Flashback: “the Office of the Dean”
There is a great snarling wolf between Rhea and the office of Dean nikink, which is frankly just plain ironic.
“Um,” she says to the wolf.
She holds out her hand for the wolf to sniff. The wolf snaps at her hand. She squeals and draws back.
“Um,” she says again. “I’m here to file my withdrawal paperwork.”
The wolf doesn’t seem to understand her.
“You don’t seem to understand me,” Rhea says wisely. “It’s probably because you’re a wolf and I’m a human.”
This is total slander. People always say things like this about wolves and it really hurts their feelings. Wolves understand what is going on with all the social rejection just fine.
“Are you an administrator?” Rhea asks, hopelessly.
The wolf snaps its leash. It attacks.
If I had to guess where the wolf came from I’d guess that it came from Principal Goethe’s coffee machine. I’d guess that the coffee machine was left on, and the coffee in it boiled down to this thick black gunk, and then came to life and burst into being as a great jittering wolf, a sludge-wolf, an agitated and agitating wolf. It ate various papers from the inbox and grew, becoming bigger and bigger, until at last it was flagged by the Principal for an intervention by the Dean.
Troublemakers usually are.
It was sent to Dean nikink’s office, whereupon it would presumably be nikink’d—
Save, some distant twinge of survival instinct? Perhaps? Guilt? Shame? Maybe simply the instinct there is in a coffee-wolf to stay just a coffee-wolf rather than learning to change? stopped it before the doors, left it to scatter the secretaries and perch on the table but not actually go in for its deaning.
It was a wolf. It was a terrifying wolf. It wasn’t an administrator at all!
And that’s why it’s fighting there. That’s why Dean nikink comes out to check her missing appointments and discovers a swirl of snarling fur and teeth and claws in the main room instead.
I don’t know exactly what she said then. Well, more precisely, I’m not allowed to say. I’m not actually supposed to be hiding behind the curtains in the administrative office all the time spying on people. They keep saying, “That’s bad!”
I think personally that it’s morally neutral. But the point is, a wise girl doesn’t quote.
So I don’t know what the Dean said exactly. But it stopped them. They drew apart. The coffee-wolf cringed in shame, dwindled down, and flew into the Dean’s outstretched coffee-cup. As for Rhea—
She is panting there. She uncurls herself. She stands up. She brushes herself down. She gives that embarrassed smile that a werewolf girl will give after being caught fighting with a big coffee-wolf but after her wounds and torn clothing have healed.
I can’t say what the Dean said then. Probably something like, “You were here for a withdrawal?”
But Rhea just shakes her head.
I don’t know how I can explain this. I don’t even know for sure that I know this. There’s only so much insight that you can get into someone’s head from behind the curtains in the administrative offices of the Lethal Magnet School for Wayward Youth in Brentwood, particularly when you’re trying so very, very desperately not to sneeze.
But if there’s a reason? If there had to be a reason? I think that was when she realized that even a girl who can’t save the world from vast swarms of scissors is still perfectly able to fight giant wolves.
Thank you, nikink and the amazing faculty of the Lethal Magnet School!
We owe this insight and this revelation to you!
– 1 –
Emily walks past a cow. It’s got a crown. She nods. It moos.
Emily speaks with a snake for a little while.
At the edge of the chaos she kills a fine feathered coat-beast and she puts on a fine feathered coat.
She walks to the waste, with its great sticky trees, and she scuffs the dirt with her toes: here a down arrow. Here a left arrow. Here an up arrow, and here a right.
She sets up a stone, that’s all you need, you don’t need a PlayStation if you’ve learned the dance.
She turns the staring skull to face away.
And this is how the world begins: when the last bit of fear in Emily settles, and the feathers of her coat; and she closes her eyes, and opens them, pure and clean; and she grinds a power button into the dirt, and she presses it, with the horny calloused tip of her right big toe.
Lightning flashes. Thunder rumbles. The world powers on like a PlayStation fan.
“You could die here,” whispers a silver snake. “They could fall on you. The world could bury you alive.”
There’s no turning back now, warns a passing crow.
And the jaguars go around and around the Earth, in the cold and the airless awfulness of space; and even in this last moment of that pain they do not know that an Emily has come.
– 2 –
I think if the wolf had lived —
The bigger wolf, I mean. The one that wasn’t Skoll, or me —
That maybe it would have been bad, I mean, really bad, but not world-ending bad. That maybe there’s something else that you can do with wolves that isn’t just killing them or letting them eat everything. That maybe sometimes things can happen, and they suck, and they’re awful, but then afterwards, somehow, things go on.
Or maybe they don’t. I don’t know. How could I? There’s not been time.
The world has only just begun.
– fin –
This is the beginning of the world:
When her feathers, when Emily’s feathers, settle, and her fears fall away; when she closes her eyes and when she opens them; when she boots up the Thunder Dance on that little rock and dances then to touch the sky, and to bring it all tumbling down;
To work a brand new miracle
And to set a hurt thing free.
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