Now, have breakfast and explore the southern island before he arrived.
Touchwit picked her way around bushes and over rotting logs down the city side of the island. The shoreline was higher in the water than the eastern side, forced up by the roots of trees. That made the growth denser. A family of sleek-headed ducks swimming low in the water scurried out of reach. The ducklings tumbled over each other, trying to remain a family. Relax, Ducks. I’m not going to bother you. Dragonflies and Damselflies skimmed the surface of the river – especially the many iridescent light blue ones. Won’t eat you either. That excited high-pitched calling that hurt her ears was a group of fly catching birds with tiny crests and black raccoon masks. Sociable, joyful, masked, as if at a costume party: she’d call them the Raccoon Birds. It felt clean and pure to make these identifications, as if she had awakened on the first morning of the world.
The channel turned out to be an idyllic place of its own, with the stillness of a pond. White water lilies crowded the water. Turtles basked on a floating log in the sun. She left them in peace – it didn’t feel right to violate them. After all, they were at home in their own burrows, which they carried outside their bodies, ready to withdraw into them if they were threatened. The Turtles displayed in yet another form the spirit of individual existence which typified this island. She caught a Rock Perch that swam into her paws like a gift, and ate it on the far bank. Then she found an ideal privacy to pass scat, and thinking it was the right thing to do here, she buried it well. It seemed to be the custom not to leave a mark that suggested one owned these magic islands. The Stranger’s Making faced the city, indicating that he could be nothing more than a visitor. The Islands were their own Making, emerging out of the river every year, washed free of the history of scents by the spring flood, a new creation.
The south island differed from the north because its trees were long established. But when she approached the far end, its landscape changed completely. The shallow terminal spit of an original shoal, it gathered fewer seeds and therefore less diversity of vegetation, and of the few trees that grew on it several had blown over in wind storms. Bulrushes and marsh grass had taken over the open space, with clumps of purple loosestrife, elderberries and milkweed. Ducks nested in the reeds. And the Geese also favoured this southern tip because it tapered off into shallows that extended for a distance, with water weeds that were easy to reach, if you liked eating upside down. And she guessed that the shallows were a place where the fish that had whiskers like Uncle Wily grazed on the riverbed and laid their eggs. This wasn’t a good place for raccoons – too few trees to climb and too much exposed space. But it dwelt in its own busy harmonies and the eel grass beckoned her fingers.
Within minutes, Touchwit created a second Making. The Stranger, when he ventured down this way, would appreciate that she had constructed it out of the materials of its place. It spoke of the balances of life at the tip of the South Island. Maybe, if it was really well-made, it spoke of the imbalances too.
Going north up the low-lying, mucky shoreline facing her house, she felt herself returning to her comfort zone. The South Island was expansive, the way it opened out to the sky, but it offered its freedom to creatures that fly like ducks and geese, not to raccoons. Freedom was having lots of options, including escape routes if necessary. She realized she hadn’t been relaxed on the tip facing the train bridge. Some vague threat lurked in the weeds. Perhaps it was just an imagining, an expression of the discomfort of her body out in the open during daylight. She should get back in a tree and nap.
Touchwit swam back across the small channel and up the western shoreline. She was soon inconspicuous in the leaves of the Stranger’s tree, with his Making close by for company.
***
The River came to life at dusk in the tiny, discreet ways of nightsiders. First the mosquitoes. Then the rustling of mice. She let herself stay half asleep so she would take these happenings into herself as a continued reverie. She learned more about their relationships that way when they were out of reach of her busy fingers and able to compose themselves freely into patterns. The Geese off the southern tip were going on about something. With daylight gone, they became fearful about threats they couldn’t see. That roundness disturbing the surface of the water. The Beaver. Nothing for him to take alarm in – he could simply vanish into his second world with a slap of his tail. A fish jumped in the channel between the islands. That’s a good idea. She should get some food in her before the other personality of the island revealed itself to her – its night side which she hadn’t yet explored in its particulars.
It was dark and complex at the channel, with the water lilies closed up for the night. She decided this was her favourite part of the island, in spite of the nearby Owl with its superstitious omens. She began washing her hands. Hunters need to be clean even if all they are going to catch is a minnow. A fish can smell the scent of a predator.
Touchwit was washing her paws when a darkness moved up the channel from her. She froze and watched. It transformed into a shape. The shape turned into an animacy, a large creature. It moved silently to the channel’s edge. Stopped. It was checking its surroundings. Upwind. It couldn’t smell her. It moved again. The animacy began washing its paws. Another raccoon. The Loner.
She knew it was him because of his style of discretion. He didn’t transition between a sociable world and the solitary world of the hunter. He left no scent.
The Other slipped into the water without making a ripple. And this was interesting: he didn’t wade with his hands in the water ready to grasp a fish. He had put his whole head underwater, leaving only his long arched back breaking the surface. Like a turtle, she thought whimsically.
His head shot out of the water, then his whole body leapt for the shoreline, water cascading off his fur. Something twisting and splashing in his mouth. A fish. He had caught a fish. With his mouth! Not one of those shoreline fish with spiky spines that weren’t worth the effort, but a gleaming yellowish monster. He dragged it into the forest. Soon there was the sharp smell of flesh.
She practically tasted the fish, but it wasn’t right to crash another hunter’s catch if he wasn’t kin, and besides he’d be offended at being watched while he was hunting, which is an even worse mistake in etiquette. Hunting was when things transform, when in this case a Fish is turning into Raccoon. In fact, it turned so swiftly she anticipated he’d leave no leftovers for her to eat. Then again, he’d likely bury what he didn’t consume. That was his way. But she was in no way prepared for what he did next. The Stranger emerged from the ferns holding the skeleton of the fish in its mouth. Then, instead of washing his hands after the meal he washed the bones of the fish. He did it with the care for every detail that goes with ritual. And then, holding the cleansed skeleton in his paws, he slipped it affectionately nose first into the water as if setting it free.
Only then, he washed his paws.
Touchwit had a lot to learn. There were going to be meaningful nights ahead. So long as the boy energy in her kept his mouth shut. Not all at once, but in little bits. Like ritual. Getting to know him would be a ritual. Like washing the paws before eating.
He swam soundlessly across the channel and disappeared into the bracken of the South Island. Perhaps he’d see her Making and smell the scent of her hands on it, its Maker.
22
Dawn painted her clouds with brilliant pinks and oranges. She painted them so well that she painted out the Great Raccoon Ancestor, producing in his place the idea of a Sun. Clutch left the poplar tree to take advantage of the early morning light. He needed to find his companions. He didn’t know what had happened to them after the senior males returned – he’d been too involved with the dog to witness the aftermath of the raid. He only knew he had betrayed his new kin. He had run away when the door of the house flew open, revealing a Primate holding a club.
Clutch found Sleekfoot’s trail easily. Not very sleek of foot now because the boy raccoon was limping and dripping blood. A second trail showed that he was supported by Lightfinger, his sister. She appeared to have come out of the brawl unharmed. But two other scent trails beside the first two belonged to striding male raccoons. Powerful Creek Town Fathers who had recently eaten, because one of them had shed a chicken feather. At least they hadn’t killed his comrades in arms. But what use did they have for a wounded boy and a maiden not ready to breed?
The mixed scents led to the canal, then to Clutch’s surprise turned north in the direction of the railway bridge. That explained their vector of attack. The two males had skirted the geese by moving through brush to the railway tracks and then crossed the canal by means of the train bridge. That was why they were able to avoid the geese and ambush the chicken coop from the east.
Clutch knew what tell-tale clues he was leaving in his own scent. They would show a loser in a fight, with a left leg whose muscles were frozen, a slashed, stiff back, and possibly a gash on his face. A stubborn loser, dragging his defeated body behind him. But more than the weight of defeat, he was dragging a burden of guilt, cowardice, and betrayal. He had failed his kin. He hoped his scent would now show determination. He, Clutch, senior male of the Island Family of the River Clan, was going to stand or fall beside Sleekfoot and Lightfinger.
Now, the railway bridge. Awkward to walk and smelly with the tar in the wooden cross ties and the metallic tang of iron. He pushed on a few yards further and crossed a highway free of traffic at this hour. Now, the safety of railway tracks providing a view in front and behind, with the wind on his left flank, so he couldn’t be surprised from that quarter. But on either side of the tracks there was only scrub forest to retreat into, nothing to climb out of reach of a fast-moving predator.
Clutch licked some condensation off the rails – an excuse to rest. He had to stop. His left flank was seizing up. He reached around to lick it – licking a wound subdues the pain – but this wound went deep into his thigh. He looked ahead: an empty track disappearing into oblivion. Behind: home, but he couldn’t go back a failure, and he wasn’t sure he could even reach home anyway. He was in a vulnerable spot. If attacked, he couldn’t fight or flee.
Well, Clutch thought. I’ve tried, and I’ve done my best. Nobody will think less of me if I curl up here beside the tracks and go join Uncle Wily.
He cast his eyes up to the southeastern sky where the Ancestor had disappeared into his den to escape the brightness of the day. What would he advise?
“Unswerving loyalty along the crooked path of cunning.”
That was a contradictory formula. How am I going to go straight ahead along a crooked path? Thanks a lot, Ancestor.
Pondering this dilemma, Clutch realized he was being watched. Every sinew in his body sprang to attention; he flexed his back in pain. To be tracked by a silent hunter even while you are moving like a hunter! He checked behind to see who was following his scent. All clear. His downwind side. Nobody. Then, where?
A boulder sat balanced on the track. About four bounds away. He must have missed it while he was lost in his thoughts. Typical of him. The boulder seemed to be grinning at his plight. No matter, all of nature could take amusement in his plight as far as he cared. But this boulder had big woodland ears. One of them drooped. Prominent ears and bushy tail. Could this be a Fox? Not to be regarded as a threat, merely a nuisance, and like raccoons (and unlike weasels, skunks, and mink) hunters who didn’t leave the remains of their kills for all to see.
“Stay away. You have Rabies,” it said.
“I don’t have Rabies.”
“You’re a mess. Who knows what’s bitten you?”
“Well, I’ll tell you what’s bitten me: a Rooster and a Drooler. Do I sound like someone with rabies?”
The Fox considered this information. “My condolences,” it said. “Did you get a chicken?”
“No.”
“Tough luck.”
“You should see the Drooler. He looks like roadkill. And the Rooster is toast!”
“I’m sure you put up a brave defense,” the Fox said.
