see in the dark.
Slipping her dress off and laying it over a rock, she dug deep inside her psyche to bring out the inner hunter from deep below her human self. She needed the most cunning, sharpest cat possible and no substitute would do. She felt her face start to change as her ears slid up and mouth became much smaller and her nose flattened against her cheeks. She felt claws slip out from under the skin of her hands and her feet until she felt she could stand on them. Her arms and legs bent oddly, giving her the permanent squat of a feline on its hind legs and she waited as the little bit of fur she always got sprouted up and down her back, arms and legs. A little bit of it graced her face, but then it stopped.
She blinked. At first, the dark remained. After another blink, it changed. The dark became a soft grey. She could make the edges of things and eventually see each individual shape as her mind took on the awareness of a cat. She walked away from the tree, which was now clearly Larissa’s. She sniffed the air and found the scent of all the neighborhood shifters, humans, children and adults. Had Marcus left a smell?
She sniffed again and, while she didn’t smell Marcus or his friends, she did smell something a little off. It was the smell of food rotting.
The sour, acrid smell led her to a large bush. She had to get down on her hands and feet and then flatten herself completely to crawl through the small opening that had been burrowed through it. Someone had left their scent behind here, but it whomever it was didn’t smell young and innocent like a little boy but rather cunning and desperate, like someone who was returning to clean up a crime scene.
On the other side of the bush was a circle of young trees. They had sprung up too close together to get any fatter, so they stood like a natural, tall fence. Harper’s cat claws gently parted them and she gracefully slipped through. The trees snapped back together behind her, hiding her from the outside world.
She didn’t know it, but at that moment her lover Grey was very, very drunk. He and Larissa had made it to the bar and quickly discovered what everyone was drinking. The clear alcohol was distilled from the skins of the local fruit and had a real punch to it; only three drinks in and Grey was already reeling.
All around him, men yelled and laughed and jeered. Somewhere in the craziness, there was Larissa disguised as a boy. Some human girls were behind the flimsy little bar, pouring drinks into recycled metal canisters with their edges softened. If someone wanted an actual glass, they had to give the girls a tip.
For the first time in a long time, Grey and Larissa watched money exchange hands. They saw it the moment they walked in and right away they were struck by how dirty it felt, the trading of pieces of decorated paper for a night of debauchery. One of the girls recognized Grey and offered him and his handsome friend a free round of alcohol in a glass if she could have a kiss. Boy Larissa was amused by the proposition and promptly pulled one of the girls onto her lap to kiss her properly while her colleagues poured the two cocktails.
“First time here?” the human bartender asked. Grey nodded.
“You’ll love this,” she assured him. “Best booze you’ve ever had.”
“You girls make all this yourself?” he asked as he smelled what was in his glass. No scent reached his nostrils. He inspected it a little closer - the stuff was completely clear, not a drop of discoloration was anywhere in sight.
“We got a deal with a little operation just outside the forest,” she told him, smiling. “They only accept cash, which is why we have to charge here. If you need some, we can tell you where there are some secret stashes all around. You’d be surprised how many people went ahead and saved the last of their paper money after coming here. I was sure it was all gone for good. Shows what I know.” She patted his hand and moved on to the next customer who had a one thousand Bachmann bill. Grey heard him asking how much that would buy him and the girl assured him he could drink all night on that much.
After that, things happened quickly. Grey did his best to chat up the guys around him, but they were so eager to get the clear, fiery water down his throat that no one seemed up for much conversation. Grey shrugged and joined the fray, but he instantly regretted his first drink.
The alcohol had an odd, cleansing effect. It didn’t wash away his sorrow or his sad memories, but rather his good ones. Everything he’d ever loved to look at was gone from his memory; his mother’s face, his father’s proud smile during the days he’d messengered for the president, Harper’s sweet smile, gone. All of it. The only thing left was pain.
It filled him and hardened him. He found himself taking bigger and bigger swigs as the pain inside him increased and demanded that he tend to it. “More,” it told him. “I need more. I need it. Give it to me.”
Grey listened and kept drinking, his pain turning to anger. What right did the world have to give him so much hardship, so much heartache and death? His own mother died right in front of him, beaten to death by a gang of humans out to teach the shifter community a lesson. Why did that have to happen? Could anyone tell him?
He glared at everyone in the room, boy Larissa included. There was a new girl on his/her lap and the sight of them laughing, rubbing their noses together and stealing soft kisses from one another suddenly looked grotesque. He could see all their blemishes, the insides of their mouths lined with sticky, stretchy saliva, the yellow on their teeth and smell the horrible scent of lust on their skin.
He stood to confront them, tell them to stop, but as soon as he did the floor pitched violently beneath him, throwing him into a nearby male human.
“Hey! Watch it!”
Grey shoved them man away from him. Why should he do what this loser wanted? He need to talk to his friends! Why did everyone have to be out to be in his way?
He tried again, holding onto the columns that supported the bar this time. He took a spin around the first one, tripping over his own feet. By some miracle, his drink didn’t spill so he kept moving, kept downing more of the horrible stuff. For just a brief moment the alcohol would make his face screw up and he had to fight to not spit it out. Once he swallowed, it turned to pure fire and burned up every little bit of good inside him, leaving the purest sense of hate and spite he’d ever felt in his life. He felt powerful as it grew. That is, he felt strong and unstoppable until he took his next step. Then the room would tip and spin again and he found himself reeling.
Somehow, he got to Larissa and found him/her and the girl laughing loudly at him. Something very funny had happened but he wasn’t sure what. The girl handed him a second glass and said something about the “happy round.” He had no interest in happiness so he downed the stuff far too fast, so much so that even the bartender girl called out to “Slow down!” But there was no stopping him. He wouldn’t stop until he was pure darkness, pure hate.
The alcohol hit and he stood staring at the wall, waiting for it to transform him. As he watched the wall made of small, young tree trunks something alarming happened - the wall he was staring at began to dance. It shimmied and bounced in place. Grey found himself dancing along with it and laughing hysterically. What was this? He still had laughter inside him.
Other men came close to him and linked arms and they all started to bounce. The girls at the bar sang them a song and they got the beat and then kept going.
“Oh, I’ll have another,
My brother,
My brother!
Why don’t we stay
Right here at the bar?
The night is so warm and girls are so soft
And home is so very far!”
Everyone was elated beyond any state they had ever experienced before in their lives. It didn’t matter if anyone was shifter or human or anything else, they all just wanted to laugh and put their hands on each other’s shoulders for support as the laughter made them double over and hurt their ribs.
“Why- why- why can’t I stop?” Grey shrieked out during his mania.
“It’s the magic of the booze, my friend! The magic has you!”
He looked around to see who was talking, but there were so many faces. He looked over to Larissa and found him/her deep in a kiss with the bartender. Her drink sat untouched on the table in front of her. Grey quickly walked over and downed it before she could remember that they were there to get drunk.
Whatever happened after that point was lost to Grey’s memory. He was sure that it involved a lot of dancing, singing and running through the open jungle with the other men, but he only felt that these things had happened, he couldn’t be certain they’d actually taken place. All he knew was that he woke up curled up next to the base of a tree, his glass tipped over right next to him. He stood slowly, waiting for the pain of a hangover to hit him, but to his shock there was nothing. He blinked, trying to see if the light had any affect on his eyes, but no - he only felt rested and content.
He suddenly realized just how dangerous this moonshine was. Not only did he have no idea what he’d gotten up to the night before, but he felt no regret. The anger and violence he felt at the top of his drinking spree had turned to happiness so quickly that it was forgotten almost entirely until he sifted through the deeply buried memories of the night. There he was, dark, angry Grey, ready to punch Larissa in the face and feeling completely justified in the action. He shuddered at the thought.
He picked up his glass and looked around. He didn’t see anyone else but he did see what looked like a brown stick poking out from behind a different tree. No, it wasn’t a stick, it was a leg. A deep brown leg with a pale white leg draped on top of it. He walked the glass over to a little crate stuck on the side of the now closed and shuttered bar and then quietly made his way over to the pair of legs.
There, on the other side of a large tree, he found Larissa and the bartender. At some point, Larissa had shifted back to her female form and now she was nude in the grass with a naked young woman on top of her. Grey leaned down to touch Larissa’s shoulder, but as he got close the human girl woke up and looked at him.
“Hey, get outta here,” she grumbled at him, then turned back to her lover. To her complete surprise, she found a woman down there and let out a little shriek.
“What the -? Who are you? Where did that handsome guy go?”
Larissa, now awake, put her hands behind her head and shrugged. “You’re looking at him.”
“But… but I don’t understand. You were- last night, you had a - oh, you shifters! Just get out of here!”
She stood up and crossed her arms, glaring at the two of them. Grey helped Larissa up and she brushed off her curvy limbs and buttocks while he waited. His companion seemed to be in no hurry at all and that just made the situation much more awkward.
“Go, already!”
Larissa turned to her one night stand and gave her a smile. “Thank you for a lovely evening. You were more wild than I’d ever dreamed you could be.”
That comment made the human girl blush and look at the ground. Larissa chuckled a little at her discomfort and then strolled off, Grey following her lead.
“You leave any clothes behind?”
“Yes. They’re over here by this little pond. Somewhere.” The two of them looked for the shirt and shorts that Larissa had abandoned in the throes of passion. They found them flung off to opposite sides and the fossa quickly dressed to get back home.
“Well,” she said, pulling her shirt on, “we have quite the story to tell your girl, don’t we?”
“Uff. She won’t believe it.”
“She will,” Larissa countered. “You forget, little bird. Your girl was raised human. They’ve seen every form of evil you can imagine.”
The two walked off back to their branch of the forest and left the bar behind. Grey silently vowed to do everything he could to get the place shut down. Better yet, he reasoned, he should find the makers of this horrible substance and see to it they never made another drop of that liquid evil. He didn’t know how he was going to do it, but he needed to do it soon. When the cash hiding under mattresses and stuffed into tree trunks ran out, all of those men he had seen upending their drinks would start to get desperate. And desperate men were dangerous.
They walked over to Larissa’s tree so that Grey could be certain she was home safe, though she insisted no such move was necessary. As they walked, Larissa suddenly stopped. She sniffed and crinkled her nose up, shook her head at the awful scent that hit her.
“Some pregnant woman has been peeing all around my tree,” she said out loud. The fossa turned to Grey. “I don’t suppose you know which pregnant lady that might have been?”
He grimaced. “Sorry about that. Someone told her about a secret little hiding place that boy Marcus had at the base of your tree. She wanted to come out here and find it. The baby must be pushing on her insides a little more. Pregnant females always have to relieve themselves.”
Larissa rolled her eyes as if carrying a child inside one’s uterus was nothing more than a bothersome notion. “I think she’s close,” she informed her friend. “Let’s take a look around.”
Soon the two of them were following the same path that Harper had taken. Fossa Larissa crawled low to the ground while Grey in bird form flew over it. Both found their way to the other side and the tight circle of trees.
They shifted to humans again and called to Harper. No answer. Grey started to panic.
“What’s happened? Is she inside there? Please, help me!”
“Wait.” Larissa held him back a moment. “I smell someone else. Someone passed by here, along the border of the fence. A man, I think. But I smell Harper as well. She’s shifted but she’s not in danger.”
She gently pushed the trees open and there, on the other side, found a naked Harper deep asleep.
In the night, Harper had found several things. A ripped up blanket, a mallet and a book with only a few pages remaining with a drawing done on the back. She held them all in her arms as she dozed, protecting them like priceless jewels. Her lover and friend walked up to her and gently shook her awake. She blinked her eyes open and smiled, then realized where she was and balked.
“What? Why am I here? Didn’t I make it home?”
Grey smiled at her and pulled his shirt off to give it to her. “Nope. Looks like you camped out here.”
“Darn it! I fell asleep again.” She stood and collected everything she’d found into her arms. “I want to take these to his family. I’m sure they’ll want them.”
Grey nodded silently and held his hand out for her to walk with him. Together they took the long way out of the clearing and back around to her home. She was a bit delirious from a lack of food and water and Grey wanted to get her safe as soon as possible.
Done with the both of them, Larissa quickly shifted and scampered up her own tree and promptly forgot about the whole night.