Unnatural Creatures

The bellow happens again, all around me. I get ready to leave my Father to his Beast, but Billy Beecham appears, wearing a trench coat, and scraping a moss sample from one of the trees. There’s another bellow, this one startled.

“Angela,” he says, and winks, like it’s a pleasant surprise to see me in the middle of a mini-forest.

“Leaving,” I say. “You should too. The Beast is about to be on the move.”

“Did you see it?” he asks.

“All the time,” I say.

From somewhere nearby I hear my Father’s voice, beginning to sing “Happy Birthday.” I assume it’s to himself. The Beast’s birthday is anyone’s guess. I guess you could figure it out, but you’d need a chain saw.

Could things be more pathetic? I straighten my uniform and walk out. In the direction I think is out, anyway. Which it isn’t. That is, of course, implausible, because of the one-block-by-one-block factor. Nevertheless. I’ve gotten turned around. I feel like things are spinning. I feel like the trees are taller than they were. I note the fertilizer at their feet.

Billy Beecham is smiling at me when I return.

“Lost?” he says.

“What is it you do, anyway? You can’t just be hunting this one Beast,” I ask, making the best of a bad situation.

“Collector,” he says. “Began with butterflies, now assigned to beasts.”

He pulls something out of his pocket. It keeps pulling and pulling like a magician’s scarf. A net, but large enough to catch a whale in. Not big enough. Poor idiot.

“It’s not like you’ll catch the Beast,” I tell him. “No one can. You’ll end up living here on the edge, and you don’t want to, believe me.”

“How do you know?” asks Billy Beecham.

“No one wants to live here,” I tell him. “We just do. We have to. We’ve been here a long time.”

“Happy birthday to you,” sings my Father from somewhere far away. I hear him blowing out his own candles, and the mini-forest gets as dark as a mini-forest surrounded by streetlamps can get. The mini-forest also gets larger. I feel it happening. Like it’s taken a deep breath.

Billy Beecham grabs my hand, and takes off running, and I’m flying behind him like a streamer. He’s making some sort of call with a whistle. A honk.

The Beast has never honked. My backyard borders the mini-forest, and if anyone’s heard the voice of the Beast, it’s me. The Beast roars.

Billy Beecham stops, and I crash into him. He’s swinging his net around over his head. This is not what you do with our Beast. Our Beast is uncatchable.

“Here, Beast,” he croons. “Beast, Beast, here, Beast. Does it need a virgin? You’ll do.”

I look at him. He doesn’t even have the grace to blush.

“It doesn’t need a virgin. It doesn’t care about virgins.”

“Not what I heard,” Billy Beecham says, and resumes his clucking and net swinging. He has no idea how to call a Beast. I decide to show him.

How do you call this kind of Beast? It’s the kind of Beast that responds to one hand clapping, and so I clap against a tree trunk. It’s the kind of Beast that hears when a tree falls in the mini-forest and there’s no one around. I feel it beginning to move. There is a tearing sound, and a racking sound.

It’s not like our Beast doesn’t have a history. It used to be a much bigger Beast.

It used to live in Scotland, and it came across the ocean on a ship it took over by talking to the planks. We keep it under control. That’s why we’re here, on all sides. Bastardville stands guard over our Beast. The last time it got loose, it took over half the Rocky Mountains and created a whole army of pines before we got it back.

Billy Beecham is staring at me.

“What?” I ask.

“Are you trying to poach my Beast?” he says.

I have already discovered that I don’t like him. Forgive my momentary delusion. He belongs with his face in a tub of Peppy Ripple. He belongs here, in the mini-forest.

“It’s not your Beast,” I say. “It’s its own Beast. We just keep it boundaried.”

The Beast starts to walk. Billy Beecham sits down abruptly, his face drained of color. I see my Father peering out from behind a tree, the bag of fertilizer still in his hand. He’s grinning at me as the forest tilts and lifts us up. He gives me a thumbs-up. I’ve never seen fit to participate in this, but along with the neck-pinch skill, girls get some training early on in Beast Management. Maybe this is my calling. Maybe I’m a hunter. Maybe I’m a gatherer.

We’re on the move. I think about the houses on the eastern border of the Beast. This is a bad little forest. It moves around. Those houses just went back up again, but thankfully, they’re empty at present. The Beast tends to like to walk toward the sunrise. We’ve learned some things over the years. Mostly the Beast only moves a few feet, but today, it’s really shaking. The birds that have been hanging out in the Beast’s hair scream insulted screams and take off.

I can see a little bit, through the trees. We’re way above the streetlamps now, and the Beast is maybe twenty feet in the air, walking on its taproots.

Billy Beecham’s mouth is hanging open.

“You know what the Beast eats?” I ask him.

“I don’t,” Billy Beecham says. “Let me down.” After a moment of looking at me, he increases his pitch to the high whine of someone being picked up against his will. “LET ME DOWN.”

I feel a little bit of sympathy for him, but he is also the person who kissed me without an invitation. Collector. I don’t like being collected any more than the Beast does. Don’t come in here, thinking you can collect Bastardville’s Beast. Just be calm, go into the mini-forest, and let the Beast have a snack. You’d think people would learn.

Some people called us tree huggers here in Bastardville, back when we were Utopian. Some people called us weirdos, some people called us pagans, and we were those things too. We’re part of an old tradition, Beast Managers, and this kind of Beast requires a lot of maintenance. It needs pruning and fertilizer. It needs exercise. It needs the occasional blood sacrifice. It’s no big deal. That’s what tourists and collectors are for.

I wrap Billy Beecham’s net around my hand and sling it over him, using the neck-pinch skill. I wrap one end around a tree and tie a knot. I wave at my Father as I walk out of the clearing, so that the Beast can do its Beast thing.